Fine Art Doll Gallery

Trade Secrets

Dollmaking Tips to and from Dollmakers

Shipping

Karen Williams Smith had given me this advice last year on shipping fragile dolls and it helped me enormously!!

This method is a little costly, however, it is well worth avoiding breakage and going through filing a claim.

Get 5 inch cushion foam from the fabric store. I buy a 6 foot by 5 inch piece for about $22.00. What you are going to want to do is put 2 pieces of foam together with the center hollowed out so you can wire your sculpture inside. Allow for at least 3 inches around all of the edges so that will give enough of a cushion.

I use 10" x 10" good quality boxes (like 275 pound test from www.uline.com), cut the foam into 2 10" x 10" squares. Then I lay my sculpture down in the center of one of the squares and take a black magic marker and trace around it to get an idea of where to take the foam out. I then take a sharp exacto knife and cut the shape out. You don't want to go too deep. Leave at least 2 to 3 inches to cushion the back of the foam block.

I then lay my sculpture face down on the other foam block and trace another shape with the magic marker. Then I cut out that shape. Keep your sculpture near by to lay it into the hollowed out areas to make sure you are not taking out too much.

You don't want the foam to touch the sculpture, so be careful that when you put the 2 blocks of foam together, they are not pressing into your doll. I then take polyfill and surround the doll to make a tighter fit and to fill in areas, like behind the neck for example.

I take 22 gauge wire and secure the doll into the foam. I do this by finding the flatest part of the doll, usually the back, lay it down on the foam and poke in the wire from the front, going across the belly (over some polyfill) and then take the other end of the wire and poke in the other side, then secure both ends by twisting together in the back of the foam block. You should be able to take the block of foam and lift it upside down without your doll moving or falling out. I then put this into the box and then put the top block of foam over it. The end result should be a 10" x 10" block of foam in a 10" x 10" box with your doll sandwiched in the hollowed out center.

Then I tape this box closed. I put this box into a larger box, like a 14" x 14", and surround it with foam peanuts.

I have not had ONE breakage after using this method.