Ok so I am the worst at taking before and after pictures so this is the best before picture that I took. In the summer time my kids and I like to look for treasures at garage sales. They call Saturdays the “Garage sale day”. I know I know I don’t know if that’s a good thing or not… Anyways my daughter found this doll and had to have it at first glance I said no way am I going to pay for this doll to enter my home… but of course the lady having the garage sale didn’t want this doll either so she said “oh that doll, she can have that for free” I thought oh great, thank you… Well the doll sat and sat and sat in my daughters room and one day I had the idea of making it into a mermaid. I thought how hard can it be, just a little bit of fabric her and there and we can turn her into a mermaid, (because my daughter is obsessed with mermaids) so this is how I did it.
First I got some yarn and I just glued each strand one at a time with a hot glue gun. I know it took a little bit of time but she looks much better with some hair!
Then I cut off her clothes and legs.
I purchased a pink fabric square and drew a mermaid tail on the fabric that was folded in half, I made sure that the mermaid tail was about a half and inch to and inch wider on both sides at the hips where I would connect it to the doll. I sewed the two pieces together leaving the top undone. I then stuffed the mermaid tail with toy or pillow stuffing. *tip- I had to take out the stuffing and restuff because I didn’t fill in the small parts completely. I learned the hard way that it’s important to get it completely filled by using small pieces of stuffing and a stick to push it down into the small parts.
After the tail was stuffed I hand sewed it on to the top part of the mermaid doll. I could of been done here but I wanted a little more character so I got some pink yarn and add a few wraps around the top of the fish tail with hot glue. Next I added some yarn with hot glue to her chest and with the extra pink fabric I cut out some shells and hot glued them to the yarn.
It’s much cuter now than it was before and my daughter can’t get enough of her new mermaid. And that’s the end of rags to mermaid.