What Does Hiraeth Mean to Me?

It’s so exciting to finally release my Hiraeth and Cwtch Welsh Doll peg ladies! Of course, there’s more about them at the end of this post! But knowing that lots of my customers aren’t Welsh, I thought I will talk about what Hiraeth is, and what does Hiraeth mean to me!

Hiraeth is the welsh word for a deep longing or wistfulness for days gone by, for your homeland. For a place from your past that may have disappeared and can’t be returned to. It is felt deep in your heart and soul. It’s a small word that encompasses so much nostalgia and deep feeling!

What does Hiraeth mean

It’s something that even I must admit I didn’t really understand until recently. Owing to my Dad’s job, I had the privilege of growing up to my mid teens in a special, historic location. With it’s red brick and grey window frames, our little bungalow almost looks fashionable again! We had no neighbours, 12 square miles of woodland to play in (including a beautiful waterfall) as well as 14 acres of gorgeous maintained gardens to ride our bikes around all weekend. Childhood bliss! The site was previously a mansion belonging to a prestigious Victorian family who were pioneers in botany and photography. The observatory from were they took some of the first photographs of the moon still stands there today. I loved where we lived, and appreciated both the beauty and the heritage of the site.

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Above: My sister and I, in traditional Welsh Costume, outside our childhood home.

But times change… Local council boundaries were redrawn, the offices that my father was caretaker of on the site eventually became disused, and we moved. The site remained unused for years, until a housing developer eventually bought the land. They bulldozed the offices and built houses there – not without controversy.

Of course, in the process my old home of 15 years was razed to the ground. The place where I grew up. Where I passed many of life’s important early milestones. And where I still enjoyed visiting for a walk every so often. A place that held such a huge part of my heart, that my soul felt forever attached to. Gone forever.

I genuinely felt a loss, and a longing to be able to go back to how it was years ago.

This is the essence of Hiraeth.

I recently “plucked up the courage” to go and drive through the new houses. The observatory has been kept owing to it’s historical importance. But otherwise I found it hard to orientate myself and work out where things (including my old home) once were. It was highly emotional and took everything I had not to be moved to tears!

So…this is what Hiraeth means to me, and why it led to me creating a hiraeth gift! I’d had a plan for Welsh Dolls for over three years, but this recent experience made me think about how it would be lovely to create something that would be the perfect way of sharing a piece of Wales with someone who is perhaps further afield from their native soil.

Both the Hiraeth and Cwtch gifts are packed with lots of well-researched details.

The Hiraeth Welsh Lady Doll is wearing a more modern traditional Welsh Costume, with many details heralding from the 20th century. She has a black skirt underneath a heavy, full length, red gown, which historically would have been made of flannel woven in a local Welsh wool mill. Her neat, white blouse has balloon cuffs.

Her black and white checked apron is almost full length, and would have protected her gown from dirt.

She wears a pretty red cotton shawl printed with daffodils; something that would have been reserved for special occasions. As with all of my peg dolls, the details are running all around the doll; here’s a closer 360° view:

I also have another Welsh lady available.

Proudly holding her bunting, my Cwtch Welsh Doll is the perfect way of showing a special someone just how much you care about them, as Cwtch is the Welsh word for hug. There is nothing warmer and more comforting than a great big Welsh cwtch!

The Cwtch Welsh Lady Doll is wearing a traditional Welsh Costume. She is has a black and red checked bedgown, which historically would have been made of flannel woven in a local Welsh wool mill. Underneath this she has a red woollen skirt and white blouse.

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Her fringed shawl is grey – a typical colour for a traditional Welsh shawl of this style, however I gave her a more modern polka-dot pattern to give my design a fresh edge. On her head she is wearing a cockle-style Welsh hat, with a lace-edged mob cap gently peeping out from underneath. These hats were traditionally woven from straw, but are now usually made from felt.

The black and red checked gown and cockle shape hat were predominantly worn by the women of Swansea and the surrounding Valleys.

Here she is in all her glory:

Both of these lovely welsh dolls are available in limited stock in my shop

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I hope you’ve enjoyed reading about Hiraeth, and about the lovely place where I grew up….

Lot’s of love from this now-grown-up Little Welsh Girl…

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Not Painted Peg Dolls – The magic behind my work

You might look at my peg dolls wondering why they’re a bit more expensive than others you are seeing online.

Every single peg doll that passes across my table goes through a labour-intensive process. Firstly, I draw the designs in pencil straight on to the doll. This can take a few hours on each one until the features and details are just right.

When I’m happy, it’s time for burning my drawings into the wood using the art of pyrography. This is the technique of using a red hot tool to permanently scorch the line work into the dolls. This can be lengthy depending on the complexity of detail.

When I first began in early 2015 I was the only peg doll artist in the UK (and as far as I’m aware in Europe) to use pyrography to create peg dolls.

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Once this is done, I am ready to sand back the doll to tidy the burned lines and prep the wood for colouring.

Colouring

This is the lengthiest part of making Doli Dwt peg dolls. It can take at least A WHOLE DAY to colour one 9cm (adult) peg doll, and about a week to colour a whole family. This is because they are not just painted peg dolls. My go-to medium is coloured pencils. Again when it comes to creating peg dolls this is an unusual technique, as most are painted.

If you can imagine sitting down with a colouring book, it takes much longer to colour a section of the image with pencil than if you were to lay down a wash of paint. It’s the same with peg dolls. It takes a lot longer to lay down colour on them with pencil than painting them. However, I just love the beautiful effect pencils create on wood grain and the fact that it makes my dolls unique and instantly recognisable.

That’s not to say that I never use paint in my work. My mission is always to create the best representation of your loved ones’ outfits, and if a combination of pencil with acrylic or watercolour paint is what will give the desired effect then that’s what I will of course use.

You might enjoy taking a peep of this hyper-lapse video of me colouring a part of a peg doll to see what it involves!

There are lots of other videos of my processes, including wood burning, on my YouTube channel.

This recent commission for a beautiful peg doll family portrait highlights how each order comes together.

I’d already worked for this lovely customer in the past, creating cake toppers for her wedding. I was absolutely delighted when she emailed asking for an updated set to represent their growing family!

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As always, the process starts by working from photos to draw the peg dolls. These ones have some really special details in the shape of the children’s favourite toys, so they took a while until I was happy that they were just right!

Then I burn the whole family with the pyrography tool – sounds painful doesn’t it?! But I can assure you nobody is hurt in the making of my peg dolls. Except maybe the odd burn to my own fingers!

The fun really begins when I start to colour the clothes! This commission had some really exciting/challenging details to add. First up was this tiny floral hedgehog. When scaled down to fit the doll, it is smaller than my thumbnail!

Here are the finished two children with their cuddly toys. Lots of detail is packed into the tiny 6cm peg dolls! Spot the tiny monkey-face socks!

Mum’s dress is exceptionally beautiful! As with most pretty dresses, it had to be created in stages, sealing bright colours as I go so that the high-pigmentation of the pencils aren’t carried across to other areas while I work.

Dad’s shirt is not short of detail either!

Together they make a fab peg doll couple!

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I hope you agree that they are an absolutely gorgeous family. They were a total pleasure to recreate in peg doll form!

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Hopefully, this has helped illustrate that my Doli Dwt dolls are so much more than painted peg dolls. They are beautiful, detailed heirlooms that will be displayed and treasured for years to come.

If you’d love some for yourself, or someone you love, pop to this page for more information and guide prices. Then drop me a line using the contact form and we can chat about your ideas!

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Wedding Table Centrepieces

I cleared my timetable in January to undertake a really special commission for a special set of wedding table centrepieces. It was a welcome break to work on something so personal after the madness of Christmas. However, it was also a bit daunting, as I was tasked to working with wooden dolls around three times bigger than what I am used to!

You may remember this post from a couple of years ago, where a set of my peg dolls was used as part of the romantic wedding proposal of two of my friends.

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Both of them are fans of graphic novels and the superhero movie genre, so naturally they decided to continue both the superhero and peg doll theme throughout their wedding. They asked if I could make their cake toppers, several gifts for family and friends and their table centrepieces.

I’ll save the toppers and gifts for another post, but if you have 3 minutes to spare, here’s a video of the giant peg doll wedding table centrepieces. Enjoy!

If you enjoyed this, then make sure to pop directly to my YouTube channel for more, similar videos. I am gradually building a little library of videos of the techniques and processes I use to create my peg dolls. This gives you a great insight into the work and love that goes into the details of every tiny doll that I create.

Until next time,

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~Peg Dolls ~ An Extended Family!

You might remember this lovely pair of peg dolls I made a few years back if you have a great memory! If – like me – you can’t remember what day it is, here’s a link back to the post where I first shared them.

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The peg dolls were a retirement gift from a daughter to her father to commemorate his career and all the admirable work he had done over those years.

Both her dad and her mum loved them, and it wasn’t too long until she got in touch asking if I could make all the grandchildren to add to the set. Of course!

Here they are, all six of them!

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Four lovely girls in a mixture of pretty patterns. Florals and stripes, always a favourite of mine!

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Not forgetting the handsome boys in their gear! Check out that splattered dotty little shirt! So cute!

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The grandchildren dolls were handed over to their Grandparents, and were very much loved immediately. So much so, that Granddad declared he needed dolls of his own children too, to complete the family.

My lovely customer got in touch to see if I could extend the family set again, this time with her and her brother and sister!

By now she knew my love of working with patterns and colour, and sent me pictures of outfits that didn’t disappoint!

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I love layering up the colours and stripes that make up a checked pattern! It’s time consuming but fun!

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I particularly enjoyed recreating the patterns in this scarf on this little lady peg doll. It was also fun adding the shading to get the “puffa” look to her body warmer.

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I actually captured working on some of these details in a video, which you can see here. I’m working on building more videos of my work and processes, so keep an eye on my YouTube channel. I hope to gradually add lots more of my pyrography stages and colouring of my peg dolls.

My lovely customer kindly shared a picture of them all in their forever home! A peg doll family which has been extended and built up over the past couple of years. They look so lovely together and I’m sure they will be treasured by all the family for years to come!

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Peg Dolls – A Happy Little Family

A request popped into my inbox last year asking if I could make a set of peg dolls as a wedding gift. Heck yes!

I was sent gorgeous pictures to work from of a beautiful family, including the furry four-legged members.

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The adults had very different styles which was fun to recreate. One is wearing a beautiful dress, while the other has a far more casual look of jeans and a sports hoodie. I loved this contrast between the two dolls.

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The lady in the dress certainly provided a few challenges! The dress is black, with quite intricate, delicate but really bright (almost neon) butterflies. We all know I’m allergic to black on peg dolls (!!) but this really was tricky. Finally, I decided that paint would be the best medium to create the right look; the opacity of the paint meant the colours are rich and bold against the black background.

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The couple’s son is an avid Newcastle United fan, so I was asked about recreating their strip. It was challenging to get those minuscule badge details on the tiny 6cm tall doll, but I got there!

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The little daughter clearly has a confident and individual sense of fashion, as little ones often do! I loved copying her outfit from her photographs. Her purplish leggings really are setting off her gorgeous top with the swallow motifs.

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Obviously, the dog and cat are adorable too. It’s always a pleasure to add animals to family sets of peg dolls. They are such little characters!

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They are such a colourful set altogether. I hope that they represent the vibrancy and fun that comes with family life for this gorgeous lot!
My customer was thrilled to give them as a wedding gift.

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As always, you can find out how orders for my personalised peg dolls work right here. I love creating peg dolls for people just like you!

Lastly – remember to keep up to date with us over on our Facebook page. If you’re not already following, please go and give us a like!

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