Teaching Vocations: Holy Sisters Dolls

Remember Little Man's sweet Godsister? Cowgirl and I finally got to make her very belated birthday gift. Since she asks almost every Sunday  for us to pray for the nuns at our local convent, I though she would appreciate some little nun dolls. These dolls are based on Jennifer's peg doll statues on Catholic Inspired.  This is a project I have wanted to do for quite some time, Godsister's 4th birthday was the final push I needed to get it done.

We started with mini peg dolls from Hobby Lobby. They were only $3.50 for a large package of 36.  We also picked up a few pieces of felt in brown, black, white, and tan. I wish I had gotten blue and gray as well. We found some blue fabric and ribbon in the scrap bag but felt really works better.

I then looked up the habits for the orders we chose to make. I found a lot of ideas on the listing for these nun paper dolls. Unfortunately, they are out of print, but you can find them on this Picassa album. I just wish I could figure out how to print them out.  Some of orders we picked have a special meaning for Godsister and/or Little Man, others were habits we enjoyed. It was nice to be able to personalize them for her.

Using a glue gun and sharp scissors, we first cut rectangles of the main habit color and then cut out a head hole. We then glued the habit to the "chest" and "back" of each doll, and tied the waist with ribbon or thread.  We then cut out veils, wimples, capes, etc and added them to the doll. We found that it helped to define the arms if we put a little glue in the folds that the waist belt created and pinched them horizontally.

Pictured front the top left:
First row: Franciscan, Sisters of Charity, Missionaries of Charity, Dominican
Second row: Carmelite, Sisters of St Vincent De Paul, Daughters of St Paul, Holy Spirit Adoration Sisters (just because my favorite color is pink!)
Last row: Parish Visitors

I'm sorry, that I didn't take pictures of the step by step process, but Cowgirl and I have at least five more that we want to make, including a local order foundress who is up for sainthood, so we will do one soon.

After the dolls were complete, I wrote the order each represents on the legs.

We found this plastic container in our cabinet and it fit the nine dolls we made perfectly.  I then wrote Holy Sister Dolls on the lid with permanent marker and drew a little cross.

They were a big hit!  Imagine Sisters has a tutorial for making cute, nun paper dolls if you are looking for a fast and easy project.  What orders would you like to see made into peg dolls?

Update:  I found a new version of the Holy Habit paper dolls for sale  here.