DIY Mid-Century Style Doll Bookends

I LOVE the look of modern-style dolls on shelves. My grandmother started my love affair, as she picked up dolls from all her worldly travels and had them on display in her home-office, like an international chorus. And then designers like Alexander Girard picked up the inspiration baton when I first learned about these dolls:

And then Jonathan Adler came out with his Utopia Collection.

And then last year while on that 6-week stay in Denmark, I fell in love with the work of Danish designer, painter and ceramic artist Bjorn Wiinblad and his kooky ceramic ‘doll’ vessels.

Trouble was, that I can fall in love with all these things as much as I want–but they’re all HIGHLY collectable and, while easy on the eyes, are not at all easy on the wallet. Then one day as I was wandering through the isles at Lowe’s I saw these simple curtain finials, and they didn’t look to me like curtain finials at all, instead, to me they looked like my next DIY project My very own kooky heads to adorn the book shelves. So I also picked a a little floating shelf, because I loved the idea of the heads not just being decorative but being functional, too–I was going to turn them into book-ends.

So what I did when I got home was very, very simple. I took a black Sharpie to the finials and drew some faces onto the finials.

Then I measured and drilled small holes into the shelf where I wanted the heads to go and screwed the heads right into the shelves. And about $20 and 20 minutes later I finally had some dolls on my shelves!

I hung the shelf in Ida’s room and she loves it. She points to it all the time and says “Mama make dat!” “Lady sleeping, man awake!” It’s pretty much the cutest thing ever, a very quick and easy DIY that would also be fun to do with kids. I may also do another round making one head for each person in our family.

*Project and photography by J. Blakeney.
*This project was created in partnership with Lowe’s Home Improvement. For more ideas, check out our board “Justina’s Creative Home” on Pinterest.

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