Crackle Head

Rivkah, a doll artist in Israel, asked me to share how I made this crackled head. I was taught this method by Christine Shively when she came to Alaska for a doll class. It's been a while since I made this but I'll try to remember what I did.


Click on the photo for a larger image.

First I painted the base layer, which is a peachy flesh color. You need to make this the color you want to have show through the crackles. Let this dry.

Then I painted the crackle medium on. I put one layer of crackle medium on, fairly thick. My friend Sharon told me to paint the crackle on in one direction only. Then it needed to dry. If I remember rightly Christine said to leave it dry overnight. The bottle of crackle medium said to let it dry an hour. I think I left it for a couple of hours. I'm always impatient when it comes to letting things dry. Next thing was to paint the skin color, which in this case was a brown tone. I painted the face last.

The face crackled up nicely but I got a little crazy and rolled it in my hands to see if the crackles changed. Made really big cracks in the face which probably wasn't the smartest thing to do. I think if I was to do this again I would buy the stuff that makes really fine crackles. It's a two part product and it says on the package that it's for fine crackles. In my Michael's Crafts you find it with the decoupage stuff. I haven't made another one since but it was a lot of fun and I was pretty pleased with it. Just remember that if you crackle the face .... crackle all the skin that will be showing or it might look like something out of the Twilight Zone. Hit by an aging ray. In the head.