Saint Peg Doll Exchange

The original idea for this Saint Peg Doll Exchange came from the Catholic Icing blog. Early in the year our large homeschooling group decided to have an exchange, and we thought that planning it for after Easter would give everyone enough time to prepare. We had about 30 moms sign up to participate, and we each sent the coordinator a list of our top choices so she could make the list of saints we'd be making. We ordered our 3 1/2-inch pegs together in groups from craftparts.com (dolls for female saints and men for male saints) a month or two beforehand and prepared to paint 32 of our assigned saint.

Many of us were last-minute painters! my girls and I finally started painting our St. Elizabeth Ann Seton dolls a week before the exchange! We used acrylic paints and then ultra-fine Sharpie markers for the eye details and a white paint pen for some of the white details. Then we added a few layers of top clear coat that I found near the acrylic paints.

I searched online for peg dolls to get ideas on how to paint them and make the eyes. It took maybe a total of five hours over a series of a week to finish these. Plus some fixing time due to a couple different mishaps (make sure you clean the brushes VERY well before adding the top clear coats, and DON'T lay them on their side on top of newspaper when they are still dripping with paint...yes, they will stick!).

 In-process

Complete!

Saints on display at the brunch

Some of the ladies at the brunch exchange

On Saturday, April 25th we meet at 10am for brunch and the peg exchange at the home of the coordinator. The dolls were set up in rows on the dining room table for all to admire!  Here's the lineup...

St. George

St. Catherine Laboure

St. Josemaria Escriva

Blessed Mother Teresa 

St. Rose of Lima

St. Rita

St. Therese of Lisieux

St. Ferdinand

St. Kateri Tekakwitha

St. John the Baptist

St. Clare of Assisi 

St. Pope John Paul II 

St. Bernadette

Immaculate Heart of Mary 

St. Mary Magdalene

St. Dominic 

St. Patrick

Saint Lucia

Our Lady of Guadalupe

St. Agnes

St. Michael the Archangel

St. Francis

St. Maximilian Kolbe

St. Elizabeth Ann Seton

St. Faustina

St. Martin de Porres

St. Juan Diego

St. Dymphna

St. Philomena

And a special Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati peg doll that our friend's daughter made for Beverly and her family!

It was a really fun project, a lovely brunch with friends, and I look forward to having these beautiful saint dolls and maybe even adding to the collection in the years to come!