Sacred Seeds

Sister Boob Chicka Boob Boob

Sister Boob Chicka Boob Boob
A Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence Charity Doll
Private Collection

Sister Boob Chicka Boob Boob was created in honor of the Benefit for the Boob presented by Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence & (then Novice) Sister Sara Femme and benefiting the Breast Cancer Emergency Fund of San Francisco, on March 2, 2008. Since the theme was the “boob” and “breast cancer” I went with pink for the costume. I had purchased a Tonner doll for Demeter that came in an outrageously pink evening gown that happened to fit the Matt O’Neill doll. And wow… once that dress was on, the Sister Within came Screaming out! Sister BCBB is a crusader in the defense of women and their families coping with breast cancer and has the boots, and attitude, to work on stomping it out!

After looking through the wonderful photos of the current Sisters at the SofPI website, the ideas started rolling. Since a crucial part of the Sister’s habit is their wimple built on the base of a bra, I needed to get a bra the right size, and found a doll lingerie maker through Ebay who had just what I needed. Sister BCBB’s evening gown came with a matching shrug so that obviously had to be part of the wimple, along with a whole lot of black! The next piece was, ah… well… boobs and explaining to both the stuffing and the dress that they were all going to play nice together! The addition of boobs expanded her chest width and altered the shape of the dress’ bodice, so that had to be amended and reworked so that everything stayed tucked in and elegant at the same time.

The shoes were another issue all together. While there is a whole spectrum of manufactures that make fantastic high heeled shoes for large feet, there just isn’t anyone making such things for the flat footed, wide, long clod hoppers that Matt has! I worked on making a pair of platform shoes on the old medieval and Asian styles that have no heals, but it just wasn’t working. As a joke I said “I could always stick her in a pair of combat boots!” – which was obviously the answer given what she was created for. The boots of course needed pink laces and rhinestones… so that’s what they got.

And with the shoes she has black stocking topped with black beaded fringe.

The other vital element of the Sisters habit is their make up which begins with white face and then is customized for each sister. After a lot of thought and no little trepidation I pulled out the white paint and a paint brush and piled on the layers of white paint until I had a nice solid white canvas to paint on. Sister BCBB then got new eyes of lavender (are we surprised?), vibrant pink lips, and matching nail polish, and finally two tones of vine like swirls curling off of the corner of each eye, topped off with tiny pink glitter stars. Once everything was in place, she got a coat of varnish to seal all the pretty paint in place.

The last two pieces were the jewelry and her base/box. Sister BCBB’s necklace, earrings and bracelets are all strands of tiny pink seed beads blended with rich black Swarovski crystals.  Her rosary is made of 15 sets of 10 pink seed beads separated by 15 slightly larger iridescent white beads. The crucifix at the end is hand made of paper clay with pink rhinestones and a layer of pink paint.

Sister BCBB’s base was painted in rich pink to match her dress and then covered with an explosion of pink and iridescent glitter.  This of course led to needing to cover her box in a similar manner. My husband just shook his head and walked into the other room after I got done covering my craft room in a cloud of glitter.