Buckle up kids, this one is gonna be uber pic heavy! LOL
Before the Pandemic took hold, I had plans to meet up with a few friends out of state earlier this year. We had all decided we would do a little craft exchange, except I think I got confused on the details, but whatever. That’s not important.
What is important, is the genesis of this idea. I was racking my brain trying to figure out just what I wanted to do for these awesome friends. While browsing Pinterest, I came across the cutest little crocheted voodoo doll. It was adorable, but I didn’t like the sensationalized negative representations voodoo dolls have. Eventually a little light bulb in my head went off, and I came up with the idea of a reverse voodoo doll. Essentially, I figure I can make the doll represent the negative emotion(s) you are feeling at the time and the pins are the positives you want to feel instead.
Look, sometimes we just feel better after stabbing things, amirite? (lookin’ at you @PerfectlyBohemian with your felting 
)
Thus, Emotional Support Demons were born!
I should mention that @geekgirl was present during the making of various parts of these dolls and perhaps not so subtly hinted that she wanted one of her own. We joined the Go Bananas swap together so she could get her very own and I will be including the making of her doll with the rest of them in this post. 
Now you get to see all the crazy in progress pics on the making of these. Fair warning, there will be a lot and I’m pretty sure I missed progress pics for parts of them >>>>
The doll bodies were all done with crochet. I found an adorable Crocheted Monsters book that I used as bases for my body parts and tweaked things as I went.
The eyes are just glass cabochons I found off of amazon and they were glued onto either felt circles or half of snap closures sewed onto the doll. the kinky hair on some of the dolls is done by separating out the strands on worsted yarn. Tedious, but I really like the end result. Once I had the Demons finished (of which I’ve done a total of 5. I did not have progress pics for some of them), I could start work on the demon masks.
For the masks I used air dry paper clay to sculpt them since I had a bunch in my stash. I added wire supports where I thought it necessary to help give the mask added strength.
I wanted each Demon to have a unique animal mask. The animals I ended up choosing were a deer, rabbit, fox, wolf and geekgirls’ is a hedgehog. There was a lot of sanding before I could prime and paint them lol. My desk is still covered in dust. 
I also needed to make the positivity pins! Luckily, I found that corsage pins were the perfect length for the size dolls I made. I painted the pearl tips of the pins to give them distinction and added charms to help identify the positive representation.
then I created holding cards for the Pins and sewed up felt pouches. I finally found a use for that rainbow floss and buttons I’d been hoarding!
Finally, you can see them all together with their painted masks and tiny finishing details.
Here is Geekgirl’s completed Emotion Support Demon
Whew! That was a lot. If you stuck it out till the end, thanks so much for looking!! These guys were a labor of love and I honestly enjoyed every second.
