 Hi there, I'm Sandy Allnock and I am an artist. By the title of the video, I'm a professional artist and I'm going to be playing with Barbies today. This is not a toy channel. Normally I don't mess with toys at all unless you consider art supplies to be toys. But today I decided to make an exception because I saw the Barbie movie last week and I was inspired to find out if there's an art Barbie. It turns out there's two art Barbies. In 2020, Mattel released Art Teacher Barbie. And as a child, I would have absolutely loved that one because I wanted to be an art teacher. I wanted to stand in front of a classroom of children like my teachers did and give them encouragement. That didn't exactly play out in my life. I didn't end up in classrooms even if I did develop my own online art school. I have classes primarily for adults, but I do have a couple classes for children. And in the doobly-doo down below the video, I will link to both of those. Now let's get back to Barbie. In 2022, Mattel released a second art Barbie and this one is Art Studio Barbie. And this one is right up my alley because Art Studio Barbie, hey, she does multiple mediums. She does clay. She does painting. And that I thought would be perfect for me. So I searched all over town in eight different stores to find myself in Art Studio Barbie and I brought her home and decided that my project for today is to build her a room for her art supplies. And we're going to teach you how to do a little painting because I taught her how to do some real painting. Yes, I gave her real paints to create a puppy painting with. And then we're going to have an art show at the end of the video. Come on Barbie, let's go Barbie. The first thing to do is to unpack the box and I am not going to put you through watching me take every little bit apart because everything is attached to the cardboard. I am not great at taking apart kids toys. So there's that, but I will show you all the pieces. Don't worry. Her hair was a little funky and I will deal with that as we go along, but I just wanted to get all the pieces unattached to the box and move forward. So this is the doll. I love her relaxed makeup. She doesn't look like she's all fancied up and we artists aren't all that fancy usually. So there you go. Her hair is a little wonky. Just the way it's cut doesn't look like a professional cut it. It looks like I cut it because I cut my own hair sometimes. Her dress is decorated on the front, but not on the back. Just on the front. She's really cute. I love her little denim outfit. And then she has a hand with a thumb out that she can hold all these things that are in the set just by clamping them around her thumb. Hope she does not lose feeling in her thumb when things get clamped on there. Her right arm is straight. Her left arm is bent. So her right arm will be her painting arm and her hand can't actually reach her palette. So you have to help her. And then we've got bendable knees and a bendable waist. She's one of the Barbies that has that feature because she has a chair to sit on. And if she didn't have bending legs, you wouldn't be able to sit her down. There are a number of Barbies I saw in the store that have bendy legs and some have bendy arms as well. So there's different Barbies than when I was a little girl a long, long time ago. But she sits nicely in her chair, but that does need a cushion because it doesn't look very comfortable. So next up is the easel and it comes with two pieces of artwork that you can display on it. And I immediately knew I was going to paint the easel because I have a black easel. And I really like my black easel for my plain air work and I wanted to make hers match mine. And it has lots of little things to go in it. You've got little pots and a water jug and stuff. For the clay section, there's two things of clay, a pink and a purple. And then lots and lots of little things you can put on the shelf. And they all have a little connector so that you can fit it into the little doohickey on the shelf and hold them in place. They mostly hold as well as plastic does. And some of these things are interactive. So you will be able to do things with them and we'll show you that later. But this is a look at the shelf itself. It's got all those doohickeys for holding things on the shelves. It's got a spinning wheel for the pottery, as well as a little form that you can make a vase and it's kind of fun. And we will show you that as well, how it works. Barbie will demo it after we get the remodeling done. So let's talk about the room. I looked in the garage for boxes and I had a bowl and branch box from a set of sheets from a number of years back. I'd saved this box because it is so nice, big, thick, heavy box. It's a good size for a project like this. And it's also going to be able to pack everything back into it so all of the whole Barbie set can be together. The flap door open has on the left hand side a little bit of pattern on it. So I'm going to use that pattern as part of the wallpaper and then do wallpaper inside the box. So it'll be meant to stand up to create the room. First thing I wanted to create was the flooring because I was going to paint it and I knew it needed to dry. And I had some things again in the garage, just using lots of leftover things. I had some foam and some cardboard, some white cardboard. And I was going to glue them together. I measured it so that this will fit in the box so it can be stored with it. And it's also going to be able to be the flooring that sticks out of it. And I put double stick tape, really heavy duty double stick tape. And then I could glue the two together and then they're going to stay together. The cardboard is not excellent for painting with like I'm going to do. But the heaviness of the background underneath of it, that foam stuff is going to make it nice and sturdy. Now, initially, I was going to do a checkerboard floor. And then I went, wait a minute, I'm supposed to make her studio look like mine and I have a wood floor. I didn't have paint the color of my wood floor, unfortunately. So I just took a bunch of different paints that I had from different walls in my house. I just did a renovation recently. I had lots of leftover chunks of paint, just little dollops here and there. And I just layered brown with a yellow with a rust color. And then more brown and more yellow and just kind of kept going back and forth until it made something that resembled wood. It's not the same kind of wood as my flooring, but it's going to work. Just wanted something nice and warm for for the room. So it would have the feel of being something like my own studio. And I set that aside to dry in a couple hours later, I was able to draw in some lines with a Sharpie to indicate the floorboards. And then I even drew in some nails at the end of each one of the boards. Just so it would feel a little bit more realistic for Barbie as she walks across her floor. And then to create a rug, I took an old piece of felt and I wanted an oval rug. So I cut it in a rectangle the size of the oval a little bit bigger than that, folded it in quarters and then drew part of it so that I could just make an oval. And when I cut it, I was hoping that it's going to end up with all four quarters being about the same so that I have a decent shape. And then I added some rickrack to it that you'll see later. Now, wallpaper is going to be patterned paper because I didn't want to paint all of that. And it's a matter of lining this box. I'm going to leave this gray right here. And I picked out some patterned papers at my local craft store because I wanted to decorate the outside as well as the inside. The outside is going to feel more Barbie. The inside is going to feel more sandy. So I've done the strip across the bottom for the gray panel and then the two sides. I did one kind of yellow paper down the side and then black at the bottom. And I made them curve around a little bit. I made them a little bigger so that when I add the panel in the back, I'm going to get a nice consistent line from one to the other instead of having a crack in it or anything because this box was bigger than a sheet of 12 by 12. So I was going to have to stitch things together and make it work. So now I've got the black on the bottom of that back panel. And I am going to add some white trim to it in a couple of places. But for now, that's good enough for the outside of the box. I use some pink and teal pattern papers. And then I wanted to make a big bee on the front for Barbie. And I traced the bee. I printed it out offline and then trace the bee onto the backside of my paper. So then my pencil lines didn't show. I did that by putting it on a light box. You could also just tape something to a window and turn it around backwards. So you're tracing the wrong side. And then when you flip it over, it's the right side. So I've added some dimensional adhesive underneath of it just to make it a little more special. And the original idea was to put some of this glossy accents adhesive. So liquid adhesive that dries clear, put a bunch of that on there and then glitter. And in order to smooth it out, so I didn't have to use up my entire bottle of glitter, I could spread it using a piece of cardstock. And then I decided I was going to put the glossy accents also on the pink part because the pink didn't match the pink of the background paper very much. But I thought if it's all glittery, no one will care. So then I took some glitter and sprinkled it all over that. Now, kids, if you decide you're going to use glitter on any project, make me a promise that you will always be very careful when you shake it off. So here I'm shaking it off on a piece of scratch paper so I can really dispose of it without making a mess because glitter goes everywhere. I don't usually use glitter very much, but I love how the outside of the box came out, the shiny paper and the glittery B. Next is the furniture makeovers and I'm painting straight onto the plastic. I didn't do any priming, probably could have, but, you know, is what it is. And I'm just using some chalk paint. Please don't use any paint or be real careful with whatever you're going to do if little, little children are going to play with this because you don't want anybody putting anything in their mouth and ending up ingesting any paint. But mine are not going to be in that situation, so they're safe to just paint away. I started painting just parts of it and then realized I wanted more of it black. Wanted that drama. I am leaving the tabletop for the clay portion so that it'll kind of feel like a wooden table. But everything else is getting painted, even the pink chair. Now, don't get scared. This chair is probably my favorite thing that was changed in all of this. So it's going to be very cute when it's done, but just going to paint over it, make sure I get all of the areas underneath of it, all those little sections. So use a small enough brush, you can get into that and you might need a second coat because what I found is once it dried, I could see all the spaces that I didn't quite get in the first coat. And then I used puffy paint to restore the logos because there are some embossed logos in here and I was able to just trace over them using the puffy paint, which was kind of fun doing that and adding all the little little tiny details back into the graphics. And here it has Barbie embossed into the chair and I added some flowers to it as well. And on the legs of the chair, there's three lines indicating, you know, some kind of wood trim or something. But I decided to make it in color using the pink and the yellow. And then I made a cushion, I sewed a little cushion, one side pink, one side yellow. So Barbie can decide which one she likes better on any given day. Now, while we were working on all this, Barbie and I had a chat about her hair and I decided it needed some help because as you can see, it's really uneven. Something funky going on. I'm not really sure the intent. Maybe that's a style and I just don't know it. But we decided to open our very own little hairstyling salon and she's got really cute short hair now. I made the front part longer than the back part, so she'd be all stylish. So now her hair is not in her way and we can get to the artwork because she wanted to get busy painting. Since I told her that I had real paints that we could put into all of her paint pots. So this set comes with three big paint pots that you can put in the easel itself. There's a little shelf and I've put gouache into them. You can squeeze in some watercolor paints instead if you have some tubes. But if you're going to put really wet paints in there or inks or anything, then don't put them away when they're all wet because they'll spill. So these will eventually dry and we added some water into the water jug using a dropper so that she'd be all ready with her water. But she also wanted more colors because there's only three of those pots. So we took her palette and added on just little tiny dollops of paint using a toothpick because these are very tiny. She's not going to have a whole lot of paint to work with, but it's enough to get her painting done for the day. Added all those colors in and as I said, this will dry and you can rewet them with water. So she's super happy that she now has real paints and doesn't have to pretend she's going to paint. But she wanted to paint the dog and this is a dog that she had painted before. Obviously, since she signed it and she wanted to paint it again. But in these paints, so she did a little sketch and she sat down with me and we she got on her knees and hanging out on the floor doing her drawing on her canvas. And then she put the canvas up on the easel and the picture was up on the wall so she could follow what she had done before. And she was looking for where she'd put the yellow, where she'd put the pink and where she put the blue and just kind of following along to create the shapes of the dog. And here she wet her brush. She's using a very tiny brush and I kept telling her she should use a bigger one. But she wanted to use her tiny brush. It takes a long time when you're using a tiny brush and she got busy painting. And while she was busy painting and doing a good job of looking at her reference and then looking back so she could keep an eye on what she was doing, I decided I would also do some painting. And I decided I was going to paint Weird Barbie because when I saw the movie Weird Barbie was my favorite because I could really identify with Weird Barbie when I was little and I'm painting in gouache paints like I had put into Barbie's palette. These are like acrylic paints, but they'll keep rewetting. So acrylic paints, once they dry, they're dry and you could paint over top and these don't quite do that. So if you have acrylic paints, you can just start with your darker colors just like I'm doing with the gouache and paint right over top of them with lighter colors. And I'm going to paint some darks into her face and then we've got to get that hair in there. So I'm starting with the yellow color and then I'll go over it with white and just lots of layers. But I was taking a long time getting my painting done and Barbie decided she was not going to wait for me. She had some other things she wanted to do. She had to finish her dog first. And so she was busily on the other side of the studio working on the dog and see she finally switched to that bigger brush like I had recommended. So she might be a good painter, but she learned a little tip from me, which was great. I learned some things from her, too. And then she decided she wanted to do a show. So we talked about that while we were working, while we were painting, that we were going to do a bunch of paintings so we could have a show at the end of this video. And she finished up the dog, got all of the little pink parts put in, all of the colors blended exactly like she wanted. And then she had to go in and add the best part. This is Barbie's favorite part is adding the white highlights on the nose and the white highlights on the eyes, because she says that makes it look alive. So look how proud she is of her painting and how well she did. Painting this dog on a canvas isn't he cute? He's going to be the star of the show for sure. But while she was all done with her painting, I was still working on weird Barbie. So, you know, Barbie just said she's going to go on without me and start making a clay project. She wanted to do a little bit of a clay vase. And she was wishing that I was over there helping her because it's really hard when you don't have human hands to get all the parts to work together and get the clay in the right shape and get it all pressed down. But she did it. Look at her. Look how fabulous she is. Fabulous Barbie, very talented, making a beautiful vase. And then she put it on the potter's wheel and used the stamper tool to stamp a row of stars all the way around it. There's also a heart stamping tool. Maybe she'll use that another time. She also wanted to work on painting some of the clay items that are here in the clay section. And you do that by taking a glass of ice water and dipping the wand in and applying it onto the lightly painted areas. And you can see that those brighten up. And as soon as it dries and the plate warms up, it'll go back to being very pale pink parts again. And she'll do the same thing with a little bear. So while she was finishing up with that, I was finishing up making a couple extra paintings so we'd have a few more pieces for the big art show to come. So I decided I would switch clothes and I put on a pink Barbie shirt and I put on overall so it matched my doll. We're going to do each other's nails and I'm going to do her hair. So I got out some hairspray so that her hair would kind of sit in the way that I wanted, made sure I wiped any extra hairspray off of her face. And then I decorated her glasses. I had already painted these in black. They were purple glasses when they came and I use some gold puffy paint to put little decorations on the corners. And then I've also put some glitter in her hair since I had the glitter out just a little tiny bit touching on top. You can see she's got a necklace on. I painted that chain around the neck using some puffy paint, that same gold puffy paint and then glued a star on it. So it's embellished with a little gem. And then we put a little gem on her for a brooch. So she'd be all dressed up for the big show because we wanted to make a big shindig out of it. And that was perfect. So then we wanted to paint nails, as I said, and I used some gouache on hers. You can see she's also got a bracelet that was painted in the puffy paint. The nails will wash off, but I don't know about the puffy paint. That might not. And of course, she had to paint my nails, too. So I got pink nails and there she is. She's got a gold earring as well made in puffy paint. She's looking gorgeous and ready for the big show. Now, let's take a look at the box itself. It's all packed up and it has room on the left hand side for Barbie to lay down so she can be stored along with all of the art supplies in here. So I'll take all this out and show you how it comes back together to make the art studio room with all these items. And you can kind of tell me if you think it's an improvement or not on what was purchased in the set. So flooring can either be tucked into the box this way or you can leave the flap open more, have the floor out in the middle. You can do whatever you want with that. There's also the little piece of carpet with its rickrack around the edges, looking all fancy. When you put the shelf in place, it's always easier to have good access because some of the pieces are a little tough to get into all of those little nooks and crannies in the shelf itself. So before you put it in the box where it's going to go, it might be helpful to set it all up. And I'm going to move it over a little bit because I have a few items to put in. One is a pill bottle wrapped in patterned paper that has her extra artwork in it. We've got a planter that's made with just some hot glued cardstock that's glued to the wall and just tucking in a little plant brings a bit of life to the room. And then underneath the table, you can also put the extra clay. You can put extra canvases, that sort of thing, store other art supplies. And now Barbie is going to set up all the artwork on the wall. She's very persnickety about making sure everything is really straight. So she's taking her time and doing a good job. We're using that kind of gummy stuff that you can put on walls that doesn't damage the walls. We're hoping that this patterned paper doesn't end up getting damaged ever by that. I don't know how that works on regular patterned paper. This is shiny stuff, so it's a little glossy. And it works really well with that kind of gummy stuff. And there is my weird Barbie painting. It's still weird, but weird Barbie is weird and that's good. I like weird. Weird is my favorite. So there you go. But we have some simple paintings. We have some complex paintings and you could even have trolling's. You can have things in crayon, things in pen and ink, things in pencil, whatever it is that you like to make artwork with. You can make a whole display of artwork and we use little sticky notes to make signs beside each one of them like they have in fancy galleries. For the art show, Barbie decided she would have her sketchbook out if anybody wanted to flip through her sketches. And then she put a chair out in the middle. So if anybody wants to sit down, they can do that. And she's got her cushion on it so to make it nice and comfy for anybody who comes by. And then, of course, we had to have a sign. So we bought this at the craft store and put a sign on it. It says Open Art Studio. All of this has made me think I need to have a play date with some of my little friends who have Barbies. I texted the dad of one of my friends and asked, like, what does your daughter think of what I have done to Barbie's chair? Because I was really worried kids would get mad. And Elise thought it was fantastic. She loved it. So I'm hoping that maybe Elise will get together with me and some of her friends and we'll have all the Barbies come to an art show and all the other Barbies can go home with a piece of artwork. I think that would be kind of fun to share our artwork with other Barbie dolls. Thank you so much for joining Barbie and I for this great adventure in her art studio. If you're interested in still pictures of the things that I created, I'll put them over on my blog. And if you have any questions about what I made something from, please feel free to ask because I'm happy to give you any of those details. I will see you again in my next video. That's going to be on Friday this week instead of Saturday. It's going to be another project with glitter. I'll see you then.