Who is familiar with these Bad Boys?
These are the River Boys from the Australian “melodrama”¹ Home and Away. I have a real soft spot for this programme- I get a real kick out of it, can’t explain why (ok, the beautiful boys above are a compelling reason). The boys are brothers² in the show, members of the troublesome River Boys gang. Daryl “Brax” Braxton is the eldest and has looked after younger brothers Heath and Casey since they were nippers- Dad was in prison and Mum is an alcoholic gambler. They have many tattoos between them, and super-sculpted abs. So I made dolls of them. As one does.
This is Brax. He’s the Daddy-Brother.
spot the difference
Brax has many tattoos; they’re on his hand, arms, chest, torso and lower back.
This is Heath; he’s the Irresponsible, Hot-Headed, Don’t-Give-A-Damn Brother.
Heath has tattoos on this chest, shoulder, arms and neck.³
This is Casey. He’s the Baby Brother.
Casey has only one tatt, gotten in a fit of teenage angst about his actual in-prison-for-armed-robbery daddy.
They took me many months to make; a bit of sewing here, a bit there, a pause, start again. I made MANY mockups before settling on their body shape, emphasising their wide developed shoulders. Each doll has a double skin on their chest so I could put stuffing in between them to make their abs. Their board shorts and flip-flops (thongs…) are very simply made. They’re going to take a trip to Wexford soon so I can take pics of them in their natural habitat, the beach.
Their skin tones are all different, mainly due to the fact that one cannot buy decent fabric off the shelf in this country for doll making (for any making really). So I got it online, but its hard to know what colour fabric really is when looking at it on a monitor. So I bought 6 shades of Kona Cotton, but not enough for 3 dolls of any of them because I AM NOT RICH. Hence the 3 different skin toned dolls. What a pain. The sooner we open our own fabric shop, the better, eh Tricia?!
(they’ve got such cute bellybuttons, doncha think?;-)
¹This is what it’s called on the TV Guide section of our DVR box, a melodrama. According to dictionary.com, melodrama means: “A dramatic form that does not follow the laws of cause and effect and that exaggerates emotion and emphasises plot or action at the expense of characterisation”. I am outraged at this. H&A is so real, so lifelike, the characters so well-rounded; how can anyone think the word Melodrama is appropriate. I think it should be listed as a documentary. Or an anthropological study of attractive people and a beach.
²There is another brother too, Kyle; he is a half-brother, same father. He only appeared in the show earlier this year. He has no tattoos that I am aware of, so I left him out. Tough luck Kyle… For symmetry’s sake, lets call him Other-Brother.
³ In the show, Heath has gotten another tattoo on his chest since I finished sewing- the names of his children. Oh the inconvenience! Tisk. And I noticed that he has a tramp-stamp of a gun wedged in his shorts too- who KNOWS when he got that one… *shakes head sadly*
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