Danielle Zweers

 

My name is Danielle Zweers, I'm married with Cor and mother of four children named: Bart, Tim, Sara and Dana. I live in a town called Almere in the Netherlands. I come from an artistic family of oil painters, my dad and my grandmother of my mother's site, and some uncles. As long as I can remember my dad was always painting and drawing portraits, you can say I was raised between the paint brushes, linen and the picture frames. Therefore I was also busy with drawing painting and trying to make clothes for my dolls. I made my first own doll in 1977 at the age of 17 and that was my first step into the world of dolls, I made fantasy dolls at that time and never took courses so I developed my own style of doll making. I had a second passion too and that was making my own clothes so I took classes at the school of dress design and graduated successfully. I could now make my own patterns and children clothing. Then after a while, after my youngest daughter was born, I decided to give it a try to sculpt realistic baby dolls of Polymer clay. After the first doll I knew I had found my passion for life there was no way back, I had to create these little ones and each doll was a labour of love. The challenge for me is to try to capture the innocence of childhood and sculpt my babies as realistic as I can. I love to create life like babies of all ages and to always improve. The back of my dolls heads bears my trade mark, the letters D and Z across, the year of birth. To cut a long story short my passions came together as one, sculpting my babies, sewing their bodies and creating their outfits as well, even the knitted and crochet ones.. Now I cannot imagine doing without it and I sure hope to do this for a very ....very....long time!