DIY Stop Motion Russian Doll Gender Reveal Video

You can only have one first child, so it was important for us to really go all out when it came to all that "stuff" expectant parents do. We wanted to do the early (pre-20 weeks) gender reveal ultrasound, we wanted to do the gender reveal cake, and I wanted to make my own gender reveal video... and if it could incorporate an idea I'd never seen before, that was a definite plus.

We did our gender reveal sonogram at Baby to Be Images in Annapolis. After our appointment we took a sealed envelope with the sex of our little critter over to Sweet Hearts Patisserie in Annapolis to bake up the gender reveal cake just for my husband and me. 

Truth be told, although we had a good time at Baby to Be Images, the woman doing our ultrasound accidentally dropped a few clues during our appointment so we were both fairly certain we knew what color that cake filling would be... and we were right. That's okay though, still delicious.

...and we did really want a boy. 

To share the news with everyone else I decided to make a stop motion video using hand painted Russian Dolls. That was all well and good, except that I'd never painted my own Russian Dolls and I'd never made a stop motion video. 

I ordered a set of naked Russian dolls from ShopSwellGoods on Etsy for $15. I got a set of five so the whole family could be represented in doll form: my husband, the cat, the dog, the baby-to-be, and me. 

Photo via ShopSwellGoods

First I put a coat of white paint on each doll with a small mark on the seam of each so I could keep them properly lined up as I painted.

Then I dove in and free-handed our little family onto them using acrylic paint.

After I had all of the dolls painted, we set up a camera on a tripod and took step-by-step pictures to make up the stop motion video. I'd never made a stop motion before, so rather than try and figure it out myself, I simply used dropbox to move all the images to my iPhone and loaded them into the PartyParty app. I wanted the movie to have music as well, so I downloaded another app that would allow me to add music. What app? I can't remember! Oops.

Here's the finished product: