Maria Martinez is a dress designer but you won’t see her models walking runways at fashion shows or posing for magazine covers. She designs and makes clothing for dolls and has been dressing up her “girls” for more than 20 years.

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Inside the Rio Rico home that she and her husband, Marco, built two years ago a towering armoire holds her collection of porcelain dolls. Through the glass, creamy smooth faces with innocent, sweet expressions peer out as if they were inviting visitors into their small world. Many of the faces may look the same but detailed and elaborate costumes have transformed the dolls into Brazilian dancers, beautiful brides, Southern belles and even Oriental Geisha Girls.

“I usually design their outfits as I dress them,” explained Martinez. “When I start dressing them the ideas just start coming.”

The “girls” as Martinez fondly refers to her collection of porcelain-faced beauties come to her already attired in clothing, but those “store-bought” dresses are quickly discarded for more elaborate attire.

Each costume is hand-sewn, many with elaborate beadwork, lacing, feathers or embroidery. It is all time consuming, intricate hand work and transforming one of the Plain Jane dolls into a designer beauty can take anywhere from a couple days to several weeks, said Maria. In addition to the costumes, she makes most of the dolls’ props, fancy hats and transforms their curly locks into elaborate hairstyles.

“I have always to do things with my hands and can’t just sit down,” said Martinez. “I have always loved arts and crafts.”

Martinez said that her love of dolls began 60 years ago when her mother gave her two dolls with full porcelain bodies for Christmas. After raising two sons, now in their 30s, she realized her only chance to play with dolls would be if she bought her own and her collection began.

Her original two childhood “friends” now sit high above the family fireplace on special shelves, peering down as if holding court over the members of the newer collection of more than two dozen costumed dolls.

“I could just work on the dolls all the time if I could,” said Martinez, her eyes twinkling as she talks about her girls and their costumes. “I lose track of time and pretty much don’t want to do anything else.”

“I hate them,” joked husband Marco Martinez, a retired INS supervisor. “Every time I want something to drink or eat she is too busy with her dolls.”

Martinez said that it was her husband who encouraged her to show off the dolls’ fancy costumes at the Arizona State Fair in September where she earned a blue ribbon in the Modern Collections category. In April she plans to enter her girls in the Pima County Fair competition. After that showing she may sell a few of the dolls to make room in the armoire so she can make more, she said.

When not designing and making dresses for her elaborate dolls Martinez makes table decorations, cooks (she won a first place at the Santa Cruz County Fair for her chocolate flan), knits and will soon start a new hobby making complicated bread dough flowers.