Dollybird

The story of Poe

2011-11-25T14:10:00.010+10:00

Once upon a time there lived a Disco Boogie Blythe. She was shiny and new and had lovely thick hair with blonde streaks. She thought she looked pretty amazing.

But her owner did not. So out came the scissors, and Disco Boogie had her fringe cut off - right down to the scalp. Then she had the back cut short. It didn't look quite the way that her owner had hoped... Her stock makeup was sanded off, all except for her lipstick. Then she got some new smoky black eye-makeup and lashes.

It didn't go quite as planned.

Her owner didn't know how to fix her, so she sold Disco Boogie to another collector, far across the sea who thought she had promise.

Her new owner called her Poe, because she looked so sad. She tried her best to fix her hair with another haircut. Then she thought perhaps Poe might be a hat-wearin' kind of girl.

She did look quite cute like that, but in the end it was decided that it would be best for Poe live elsewhere. After all, forever is a long time to wear a hat.

Then Poe came to live with me. She looked like this:

And she was very sad indeed. I had never even seen an EBL before, but I thought I could make Poe look a bit better at least. So I took off her hair, sanded her face and gave her a wig.

But a girl can't be bald forever. Poe needed hair. I thought she might look good as a redhead.

But the mohair was too short. So then, I thought perhaps pink mohair might be nice.

But I didn't finish it, and somehow it just didn't suit her at all. Poe still felt sad and looked...ugly. I had done my best but it just wasn't good enough. I thought of selling her, but I liked her too much to let her go. I knew that the next stop for her would probably be as spare parts or as bait for yet another new customiser. So even though I didn't take her out to photograph her, I kept her because one day, I knew that she would be beautiful.

Poe sat in a drawer for a long time, bald and sad. I felt sorry for Poe. She had suffered enough at the hands of amatuers and was really quite cute, under all those poorly executed customising attempts. Clearly expert help was required.

So I sent her to Moofala for a new scalp, faceup, lip carving and handpainted chips and here is how she looks now.

Thank you so much Kate. She is every bit as lovely as I knew she could be.

Little things...

2011-09-19T17:59:00.004+10:00

I'm really enjoying working on the shop at the moment. Thank you so much to all of my wonderful customers - every sale feels just as good as the first :)

The problem with being on Etsy so much...is that you discover fabulous things that turn you into a drooling puddle of want.

These are some of the things I'm loving, wanting and erm...buying!

Prints by Hidenseek:

Original watercolour drawings by KarKarStyle

I bought a few of these...they are adorable - and so reasonably priced!

And a Tokissi bunny - I think they are so sweet!

I still haven't opened my Bohemian Peace. What is wrong with me?! I need to set aside some Blythe time really soon.

Don't try this at home....

2011-09-13T10:25:00.003+10:00

Sewing is not for sissies it would seem. This is an x-ray of my left hand, complete with snapped off sewing machine needle STILL INSIDE. Eeek! Did I mention that I'm left handed?

I was having such a great day too....

It was my own fault, I was of course doing something silly because, you know, I've never had anything go wrong before. As it turns out, attempting to shove a tiny but thick piece of fabric under the presser foot with a bamboo skewer was not the foolproof exercise I thought it was. I would have been traumatised enough if I had just sewn through my finger like a normal person, with a bit of pain and a bit of blood but no harm done otherwise. But no, I like do these things properly. I managed to get the needle perfectly centred right through my fingernail so that it went through the bone (I still can't quite believe it) and snapped off on the other side so that I needed to go to the emergency room to get the pointy bit removed. Nice.

I have a new understanding why they torture people by messing with their fingernails now. I can't believe how painful it was, and all that remains of it now, 5 days later is a teensy hole in my nail and a tiny cut on the back. And a huge huge bill. That delightful xray cost me $700. I think I shall have it framed.

I'm still here!!

2011-08-29T11:51:00.005+10:00

I have been a very bad blogger indeed! After the wedding madness, I felt that it might be entirely possible that I may never want to sew anything, ever again. Seriously. So I didn't.

Here's how the dress turned out (this isn't at the wedding, obviously!). I made another one for my little niece but I don't feel comfortable putting her pic in the interwebs without talking to my SIL about it. My sister promises me lovely pics from the photographer but they haven't arrived as yet, so in the meantime this will have to do. I got lots of compliments about the dress, but sadly it took a bit of damage at the wedding reception (performing "the worm" on a crowded dance floor will do that!) and one of the tulle panels was torn. Oh well, it's not like she'll have reason to wear it again. Miss B danced so hard that her flimsy flowergirl shoes wore out and then she danced right through the feet of her stockings!!

I also left my Blythes to their own devices for a while (well, languishing in a drawer - they don't do much!). And the Etsy shop stayed empty. Instead I gardened, read and went to the gym. I still kept on admiring other people's lovely Blythe photographs on Flickr and speny some time in the forums though...I didn't go completely cold turkey! But for a little while, I felt as though I could just about put the Blythes away and maybe just keep one. Ha!!

I'm just starting to feel like Blythe-ing again now, and it's quite nice :) I participated in a swap and received this super pretty dress and shoe set which went straight on Roxy and has stayed there. I hadn't given her much attention in a long time what with the new arrivals, and re-dressing her made me realise just how pretty she is. Even if she is a lowly factory Blythe!

She really needs her faceup redone though, as it is very faded. One day I'll get some MSC!

I have done a little bit of sewing (like the cute velvet headband she's wearing - the velvet is a pain to work with, but it's so plush!). I put a few things in the Etsy shop and they all sold really quickly. I'm over the 100 sales mark now and I don't quite know how it happened! It's hard to keep the shop stocked, but I'm not stressing too much about it. I find that I don't enjoy it as much when I have to sew, if you know what I mean. Since I made the 100 milestone, I treated myself to some really cute stickers for my packaging and I can't wait for them to get here so I can start using them. I really love the packing side things, probably too much! It's like wrapping a little present :)

I STILL haven't deboxed my Bo Peace....and feel no urge to. I never thought I would be the type who'd have the restraint to do that. I kind of bought her because of this photo by the very talented Sarah. Isn't she stunning? She has the best hair ever! Maybe I should go and debox my Bo Peach right now!!

No new girls have arrived since my still un-named ObviousZebra custom. I've decided to work on appreciating the ones I have more before I go out acquiring more and even then there are only a few that I want. Poe is about to head off to Moofala for a new faceup and lip carve (and also to have her new bobbed Rouge Noir scalp attached). I can't wait!! Kate does such lovely work and I really look forward to seeing Poe come to life. Especially since she has had such a rough time of things so far! The more I worked on the mohair, the more I realised that pink and fluffy was not going to be a good match for Poe's little personality. She's a sulker and a bit sad and not suited to pastel mohair sweetness at all. I don't really know what to do about her original scalp. I don't feel the slightest bit inclined to finish the reroot!

I have a few little things I need to do with my girls right now. Three of them need opening and eyemechs looked at (sigh), two of them need face-up freshening and I'm also looking at my Simply Vanilla and thinking about doing a bit of work on her.

I'm swapping her back to a Takara body as I really don't like the PN Flection one at all. I feel like she's constantly trying to wriggle out of my hands (perhaps she doesn't like me?). Her scalp was always very poor, so rather than doing a full reroot (which I may never finish if my past efforts are anything to go by!), I am considering filling in some of the gaps with some platinum saran I have and putting some lovely candy pink saran underneath. I may have to send her off to someone for a haircut afterward though. It's just such a shame that her hair is so bad! I love the colour so much but it's just so thin and gappy. Even her fringe is very different to most of the SV's I've seen. They all have quite long fringes but mine has baby bangs! They are the best thing about her hair but it's odd that hers is just so different. I'd love to see what goes on inside that factory - someone must have been deep in conversation when they were doing her scalp!

A new girl from far away...

2011-06-20T11:26:00.002+10:00

This beautiful girl arrived a few days ago from the UK. She's an Obvious Zebra custom with a Tarts and Tea scalp and every bit as lovely as I thought she'd be. Zebra called her Sitka, but I don't know that it will be staying. She hasn't told me her new name yet ;p.

This girl is responsible for making me want a T & T as soon as saw her, only problem being I didn't just want a stock T & T, I wanted a custom girl just like her and given that T & T is a limited release she was far too expensive for me to consider trying to customise her myself and sending her away for work would have brought her price up to...too much! So when I saw her come up for sale I knew that I would be kicking myself if I didn't get her (even though I had just vowed that I wouldn't be buying any new Blythes until I got my grail girl, Rosie Red!).

I'm so glad that I bought her even though at the time I was doing my best to resist, her eye makeup is so vibrant and her hair is just so thick and gorgeous. She has some really beautiful eye chips as well including a handpainted brown and gold set and a green Ana Karina set, but unfortunately I think something shifted in her head during transport and her eyes are now stuck on this set. They are pretty and suit her, but aren't nearly as amazing as the handpainted ones. I am not too worried as I'm sure it's probably just something minor, but I am a bit scared of opening her up so for now she will stay like this.

In order to ease the guilt of buying her (especially when I have a Bohemian Peace who is still waiting to be opened!), I bit the bullet and sold my Star Dancer. It was the right thing to do as I just wasn't taking pics of her and even though I could appreciate that she was very beautiful, I just didn't feel all that attached to her. Her new name is Trinity (which I love!) and she now lives with Mandy (Jeds123). She looks very well loved and very fashionable these days so I am glad that I moved her on. As it turns out the process wasn't nearly as painful as I thought it would be. I may even be able to bring myself to say goodbye to another one or two after I get back from the wedding. I just gotta have that Rosie Red!

The drawing board - yawn!

2011-05-14T09:07:00.007+10:00

Still plugging away on the flowergirl dresses. I decided to close the shop for a little while so I could concentrate on getting everything wedding related sorted , and spent most of the week tweaking the design and resizing things, and now I'm finally ready to spend up on delicious silk dupioni and tulle and get sewing the real thing. I even made a muslin of the bodice to make sure that everything will fit Miss B and sacrificed an old bedsheet to mock up the bustle/bow thing on the back. I have to admit...there's a little piece of me that gets super excited when I see all those piles of pretty and impractical fabrics. Tulle is quite possibly the dreamiest, girliest, prettiest fabric in existance and sadly I just don't get enough opportunities to play with it!

To keep things Blythe-y, I got super lucky on a sundries sale and snagged this super cute outfit for Holly. I love it to bits - especially the hat. I so wish I could knit. Then I'd have one of these babies in every colour!

The outfit came with red tights, gorgeous white zip up boots and even a tiny pair of white glasses (that I'm too scared to put on her for fear of scratching her makeup!). I have to say that it was great to buy a complete outfit - tights, shoes and all - and kind of special to get clothes for her that I haven't made myself. I think I may be hitting the Etsy stores in the near future :)

A little while ago, I also got this super cute pair of jeans from Claribari on flickr in a swap. I love them soooo much! The detail on them is amazing - they even have teeny tiny pockets! Check it out :)

I am kind of feeling the urge to give Ash a makeover at the moment. I saw a gorgeous pic of a FrFr with a tiny fringe and I'd love to try it myself. Her makeup is in dire need of a freshen up too. The problem with not using MSC is that the pastels fade over time, so a touch up is definitely in order. And these horrible fish eyes have to come out. They give me nightmares!! I'd like to replace them with some handpainted chips. Brown and gold maybe?

This pic was taken before I redid her lips. Ick!!! She looks wind-burned!

My Bohemian Peace also arrived, and for once I haven't fallen on the box and tore it open like an animal. She is still NRFB - something that NEVER happens around here!! I think I will try to wait until the dresses are done, and she can be a reward :)

Time for a BL

2011-05-02T08:21:00.003+10:00

I never thought I would say this...but I finally get what all the fuss is about. I want a BL. So. Bad.

When I first got into the hobby I could not fathom what the appeal was. Goldie just looked...weird to me and Rosie's forehead was huge and the others, not that special at all really. The RBL's were just so much prettier and so much more affordable, with cooler hair as well. Why on earth would you spend that much on a doll when you could get 3 pretty RBL's instead?

But now the madness has finally affected me too. I want a BL and I can see there's no hope for me but to start raising funds and searching.

For those who don't know, the BL's were the first Neo Blythes released by Takara, beginning with the very exclusive Parco in June 2001. They are of course quite expensive and hard to find these days. Parco is so rare she almost never even comes up for sale, while the others tend to go for anywhere between $300 to $1000 on Ebay. I guess it's all a matter of what people are willing to pay for them.

Here's a list of all the BL girls in order of their release.

Parco Limited (Parco) - June 2001

Mondrian (YSL) - June 2001

Hollywood (HW) - October 2001

Rosie Red (RR) - October 2001

All Gold In One (Goldie) - January 2002

Kozy Kape Inspired (Kozy) - January 2002

Aztec Arrival Inspired (Aztec) - February 2002

Sunday Best (SB) - April 2002

Dottie Dot (DD) - April 2002

As you have probably guessed from previous posts, I'm currently chasing a Rosie Red. Hopefully at the more reasonable end of the scale. To this end, I am swearing off buying any more dolls until I have the funds to bring a Rosie home. And possibly selling off an RBL or two to make it happen. Maybe ;P

So much to do....so little time!!

2011-04-27T14:54:00.008+10:00

I forsee myself spending a LOT of time in my little sewing room for the next few weeks. My sister has asked me to make the flowergirl dresses for her wedding - something along the lines of this, but in a vintagey blue with a latte sash.

Naturally, the pattern needs to be changed as it doesn't have a tulle skirt or the big bow....and it isn't the right size either. I so hope it all turns out ok. It's one thing to wing it when you are making costumes, but quite a different matter when it's for a wedding!

And I'm also needing to make the wedding present for the happy couple as well. She wants a quilt, aaaaaaand there's no proper pattern for that either - she fell in love with a picture in a magazine. It's in Sandy Klopp's studio, but she doesn't seem to sell the pattern for it. The one she likes is second from the top with the double half-square triangle border. The Ohio Star blocks will be easy enough...but the border looks like some serious mathematics may be required.

And here is my progress so far.

Yep. So far I have done nothing but had a fiddle about drafting it and putting some blue fabrics in a box. We leave for the Wedding at the end of June. Oh dear.....

To keep this post Blythe-y (and to stop me from hyperventilating from anxiety), I bought this lovely girl a week or so ago.

Well not this exact one, but a Bohemian Peace. When she first came out I really wanted her. And then I kind of felt that I didn't need a new doll, and I decided that I didn't like her stock makeup so much so I didn't get her at all. Then the other day I was browsing flickr and came across the most beautiful owner pic here and was smitten all over again. Aaaaaaand I had some dolly funds in Paypal, just sitting there so I bought her. My little plastic family is getting very big these days. I now have:

Punkaholic People - Frankie Darling custom
Veronica Lace Factory Girl - customised by me
Friendly Freckles Factory Girl - customised by me
Scalpless bait Factory Girl - bought for her hair and now in pieces
Simply Vanilla - customised by me
Star Dancer - stock
Nostalgic Pop - stock
Can Can Cat - Morgan Orton custom
Disco Boogie - Bait - customised by several people...halfway through a mohair reroot and needing a new faceup

and now Bohemian Peace on the way

Also in the house - Simply Lilac belonging to my daughter.

On the wishlist - Rosie Red, Simply Peppermint/Enchanted Petal, Ichigo Heaven/Peony/Snowflake Sonata

And to think I thought that I could stop at just one!!

The new arrival

2011-04-08T12:10:00.007+10:00

I had been having a bit of a downer of a day yesterday, but look who arrived just in time to cheer me up. She is by far the best impulse purchase I have ever surrendered to! I had to take a photo of a commissioned set I made and it seemed like a good excuse for her to have her first photo shoot.

She's the sweetest Blythe I think I own - I can't stop looking at her! Her hair is the nicest that I have seen in person. I don't know if all Can Can Cats have hair like this straight out of the box as obviously I am her second owner, but hers is perfect. Absolutely poker straight, sleek and the fringe is perfectly cut. Now I just need to think up a name for her.

I am finding the difference beteen the older girls and the new ones astonishing in terms of quality and even just general cuteness. The downside of this is of course that I think I may now have a thing for "designer" customs of the older girls. Oh no!!

I think my collection is about to undergo quite an overhaul in the next few months. I have a hankering for a Rosie Red that just won't go away, and poor old Poe will have to get finished or get out. I can't stand having all these unfinished projects and Blythe in pieces in my sewing room anymore, it's driving me crazy! I think I have come to the realisation that I don't like customising quite as much as I thought I did, and besides I think my own customs all tend to look quite similar and I like to see a bit of diversity on the dolly shelf.

The shop is keeping me quite busy of late - I am really enjoying that side of the hobby at the moment, and I have met some really lovely Blythe people through it that I might not have had an excuse to talk to otherwise. I made my 50th sale a little while ago and things seem to have really picked up since then for some reason. I'm loving it!

When I went to write this post today, I realised that I had past the 100 post milestone a while back without realising it. I think a giveaway is in order, perhaps for my 125th post - it will be coming up soon so keep an eye out for it.

Red Riding Hood Treasury

2011-03-29T11:43:00.003+10:00

As part of my Etsy-ing, I have decided that I am going to try to make a bit more on an effort to curate a weekly treasury. They are so much fun to make - all the joy of shopping with none of the spending! Now that I have found this amazing tool, I can also share the eye candy here. I am a bit besotted with the handpainted cameo. Maybe my lovely husband might buy it for me for Mother's Day??

In honour of the soon to be released movie, I decided to make this one Red Riding Hood themed. Hope you like it :) There are some amazingly talented people out there!

'Little Red Riding Hood' by Dollybirdblythe

Lost in the Wildwood print -... marisolspoon $18.00	Little White Wolf Porcelain... poodlebreath $40.00	girls dress retro red riding... SewnNatural $78.00	Little Red Riding Hood and W... Shadowpuppets $18.00
Red Riding Hood Paper Doll -... FiveAndNinetee... $9.50	Silhouette Axe Brooch touchthedutch $60.00	Little Red Riding Hood - fro... mabgraves $135.00	Tiny Wolf MossMountain $8.00
Heart. Vintage Ruby Jewel Ne... dreamyvintage $27.00	Primitive Storage Basket, Ch... ForgetThemNot $22.00	35% Off Moving Sale Into The... Maddenphotogra... $16.25	Little Red Riding Hood - Bub... WonderlandCont... $32.00
SHOPWIDE SALE - FREE Shippin... thelittlefox $12.00	Needle Felted Grandma haddy2dogs $48.00	Little red riding hood - emb... comfortstitchi... $5.00	1960's Wicker woven picn... PenelopesCauld... $44.00

Treasury tool by Red Row Studio.

Arm candy :)

2011-03-28T17:26:00.005+10:00

Spent the day happily sewing little headbands for the shop. They look so cute all together on Miss B's arm don't you think?

I've been getting a few sales of late and I'm really enjoying working on my little shop. Have been quite the productive seamstress these past few days. The Power Puff Girl costume I started on Thursday came out great (and better still, only cost me about $15!). Miss B loved it and had a fantastic time at her "P" themed dance. She was the only Power Puff Girl in a sea of punks, princesses and pirates. She probably should have worn tights instead of knee high socks, but I thought she might get a bit hot at the dance. She loved the dress so much she wore it the following night when we had some people around for dinner. Luckily it was only family, and they already know she has a theatrical side!

I used the same method to draft a pattern as I did on the Cinderella dress - using a T-shirt as a guide. I am so grateful to that person for sharing her method via her blog. It is so wonderful being able to run up a simple costume without needing to buy a pattern. I think I will probaby use it a bit later in the year if Miss B's school needs my services for the musical. I did the facings the same way that I do my doll clothes and put in a zipper at the back to avoid wardrobe malfunctions. It all came together really quickly and without any unpicking or bad words.

I took Miss B to the craft show on Sunday, but I have to say I was a bit disappointed this time around. There was nothing new at all, just the same group of stand holders with much the same stock as always. I bought a few fat quarters and a quilting ruler that claims to make doing triangular piecing super easy. We'll see about that!

We did a jewelry class together (I do this out of motherly love, I am terrible at beading but Miss B loves it!), and it was not very well taught. We both came away not having learned anything much and in addition we didn't get to finish the workshop piece. I have a couple of tools here, but nothing much so I don't know if I will be able to get it completed here at home either.

To keep this post Blythey, I took a few more pics of Vanilla today to model the headbands for the shop and I have to say that while the Flection body's floppy characteristics leave me cold, I am loving the way you can tilt the head. I wonder if the other Neemo bodies have the head tilt as well... Maybe I will replace the Flection with the standing up body instead. Vanilla is proving to be lovely to photograph with her paler than pale hair and her matt face is much easier to work with. I still have a very long way to go with my photos, but that is a post for another day :)

What a life :)

2011-03-24T13:39:00.008+10:00

My to do list for today:

Act as Roadie for Miss B's violin performance for her class.
Shopping.
Make Power Puff Girl costume.
Buy another chicken.

It's an odd life, but I love it!

Oh, and I should also mention that I made a little spontaneous Blythe purchase which is very unlike me. Usually I um and ahh, research and compare, taking so long to make up my mind that the doll in question gets sold to someone else. Not so with this little lovely. I bought her without hesitation before I could change my mind and I'm so glad I did - I am really excited about this girl.

She's a Can Can Cat, customised by the talented Morgon Orton. CCC was one of the girls I really really wanted when I first discovered Blythe, but I could never find one that was within my price range, and then later when the prices dropped a little I was afraid to buy one stock because I knew I'd want her customised and she's an SBL. I am a big ol' chicken when it comes to sawing dolls heads open. These photos aren't mine obviously, they belong to Mandrake, AKA treaclemineroad on Flickr.

Isn't she lovely? And look at her lids!!

And that luscious luscious blue hair!! She seriously could not be more perfect if I had commissioned the custom myself. Thanks to her owner for allowing me to adopt her - I promise I'll take good care of her!

So now I have EBL, RBL, FBL, SBL - all I need know is a BL (Rosie Red, I'll have you eventually!), an ADG and maybe one day, a Kenner.

For now though, I'm off to make a Power Puff Girl costume!

Back together again :)

2011-03-23T21:19:00.006+10:00

Vanilla's head that is! I finally plucked up the courage and did the slightest, wimpiest boggle and gaze correct ever. I can see the difference with the boggle, but not so much the gaze correct - I think perhaps I didn't take enough off, but I thought I would err on the side of caution. While I do currently have some spare parts, I would prefer not to have to use them if I don't have to!

I am really very happy with how she came out - I really really did not like her at first and now I am glad that I persevered and gave customising her a shot. She is far far from perfect, but I think she is kind of cute and the FBL face is really growing on me. I have even almost forgiven her for her terribly thin hair. A very sweet BK forum member sent me some saran to patch up the bare spots but I'm not really very keen on separating her scalp and dome if I don't have to. Besides which, I am well aware of Poe and her poor bald self requiring my attention.

My intention was always to have her as my Neemo Flection girl, but after a single photography session I think I'll be switching her back very soon. How do people manage to pose these bodies? The photo session was a little reminiscent of that 80's movie Weekend At Bernie's. As soon as I would get her in a pose I was happy with, her legs would collapse, or her head would flop down. And I can't get her feet into any of the shoes I have either. I'm a bit disappointed as the body is just so damn cute, but the floppy-ness is just too much for me. I'm not patient enough! I think I will offer it for sale on WPWD now that I know that I definitely won't be using it. I've really got to cut down on some of the dolly clutter!

Does customising de-value Blythe?

2011-03-09T20:30:00.007+10:00

I must be feeling a bit pressured at the moment, because I've found myself sneaking off to do dolly things during the day and really enjoying every moment of it!

I read a really interesting thread on the This Is Blythe forum recently that kinda got me thinking. It was from a new collector who was asking if customising her doll would devalue it. After considering it for a while, I think that if you look at your collection as a long term investment (and with the amount of money sunk into the hobby, you might as well!), and assuming that you have a mint NRFB Blythe then yes, in the long term if you look at it from a strictly financial point of view it probably does.

I guess the thing to bear in mind is that a doll that may be cheap and considered prime customising fodder right now may end up becoming very valuable in years to come. Tastes and fashions change and an older release doll that was previously thought ugly or odd (like the original Kenners as well as Goldie and Kozy) may suddenly become highly sought after. If most of these dolls were customised back when they were easy to come by, suddenly it's really hard to get one in stock condition and the rule of supply and demand comes into play. Who is to say that Mango, one of the most frequently customised Blythes might not be the Goldie of the future. There's no real way of knowing!

Another thing to consider is the quality of the customisation itself. If it's not well done then regardless of the base doll it is going to be worth less than you paid for it. Even if you are willing to pay for a professional to do the work you still may come out behind due to the amount of money it cost you to have the work done. The services of a customiser, materials and postage add up really quickly, so even though you might be able to sell the doll for a lot more than you originally paid for her, you might well still not get back what you have invested in her.

This is the kind of money you can expect to pay all up for a commissioned mohair rerooted Blythe with a new faceup from a customiser with a good reputation. Not the most expensive, but also not the cheapest.

Original cost of doll - lets say it's a new release RBL that you bought nude.

$80 + $25 shipping from somewhere in Asia - $105

Plus the cost to send to the customiser - $20 ($125)
Plus the materials used - reasonable quality mohair - $60 ($185)
Cost of reroot $150 ($335)
Eyechips $10 per set including fitting. Let's say you changed 2 sets. ($355)
Faceup$65 - sometimes more, sometimes less - ($410)
Lashes $10 ($420)
Lip Carving - $15 - again, sometimes more, sometimes less ($435)
Return postage - $20 ($455).

That's a lot of money to have to try and make back, even when you consider that people will pay more for a well known customiser's work!

Even if you did the work yourself and assuming you already had the necessary tools and art supplies, you would still be paying about $185 and spending a lot of time (days and days of rerooting alone!). And a lot of us just don't have the artistic ability that the well known customisers do. Sometimes the doll ends up looking worse than when you started!

So bearing that in mind you would think that I am anti-custom, but nothing could be further than the truth. Most of the stock girls just don't appeal to me at all and I'm not interested in having a shelf full of NRFB dolls that I'm too scared to touch. I love my custom Blythe - even the ones I did myself. Although I am sure they are not to everyone's taste, I enjoy them so much more now that they have a bit more personality.

I think the question you need to ask yourself before you busy with the sandpaper, is how upset you would be if you customised the doll and it looked bad or if you knew that you had just devalued a hard to find and expensive Blythe. If you have any niggling doubts, perhaps you'd be better off either leaving her stock or buying a pre-customised one to begin with.

For me personally, I'm only comfortable working on bait dolls or new releases with a few flaws that I'm just not liking so much, but even then I am aware that the amount of money spent on the customisation might be a lot more than the doll is worth at the end of it - especially since I am no expert! With the exception of the Basaak, I like the way all of my rescue girls have come out, but when I think about how much I spent on them, I know that I will make a loss when I come to sell them.

Roxy started off being a very inexpensive factory girl and she cleaned up quite nicely. I didn't try anything very adventurous with her at all.

Then I bought another doll for her scalp (more $$ invested as she was more expensive than the original Saffy factory girl) and now she looks like this.

I might just be able to break even with her if I was to sell her as her scalp is very nice and I also managed to recoup a little bit of the costs by selling her blonde scalp. I consider her to be a good investment.

On the other end of the spectrum, there's Poe. She came as bait back when EBL's were really quite expensive. At the time that I bought her, she was a bargain with a lot of potential, but still cost quite a bit more than Roxy.

Her hair was beyond redemption, so I decided she should get a reroot. The mohair cost me about $25 and a lot of time to prepare it. She is still in pieces and the reroot feels like it'll never be done!

I think I will send her face plates away to an Aussie customiser, but even with the saving on postage, she'll still end up costing me a LOT more than a stock Disco Boogie would now and if I was to sell her I would probably make a loss. At one point I did consider getting another EBL scalp for her at least, but it still ends up not working in my favour.

So as you can see some things even depend on how the Blythe economy itself is currently working, and there are no guarantees that you will come out on top, even if you buy a bait girl to do up.

I'm still here!

2011-03-08T21:18:00.002+10:00

The trouble with work, is that in addition to the time that it gobbles up in it's own right it also seems to render me completely unmotivated to dabble in my hobbies. It's only been a week, and already I feel caught up in a groundhog day like cycle of get up, work, pick up Miss B, clean up carnage, cook, eat, clean, sleep. I am such a wuss!

I've been sewing up a mockup bridesmaid dress in my "spare" time too, which hasn't left me with much time to make any new outfits for my beloved Blythes. Or put poor Vanilla back together again! She is still sitting on the buffet looking at me reproachfully as I eat my brekky. I'm reluctant to tuck her away out of site for fear she may join my group of Blythe in bits! I have 3 right now, all needing a bit of work. I must stop getting TLC girls!

I feel the itch for a new girl again and will probably treat myself to one when the contract is over. Maybe I'll finally get that green-haired girl I've been pining for. Or maybe a new blondie. I love the anticipation just as much as the deboxing!

Speaking of arrivals, I am not very happy with Australia Post at the moment. I hadn't been home 10 minutes this afternoon when I saw them pull up outside the house through the window. I got all excited because it's Holly, back from Frankie Darling and I can't wait to see her, so I walked up to the front door to get my parcel...only to see them drive off! The lazy buggers couldn't be bothered walking up the driveway and up the stairs to even knock on the door!! To add insult to injury, the "you weren't home" card says that I can't pick her up until the 10th! What the??!!

Oooh I was peeved!! What's more, did you know that apparently Australia Post have no way of contacting their contractors until they are back in the distribution centre? How ridiculous!

I do apologise for the lack of pictures in this post. The only thing I have recent photographs of is me wearing a very unflattering dress in a Von Trapp curtainesque print. And there's no way I'm putting that out there!

Let me just say that boat neck 50's style gowns will make your ta-tas look like basketballs if you are anything more than Audrey Hepburn shaped. Which sadly, I am not!

A new face

2011-02-25T09:52:00.005+10:00

Just a little progress report on Vanilla. She's not quite finished, and definitely not perfect (an unfortunate condtion shared by most of my customs), but I do like her more so I'm considering it a victory of sorts. I may redo her lips yet as they are not terribly symetrical. How I wish I could paint!

I decided to go with a more exagerated shape this time as my previous attempts of natural and pretty looked well, unnatural and kind of ugly which kind of defeated the purpose. At least this way it's kind of meant to be kooky so the wonky-ness is a little more ok to live with. A master customiser I aint!

I still have one pair of eye chips to change out - plum to stock blue - and a few other things that I am quite frankly a little scared about. I've never attempted a boggle or gaze correction before, mainly because it involves carving bits off of things that can't really be changed back once they are done. I established quite early on in my foray into customising that carving is not something that I am good at and therefore have resisted the urge to further mutilate any more of my dolls in that manner. Hopefully this will be ok as at least it is on the inside and (fingers crossed) undetectable!

I also have to separate her scalp from the dome to do the patching, and I can see that there is a bit of glue there, unlike my factory girls which just had the scalps sitting loose on the dome. I'm a bit worried I won't be able to get her all put back together without some kind of a gap. And also about cutting the patched pieces so they blend in with her hair. Last time I attempted a haircut it was a disaster! Perhaps I should just leave it alone for the time being...

Also on the to-do list is a new body - the flexion I've had sitting dainty and headless on the shelf for about 6 months. And possibly a new outfit. This one likes jeans, sneakers and hats. I like her, she's kinda cute :)

I am glad I decided to give this a shot - it's like getting a new girl without spending any money!

Off with her head!

2011-02-24T10:30:00.007+10:00

I tried to love Vanilla, I really did. But in the end her shiny face and stock makeup just a little too much like Frankie the fake's got to me, so it was off with her head! I was a little bit nervous opening her up as I hadn't done an FBL before, but I needn't have worried as it was exactly the same an an RBL.

Possibly not the wisest decision to customise her, but I figured that I would have to sell her as bait anyway (even though she had no scratches or damage) as her scalp is so bad, so what the hell. I might even attempt my first boggle and gaze correction on her. I'm going to try to fill in the massive gap in her rooting with some saran as well. If it doesn't work out, I have a really beautiful Audrey scalp here as a backup plan and if I still don't like her then out she goes. As bait. It's ridiculous really. And yet another compelling reason to get your dolls from Junie Moon - I could have returned her then.

So here she is, a blank canvas - for the time being. Mwah hahahaha! Usually I find the sanded faceplates quite beautiful and delicate looking, but even with no makeup, I'm not liking the FBL so much. She looks a bit dour don't you think?

You know what though, I am really a bit miffed at Takara. I should have been able to sell her without any concern at all as she was NIB when I bought her - their quality control absolutely stinks of late! Just look at how bad this scalp is. I am so not impressed. Especially when I see the lovely thick ones that other people got.

Anyway, hopefully I will like her better with a new faceup. And perhaps a hat!

The restless collector....

2011-02-22T17:12:00.003+10:00

I didn't think that this would happen to me quite so soon. After my disappointment with Vanilla I thought that perhaps I was done with buying new Blythe, but the last few days have seen me wistfully trolling ebay and Flickr, not to mention the trade threads on the forums. I'm thinking maybe I should take the plunge, sell one or two that don't excite me and get myself a new girl. Or two.

Right now I am thinking I'd like an Enchanted Petal or a Simply Peppermint (to be customised), or a blonde girl like Silver Snow (I have my eye on one already customised - she's very pretty. Shame I have no funds at the moment until I sell another doll!). I'd also like a Simply Sparkly Spark. She has the best hair ever right out of the box!

Meanwhile, I ordered a blonde bob wig for Vanilla and am itching to sandmatt her, change her chips and see if I like her any better. I have seen some adorable customs on Flickr, but they notably all have much better hair than mine. Maybe I could just cut my losses now, sell her on and put the funds towards Sparkly Spark. Or customise her anyway and sell her if I don't warm to her.

I never did bond with my Star Dancer and I don't have the heart to have her customised as she is in such good condition stock. It seems so silly though, as she's the most valuable Blythe in my collection and I couldn't afford to replace her. What's wrong with me? She's so pretty and I barely give her any attentio - she doesn't even have a name!

Should I hang onto her and see if she grows on me? I don't like to photograph her because of her super-shiney face and I think I'd prefer a blonde with a lighter skintone. Perhaps I'll be saying goodbye to her soon - if I can bring myself to sell her!

Living vicariously!

2011-02-20T15:18:00.003+10:00

I love the 50s. I wish it still WAS the 50s! In my little idealised version of it, everyone is nice and mannerly and there's a lot of pie and swing dancing. I've always secretly wished that crinolines would come back into fashion - there's something so feminine and dainty about all that tulle and big full skirts.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, my near 40 year old plump self might raise a few eyebrows if I were to wear a big ol' dress out to Woolworths, but I can always live vicariously through Blythe :) I've been just about sending myself blind making these petticoats but I love them! They really give a dress some umph and they are soooo fluffy and ruffly on the bottom! I originally intended on making a double layered one, just like the one I did for Miss B, but I soon realised that it would have been a petticoat of ridiculous proportions (not to mention double the amount of super-boring gathering) so I settled on the single layered one, which is more than full and fluffy enough to indulge my 50's fantasy.

They take quite a while, and are not particularly fun to make either, but I am kind on obsessed with the end result so I think I will have a few more in me before I'm done with them, I just love the extra dimension they add to a dress.

New fakes or factory teething problems?

2011-02-11T09:00:00.001+10:00

There's a new scandal sweeping though the Blythe community - the possibility of a few recent Blythe releases being copied and sold as the real thing.

For a long time now there have been Blythe clones, but up until now they have been easy to spot a mile off and have never branded themselves as Blythe. Blybe, Basaak, Blyth and CCE all look a bit like Blythe, some of them even sound a bit like Blythe. If you were a new collector you might be forgiven for accidentally buying one thinking that they were the bargain of the century only to quickly discover once you unboxed her that they were not a Takara Neo, but for the seasoned collector it's obvious at a glance from the auction pic that this are poor quality clones.

Here's my clone. She cost $25 and looks nothing like a Blythe. Excuse the terrible photo - I knew nothing about how to take a reasonable one at the time!

This is not the case with these girls. These Blythe are being sold as official Takara releases. They come in Blythe boxes complete with the printed inner and are even dressed in exactly the same way as their better quality counterparts. The difference being, they don't look right. And rather than coming from obviously dodgy sellers with barely any feedback, these Blythe are being sold by trusted Ebay sellers with hundreds of sales and 100% feedback - many of the people who have ended up with these dolls have purchased from them several times before.

There is (or was, it may have been removed now) an interesting thread on the This Is Blythe forum that had an email from one of the sellers of a suspected fake. The seller more or less says that the dolls are not fake and have come from a new factory in China that has some quality control issues rather than the usual one in Japan. Their claim is that the dolls are defective rather than counterfeit. Either way, there are some big differences, and I can completely understand why collectors are up in arms about this.

I would love to post some pics of this, but I'm not sure in terms of blogging ettiquette if it's ok to use other people's photographs from Flickr. Click the link here to go to the Fake Takara Blythe Galore photo group. It is well worth checking out. The sellers names are disclosed as well as comparison pics of some of the dolls in question. There is also a Bad Dolly Deals post here. From what I can gather the matter is still being resolved, so in all fairness it is entirely possible that the seller did not even realise that the dolls they were selling weren't right.

So far the dolls that have been discovered to have differences between them are Last Kiss, Urban Cowgirl, Simply Mango, Simply Gauva, Bohemian Peace and I've also heard of a Kiss Me True. When the doll is placed alongside the "real" version, you can see that there are quite a few tiny differences:

- Skintone differs (often darker).
- Scalp and faceplate don't match (but not always).
- Eye shape is wrong. RBLs that look like SBLs...but not quite.
- Eyechips are not quite the same shade as the original version.
- Face is strangely shaped - square rather than round around the eye/cheekbone area.
- Feet are stubby looking and square and the digits are more defined than the Takara.
- Stock is poor quality, particularly the shoes.

So keep on the lookout, join the group and check your dolls if you have any of these releases.

I will be very interested to see what comes of this - it is horrible to think that the $100+ that you spend on a doll might be going towards a worthless fake.

A hairy experiment...

2011-01-27T13:43:00.005+10:00

Well known Blyther Aveuch has written a fabulous hair washing tutorial that you can find here. It's quite different to the method that I normally use and uses human hair products instead of fabric softener. His Amarylis Aimee always looks so good (and Amarylis has notoriously frizzy hard to manage hair) so guess what I have been doing today...

Yep - washing dolly hair. All in the name of research of course :) Five girls got the royal treatment today and I am busting to see how it looks when it is dry. I must confess to enjoying the whole process immensely and the human shampoo and conditioner is without a doubt more pleasant to use than smelly fabric softener. I have been curious about this for a while - it makes sense to me that dish soap and fabric softener would be more appropriate for synthetic hair, but there is something kind of enjoyable about using "real" products. I think it stems right back to when I was little and washing my Barbie's hair.

I really should make time to do this more often - it was great fun! During the process Vanilla's name came to me which is nice as I was starting to think she would never have one. Apparently her name is Prickle and she's more quirky than beautiful. I am thinking of doing a little custom work on her very soon to make her a bit more appealing. Or maybe I'll send her off to someone else.... I still haven't worked out how to do those damn lips!

For some of the gang it was their first wash, so I am really looking forward to seeing if there is a difference. I don't know why I don't just do it as soon as I debox them really - maybe I will from now on (should any new Blythe make their way into the house). The drying process will probably take a few days as it's very humid here at the moment. I will have to be patient I guess.

Speaking of the need for patience, I find that I am beginning to miss having Holly my PuPe around. I've been stalking FrankieDarling's photostream hoping to get a glimpse of her! Maybe I should have sent out a doll that I wouldn't miss quite so much, but I really wanted her to be a Frankie custom - guess I will just have to suck it up and wait!

Swoon! A new dolly crush

2011-01-21T17:05:00.003+10:00

When I first got into Blythe I could never understand the appeal of Dal with her scowling and (to me at the time) unattractive face.

How things change. For a few months now I've been finding them well....cute. And wanting one. And then I saw this just a few minutes ago, and I REALLY want one!

I think that Tinkerina may own the best Dal in existance :) Is she not the sweetest daintiest creature you ever saw?

It's so odd how tastes evolve. I can remember first seeing a Goldie and thinking she was hideous. And now I want one of those too! Shame my bank account would disagree somewhat. But the Dal...she's do-able. Let the hunt begin!

A little update

2011-01-17T17:43:00.009+10:00

Once again, I find myself apologizing for my lack of regular posts. It feels a little trivial to be posting about Blythe when there is so much sadness going on in my city of late. Today workers were urged to return to work if they could, so in a sense it feels as though Brisbane is soldiering on, even though things are far from back to normal.

Over the weekend we ventured out of our immediate area for the first time in a little while. Once to drop my hubby off to volunteer for the cleanup (or attempt to!), and later to catch up with some friends at one of my favourite places, the Riverbend Cafe in Bulimba. Our ex-Prime Minister and current Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd also likes it there and we saw him buying a coffee as he recuperated from the infection he got from floodwater in his foot while helping the members of his electorate. What a guy!

We passed quite a few places on the way there that had obviously been inundated, but with the huge turnout from the public to assist with the cleanup, the worst of the mud was gone and the rubbish had been removed from the streets (that I saw, I am sure that there are still lots of areas that are yet to even dry out). There is still a nasty smell lingering - a nasty, swampy, rubbish tip kind of smell. I hope that it dissipates quickly from the affected houses as it would be very unpleasant to live with.

The response from the community to help with the clean-up has apparently been quite overwhelming - there were so many volunteers that they had to turn people away! I dropped off my hubby at one of the volunteer muster points on Saturday (the traffic was crazy! - soooo many people were there) and after getting all kitted up with safety gear and braving a tetanus shot (a very big deal for him as embarrassingly he tends to faint when he has injections!), the roads were so congested with people helping out that the buses couldn't get through anymore. So I had to trek all the way back and fetch him without him even getting his hands dirty! It is great that so many people were willing to lend a hand. I just hope that the effort can be sustained until the job is done.

On my last post I mentioned that the supermarket shelves were emptying at an alarming rate that left me feeling a little scared. I went back 2 days later and took these pics with my phone (feeling like a dork while everyone stared at me). This is the bread department.

And here is a section of the fruit and vege department - apparently people aren't that keen on celery, shallots or cauliflower - that was all that was left!

I've been busy sewing some bows which I am thinking of selling to help raise money for the Premier's Flood Relief Appeal. They'll be a measley $5 each and are very cute if I do say so myself. I've got a few different colourways in progress - black, white, pale pink, blue dot, red dot, yellow dot and natural linen so far. More pix to come when they are ready - hopefully very soon.

Just to keep this a little Blythe-y, my favourite girl and bow model Holly arrived safely in America (phew!) for her faceup. Shame that she is away right now as I think the bows look really sweet on her - I would have liked to have her here for the photos, but I'm sure the result of her makeover will be worth the time without her.

Brisbane floods

2011-01-12T10:12:00.003+10:00

I've been glued to the TV for the past 24 hours watching the most surreal events unfold.

Two days ago an 8 metre wall of water that has been dubbed an inland tsunami rushed down the streets of Toowoomba, inundating businesses and homes and picking up cars and smashing them like they were playthings. What makes this doubly scary is that Toowoomba is 700m above sea level, situated on the flat top of a mountain range. The water then rushed through small townships, lifting homes off their foundations and sweeping away entire families.

Right now my own city (Brisbane) is experiencing the worst flooding since 1974 and it looks as though tomorrow those levels will be surpassed. The CBD looks to be in real trouble. I just watched an iconic restaurant float down the river on TV. It is very surreal.

Our home is not in any danger of flooding as our suburb is neither close the the river or in a low lying area, but we are cut off for the time being as more and more major roads become flooded in places. My husband was sent home from work along with the rest of his colleagues yesterday when it became apparent that the water was rising very quickly. To give you an idea of how fast the waters rose, about 1/2 an hour after he arrived home the route he took was impassable. It's not expected that he will be able to return to his office until next week when flood waters recede.

People were panic buying at the supermarkets yesterday. I went out last night to get some pet food and a couple of things as I probably should have done the regular weekly shop (but was too busy watching for updates on the flood situation and fretting about my husband on his motorbike braving the rain, panicked people driving home from the CBD and the rising flood waters) and the shelves were completely empty. Not a single loaf of bread, bottle of milk, pack of flour, rice, pasta or noodles or bottle of water to be seen. All of the potato bins were empty bar a few at the bottom that escaped notice, any veggies like cabbage and corn that keep well were gone and most of the meat was gone too. There are no batteries and no candles to be had. I wish I had thought to take a picture - I've never seen anything like it! You would think that people believed that there was never going to be food again. The annoying thing is that I am sure that a lot of it will go to waste - especially the milk and bread as not that many people have the space to freeze it, and by being so selfish and overbuying a lot of other people may not be able to get anything at all.

My home town of Rockhampton has also been suffering from flooding for the past few weeks and my parents reported that similar behaviour in the supermarkets - people actually had fist fights over packets of 2 minute noodles and a lady bought every last hot dog roll from the local Wendy's! Probably at great expense too....

Unlike the situation here though, the people of Rockhampton are quite used to flooding. The waters rise slowly and most of the time residents have enough time to get their belongings to higher ground and prepare. In some parts of town the flooding is kind of a given event every couple of years. Most of the houses there are Queenslanders built high on stumps and although the water comes partway up the stairs, unless it is a severe event usually people are able to stay in their houses. My first job there was at Boral Gas right on the river and the staff told me that during a flood a couple of years before I started the only way to get to work was to be ferried in by dingy!

I have to say that I have never seen anything like this though.... I'd love to show you some pics but we are being cautioned to stay off the roads on order to keep the way clear for emergency vehicles, and besides it would feel like pretty poor form to be wandering about taking photos of other peoples misfortune. Here is a link to our local newspaper's photo gallery of the event to give you an idea of what is going on.

At any rate, as I said our home is high and dry, my family and friends are safe and we have a little bit of food in the cupboard and that is more than a lot of people have right now.

I have temporarily closed the shop for the time being as I can't guarantee that delivery won't be effected for the next week or so.

Bad Blogger!

2011-01-10T17:38:00.005+10:00

I'm so sorry for my lack of posts of late - I've been such a bad blogger but don't worry, I'm still here!

The holidays were/are crazy busy and I haven't had a lot of time by myself to craft, do Blythe bits and pieces or blog which is why things have been so quiet on the blog front. Let me give you a quick catch up of what's been going in in Chez Dollybird of late.

I've been sewing people clothes - a long retro nightie for Miss B (which she loves!) and I'm partway though a skirt for me. I also need to start work on my practice version of my bridesmaid dress for my sister's wedding. I don't have any pics downloaded of the completed nightie yet, but it's from this pattern. The one on the left. I made it in a really pretty cotton lawn in a rosebud print.

Xmas came and went and a great time was had by all, even if our celebration was very small this year. Miss B received a tonne of pressies including the Sylvanian Families dollhouse and furniture. No Blythe under the tree for me, however I must have been a very good girl this year as I got a super-duper DSLR camera! It's a Nikon D5000 and very flash. It was my Xmas pressie and birthday pressie from just about everyone I know. Truth be told I am a bit scared of it. I think I need to do a course!

In Blythe related news, I sent Holly, my very first Blythe away to FrankieDarling to be customised - I'm kinda worried about her travelling so far. As you may know, I'm in Australia and Frankie is in Portland USA - that's a lot of time in the hands of postal workers. I'm wondering if maybe I should have sent Vanilla as I would not be quite so upset if she was to get lost/damaged and she really does need something done to her if she's going to stay here. Crossing my fingers and toes that Holly arrives safe and sound. Aside from the anxiety about her being in transit, I am very excited about the customisation. Here how she looked when I first got her just before Christmas last year.

I've only ever had girls that I customised myself unless you count Poe, who was kinda ruined when I got her really. I think that a number of my Blythes will be customised professionally this year as there are not have that many new ones that I am interested in buying and to be honest, stock girls just don't do it for me at all anymore. This year I would like to get a Simply Peppermint and maybe a Rosie Red. I still need to find an SBL and a BL for my collection as I really would like to have one of each mold.

I also find myself toying with the idea of getting a Kenner - something I never thought would interest me at all! There's just something about their skin that really appeals to me. I think I would get a Raven girl.... I blame it all on Angel~Lily. She does the most amazing Kenner restorations rerooted in Alpaca.

Cinders

2010-12-04T08:31:00.008+10:00

Just a quickie post today, to show off Miss B's Cinderella costume. I was reasonably happy at how it came out, especially considering that I didn't have the added expense of a pattern. As I mentioned in my previous post, I used the tutorial from the Make It Love It blog here . Give it a go - it's fantastic!

I love this shot of her. I told her to pretend that she was waiting for her prince. She loves hamming it up for the cameras! Excuse my over-zealous use of Piknic filters - they help to mask the fact that the skirt part isn't the right shade of blue which I must admit annoys me every time I look it.

The underskirt ended up being much more work than the actual dress, but as I mentioned in a previous post a lot of that came from using tulle by the metre, instead of the chiffon on a roll. There really was a load of gathering involved - I think I may just invest in a ruffle foot as I might end up making the flowergirl dresses for my sister's wedding next year and matching petticoats would be super cute. Especially as it is a 50's wedding - squee!! I did take a few shots of the completed petticoat but made the mistake of doing it inside as has been overcast/raining for the past few days here so naturally the photos are horribly blurry and not really blog-post quality. I will try again on a sunny day. Maybe Santa might bring me a fancy new camera for Christmas and this problem will be a thing of the past - hint hint!

I am not really feeling the Blythe vibe right now in the sense that I don't have that longing to add anything to my collection. What's wrong with me? I still enjoy reading the forums and looking at other people's pics on Flickr but haven't been sewing or photographing my own girls for about a month now. I wonder if in part it is because I was so indifferent to Vanilla when she arrived. It's just shy of a year since I got my first one - Holly the PuPe and I remember how thrilled I was with her. I used to pick her up every time I was in the sewing room to admire her and just loved making clothes for her to wear.

In some ways it seems that the excitement at receiving each subsequent Blythe has diminished to the point where I just don't feel it at all anymore. The last 2 Blythe I bought - Star Dancer and Vanilla have barely been looked at once I'd deboxed them and neither of them even have names. Maybe it's time to consider moving some of the lesser loved ones on and getting a Kenner? Quality over quantity ya know ;)

Cinderella, Cinderella

2010-12-01T10:27:00.008+10:00

Sometimes I just feel like avoiding certain tasks....and today is one of those days.

I have to finish making a Cinderella costume for Miss B for her school play. The dress is all finished and looks reasonably good, but the underskirt is giving me a whole new respect for dance seamstresses and sewers of those cute little pettiskirts that you see on Etsy. The $70 or so that they charge for those puppies is more than worth the money! I am currently surrounded by acres of tulle strips that need to be gathered and sewn and my heart is really not in it anymore. The tutorial called for non-fray chiffon but I wasn't able to source it locally and I thought that soft bridal tulle would do just as well. Let me just say that this stuff is a real pain to work with! And I'm sure that Miss B will be complaining about the scratchy-ness of it. If I had to suffer through this process again, I would definitely order the non-fray chiffon strips online.

Actually, having seen the costumes that the other kids have, I find myself wondering why I bother going to so much trouble. She's actually kind of conspiciously overdone! Although I don't feel bad for making it as Miss B loves the costume to bits and swans around in it after school, only taking it off for meals and bed! I guess I thought that since she had the part of Cinderella, she should look a bit special and I must admit that I really did enjoy making the dress part of the costume...and probably went to a lot more trouble than was necessary. The truth is that I love making costumes, and in some ways I wish that the culture here was a little more like that of America, with parents going to lots of effort to make things look nice. At least that is how things look from my blog reading Aussie perspective anyway!

The dress was actually not very hard to make at all thanks to the creativity and generosity of a wonderful blogger (Make It and Love It) who posted the tutorial here. I think I love this woman and I'm so grateful to her for sharing the method. You could use it as the basis for quite a lot of different costumes, just by tweaking a few things here and there.

The tutorial is more of a method than exact instructions as there is no pattern provided - which was great for me, as I find printing things to scale and fiddling with sizes to be a lot of extra work when I really just want to jump right in and start sewing. It shows you how to draft your own pattern using an item of clothing to draft the basic bodice and then just adding the extras that make it all Cinderella-y. Here's a pic of my bodice partway through construction before the sleeves were added, complete with untrimmed threads - oops!

The instructions are excellent and very detailed and there are lots of photos of the process. I was a little bit afraid about drafting sleeves, but they worked out beautifully. My only regret is that I cheaped out a bit on the fabric for the skirt and used a synthetic blend that I picked up on the bargain table. The colour isn't right and I think it doesn't have the right amount of body to really make the skirt poof out nicely. Unfortunately I didn't really have that much choice about it as there wasn't any satin that matched the bodice fabric anyway, and besides which, I had already spent a bit more than I wanted to on the materials. It's so frustrating how expensive fabric is here in Australia compared to the States! I also wish that I had cut the bodice a little bit smaller, as it seems to have stretched a little bit, but I guess in the grand scheme of things it doesn't really matter.

Make It and Love It also has a great tutorial for a pettiskirt that you can use to poof out the dress (or just make it for your little one to prance about looking adorable in!). It is pretty straight forward, but kind of time consuming as the huge amount of gathering for the two layers of the skirt seem to go on forever. Hence my procrastination at going back into the sewing room and finishing the damn thing off! I need to put an extra tier on Miss B's to make it a bit longer as the original tutorial is for a younger (and shorter) child, but I think it will still work well and hopefully will give the skirt some Cinderella-y fullness.

Oh well, I'd better get back to it. Endless miles of gathering (well about 30 meters of ruffling, then 10 metres of tulle, then another 5 metres of tulle x 2) await. And they won't sew themselves!

Simpy Vanilla Review

2010-11-22T14:59:00.007+10:00

I had planned on doing a review of Vanilla when she arrived, but as I stupidly clicked BIN without checking the listing properly, my Vanilla is naked and I saved a whole $10. Note to self - read the listing before committing to buy, Noob! So at any rate, I can't comment on her stock, which did look quite cute. Especially the shoes, which I am kind of sad about, but oh well, lesson learned!

I was excited when I saw her in the box. Although she was naked, she looked lovely and had such nice straight bangs. So I freed her from her cardboard prison, took off her plastic fringe keeper thingy (her bangs immediately revealed themselves to be crooked - sigh) and popped a dress on her. And was underwhelmed.

Everything they say about her is true. I don't know why I thought I would feel differently. I wanted so much to love her! The thing is, although she does look quite sweet in photographs, she somehow does not feel as good quality as the other Blythes when you see her in person. Her hair is very fine and I can see her scalp through the top, her legs are sticky and super bendy and her face is very shiny - even more so that normal. I compared her to the others and none of them even come close in the shine stakes. I mistakenly thought her eye shadow was grey, but it's blue and her lips and blush are just a bit too bright for her pale skin and hair. Oddly, this doesn't seem to show up as much in photos. Maybe it's just that I am not a fan of the FBL mold. She has a slightly wistful look about her, I think.

So my overall opinion of Vanilla? Great hair colour but very fine hair. If that bothers you pay extra and get Paris. Very shiny face. If you don't want to spray-matte her get Paris. Make up just a touch too dark. If you want subtle, get Paris. So I guess really, I would have been better off getting Paris myself!

On the plus side, she was very cheap and I think she will be a great base to customise. I will be sending her away to have some work done later in the year I think. A bob, boggle, lip carve and face up from a top notch customiser and she'll look a million bucks. But as she is? Not my cup of tea. I would not recommend her for those who like to keep their girls stock in my opinion.

Inner Beauty

2010-11-11T11:44:00.007+10:00

I've been thinking a lot lately about handmade Blythe clothes vs factory made. What is it that makes people purchase handmade items from Etsy rather than the cheaper mass produced Sugarmag clothes? For me it's always been about quality and variety. Factory made clothes often don't stand up to repeated dressing (or washing) and after a few uses the seams can start to come away. I also occasionally have trouble wrestling factory made items onto the dolls body, which for some reason doesn't seem to be as hard with handmade clothes. Some things, like jeans have a reputation for staining whereas the handmade ones seem not to be quite as bad, and then there is the issue of variety and dare I say it, individuality. A lot of handmade clothes are one of a kind. There is something kind of satisfying about taking a beautiful shot of your Blythe nicely dressed in something incredibly cute and knowing that there isn't anyone else out there who can replicate the look exactly because a duplicate outfit simply doesn't exist.

A while ago a read a comment comparing the prices of the handmade to factorymade and expressing shock at how much a handmade Blythe garment sells for on Etsy. Not so long ago, I probably would have done the same. After all they are clothes for dolls and use the smallest amount of fabric. It's hard to believe that it is possible to buy a human sized garment for not that much more than a doll sized one.

Having now taught myself to sew these tiny clothes, I can now understand that the reason for the extra cost is not for the materials, but the time and skill required to construct one. Admittedly, if you make mulitple copies of one garment using the same fabrics and trims I suppose that time would be saved. However having soon realised that this assembly line method soon sucks any pleasure right out of sewing (for me at least) I think that it's more likely that most Blythe seamstresses work in much the same way that I do and make each garment individually, taking the time to choose just the right fabrics, trim and little extra touches that make each finished item unique and that is what really adds to the time invested in each tiny dress - extra care and attention to detail.

One of the reasons that I've been thinking about this is that I've been toying with the idea of changing the way that my dresses are finished on the inside. My latest creation, the pink spot/stripe combo has been finished in such a way that there are no visible seams on the inside which I think looks so much better, but I'm wondering if I should continue doing this as the extra time taken should probably be taken into account in my pricing. This first one I am listing for the usual price, although it took me about 3 hours to complete all told. Does it matter to Etsy buyers that the garment is beautifully finished on the inside? Are they prepared to pay a little bit more for that little extra touch or would I be better off just keeping it simple?

Waiting for Vanilla and an awesome competition!

2010-11-08T11:43:00.005+10:00

I caved in a few weeks ago and bought myself a Vanilla. There's just something about her that milky white hair and her complexion that I could not resist. For some reason in pics her skin tone looks a little different to the regular fair skinned girls - I wonder if maybe they used a different plastic? I think she will probably get customised though, as she really is very shiny and I find that I don't enjoy photographing the super shiny stock girls nearly as much as those who have been sand matted.

I'm not entirely happy with my purchase, although it is my own stupid fault. A word of warning - before you hit the BIN button be sure to double check the listing to make sure that it's exactly what you wanted. I got a little trigger happy and accidentally ended up buying Vanilla nude instead of new in box. While I did get her marginally cheaper, and her stock isn't super-special, I was a bit sad because the difference in price was a mere $10. If I had decided that I didn't want to keep the stock clothes, I could have sold them for twice that much. At any rate, she ended up costing me a smidge over $100 including shipping to Australia, making her the cheapest Blythe in my collection with the exception of the factory girls. I know she's just a "Simply" and not one of the more pricey and sought after girls, but all the same it's interesting that the prices have dropped so much. Not good for people looking to sell older Blythes though I suppose.

I have been looking at my collection with a critical eye lately and wondering if I will ever manage to bring myself to sell any of them. I never imagined I would say this, but I kind of feel that I have reached the point where I have just about got enough Neos. Instead of madly buying new dolls I will probably gradually send most of the remaining girls off to be customised now and I think that with maybe one or two more fantasy haired girls I will be happy to stop collecting the Neos altogether and maybe begin saving for a Kenner. I would love to have a Miss Sally Rice or even a custom Simply Peppermint but other than that I feel quite content with the dolls I have and could possibly even stand to let one or two less loved ones go. I'm still waiting to hear from Erica about sending Poe off for her new face, and I have reserved a spot with Frankie Darling to have Holly customised (I am so excited about that!). Now it's just a matter of waiting and madly sewing to make up the funds to get the work done!

Speaking of fabulous customisers, I stumbled across this great interview (and competition) with Melly Kay on BlytheLife that I highly recommend reading. I've followed Melly's blog and stalked her flickr pages for a while now ever since seeing her beautiful custom work on a Saffy factory girl (Bubble) and each subsequent doll somehow manages to be even more lovely than the last. Her custom Blythes have a natural life-like beauty and innocence that is incredibly appealing to me - the soft colours and the technique she uses to carve lips and nostrils really brings Blythe to life. I don't normally use other people's photos in my blog as I've never been sure of the etiquette and don't want to stand on anyones toes so let me just say that these are not my pics - they are the work of Melly Kay, so if I am doing something horribly offensive by posting Melly's pics here, someone let me know and I will take them down immediately. The reason I decided to include them is because my descriptions really don't do her work justice - you need to see her Blythes to fully appreciate her skill. These are two of my favourites.

I love this factory Qpot that she worked on.

This mohair girl kills me - she's perfect. The colours used in her face-up and chips complement her red mohair perfectly and her lips and nostrils are so beautifully done. I love the way the lower lashes are so delicate and understated. Not sure which Blythe she started out as, but she sure is stunning now! Whoever owns her is very lucky :)

Who knows, maybe I'll end up sending Vanilla over to her one day to get made over. I would love to have one of her dolls in my collection.

Melly Kay is having a competition right now where she is very generously giving away a beautiful Melly Kay Bohemian Peace custom, Bellatrix. To enter, click the link and read the interview at BlytheLife, and follow the instructions. Good luck to all who enter - Bellatrix is a really lovely girl!

Who wore it best?

2010-10-28T13:26:00.003+10:00

I finally finished the little yellow dress that matched the purple one yesterday and put it on Holly to model. I took photo after photo, all of them blah. I thought it might be my boring white background so I put a pumpkin in the shot to give it a bit of oomph. It looked better, but it still wasn't right.

And then I saw Ash out of the corner of my eye with her bright orangey hair...

I think she wore it best :)

Huzzah for my stash!

2010-10-27T10:49:00.005+10:00

Incredibly, I had everything I needed to make Miss B's witch costume on hand and after a frantic sewing session last night this is the result. I think it came out quite well. It only ended up costing $8.00 for the hat and is a great improvement on the horrible thing I nearly bought her from the local shops. She thinks she looks pretty good in it and has been preening in the mirror ever since I finished the final stitch last night. Scuse the photo - it was taken in a big rush before school today. I swear it was easier to snap a shot of her without a silly expression on her face when she was a toddler!

I am feeling very smug about it all as I didn't have a pattern - I just cut out a rough dress shape, with sleeves and fudged a little (hence the pintucks!) until it fit. Amazingly it all went together with no trouble at all - even the sleeves - and I am now master of the automatic button hole function on my sewing machine. Embarassingly I had never needed to sew a buttonhole on it until last night, even though I've had my fancy pants new machine for over 5 years. All it has sewn is quilts, doll clothes, a few skirts and some costumes for a school musical that somehow didn't require buttons.

The reason I'm so pleased with myself is that although I have done lots of dressmaking in the past, it was always always with a pattern. I would not have had the faintest idea how to run up even a simple costume without one. After sewing for Blythe, human clothes are a walk in the park!

Seeing Miss B so happy with the costume made me feel a bit sad that Halloween is not really celebrated here in Australia. I know that the seasons don't aline properly etc etc but it really is a lot of fun and I can't see the harm in having to provide a few sweets for the trick or treaters. Last year Miss B dressed up and we took her around our street trick or treating but we weren't exactly welcomed by most, so this year we will go to the one child friendly event in our city that is halloween themed - the Manly Halloween Street Party. It's not quite the same (it's not even held on Halloween, but on the Saturday!), but at least she'll get to wear her costume again. On Friday night we'll carve a pumpkin and decorate the verandah - hopefully we'll see some trick or treaters on Sunday. Otherwise I will have a lot of chocolate and lollies to eat!

Sewers block begone!

2010-10-26T14:28:00.005+10:00

This dress, and it's little yellow sister, have been the cause of some major sewers block for the last 2 weeks. For those who don't know, sewer's block is the inability to either finish the item you are working on, or move on to another project because you for one reason or another you have become "stuck".

For these dresses, it was the trim that held me up. I really do love the look of linen, but it does tend to be somewhat plain on it's own. I really wanted to make a sweet Japanese inspired dress with it, but once I'd finished it just lacked a little something. I had originally made pockets out of the same contrasting fabric as the sleeves but when I held them up against the dress, it still looked kind of flat. The answer came in the form of these cute little flower cutouts I bought a while ago - I think they are perfect! It just goes to show that stash building can really come in handy when you least expect it.

Speaking of stash building, I visited the craft expo here in Brisbane on the weekend and bought some lovely lovely fabrics to play with. I can't wait to get stuck into them, but first I have to make a witch costume for the lovely Miss B who is singing "This Is Halloween" in front of all the grade 4s tomorrow. I originally thought I'd just buy something as I remembered seeing a few cheapo costumes at the local newsagent, but as it turns out they were $30 and really quite horrible. I don't know if I'll be able to come up with anything better, but at least it won't cost me anything!

Reroot progress report

2010-10-23T08:20:00.010+10:00

Yesterday I ignored the large pile of laundry sitting grumpily in the bathroom and instead spent a pleasant few hours working on Poe's reroot. I know people complain about how much slower mohair is in comparison to saran, but I am finding that it seems to be coming along quite quickly. Maybe I'm doing something desperately wrong! I have nobody to show it to, so I'll just have to cross my fingers and hope that it will work out ok!

I am using a method I saw on Flickr a while ago. There used to be a tutorial on how to do it, but it has since been removed, so I am kind of just combining the info I have gleaned from all over. It is a knot method, but instead of tying the knot at the very end of the plug, it's tied in the middle and the two ends are fed through adjacent holes. It leaves a really neat finish on the inside imo, and seems to be very secure. It's only suitable for long length fibre, but it's a nice compromise between lock and loop and the usual knot method. I use a large headed needle to feed the mohair through the holes. It isn't terribly fast, but then I have yet to find a method I can successfully use that is! Having the mohair all nicely combed is a huge time saver, and I just make the plugs up as I go.

I am glad that I did that disastrous reroot on the Basaak - even though it didn't work out terribly well I did learn a lot from doing it (mostly, what NOT to do!) and I feel a lot more confident this time, even though I haven't worked with mohair before. The Blythe scalp is sooo much softer and easier to work with in comparison!

I have given Poe a thatched side part - as you can see her scalp was very damaged along the centre part and although I have repaired it (that's the big white strip), I don't feel comfortable having the closely rooted rows in the torn plastic. I've just started the upper fields which are also very closely rooted - once I've done the first couple of spirals I'll start skipping holes. Poe's Disco Boogie scalp seems to be have the holes more closely spaced than a normal scalp, so I'll probably just do every third hole and see how that looks. One thing I do know, it's going to be poofy - which isn't the look I was going for. I think that perhaps those lovely wispy straight reroots tend to use lots and lots of extremely fine plugs and take a bit more skill than I posess right now. Maybe next time.

All this fussing about with Poe is giving me a lot more of a feel for her identity. I am kind of excited to be sending her away for her faceup. I have decided that I am going to get her lips carved rather than leaving them stock and I think she might be a lashless girl. I have found an amazing Australian customiser and although I am on the list to send her overseas for a free faceup, I am thinking that maybe one of the other girls might go there in her stead and I'll just have the work done locally - the list is very long and I am really looking forward to seeing her completed now. I'm pleased that I didn't end up selling her - she has real character, even if she is still a trainwreck!

A fun distraction

2010-10-20T10:51:00.005+10:00

After the success of my pink mohair I was itching to have a go at processing some more, and remembered that a while ago I bought some red wensleydale locks but didn't end up using them because they came like this.

I made a few plugs, but that's as far as I got. Yesterday I tied a couple of curls together and washed and conditioned them and they came out looking like this.

Much better! And I must say that it was nice to have lovely clean fibre to work with - it brushed out so much more easily. The photo doesn't really do them justice - I don't think it could handle the colour too well. They have a really nice pearly lustre to them and I quite like the way they are like little ringlets. It's a shame that I don't really need them for anything. I suspect that I enjoy processing and combing the fibre more than I do the reroots!

I admit to procrastinating a little about starting Poe's. Last night I repaired her scalp and painted it with acrylic paint so I could begin today, but the paint dried a little bit tacky, so rather than get to the end of the reroot and have paint flaking off, I think it would be best to sand the stock brown colour off and just use it flesh coloured. I did read that non-acetone nail polish remover is good to get the stock paint off, but I rubbed and rubbed at it and it didn't budge for me. At this rate I feel like I'll never get started, much less finish the job!

Processing Mohair - part 2 - Success!

2010-10-19T11:16:00.004+10:00

I just wasn't satisfied with how my mohair turned out. So I did some more research and then thought I'd throw caution to the wind and just dye the stuff with food colouring for fun as it seriously could not have looked worse than before and in any case, I didn't want to throw any more money at it. And here is the end result.

Seriously, I could not be prouder of this bit of fluff if I had grown it on my own back! It's shiny and luscious and perfect (even if it is pink)! As it turns out, the secret to gorgeous mohair is all in the combing.

When I was preparing to dye it, I thought I had better brush it as the locks were so tight that there was no way that the dye would have penetrated to the centre. So I divided it into lots of little locks - about 12 for the ounce of fibre I had, brushed each lock into a big fuzzy cloud and tied it together at the top with string. All of the little bits of VM and dirt came out in the brushing process so it looked much cleaner. The floor did not. It's a pretty messy business and not for the squeamish. I am reasonably certain that a lot of the little bits of "stuff" in there was goat poo and it was obvious that my previous attempt to wash it had not been all that effective as my hands were still getting oily from the lanolin.

There was quite a lot of mohair caught up in the brush - I wasted heaps, but from what I have read this seems to be pretty normal. Then dyed it with the food colouring. I chose pink because I thought there was less chance of it being completely unacceptable if I made the colour too strong or too weak as I was not sure how well the fibre would take the dye. For the record, it really grabs it! I was aiming for palest pink and it turned out much darker than I had anticipated, but it's still ok.

I wet the brushed locks with hot water and laid them neatly in a glass dish. I used a lasagne dish - as I was using food colouring it was perfectly safe to use regular cookware - obviously if I had bought the acid dye I could not have done this. Then I made up my dye bath using a few drops of pink food colouring, hot water, a glug of vinegar and a squirt of dish soap - very scientific. I didn't measure anything! Then I just poured the dye mix over the top of the mohair and "baked" it in the oven for about an hour. This method works well because the water stays nice and hot without violently boiling, which can cause felting. Water + agitation is bad news for mohair or wool, so don't stir it.

When I pulled it out the water was clear as all the dye had gone into the mohair. Then I rinsed it in hot water and conditioned it (just put some conditioner in your hand and run it down the length of the lock from the top - don't scrunch it up like you would your own hair or it will felt!), and left it to sit (ie...I went out!). When I returned 3 or 4 hours later I combed the mohair with the conditioner still in it (lost quite a bit more hair), rinsed it and left it to dry. And that's all there is to it!

Things I've learned for next time:

Separate into lots of small bunches as it's easier to comb.
Brush before washing to remove all the VM & make it easier to remove lanolin.
Comb again with conditioner still in the hair, then rinse thoroughly.

A lot of people dye their fibre "in the grease" - ie unwashed, but I think that I would probably wash it first as the mohair I had was quite greasy. I really want to do this again and experiment with some different colours. I wonder if it would take parisienne essence or tea/coffee for a natural brown?

My only concern now is that there is a LOT less fibre than I started with. I just hope that I have enough to give poor Poe a decent looking head of hair. It is a good thing that the mohair I bought is long so I can use a technique where I double it over, thereby getting double the thickness.

Now I just have to remove the paint from her scalp and repair her torn partline.

Poor Poe...

2010-10-15T17:51:00.005+10:00

I've spent the day fooling about with mohair and after all my hard work cleaning it I think I'll have to end up dyeing it after all. I held a bit up against Poe and all I could think of was Mrs Quickly from Nanny McPhee with her frizzy yellow perm. Not quite the look I was going for. :(

The photo is terrible - it's raining and the light was fading, but you can still see enough to know that this is not a good look. Even taking into account that she still needs her face-up. I'm thinking of dyeing the mohair - but can't decide on a colour. Trying to toss up between pastel easter egg type colours or just going with a natural dark brown. I have so many brunette girls already though. It's starting to get boring! At the moment I am leaning towards a pastel greenish/blue.

Mohair processing - not for the impatient or inflexible!

2010-10-15T13:06:00.011+10:00

As some of you might know, I've been in the process of trying to find some fibre the right length (and price) to reroot poor Poe with for a while now. A few days ago my fibre arrived and I've began processing it so I can begin the reroot.

The mohair I ended up buying is from an Aussie seller, and as I mentioned, pretty much straight off the goat's back. I will admit that I was expecting it to be kinda gross and stinky, but I have to say that I was pleasantly surprised. While it was absolutely not perfectly clean and lovely, it wasn't too bad and even better, the seller kept the locks all nice and together so I don't have the nightmare of untangling a big messy wad of fibre. Here's how it looked straight out of the bag.

In it's unwashed state it is kind of greasy, and there's a bit of "VM" (that's vegetable matter - hay and possibly...goat poo!). It does smell a little bit goaty, but not terribly so. All the same, if you are finicky about such things, then attempting to process your own mohair is possibly not for you. Looking at the fibre in its raw state it is difficult to imagine it gracing the head of one of my Blythes!

Most of the info out there on processing mohair is geared towards spinners rather than doll makers, who need that lock kept nice and intact through the cleaning process and if you follow their methods you will end up with nice clean mohair that has ended up in a tangled clump, rather than the nicely combed locks we need. Luckily I found this excellent guide to washing mohair by Mohairhouse. Quite possibly what I did is not the best way to wash mohair, but here's the method I used.

I basically separated the mohair into three smaller bundles, tied at the top with a silicone hair tie and followed the method for washing locks using dish detergent and very hot water. If I was to do this over again, I would have picked out the bigger pieces of VM before I wet the mohair. As I discovered it doesn't come out in the wash, but the water does help to distribute all of those tiny pieces right through the entire lock, making your locks really dirty. Oh well, you live and learn...

The fibre was very dirty, and after three washes was still not looking lovely and white so I soaked it in some very hot water with dish soap for a good 20 minutes to see if I could get it any cleaner. Next time I'd pick out the VM first, then wash once to get most of the dirt out, soak in hot soapy water and then rinse and wash again. It is entirely possible that my mohair is stained or the goat that it came from isn't white but cream (actually I don't really know why I assumed that it was white as the goats come in several colours including blonde and a silvery colour) because even though it was much cleaner looking after the soak, it still wasn't really super white like other mohair that I have seen - more like white with blonde tips. So at that point I figured that that was as clean as it was going to get, rinsed off the dishsoap and conditioned the fibre using a generous amount of human hair conditioner (just squishing the conditioner into the tied locks, not agitating at all) and put it into ziplock bags for 20 minutes or so. I was pleased that at this stage I had barely lost any hair at all from the 3 bunches - yay for silicon hairbands!

After I rinsed, dried and brushed a section of it, (at which point it turned into a cloud of frizz that was only subdued by dampening it), I couldn't help but feel a little disappointed with the result. My mohair seems to be of the super crimpy variety rather than the loosely curling type that I wanted, not especially shiny and worst of all, it's a pale straw colour that I am not a fan of at all.

It is also apparent that I will have to dye it as the colour does not suit Poe's skintone. Ironically it looked pretty good against the paler Blythe-in-bits, but I have already got a scalp for her. I am looking at using Landscape Acid Dye to improve the colour in either Pacific or Tasman - both are shades of blue/green in different intensities. They are really pretty colours, I just hope that it dyes up nicely and doesn't end up going bright green on the cream mohair. I am also considering playing with food colouring to see if I can get a pretty pastel colour I can live with.

At this point after all the work and the less than satisfactory result I've achieved, I would not recommend trying to save a few dollars by processing the mohair yourself if you have a particular look in mind for the finished scalp. It's not the amount of work involved that I consider to be the issue, but rather the unpredictable (and in this case, somewhat disappointing) result. At the end of the day, the look of the combed mohair depends mostly on the animal it came from (age, genetics, colour, living conditions) and also the part of the fleece that the locks were taken from (some parts of the fleece are guaranteed to be stained or just very very dirty). Buying mohair fibre without knowing these things means that you can't be certain how the processed fibre will look.

I wanted to achieve white or cream shiny mohair with a gentle wave and so far, after several hours work have ended up with pale blonde mohair that is matt and crimpy. It's still quite nice, but it isn't what I wanted and will look very different to the way I had envisaged.

The fibre (including postage) cost me $14.00, and I also spent an extra $10 or so on a brush, conditioner and conditioning spray. On top of that, I now need to purchase the dye which will set me back another $14 or so. I think that all up it would not have cost me much more to have purchased the fibre I really wanted in the first place and I have had to accept that the look that I wanted for Poe's customisation will now have to change to accommodate the mohair that I have ended up with. If you are patient and flexible with your customisation than it is quite doable, but for specific results you are much better off buying your mohair already processed.

Dear Takara...

2010-10-14T19:26:00.002+10:00

Dear Takara

Can you please space out your new release Blythes so that the more attractive ones are alternated with at least 3 boring ones with yellow blonde hair that I won't be tempted by?

My wallet hurts.

Thank you very much :)

Something new...

2010-10-10T17:01:00.003+10:00

I've been busily sewing away this weekend as it is horrible and rainy. Here's the baby doll outfit that I mentioned yesterday. Not sure if these will be a regular in the shop - I guess it depends on how well it's received. At any rate, it's nice to be filling up the shop with new things. Things got pretty quiet on the sewing front for a while but I seem to have my mojo back.

Today I made this little set, but I'm still undecided as to if I will sell it or not. I don't have any more of those little flower beads left and I kind of made the cami so I could re-take the bloomer listing photos as they were pretty abysmal. Not to mention the fact that there were plastic boobies in every shot!

I am toying with the idea of making a little diorama to take my shop pics in as the white background is getting kinda boring. I will have to sweet talk my hubby into making the box up and I'll see what I can find to decorate the room with. I'm going to have to do it on a budget as I'm saving my dolly pennies so that Simply Vanilla and Sparkly Spark can come to live with me.

Sparkly Spark!!

2010-10-09T20:41:00.004+10:00

I may have squealed like a piggy when I saw that this gorgeous girl is coming up for release on November 10. I have been wanting a blue haired girl ever since I attempted to reroot Frankie my less than successful Coraline fakie and now CWC/Takara have very kindly decided to release a new one. I did toy with the thought of getting one of the older blue girls - Can Can Cat or Asian Butterfly but I'm not overly fond of the SBLs with their yellow eyeballs and impossible to open heads so I have resisted temptation so far. I also like that her hair is a nice managable length. Three of my girls have ankle length hair with no bangs and it is a real pain to keep it under control.

Regrettably she won't be as cheap as the normal Simply girls, but who knows, maybe the dolly funds will stretch to cover it.... I hope so as she is lovely! I will have to get cracking and produce some new dresses to put in the shop (actually I made the cutest little dress today, but you'll have to wait until tomorrow to see it as it's been too dark and dreary to get a good photo).

I also hope that the quality control will be a bit better on her than it has been for her unfortunate sister, Thumpty Thump. A couple of collectors on the forums have had problems with her hair being really badly cut, which isn't good considering that these girls are a little pricier than the normal Simply releases. All the same, I cannot wait to see her promotional shots.

Bloomin Bloomers

2010-10-08T14:21:00.009+10:00

At last I have worked out a way to make these that does not make me swear like a sailor! Bloomers are available in my shop now, should you need a pair for your plastic princess.

To be honest, I probably would not have persevered were it not for the fact that I had a specific request for them and I was determined not to let a pair of tiny knickers get the better of me. There were a few failures...including a pair that would have fitted a pencil (elastic too tight!), an enormous pair that were miles too baggy and my first attempt that were a bit on the low-rise side (ie. the crotch was waaaaay too short!). Now though, I've got it all nicely worked out and they are pretty damn cute if I do say so myself.

I had fun dressing up all the girls in them for a photo shoot only to realise that there was no way to photograph them all together nicely since they wouldn't all fit in the lightbox and I am too chicken to prop them up against the wall in case of falls and scratched faces! It's a shame that Poe is not in better shape as I made 7 different pairs but only had 6 Blythes to model them on. I really need to get on and do that reroot for her as I'm hoping that Erica will soon be able to work her magic on her faceup. I've now found a place that has nice long mohair at a price I can afford without resorting to selling my organs, so hopefully it will soon arrive so I can get started.

The mohair I found is cheaper because it isn't washed, which I hope will not pose too great a problem. In the pics the seller shows it comes up gorgeously white and lustrous...I just hope that I can manage to get the same results. I have no idea how to wash it - should I use human shampoo or woolwash? Cool water or warm? I see a lot more research in the immediate future....

I had actually found some fibre through another Etsy seller, but after I had paid for it she contacted me to say that I owed her more money than the amount listed as she needed more for shipping and handling and she couldn't be bothered working out the postage to ship to Australia...double the amount that she had originally quoted. I thought that was pretty uncool as I would not have bought the item in the first place with shipping that costly. I cancelled my order, mostly through feeling a bit disgruntled, I must admit. The way that she worded her convo asking for more money wasn't the best - she sounded as though I'd tried to rip her off somehow. Incidentally, this was through my "buying" account so I'm not calling anyone out here.

I have found through my own shop that sometimes the amount I charge is not quite enough to cover the postage to certain places, and when that has happened I just absorb the cost myself and then adjust my future listings for that item. As far as I'm concerned that was my error, not the clients.

Anyway, I shall dismount my soapbox, I've had my whinge and feel much better. Until next time :)

Little Sista - The Middie Blythe

2010-09-17T11:30:00.005+10:00

A photo of the first Middie sized Blythe has been leaked...and suprisingly she's super super cute!

Until I saw this I was not especially interested in her. Her non-bendy legs and lack of a proper 4 colour eye mech were a bit of a put off and to be truthful I thought her face would be leaning more toward the expressionless Petite, rather than the Neos. I've always thought the Petite faces were kind of odd looking with their startled bunny eyes surrounded by a bristle of lashes (sorry Petite lovers!) and have never been tempted by them (even though I have some cute patterns that would be fun to make up), but the Middie with her Blythe-like features and adorable head tilt is kind of irresistable, even to a hard hearted and cynical Neo-only collector like me.

Kudos to you Hasbro/Takara/CWC/Junko or whoever dreamed the Middie up. She's more than we could have hoped for :)

The rumours....weren't true

2010-09-15T16:31:00.003+10:00

For a while now the Blythe community has been buzzing about the release of Simply Vanilla and Simply Chocolate this month, hoping and praying that Chocolate will be the fabled dark skinned Blythe.

Well sorry folks, but she's not. She's another creamy skinned caucasian type Blythe.

Actually I feel a bit sorry for this girl, as imo, she's really kinda cute. Not drop dead gorgeous "Oh I must have her" cute, but cute all the same. I wonder if the disappointment that she wasn't black will affect her sales?

Meanwhile, the illustrations of Vanilla look amazing and I'm very interested to see what she looks like in person. I don't have a really light haired Blythe yet...And I do like bangs!

She is mine!!!

2010-09-14T11:33:00.003+10:00

And for once, that does not relate to a new Blythe. Yep, I bit the bullet, outlaid rather a lot of money and bought the bike I've been covetting for the last few weeks. For people really into bike riding my bike is bottom end, but seeing as all of my previous ones have come from Kmart, it's a BIG step up, both in quality and erm...price. I still feel horribly guilty about it, so girl/s and sundries are going to have to go up for sale to alleviate my conscience.

I have to say though, that it was definitely worth it. I've been riding all over the place in relative comfort and just enjoying the weather. I am far from the fit, skinny exercise loving type, so I'm going to take full advantage of my bike-riding enthusiasm while it lasts. It is early spring here right now, and just amazingly pleasant (apart from the swooping magpies!), and I just haven't felt the urge to sit inside and sew. Which is why the shop has gone temporarily quiet. Also, poor Miss B has had a horrible toothache, which has led to her needing a bit of extra coddling (and very expensive and traumatic trips to the dentist). The dentist visit was much more terrible for me than for her I think. She was so terrified that they gave her happy gas, meanwhile I had to sit in the room and watch the entire procedure without the benefit of any sedation. I think I could have used some too! On Friday she has to go in for a root canal and I am just dreading it. Apart from it just being insane that a 9 year old should require such a thing on a baby tooth that had been treated by that same dentist 6 months earlier, it's shockingly expensive. To make things worse we discovered that to our horror our health insurance (for which we pay almost $300 a month) will not cover it. Damn you to hell MBF!!!! You are a bunch of thieving crooks! I am more than a little cranky about that.

So to that end, I need to rifle through some Blythe bits and bobs that I'm not using and give Ash a little spa and a photoshoot to prepare her for sale and put a little money back in the kitty. And now I will go and bake some cupcakes, just because I feel like it.

Mohair and wool reroots

2010-09-03T14:27:00.013+10:00

I'm in the throes of tracking down a supplier of wool/mohair for Poe's reroot, and thought I might share some of the info that I've gleaned for anyone looking to do the same. There's a lot to take into account!

A natural fibre reroot has a lot going for it - it can be curly or straight, in a natural colour or dyed any colour of the rainbow, full or thin, long or short and even heat styled (straightend or curled) just like you would style your own hair. The reason why I'm keen to use this technique on Poe is for it's camoflaging properties - curly hair tends to hid the scalpline to a much greater degree than saran and unlike saran does not need to fill every hole of the scalp. I am hoping the technique I plan on using will make the reroot go quicker...but I do need to use 10"+ locks.

A search on etsy or ebay will turn up a wealth of choices to wade through. Beware though - any fibre described as roving or batting is not suitable to reroot a Blythe (even if it's tagged as doll hair, which they sometimes are). It's made of tiny tiny pieces and will disintergrate rather than separate when you try to make the plugs. Here's the lowdown on the different hair types as researched by me.

Mohair

- Mohair is the fibre from an Angora goat.
- Curly or wavy in it's natural state and lustrous.
- It lends itself to both big and poofy styles and does
straightened and whispy equally well.
- It comes in a range of natural colours and is greatly prized by reborn artists and personally, it's for this reason that I believe it's so damned expensive.

The gorgeous mohair prepared for Reborns is usally washed, dyed and combed and looks like this. This is the good stuff!

Beautiful huh? And perfect for a Blythe. Sadly, it is usually sold in bundles of about 1/2 an ounce - from what I've read you need about 2 ounces for a Blythe reroot. All that painstaking work comes at a price - a bundle this size (4-6inches long) will cost anywhere from $18 - $30 and as you can imagine the longer the locks, the higher the price. Mohair this length can only be used with the knot method of rerooting and will result in a shortish head of hair falling somewhere between the shoulders and back. Keep in mind, that like curly hair on humans, the shorter it is, the poofier it will be. The prepared mohair is also available in longer lengths as well (although it's harder to find), so if you chose to go this way you can also use lock and loop if you wish.

Pros
Absolutely gorgeous and shiny.
All the hard work is done.
For some reason this kind of mohair tends not to be the frizzy kind (which I'm not a fan of) so you'll get a nice wavey result and not a clown-like afro.
No waste
Can get longer length - more choice of rooting techniques

Cons
Price - you pay for someone else to do all the hard work for you.
That's really the only con - it's a beautiful product if you can afford it.

A cheaper way to buy mohair is to get it washed and dyed, but uncombed. It looks like this (ie. a big ole mess!).

Pros

Cheaper
Often dyed in fantasy colours (if that's what floats your boat)
Easy to find - more common than the longer combed locks and therefore a great choice of sellers.
Comes in larger quantities

Cons

Less predictable result
This kind tends to be much curlier and not as shiny
More waste - much much more waste
More work - much much more work
This kind of mohair is usually a shorter lenghth - fewer rooting methods
Might be vegie matter in there to contend with (ie. bits of grass etc)
Daunting, to say the least!

Alpaca

- Alpaca comes from...well an alpaca, obviously.
- It's very fine and straight and comes in a lovely range of natural colours - lovely blondes and luscious chocolates. You can also find it dyed, although for some reason this isn't as common.
- Great for if you want a natural fibre, but don't want curly.

Reroots done with this look like thick human hair (only Blythe-scale if you know what I mean). Kenners look out-of-this-world amazing with alpaca reroots. This is what the good stuff looks like - all washed and combed and ready for rerooting.

This particular one is one ounce and costs $27 (from mohairhouse on etsy - I've heard they are great!). To be honest, I haven't heard of people buying it all unprocessed and doing it themselves, although I suppose it must be possible. Here's what it looks like washed - very daunting to my eyes, even more so than the mohair as there are no defined locks.

Same pros and cons as the processed mohair vs the unprocessed really.

Wool

- Wensleydale and Cotswold wool come from now rare breeds of longhaired sheep.
- This kind of reroot is not as common as the mohair, but is gaining popularity.
- The locks can reach up to 12" long (more options for length and rooting techniques)and are very curly.
- Wool is much much cheaper than mohair and is usually bundled in larger quantities for spinners and fibre artists - around $4 - $8 dollars an ounce.

Wensleydale Locks

- Very fine hairs
- Silky with a pearly lustre (although is less shiny than the quality mohair).
- Has quite a tight curl.

Cotswold Locks

- More of an open curl than the Wensleydale
- Often used in Santa beards
- Has a nice little curl on the end, like the good quality mohair

This is the fibre that I'd like to try, if I could only track some down in the right length! I am beginning to wonder if I'm looking at the wrong time of year perhaps... Will keep you posted on my hunt for the perfect locks for poor baldy Poe.

Ah crumbs...

2010-09-02T14:14:00.006+10:00

I AM a dolly hoarder, as it turns out. I was all set to say goodbye to Poe, but I can't bring myself to do it. I pulled her out of the drawer she was languishing in a few days ago and am now all re-inspired to see her restored to her gorgeous self again. Damn her and her sad little EBL face!!

I've decided that given the almost certainty that she'll have a scalp gap, a Wensleydale reroot might be more forgiving than the saran and have been trawling the internet looking for a supplier. I was considering using the red that I had on hand, but sadly it appears that it might have been a casualty of my ruthless cleanout (by accident) as I can't find it anywhere - just the plugs that I had prepared. Such a shame as the fibre was so silky and lustrous. I'm not entirely certain that the red would have suited her in any case. It's just too too red.

I'm just waiting to hear back from a supplier to see if they can dye me some in chocolate brown. I need long locks this time - at least 10" as I'm trying a new rooting technique so fingers crossed that they can help me out. In the meantime, I'm trying to get her scalp ready for the new hair. The glue that was used is just impossible to shift and is not in any way water soluable. I'm at the point now that I'll have to cut the glued hair from the back of the scalp and maybe even sand the excess off. As I suspected, that massive toffee-like clump of glue running down her partline was a right PITA and although I was evenually able to pull the hair plugs through the holes and work it off, the scalp is damaged. There's not a lot of into out there about fixing this problem either. The only useful info on the subject I managed to find suggested making a patch out of fabric and using modge podge to keep it in place on the underside. I'll keep you posted as to how it works out.

Dollybird Vol. 14 Review - Alice in Wonderland Special

2010-08-31T08:39:00.009+10:00

I must admit that I was more than a little excited about this mook - I mean it's the Alice In Wonderland special, there were promises of Blythe patterns on the HLJ website, Poupee Mecanique contributed a pattern and it is meant to come with a mini Kumar (which is apparently the latest craze). So pushing aside my recent disappointment with Dolly Dolly 22, I emptied my Paypal account and settled in for the wait.

My first disappointment came before I even had it in my hot little hands - no mini Kumar for me :( I was prepared to live with that, mostly because I don't particularly like them all that much, and in any case, I was buying the book for the patterns.

Being a Japanese book, it is "back to front" to our western eyes, and naturally...in Japanese. Unlike the Recipe Coordinate mooks, which have the traceable patterns and directions in clearly defined sections for each doll, the pattern pieces are back to back on light paper and are all at the front of the book mixed in together and it's a little more time consuming to figure out what's what. Instructions for making the garments are found in the pages following the fashion shoot and although they are in Japanese, the diagrams are very good and any experienced seamstress should have no trouble following them. Particularly in the case of the single Blythe pattern as it is very basic.

Which leads my to my second and major disappointment - Blythe patterns themselves. Or should I say pattern. There is only one for Blythe. And it's very ordinary. One bloody buggery ordinary pattern. That's not Alice-like in the slightest. The fact that it is keeping company with dreamy, detailed and fabulous dresses for just about every other doll ever made adds insult to injury and made me feel a bit cheated to be honest. There are a lot of amazing patterns in here - Unoa dolls, Dolfie, Betsy McCall, Petite Blythe, Nikki Cat/Odecco (the smaller one of the 2) and Momoko all get a look in with several very very nice patterns, but just the one for Blythe. And a disappointingly ordinary one at that.

So in short, my opinion from a Blythe seamstress's perspective - don't bother if you are buying it for the patterns. Aside from that, there is eye-candy aplenty and lots of inspiration to be found within its pages.
This is a great mook to flick through and admire the pictures, but not one to add to your must purchase list if sewing for Blythe is your motive for buying. I particularly recommend it for owners of Unoa and Dolfie. The Poupee Mecanique patterns are truly amazing - if you have a Unoa this mook is an essential. There's also a very nice outfit for Petite Blythe, and while it's just the one pattern set, it's nice enough in my opinion to justify purchasing the mook. Same goes for owners of Betsy McCall - there's just one pattern but it's a good one.

Meanwhile, I think I will try tweaking the Momoko pattern to see if I can get it to fit Blythe - I have to justify this purchase somehow!!

Confessions of a dolly hoarder...

2010-08-30T11:57:00.006+10:00

I first saw her (because she definitely is a "her", not an it) two weeks ago while shopping for a new bike for Miss B, and have not been able to get her out of my mind. She's a bit pricey, so I bravely suggested to my partner that I sell a few dolls to help pay for her (perhaps a little rashly...). A few Blythes (I'm trying to keep it down to 2),and some sundries will be leaving chez Dollybird in the next few weeks so that I can feel less guilty about buying this (which I haven't actually purchased yet, so extreme is my guilt!). So now I find myself in the role of seller, rather than buyer and it is really quite daunting having to examine my collection and consider who and what I can comfortably sell. The problem is, I kinda like them all! How do people do it? Every time I think I've settled on 2 to go, I change my mind and decide that I can't part with them! I think perhaps that I may be a dolly hoarder :(

I know that it will be worth it as now that Miss B is older, we will be able to go for long bike rides along the river and she'll be able to ride to school (if accompanied), so really I do NEED that super cute and comfortable looking bike. I've never had a bike that didn't come from K-mart, so as you can imagine, I'm pretty excited about getting a nice bike at last - and hopefully my less photographed girls can go to homes where they are appreciated.

In Etsy shop news, I'm working on a new line of bloomers that have come from a custom request. They are very cute and should be in the shop at the end of the week. Stay tuned!

Curls!

2010-08-20T17:46:00.003+10:00

Having Roxy's hair up in buns for so long had an unexpected but happy side effect - curls!

How pretty is this? Shame that it is only temporary...

She's here!

2010-08-18T15:44:00.002+10:00

It's such a rare treat to be able to buy a Blythe and have her arrive within a few days. Amidst a busy day of sewing, my new Star Dancer turned up this afternoon and even though I really am a bit pressed for time, I had to snap a quick pic to show her off!

I bought her used from an Aussie girl on the This Is Blythe forum at a very very good price. To be honest, I was half expecting her to either not show at all or be horribly flawed, she was that much of a bargain, but thankfully it's all good and she is in very good condition for a doll that was released in 2006. Her only flaws are are some tiny marks on her face (really not noticable at all - just like scuffs in the clear finish over her make-up) and a little blue stain on one leg. Otherwise she's perfect and I cannot believe my good luck! I was a little surprised by how tan she is - she's much darker than my other Blythes, and her hair is not as crazy to manage as Nos Pop's as it isn't as thick. It's a really lovely natural blonde colour and I'm itching to give her a quick treatment but it will have to wait until tomorrow as I have to run out and take Miss B to choir.

Bargains Everywhere!!!

2010-08-15T09:41:00.004+10:00

This is a great time for buying Blythe if you are a collector - there are bargains everywhere. Or at least it seems that way to me, I think that when I first started collecting they were at the peak of their price range and now for some reason (perhaps due to the factory girls?), they have come back down to more reasonable levels. I've also noticed that a few people seem to be leaving the hobby or downsizing their collection and parting with a lot of the older dolls at very reasonable prices. Sales threads on forums are full of amazing deals right now if you are looking for a used doll and don't mind if she's nude.

The reason for my excited post? I've finally found my perfect natural blonde girl. A Star Dancer RBL who looks to be in great condition. And I got her for a great price too, made even sweeter by the fact that she will be my first etsy funded doll purchase. Finally I've made enough through the shop to buy a new addition to my collection! I am kicking myself a little as that seller also had a Miss Sally Rice who I have always liked for an amazing price but I really could not justify getting the two of them so Star Dancer it was, and I'm sure some other collector will be thrilled to be getting MSR at such a good price.

I am a little nervous as I am not familiar with the seller, and it's on a forum that doesn't really police their sales threads, so I hope that everything will be OK. The price was just so good that I could not resist, despite the fact that I was all set to get a Bohemian Peace. Although, who knows, I may still get her.... I am thinking of selling Ash to fund her purchase.

I still haven't found that elusive scalp screw so that I can put my Blythe-in-bits back together. Looks like I'll have to order from Ixtee. That's the thing with the fixer-uppers - they have so many annoying little issues.

Speaking of fixer-uppers, I have seen so many Disco Boogies in great condition at just a tiny bit more than I paid for Poe that I am kicking myself. At the time, I thought I was getting a really good deal, which just goes to show that sometimes it pays to wait. I honestly did not think that their prices would drop so radically - it seems like the market is flooded with them at the moment and they don't seem to be moving, which is surprising because I think she's so lovely - and her hair is amazing in it's stock state. Poe's scalp is in such a state that I have decided not to order the saran until I am sure that I have a viable scalp to work with...and I must confess that I have been procrastinating somewhat on tackling that enormous lump of glue. I'm sure that the scalp is torn underneath and I am not really sure how to proceed from there. I just need to bite the bullet and get on with it.

A little problem....

2010-08-11T11:55:00.005+10:00

I bought this factory girl purely for her scalp. Due to her being the ever-so-easy-to-customise RBL, I was able to swap Roxy's scalp for hers without having to remove the dome and it was easy peasy. Then the poor thing sat about in pieces for quite some time until I felt like doing some customising and I decided that she would have the Adorable Aubrey scalp I had bought a while back - meaning that I would have to pull the dome out of the Saffy scalp and put the Aubrey scalp on. And that was easy too, given that these factory girls have no glue.

Now however I have finished customising Nameless Factory Girl, I am having a few problems getting her back together. This is the first time that I've encountered an issue like this and it's driving me crazy! It seems that the scalp screw that came with her isn't right and I can't get her scalp and dome to sit nice and tight on her head. It's so annoying! I've put out an SOS in the Aussie Blythe community in the hope that someone might just have a spare they are willing to sell. Otherwise I'll have to order one from Ixtee and wait a couple of weeks - grrrr!

Ash's new look

2010-08-03T12:05:00.005+10:00

Here's a better pic of Ash with her new lips.

After looking at the other Blythe's lips, the ones that have taken me time after time to get right...I've decided I still don't like them, so off they must come again! They were looking pretty good until I decided to get fancy with the second coat and just intensify the colour in the middle. Now they look blotchy. *sigh* And her blush is horribly uneven, it would seem.

How ironic that it only took me 3 attempts to get Ash's looking good - I wasn't even intending to redo them.

I've got some pretty new eye chips on the way for my new girl. Can't wait until they get here :) I love getting new eye chips in the post and it's so handy now that there is an Australian supplier - I can get them in my hot little hands within a few days. These are from We Play With Dolls. I was a little disappointed that they had sold out of several colours that I would have liked to buy, hopefully they'll be restocked soon.

Ash gets some new lips

2010-08-02T18:22:00.011+10:00

Last night I was banished from the computer (or "dolly porn" as Mr P likes to call it!) as my big photo heavy downloads were causing problems in Mr P's epic World of Warcraft raid, so I decided I'd do something with my Blythe in bits. My intention was merely to sand matt her so that when I was in a customising frame of mind she'd be all ready to go, but once I'd finished I decided I'd try to learn (or improve at any rate) how to paint lips.

Lips are really really hard for me. I can't paint or draw in 2d, so naturally doing something three dimentional that's about half an inch long is a bit of a stretch for my extremely limited talents. For once I didn't get frustrated and quit but just kept on rubbing out my mistakes with isopropyl and trying again. And again. And again.

My first attempt at lips was on the Basaak and was a total failure. I used pastels to colour the lips first (and tbh, they looked quite good at that stage), then I attempted to seal them with a clear gloss lacquer and ended up with...well that.

Lip attempt number 2 was on Ash, again I used pastels, but this time I didn't seal it. This time I ended up with them looking kind of undefined, and still not great.

On my third and fourth customs, I chickened out completely and just sanded carefully around the stock lips!

Lip attempts five to twenty something were on Blythe in bits. When I went to bed last night I had achieved this look and was pretty pleased with it. Then when I woke up this morning, I thought it was quite horrible really, and took it off for yet another attempt. Unfortunately I ran out of daylight, so I can't show you how they look at the moment. I ended up going for a much more understated look.

Then I looked at Ash and thought I'd see what I could do with her and came up with this.

The pic is not the greatest as it was taken late this afternoon, but you can see the difference. I'm quite happy with them now...for the time being at least!

So far the best technique I have managed to come up with (without the use of MSC, which apparently will make it all wonderfully easy) is this. I tip a little water based gloss into a tiny container (I use a bottle cap), add the tiniest drop of paint - like on the end of a toothpick - and mix. Then I build up layers of colour until it's the intensity I want and finish with a layer of clear gloss. The advantage of using the water based gloss as opposed to the lacquer is that if I'm not happy with it it's pretty easy to get it off and start again. Which is good because if I was having to sand off my mistakes poor Blythe in bits would have no lips left by now!

Bohemian Peace

2010-07-31T16:59:00.006+10:00

I saw this girl's promo pics a when they were first released a month or so ago and wasn't the slightest bit excited by her. She was OK looking, and I thought her little ukelele was cute, but otherwise she was nothing really remarkable.

I eat my words.

Now that I have seen some owner pics (here is the pic that had me hooked!)of this Blythe I am itching to add her to my collection and I'm not afraid to say that it's all because of her hair. As you can see, it's the most amazing colour - an absolutely gorgeous mahogany that is very different to any of the girls I currently have in my collection.

This is a bit of a problem really, because I was kind of fixated on getting Very Vicky because I don't have an SBL in my collection yet.

The final photos of her have been released and apart from the dorky hat, I really like her (although I am a little aprehensive about dealing with all that hair - looks like it could be high maintenance). I don't know that I would get both her and BoPea...at least not without letting one of my other Blythes go, which will be hard.

If one of them has to go, it will probably be Ash who has not been getting a great deal of attention lately.

Bad Dolly Deals

2010-07-30T09:41:00.005+10:00

It's crazy how many people end up the victim of a "Bad Dolly Deal". I've been very lucky in my dealings in the Blythe world so far and all of my purchases have been good ones. On occasion I've taken a punt - like on the factory girls - and I've known that the doll that I recieve might not be perfect, and to be honest, I kind of get a kick out of that. Sometimes you get an amazing doll at a great price, and others you get more or less what you expected and no more and that's fine too. Today I'm talking about those dishonest people who set out to swindle you, and how to avoid being scammed when buying through forums.

While I still believe that the forums are safer than ebay as far as scammers are concerned, it's still possible that you might fall victim to a scam. The forum Plastic Paradise has drastically changed a few of their policies following a scammer scare that happened recently. You can read about it here. As a result of this, PP have (for the time being at least) closed the forum to new members. New members must now be referred by a current member of PP and can only join bi-annually and the sales thread is closed to any members with fewer than 30 posts.

While I do applaud the efforts of PP to stop scammers (at this time I think they might be the only forum to take action on this - I know that on TIB it's strictly "buyer beware"), ultimately you need to use some common sense.

Before entering into any arrangment to buy, you should check:

1. Number of posts.

These are usually prominently displayed on the left hand side of the post along with the avatar. A seller with a low number of posts might not be out to take your money, but it is the first thing you should take into consideration before you decide to deal with them. Someone with only one or two posts has obviously joined for the purpose of using the sales thread, or someone who has been caught out before and named in BDD who can no longer use that username without arousing suspicion.

2. Avatar

Sounds silly, but do they even have one? A seller with few posts and no avatar suggests to me that they are just there to make a quick buck and can just as easily vanish when it all goes pear shaped.

3. Flickr

Do they have a link to their flickr account? Most Blythe fans tend to have one. When was it created? Does it just have a few pics of the items that they are selling and nothing else? That's a red flag for me. If they have a larger collection of pics, try and track down the doll you are interested in and find out as much info as possible.

4. Sales thread pics

Are they using the stock pics of the boxed doll? No pics at all? A list of several dolls with not even one pic of each doll posted is a red flag. The seller may have stolen someone else's images to post on flickr and doesn't want to draw attention to themselves by having them obviously displayed. Poorly taken photos or even ones that have had a lot of digital editing can be very misleading. If you have any reservations about the seller or the doll, ask for an unedited photo of the doll with a piece of paper in the shot with the sellers name on it. If they won't do this for you, move on. In many BDD the seller does not even own the dolls they are trying to "sell".

5. Third parties

Never buy anything from a seller that mentions that they are selling the doll for a friend/relative or has any third party involved in the transaction (ie. the doll is at my sister's house in Singapore and she'll post it when the money has been received). Just read through the Bad Dolly Deals site - it is full of entries that have had problems that stem from this situation.

6. Trades

Trades are a huge act of trust. Unlike a straight forward sale where you send the money and the seller sends the doll when it's been received, you have to post your doll in good faith, assuming the other party has done the same. Again, there are lots of posts on BDD where this has gone sour. There is a lot of potential for a shonky operator to get their hands on your valuable doll to onsell and for you to end up with either flat out nothing or a damaged or inferior doll to the one you traded. Unlike a sale, you have no protection via Paypal at all, so if things go wrong there's not a thing you can do. The best policy to adopt with trades is to simply don't do this with anyone that you don't "know" reasonably well. Always, always insist that both of you use insurance and tracking numbers on both packages.

7. Payment as "gift"

No, it isn't. Payment is "payment for goods" - unless this person is your best friend or your mother. Lots of people think it fair and reasonable to ask you to do this in order to avoid paying paypal fees but the reality is that it is neither. Don't be afraid to walk away from the deal if they insist on this payment method and will not budge. Paypal is your only recourse if things go wrong - don't throw that protection away. You'd be crazy!

A few sellers will also ask you to pay the paypal fees on top of the price of the doll. I personally disagree with this practice - especially if they disclose this after you have agreed to buy the doll.

8. Check the price
Always do a quick look on ebay and on other sales threads/forums on the doll they are offering for sale. If the price is ridiculously cheap and they've raised a few other red flags, you might be looking at a scammer.

9. Who are you dealing with?
Not all forums require members to be over 18. I feel safer dealing with adults when large sums of money are involved and I'm not above checking profiles, previous posts and flickr accounts to get an insight as to who I'm going to be dealing with.

How is the sales post written? If english is the seller's first language (usually the country of origin is listed in the profile) and the post is very badly written or uses leet speak it's possible that you might be dealing with a minor. Are you comfortable with this?

10. Search Bad Dolly Deals

Don't assume that just because they haven't been listed yet, that everything's fine. Don't even assume that they aren't listed there under another username. A seller with just a few posts may well be one that has been named and shamed under BDD.

Ultimately, you need to go with your gut feeling and try not to allow your heart to rule your head when making the decision to buy. While it might appear like the deal of the century at first, if you have reason to suspect that the seller is not entirely honest you are far better off walking away. Legitimately great deals pop up all the time on the forums, and if you are cautious you can add to your collection without suffering the frustration and stress of a deal gone bad.

2010-07-16T11:32:00.004+10:00

I'm a bit crabby at myself for allowing time to slip away so unproductively this week. Maybe I needed a breather, having had Miss B to entertain for the past few weeks, but it does seem a bit strange to me that while she was on holidays, I sewed more and sold more than I have this past week.

All I've managed are two of these little cuties (I make two at a time now as I spend such a long time fussing about what fabric to use, what trims look good with it etc), and a few hairbows that need to be sewn onto headbands...which I have not yet made.

Not a lot of new stock will be sewn next week, as I'll have my sister and her partner staying with me so I'll be entertaining them during the day and as they will also be sleeping in my studio I won't be able to get near it to sew. I'm really looking forward to it - I'm an Auntie again and the family have travelled all over to visit my little brother's new baby. She's one of those tiny contented babies that sleeps sweetly in the arms of whoever is holding her, never cries and is just beautiful! So far I'm fairly certain that she has spent more of her life being cuddled and cooed at in the arms of various family and friends than she has sleeping on her own. What a life huh?

So at any rate, I'll be catching up with close family that I just don't see enough of, playing tour guide, cooking for long lazy dinners and not much sewing at all. And that's just fine :)

Re-roots, Wigs, scalps and domes explained

2010-07-13T09:02:00.013+10:00

Another post for the newbies! This issue came up on the forums and I remember being confused by all the options and new terms out there too. Hope this helps to make it a little clearer.

Domes

In human terms, the dome is kind of like the top of the skull. It's the hard bit on top of her head under the scalp. As you might know, Blythe comes in different facemolds and these different kinds of Blythe have different kinds of dome. The older girls (BL, EBL and SBL) have the dome attached to the faceplate of the doll. This means that if you want to open her for customising or change her hair, you need to remove the scalp first. It's not an easy process, but that's a whole other post for another day.

Here's an EBL dome.

On the newer Blythes like RBL and FBL Takara/CWC have kindly made the dome a separate piece and attached the scalp to that. This means that opening these molds is much much easier (you don't need to soak or saw) and results in less damage to the doll. It's also really easy to swap scalps with another Blythe of the same mold in your collection.

Here's what an RBL dome looks like. The scalp is on this one as I am too lazy to pull it out again, but you can see the hard plastic dome on the inside.

Sometimes you can buy RBL and FBL Blythe without a dome - be warned, they can be difficult to source and without a dome, your Blythe's scalp can dent and well...look wierd.

Scalps

The scalp is a rubbery covering with hair rooted in it that covers the dome. Removed from the dome, it looks like this (on the underside anyway...the other side is considerably more attractive!).

The little sticky out lip on it is called the flange. This helps it to sit nicely between the dome and faceplate. This scalp is an RBL Saffy Encore.

You can also buy blank scalps from Coolcat that look like this. Obviously, this isn't my pic. Don't sue me Coolcat! I think your scalps are great :)

They are used for rerooting a new head of hair when a stock scalp is not available. They are a litte different from the stock scalps in that they are made of thicker rubber and obviously, don't have holes in them yet. They only come in one colour, so might not match your Blythe's faceplate very well if she has dark skin. They are great for mohair reroots, scalpless Blythes or if you simply can't bring yourself to cut the hair off a stock scalp to reroot it.

Wigs

Unlike most BJD's a Blythe's wig is not really her hair (that's her scalp). In some ways a Blythe wig is just like a human wig - it's a fun way of having a new look, but you can always tell it's a wig and it has limited styling options. A wig is not made of rooted plugs like a scalp, it's made by stitching wefts of hair to a stretchy or net base. If you move the hair the wrong way, you can see the wefts.

Here's Poe in her wig. This photo was taken after a bit of primping and from a carefully chosen angle. It is sitting directly on her dome as she does not have a scalp and it does not sit right. I have heard of people using them directly over a blank scalp either glued or velro'd on, but you have to remember that your styling options will be limited.

Wigs are best used over the top of a scalp, with the hair tucked up in a wig net. The nets are very inexpensive and most of the places that sell the wigs also sell the nets. A word of warning though, expect to have to wash your Blythe's hair after using a wig - especially if she has bangs. Her hair will be very messy when you take it out of the wig cap and her bangs will be all over the place.

Re-roots

A re-root is exactly that - re-rooting new hair into a scalp. Unlike a wig, this is more permanent and it takes quite a while to do. Blythes are rerooted to repair badly executed haircuts, to give them a new kind of hair, like mohair or to give them a unique new colour that isn't available on the stock scalps. The best way is to use the Blythe's own stock scalp to ensure a great colour match between face and scalp - also I have heard that it is much easier to use the holes from the factory hair, rather than having to punch your own. If you don't have your own Blythe's stock scalp, sometimes clean ones or ones with ruined hair come up for sale. You can also use a blank Coolcat scalp and punch your own holes in it. I will be doing one on my bait Blythe soon and will probably cover the process more thoroughly then.

Hope you found this post informative. I will be doing a follow-up on all the different kinds of hair in the near future.

Poe's (temporary) new look

2010-07-10T15:22:00.005+10:00

Had a fun day giving Poe a little tidy up today. Nothing too drastic, just a light sand to remove the surface scratches, a little pastel makeup, some temporary eyelashes (they are a little too short for her eyes) and until her hair is done, a wig. I even toyed with the idea of putting her on the Neemo body, but as soon as I tried it I knew it was completely wrong for her (not to mention that her head was horribly floppy!). This girly look is possibly not the way that she'll end up looking, but it's a definite improvement that street kid/lice ridden chimney sweep look she had when she arrived. The wig is really not what I would have chosen for her, but the two wigs in the house belong to Miss B - and the other one is a Lolita style one and is even prissier if that is possible. It does not fit at all well without hair underneath, but it will do the job for now - better that than bald! For those who don't normally follow my blog, here is what she looked like before.

The makeover all went reasonably smoothly apart from a short period of time that I believed I would never be able to prise her eye mech out. The older Blythes are definitely a lot harder to customise than the RBL's although that said, her eyechips came out incredibly easily. I was going to pull the pinks out at the same time in readiness for some new ones that I haven't even ordered yet but changed my mind at the last minute and now I'm glad I did. They kind of suit this sugary look don't you think?

Very Vicky - Very Nice!!

2010-07-08T08:26:00.004+10:00

Design illustration for the new Neo Blythe "Very Vicky"!

Vicky is short for Victoria.
At home, she is always called Victoria, a proper name for a proper young lady.
She is very much what her name indicates.
An aristocrat with a background that is VERY Vicky!

Very Vicky wears a classical outfit with a hint of Victorian essence.
Her outfit is separated to a shirt and skirt.
The shirt is made of a bluish green fabric, and is a very detailed design.
The bib front panel of the top is made from off-white fabric, and is decorated with pin tucks, ribbon, beads and laces.
The skirt is a simple shape, but the lace at the trim adds a very cute accent!
The little straw hat on her head has a lovely motif lace to perfectly match the dress.
Her black tights and bluish green strap shoes which match the dress color complete her look.
Her hair style is a brown long wavy hair that reaches her knee parted on the side.
Her makeup is a bluish grey eye shadow with pink lip and blush.
Her beauty mark under her left eye is her charm point.
She has a special light green eye chips gazing toward the right.
The face type is Fairest and skin color is Natural.
Scheduled release date: August 2010
Suggested retail price: 14,490 JPY

Oh man...I acknowledge that my collection is beginning to get out of hand and even though I vowed to slow down, I think I might just need this new release scheduled for August as my token FBL. Her hair, those gorgeous special eye chips, and her stock - I mean seriously just look at it - it's damn perfect (OK, I admit to not being totally in love with the dinky little hat, but I can live with that)!

I haven't been this excited about a new release since Nostalgic Pop - she is gorgeous and I must have her!

Poor Poe!

2010-07-07T17:45:00.007+10:00

Poe went through quite an ordeal today, as did I trying to get her damn scalp off. Thank goodness Takara/CWC don't use all that glue anymore. What a nightmare!! RBL's have ruined me for customising other face molds. I can't believe how long I worked on her and how little I achieved.

I gave her a good long soak first to loosen the glue on her scalp. While she was soaking her crumpled lashes came out easily from the steam. Then I undid the screws and spring...and I thought I'd zip around her scalp and have it off in 10 minutes or so. Little did I know that I'd spend more than 4 hours wrestling with it. OMG!! I checked out two different methods for removing an EBL scalp. Good ol' Pucchi Collective and one from Sue of We Play With Dolls fame as well as looking at this very helpful tutorial from shershe. Well, Poe apparently had not read these tutorials, she really put up a fight. Eventually I got it off with a little bit of damage to the flange and also a little bit of damage to Poe's back face plate (a sliver of plastic came off). That makes me sad :(

There is an unholy amount of glue in the scalp, the most worrying being this thick strip where her thatching is. I have no idea how to get this off!!

And that is enough customising for one day. My fingers hurt!

Bait Blythe

2010-07-06T10:52:00.009+10:00

Poe arrived yesterday - my first EBL,and a bait Blythe. I thought I would put up a few pics, as unflattering as they are, so that newbies can see exactly what a bait Blythe is. I think Poe is a pretty good example!

Put simply, a bait Blythe is a doll that has seen better days. She needs some work as she's in pretty bad condition and so is sold off cheaply to someone looking for a fixer-upper. Normally the seller will disclose all of her faults, but in labelling her as "bait" you should be aware that you are buying a doll with issues. Sometimes you can end up saving quite a bit of money by buying a Blythe this way, especially if you are handy at customising yourself. I don't go in for stock girls, and as DB is getting older and harder to find, I wouldn't feel good about sanding off a new one's make-up, so this is a relatively good deal for me.

The person I bought Poe from bought her in this condition as bait herself and was very clear about her issues, so there were no surprises when I deboxed her.

So here she is, pretty much as she arrived.

As you can see, she has had a few "customisations" in a previous life! The worst and most unfixable of which being the poor girls hair, which as you can see has been given a very severe haircut. Her blonde streaks have been cut off at the roots along the thatching and the back has been cut short and unevenly. Such a pity, because I have to say that I love the colour and it is very very thick. The thickest of all my Blythes, actually. I'm wondering if Takara have been skimping out on this in recent years - the quality of the RBL hair does not compare.
She will be rerooted, as her skin is quite dark and unless I can find another DB scalp it wouldn't match.

She's been sanded at some point, possibly with a Magic Eraser type sponge because she is still kind of shiny here and there. She's got lots of superficial scuffs and marks and looks a bit grubby. Her makeup has been removed accept for her lips, she has no blush and the remnants of some black pastel eyeshadow. I don't think she's been sealed, so a light sanding will take care of all of this.

Several sets of her eye chips are very scratched - how does that even happen?? I could possibly buff them, but I think I'll just change them out to new ones. The only ones that might stay are the greys. I think the browns are too dark, although they are in ok condition too. She has lost her original eye lashes, and the new ones are all crumpled up - easy to replace. Her pull string and ring are a bit grotty too, these will have to be replaced.

She will be going to the talented and generous Erica Duh for a new face-up, but I am a fair way down the list so I might give her a temporary face-up until she leaves - I don't think I can stand to look at her for 6 months or so in her current state! I will also replace her chips and eye lashes and with a bit of luck I'll have her new scalp finished in time for when she is posted to, so that Erica has a bit more to work with. So all in all, this is what I need to do - quite a bit!!

1. Order saran.
2. Order and fit new eyechips - 2/3 sets.
3. General clean. She has an odd smell - not horrible, just a little musty or something.
4. Open head. Eep - my first time with anything other than RBL!
5. Sandmatt, temporary faceup
6. Replace eyelashes
7. Remove and prepare scalp, reroot.
8. Order and fit new pullring and replace string.

I'll keep you posted regarding her progress. Fingers crossed that she turns out to be worth all the effort!

Blythe - the creative catalyst

2010-07-04T08:48:00.011+10:00

I read a post on Plastic Paradise the other day that got me thinking. The writer was commenting that she felt that it seemed to her that everyone who collected Blythe used their dolls as models for amazingly tiny knits, cool felted helmets, Blythe couture, gorgeous custom dolls or just jaw droppingly beautiful photography and it made her feel a little inadequate for just being content to collect the dolls.

I thought this was such an interesting point, my perception is that it's true that so many collectors use Blythe as a muse and sometimes end up finding new creative outlets after taking up the hobby. In addition to the obvious - sewing, knitting and crocheting clothes, I've seen the most amazing paintings, detailed dioramas and even tiny jewelry designed for her. I love this idea by Little Deer - a watercolour portrait of your very own Blythe!

I also am a big fan of Emma Mount's work. I really need to get some of her gorgeous prints.

And I would love a pair of these shoes from TSANFW How funky and different are they?!

Aside from admiring everyone else's work, I can also see that some of my own creative skills have improved since I first became interested in Blythe. This is the first ever Blythe pic I took when Holly arrived in December 2009.

And this is a fairly recent one and one of my favourites.

My photography and photo editing skills are slowly improving and it shows in the snaps that I take of my family as well. This is my gorgeous girl Miss B.

I have never been interested in photography before. It always seems so horribly complicated and technical (and as you can see by the very ordinary template I use for my blog, I have no interest in the technical!). At some stage I may invest in a better camera, but right now I am content to learn how to get a decent photo out of the very very ordinary and probably outdated point and shoot digital camera and how to use an editing program to tidy them up.

I wonder how many other collectors have started taking an interest in a new creative pursuit or set their mind to improving the skills they already have? Could it be that this big eyed piece of plastic is a catalyst for creativity?

Diet no more!!

2010-07-02T09:49:00.006+10:00

Well I did it! I was very restrained...and have already blown my budget for the month on this lovely girl, who needs a bit of TLC. This is Poe, a Disco Boogie with a rather unfortunate hair cut. It would seem that at some stage one of her owners (not the person I bought her from) didn't like her streaky hair and cut most of her fringe down to the roots. She's also been sanded and has lost her original make-up apart from her lipstick. I'm planning on rerooting her in a multi-toned blonde and giving her some new makeup. Not sure about her lips, I think I may just leave them as is, although I have seen some gorgeous custom DB with a darker peachy brown lip that looks pretty amazing. Lips are not one of my strong points, so I'll have a practice on Ash or my poor Blythe in bits and if I'm not satisfied I'll send her away to someone who knows what they're doing.

I'm so excited to be getting this girl. My very first non RBL! I hope I can do an OK job on tidying her up. Next month I'll be ordering chips and hair - I'm going to take my time with this one, but at the same time I can't wait to start!

Aniversary Girl 2010 - Marabelle Melody

2010-06-30T18:05:00.005+10:00

A little while ago CWC announced their Anniversary Blythe for 2010, Marabelle Melody and I'm very relieved to report that she's not really my type. This is good, because at them moment, her recommended retail price is $360 Aussie dollars (ouch!). I quite like her frilly little dress, and special chips, but really - yet another blonde? And so similar to Ice Rune and Tarts and Tea. Her side kicks look far more interesting than she does and are getting a lot more attention on the forums. Hopefully they will also be much more reasonably priced!

2010-06-29T17:17:00.006+10:00

Had a great day sewing, but I guess it doesn't make for very interesting blogging! It was freezing here, and for some bizarre reason I had this urge to make white lacy things so here's what' I've been up to.

This white petticoat (I suppose you could also use it as a skirt if you wanted to), which is bound for the shop.

And this white and palest of pink dresses - which was a bit of an experiment. I really like how it turned out. I'd probably list that too, only in my creative frenzy, I accidentally left the tiniest silver pencil mark on the neck seam. I am not too upset about having to keep it :)

Other news...a new arrival will be heading over to Chez Dollybird in the near future. I haven't technically broken my Dolly Diet, because I don't pay for her until 1 July - hah!! I'm very excited because she's my first EBL and as she needs a little TLC, I'll be able to leave my own mark on her without feeling wracked with guilt. Or I'll chicken out, and get someone else to do her face-up...that's entirely possible too!

I'm back, Baby!

2010-06-27T18:15:00.006+10:00

I can tell that I'm feeling much better. I've made a couple of items for the store, taken some photos of the gorgeous Roxy, bought a new Dolly Recipe Coordinate mook and I am struggling big time with the dolly diet. All of which are good signs that I am on the mend.

New dresses - the green one is in my Etsy now, and the blue will follow in a couple of days. I've also made a really sweet petticoat, which of course I have not photographed yet. It's pure white, lacy, frilly and flouncy and reminds me of those old Flake ads from the early 80's. Makes me want to make white frilly dresses right away!

I'm even wondering about my poor Blythe in bits...I am thinking of giving lips another try. I am soooo bad at them, but I'll never learn unless I keep at it. I can't understand how all these first time customisers seem to be so damn good at it - I find it impossible to do a half decent job of them. I have searched all over and have a few tutorials, but nothing that is aimed at completely hopeless newbies like myself. I wonder how many attempts I can make before the poor girl has no lips left at all!

In search of the perfect blonde

2010-06-24T18:03:00.005+10:00

So, how did I go with my 5 items in 5 days challenge? Pretty darn badly that's how! Turns out that what I thought was a particularly nast bout of the flu, was actually Glandular Fever (or Mono, for all the Americans who read this). In a way I was relieved to find out the cause of it - I thought I was either depressed or suffering from Narcolepsy!

At any rate no garments were finished this week, however I was feeling well enough today to rephotograph one of my Esty dresses, play with Roxy's hair and begin work on the grey satin dress I'd cut out so I think I might be on the mend. At any rate, I am feeling well enough to start covetting another Blythe - this time a blonde.

Now that Roxy is sporting her new VL scalp, I no longer have a blonde in my collection. True, I could get another bait Blythe and wack the Saffy scalp on that, but where's the fun in that? This time I am wanting a bit of a glamour-puss with lovely warm golden blonde hair and to be honest, I'm not seeing that many that fit the bill. There are loads of blonde Blythes, but most of them are super-light verging on platinum, lemony or yellow.

I quite like I Love You It's True, but unfortunately she can be expensive as she's an older release. I also like the new Love and More, but I think she is a limited release...which means $$$.

I wish I did not have such expensive taste!

Low mojo

2010-06-19T21:54:00.002+10:00

I have been so busy over the past week, I kind of feel that I've lost my Blythe mojo a little. I don't feel like sewing (there's a cute new dress all cut out waiting for me), I don't feel like customising (there's a Blythe in bits and not one, but TWO scalps sitting in my studio - unheard of!), and even more frightening, I don't feel like shopping. I have managed to stick to my dolly diet shockingly well, but I don't feel particularly pleased with myself because I have not had the slightest urge to buy anything, even though I've seen some dolls at very very good prices. What is up with that?? How is it possible that I'm feeling that my collection is big enough - I only have 3 of my own, Miss B's Lilac and a Blythe-in-bits.

I put it down to post flu blues.... Mr P was sick all this week (only he had man-flu, so his symptoms were twice as severe!), and this week also marked the end of my contract in the Art department. Even though it was not a prestigious position and had more than a bit of drudgery involved, I think that I am a bit down at the prospect of returning to my stay at home mum status. *sigh* I know I should not complain and that loads of women would kill to be in a position to be able to do that, but it was nice to get some recognition for the work I did and the little bit of extra money was good too.

Anyway, to shake my low mojo I am throwing down the dolly gauntlet (what would that be - a mitten??) and giving myself a challenge to work on. This week, starting Monday I will be making 5 items in 5 days to put in the shop. And knickers will not be counted! Dresses, blouses, skirts and pants only. I may even look at my Blythe-in-bits and do something with her. Or organise my studio a little bit...maybe.

2010-06-14T16:49:00.003+10:00

It's been one of those grey chilly winter days today, perfect weather for baking and sewing so that's exactly what I did. Chocolate cake and lots of tiny little knickers, I put a couple of pairs in the shop straight away, the rest will be added gradually thoughout the week.

My underwear actually sold out during the past week, which was totally unexpected. Even though they are such small amounts of money, I get such a buzz every time I get a sale! Etsy is totally addictive, even if I do seem to spend much much more than I earn.

I got the nicest surprise today when I was checking out the forums on Plastic Paradise. One of the moderators is putting together a Blythe Shopping Guide - I thought it was such a great idea, I went to check it out and guess what I found? A pic of my underwear being modelled by their new owners and a very nice write-up about it! It totally made my day. I had no idea that it was anything other than an ordinary sale, so it was completely out of the blue to come across the blog entry. The blog post and pic is here if you'd like to have a look, and of course there are lots of articles about other Blythe Etsyians too.

I put the lovely new Veronica Lace scalp on Roxy a little while ago, but I hadn't done the big reveal because embarassingly, she has nothing to wear - poor thing! I know exactly what I want to make for her, I just need to carve out a little time to run it up. I really like the way she looks with the new scalp - and the scalp itself is stunning. Anyway, I needed some knickers photographed today and she was the perfect model. I still have one more factory Blythe left to customise, but I don't have any strong feeling about how she should look, so I will wait until I'm feeling more inspired to take action.

Hello Neemo!

2010-06-11T17:21:00.005+10:00

Oh man I've been sick this week. So sick, that two new dolly parcels arrived and I didn't even open them until today - Mr P should have called a priest! I've had some kind of flu...and then tonsilitis. May I just say, that this is not a nice thing to have as a grown up, because besides the pain and the inconvenience of not being able to open my mouth to speak, swallow, drink or eat, my vanity and pride have been suffering dreadfully. I look like Jabba the Hutt. My entire throat/neck has been swollen - yes, even on the outside - and I am sporting twin lumps on my neck like frankenstein's monster. Ever so pretty - not! Anyway, enough complaining. My family weren't particularly interested in hearing me moan on about it so I'm sure that you won't be!

I opened my Pure Neemo Flection body this afternoon and I've been having great fun with it! How pervy is this shot of her?! It was getting dark when I hurriedly grabbed the camera and predictably, all of my pics were rubbish. I was trying valiantly to correct the photo and quickly realised that it was a lost cause so I had a play around with filters and effects on paint.net and accidentally created this. She looks alarmingly fleshy and real...with dolly joints - creepy!

The first thing I noticed when I opened it up was the weight of it. It's made of a kind of hard resin and it feels pleasantly substantial to hold. The resin has a natural looking matt finish and the colour is quite good - neither too pink or too brown. I love the shape of her - she's a lot more realistic (as you can see from my pervy pic!), and somehow manages to be willowy and curvy at the same time. She has a detailed collarbone, a rather pert little bottom, curvy thighs and her feet are really delicate and sweet. Her chest and torso are slimmer than Blythes, and this concerns me a little. It's already become apparent that she is not going to effortlessly be able to wear anything that fits Blythe - dresses with tight bodices swim on her unflatteringly.

I was a little worried that her joints would be too floppy to hold a pose, but they stay put nicely. However, I quickly realised that she would not be quite as posable as I had imagined. Somehow I thought that she would be a doll equivalent of those wooden artists models that you can buy and this is not the case. She can raise and lower her arms, but not move them out straight and the same goes for her hips/legs. The limb joints are not ball and socket, so while they will bend, they can't also twist. Instead you are able to twist the upper arm and thigh, which does make a lot more poses possible than a classic Takara body, but does have it's limitations. Her neck and ankle joints do use a ball type joint but the range is quite limited. I am very excited to get a head on her so I can tilt the head!

I'm also a little bit concerned about her feet coming off in shoes. They look quite fragile and I'm pretty sure that there's a good chance this might happen - particularly in boots. I am not entirely certain that they would just pop back on either (and I hope I don't need to find out!) Her feet are definitely too big for most of the shoes in my collection - think I might have to get some new ones just for this body. At this point, my first impressions of this body are very good and I can't wait to get a head on her and do a proper photo shoot. Possibly with less creepy results!

Buying your first Blythe

2010-06-07T13:40:00.007+10:00

Today I was contacted by someone who came across my Etsy shop and wanted to find out how to buy her first Blythe. I had already half finished writing a post on this, and revisited it intending to complete and publish it, but after a quick read through I realised that it was far too long and confusing and a simpler approach was needed. So, welcome to "Buying your first Blythe", version 2. For followers of my blog who undoubtably have bought many Blythes, I apologise, but I so wished that I could have found all this information more easily when I was shopping for my first. Hopefully someone will be able to benefit from it.

Buying your first Blythe is a bit of a voyage into the unknown. Neo Blythes, the ones most commonly collected, are very rarely found in shops outside of Asia. For someone buying their very first Blythe, there are a few different ways you can get your hands on one. The first and easiest way (although sometimes the most expensive), is Ebay.

CWC seem to release a new Blythe about once a month. Asian sellers buy up on the new dolls and then resell them through Ebay. Naturally you will pay a little bit more for these and there are always the usual risks that come as part and parcel of buying from Ebay. Buying a doll NRFB (never removed from box) is the best way to avoid getting a nasty surprise and buying a new release doll (with the exception of the limited or aniversary dolls) is usually the cheapest. At the moment, the cheapest NRFB Blythes are Simply Mango and Simply Guava. CWC make a lot more of the "Simply" girls than regular and limited releases, and this is reflected in their lower price. There are quite a few reputable Blythe sellers on Ebay, I like to use Mimiwoo. I've bought everything from Blythes to shoes and bodies from her and she is always reliable.

If you have your heart set on a particular Blythe or just don't like the current releases, I'd recommend joining the Blythe forums. As well as getting loads of helpful information, they have very active sales threads where you can buy and sell everything from Blythes to wigs to shoes, mostly pre-used by other collectors. The advantage of buying from within the community is that most Blythe owners will go out of their way to show you every little flaw and mark on the doll that is likely to be an issue for a collector, and are happy to answer any questions that you might have. Most will have links to their Flickr accounts in their sales threads so you can see a lot more photos of the doll you wish to buy than you could from an Ebay seller. It's also highly unlikely that you will encounter somebody trying to pass clones off as Blythes and you are also likely to get a fair price and cheaper shipping if you are lucky enough to find the doll you want in the same country you live in.

These are my favourite Blythe forums (you can find me on there as princesspea...If I'd known that I'd be so badly hooked I'd have chosen my username more carefully!):

Plastic Paradise
This Is Blythe
We Play With Dolls

You can also buy Blythe through some asian online stores, like Hobby Link Japan, but stock can be sold out in the blink on an eye on the more popular girls and language can sometimes be a barrier.

Things to keep in mind before purchasing:

Blythe has lots of imitators known as clones. You are most likely to find these on Ebay and some unscrupulous sellers will try to pass them off as Blythe dolls with Blythe sized Buy It Now prices. If the listing mentions CCE, Blybe, Basaak or Changing Colour Eyes you are probably looking at a clone. An easy way to tell is to look at the scalp. Clones have a wider space between the faceplate and the beginning of the hairline. Some sellers are aware of this and will angle photographs so you can't tell. If it isn't listed, ask them what kind of Blythe the doll is - CWC/Takara Blythes all have names "Baby's Breath, Tarts and Tea" etc, clones don't. If they can't give you a name it may be a clone.

There is another kind of Blythe out there that was released by Ashton Drake Gallery (ADG) that is slightly different to the Neo. A lot of Neo collectors dislike them and consider them to be inferior. Initially they were much cheaper than the Neos but as they are no longer being made, the price is inflating. Just be aware that there are differences between them - do some research on the Blythe forums.

Ask if the doll has had any customisations or haircuts. It may not make a difference to your end decision, but it's important information to have.

Check that the eye mech works smoothly.

When buying on Ebay, it often pays to ask if the doll has come from a non-smoking environment or has any odours. Sounds silly, but I have heard of lots of people who have inadvertantly bought a smelly doll.

Ask about stains on the body. A lot of dark or brightly coloured clothes can stain the Takara bodies. If you have your heart set on a particular doll and she has a few stains, it's really no big deal to get a new body for her. They are usually around $10 - $15 plus postage and can often be found on the forums.

Ask about scratches on the face.

Ask if the head has been opened. Older facemolds were quite difficult to open and will sometimes have pry marks at the sides of faceplaces and the neck. If the head has been opened, it's worth checking that there is no gap between the scalp and the faceplate.

A lot to think about? You betcha. And we haven't even gone into facemolds, Kenners, Prototypes and different customisations that your Blythe might have. I'll cover that in another post, it's too much information to take on at once. If you found this post helpful I'd love it if you could leave me a comment.

Who's That Girl?

2010-06-02T09:53:00.007+10:00

I can hardly believe it, but my "odd haired girl" has arrived already! I'm glad, because I barely had time to fret over which one I'd end up with. I'm pleased to say, that I did receive the exact same one that I imagined I had purchased. All my wishin' and hopin' paid off - she has the Veronica Lace scalp! Huzzah!! The "real" VL is currently selling on Ebay for about $US260 and up and there is no way I'd ever have been able to afford her.

I have no idea which face plate she has. I puzzled over it for hours and the closest guesses I have are Tarts and Tea, Casual Affair, or Baby's Breath. Her absence of blush makes it that tiny bit harder to place her, but I'm leaning towards Tarts and Tea. She has a blue pull ring that I've heard is Tarts and Tea's. She has the purple/plum chips that my redhead came with, although it was from a completely different seller.

She photographs like a dream, but I'm feeling a bit ambivalent towards her so far. There is something about her face that is kind of blank. I will definitely be customising this one and I may even attempt a lip carve. I don't even have any idea of a name for her yet. Obviously I can't go on calling her Odd-haired Girl! Here are her factory flaws:

- Scalp is a different colour to face. Again. *sigh*
- Hair is shedding quite a bit (although I know that some people had the same problem with the official VL scalp doing this).
- A few little scratches on face. Nothing major.
- A few little flaws in the shiny finish. Again, nothing major.
- Body parts don't exactly match, but it isn't super noticable like on Roxy.
- The seam on her body isn't perfectly sealed shut.
- Her eye mech doesn't feel right. This is a bit concerning - I'll be cracking her open to investigate. She had a shaving of plastic stuck in her eye socket when I got her and I hope this isn't somehow related.
- As with all my factory girls, she is missing the metal surround of her pull string hole.
- Pull ring was included, but not attached.

The best thing about her is by far her hair - it's amazing. It isn't out of the box perfect, but it is in very good shape for a factory girl. I really can't understand why the seller didn't make the effort to take a better photo of it as the auction one just looked a not-quite-right shade of brown, rather than it's VL two tone glorious-ness. It feels very sleek and silky and has just a few snarls at the very bottom of the length. A single treatment will more than sort it out.

Because her scalp is a different colour to her face, I think she'll be donating her hair to Roxy. If I was a better Blythe hairdresser, I'd probably do bangs like the "real" Veronica Lace, but I know I would mess it up horribly. I think that the Aubrey scalp will probably end up being hers, depending on the skintone of the scalp I guess. I think I might see if I can sell the Saffy scalp. It is quite cute, and I really like it on Roxy, but I just could not live with the mis-matched scalp colour.

My new body

2010-06-01T09:49:00.004+10:00

I got in the day before "Dolly Diet" officially began and bought myself a Neemo Flection body. I've been wanting one for quite a while, and apparently this was the last one left, so you know, I had to buy it really. Hopefully Mimiwoo won't object to my borrowing her picture. I've bought from her several times and she is always wonderful to deal with - can't recommend her highly enough (see - I've just given you a free plug, how can you be mad at me now? :P).

I'm quite looking forward to playing with this - the poseability (is that an actual word??) is amazing and she has really cute legs - kind of anime style. I'm not quite sure which girl will be getting this body. At the moment, I'm leaning towards Roxy, because as well as her being my current favourite, she also was saddled with the worst body I've seen - pretty much every component is a different colour! I also noticed when I was sanding her that her faceplates are ever so slightly different colours as well. Poor thing.

Not such great news on other purchases...the seller I bought my odd-haired girl from has reposted the exact picture of her (and I know this, because she was numbered hospital wrist band style!) back up for sale. I know that they all probably look much the same to the sellers, but the factory girls really are OOAK - in that one will have flaws that another one won't. I looked really closely at the pic before I opted to buy, and I know that if I'm sent another one it's highly unlikely that she'll be in perfect condition. I sent him a "please explain email" and he said not to worry, that the one that I've been sent is the same, but given the very nature of the factory girls, that really is not possible. I hope I haven't been sent a total dud. I really hate ugly transactions/confrontations and have so far been very lucky in that everything I've bought from ebay has arrived and has also been pretty much what I expected. I guess I'll just have to wait and see.

Roxy's new faceup

2010-05-30T09:54:00.004+10:00

I know I said I wasn't going to change Roxy's faceup, but the uneven blush was really bugging me...

I decided to keep it very similar to her existing make-up as I was kind of looking just to fix the problems really, rather than go for a whole new look. I quite like how she turned out:) The yellow eye make-up does not really do her any favours at the moment, but I think it will look good with the new scalp that's on it's way.

I also have her two new sets of chips while I had her head open - the blues that are in the top pic and these browns. I know that chip changing is one of those things you can easily do without opening the head, but I just find it so much easier to do them from behind - that way there's no concern about getting melted gluestick on her eyelashes. RBL's are so easy to open that I always prefer to do any work that way.

The brown chips are actually the yellow/amber ones that she already had when I got her with an iris backing paper that I borrowed from some supposedly hand-painted chips I bought. I thought those chips were great at first, but after putting them in Holly I realised that they looked very flat and gave her a blank looking stare. The backings were not even hand done - just printed - and I paid far too much for them. Ah well, you live and learn! Put beind a normal 20 line eyechip though, they give it a whole new look. These were a spare pare that I hadn't put in, but I'm thinking of pulling the others out of Holly to use the same way, assuming the backing isn't destroyed in the process of removing the chips.

Damn - I won!

2010-05-26T14:49:00.005+10:00

Why is it that when you are bidding for something and desperately want it, you almost always are sniped at the last second, but when you have second thoughts and offer a ridculously low amount, you win???

I know I should not have, but I saw this girl with her odd looking hair and I put in an almost insultingly low offer on her thinking that there was no way I'd get her for that amount...and dammit if the seller didn't accept it! I freely admit that this girl was bought for her hair. I just love it! I think it might be the same as either Veronica Lace or Heart of Montmarte - it's very unusal. There's no way I could afford the real thing. I may not even keep the doll it's attached to, we'll see.

One of the main reasons that I regret the purchase is that I also bought an Aubrey scalp just today (the long one) for Roxy. Typically for me, a Winsome Willow one came up for sale for much less money and I really would have preferred that to start with. Her mismatched scalp colour was just annoying me too much to put up with it any longer.

As of this moment I am going on a doll diet - not one doll purchase for at least a month now! I will just have to sew, photograph and enjoy the ones I have. Easier said than done....

Undies, undies everywhere!

2010-05-23T19:54:00.004+10:00

I've been a little obsessed with these knickers of late. Now that I have perfected them, you'll be seeing them slowly being added to the shop. I don't know how long I'll keep making them for as they are so fussy and fiddly. They take a while to make, but they are so sweetly tiny and perfect when they are finished.

P thinks that anyone following my photostream will think that I'm some kind of pervert due to all the topless-ness and underwear shots. I think he's being a bit prudish...I mean it's not like Blythe is anatomically correct! Maybe am I just blind to it having been wrangling pants onto dolly crotches all weekend long. I wonder what he'll think when my new flection body arrives... I will confess to being momentarily tempted by the body with the big bazoombas, but in the end I decided that petite was probably best (and would avoid having to make a whole new wardrobe!).

I still haven't done anything much with Roxy. With our Aussie dollar having plunged in the last week, I've been putting off buying her scalp...and I would like to get some backing foils to go on the back of her chips, so there's not even any point in changing those out until I've got the foils. I think I may sand off her makeup after all as her uneven blush bothers me.

I am fighting the urge to buy another factory girl. There's been quite a bit of hating on them going on in Plastic Paradise right now, but there is something so addictive about them! The cheaper than cheap prices on the low end ones make them oh so temping to people like me who just want a fixer-upper...and besides, I need some girls with different hair colours.

Such a big week coming up, I am kind of dreading it. P's dad is having major surgery on Tuesday and my big assessment piece is due on Wednesday. My employer still has not told me if they want me to continue after next week. I am kind of hoping not, as I have soooo much to catch up on at home as well as many many assignments that I need to do. Reality bites.

Ooh La La - Lingerie!

2010-05-19T13:51:00.007+10:00

I know they aren't the most glamorous of clothes, but I think that knickers are necessary, even for dolls!

Actually, I hadn't even thought that much about it until someone on one of the forums was complaining about how their dolls kept arriving completely naked. I wonder what on earth people do with all the spare undies - it's not like you need to change them on a regular basis! I can just see a room full of little white knickers at places like Blythe Plus who sell all their dolls nakie. Not really much point in keeping them in my opinion, and as far as I know they don't seem to sell them seperately either, so why don't they just leave them on the dolls?

Then I got to thinking about doll undies and that yes, it was kind of annoying that my factory girls didn't have any so I had a look on Etsy and couldn't find any that I really liked. I just wanted plain ones, no lace, no frilly bits and there were none available.

So, here is the result of an afternoon playing with dolly pants. May I say, that these are bloody fiddly to make! These are my second pair, and I can still see some room for improvement (scuse the untidy thread ends - didn't notice them when I took the photo!), but they aren't too bad considering the tiny-ness of them. I think they are a smidgeon big, but it's a start! I'm thinking of adding knickers to the shop, once I'm completely happy with them. I wonder if anyone will buy them?

2010-05-16T07:22:00.004+10:00

At last the painting is finished in my sewing/music/reading room and it's time to move in. In a way, I'm kind of dreading the unpacking and organising of many many boxes of fabric, trim, tools and unfinished projects more than I was the actual renovating!

I love this room so much it's insane. I know that to some wood floors and plain white walls are unspeakably dull, but to me it all seems so peaceful and calm that I love spending time in there already. It's all very Zen without the furniture - if I had a big enough house I think I'd have a space just like it with nothing in it but a couple of plants and a comfy place to sit. It almost seems a shame to clutter it up with all of our stuff, but sadly our house is small and we have to make the best use of the space we have available. I'll be sharing the space with Miss B - she needs a desk of her own and space for all of her books as well as a nice calm environment for violin practice. Her bedroom is very small - I don't know how she's been managing to practice in there for so long.

Pre-Blythe I was a quilter and I have an astonishing amount of bits and pieces and works in progress that I've collected over time. I feel kind of guilty looking at them, so now that the weather is cold and I at last have room again, I think I may have to get stuck in and finish a project or two. I'm feeling frustrated that I have so little time for creativity right now. Work, study and housework are consuming most of my time and energy when all I want to do is sew! I have something new that I want to add to the shop and it's killing me not being able to transform my idea into reality.

Today we are off to Movie World again as we got a season pass the last time we where there and Miss B is dying to try out the rides she missed last time. In the evening I have to work on this cursed "group" assignment. It's a group assignment in name only, as to be honest the "group" is comprised of a pack of losers who all seem to have various personal issues that prevent them from doing any actual work. From a group of 5, only 2 of us do anything and the other woman only seems to be focused on working on things that directly give her credit, not the team parts of the project which seem to have fallen to me. I am heartily sick of it and them. 'Nuff said.

Last night I spent a little while playing around with the Wensleydale locks. I've heard a few horror stories from people who have painstakingly rerooted their Blythes and then happily washed the scalp when they've finished only to have it turn into a ruined felted clump. I combed out a little piece, washed, conditioned and straightened it with a hair straightener while it was still wet to see how it would handle it. It handled it all very well and there were no problems at all. I love the way it looks straight.

Feeling a bit more confident that my lovely wool could handle a bit of abuse, I made up a few plugs. OMG it's slow. Even though the wool looks relatively tangle free it's not. Combing it out is slow. Separating the lock into plugs is slow. Tying the knot at the end is slow, and even more worryingly, the knots kind of undo themselves. I think I'll have to put a little bit of glue on the ends, you know, just to make the process EVEN SLOWER! I can tell already that this method of reroting is going to be very untidy on the reverse of the scalp and I'm not entirely comfortable with it. I'm wondering if I would be better off to do a lock and loop only instead of doubling the hair over in half, to do it about an inch or so from the cut end if you know what I mean. On the other hand, I don't want it to be super poofy, and wouldn't the short end kind of give the roots even more bulk? I'm just a bit nervous that if I use the traditional knot method all the cut ends will be so bulky on the inside that I won't be able to fit the scalp back on!

Rubies, wine and an unforseen dilema...

2010-05-14T17:25:00.006+10:00

A few little things have happened in the past few days. Besides being horribly busy with real life things, I've managed to steal a chunk of time between bouts of drudgery, boredom, stress and frustration to give Roxy's hair a treatment. It's come up quite nicely I think, considering the state that it was in (again, the hot water/fabric softener solution is a MIRACLE!). Maybe with one more treatment it might be even better as it's still a bit frizzy at the back. This leaves me with a bit of an unexpected dilema as to what I should do with the fibre for her reroot that arrived yesterday.

The fibre is not mohair, but wool from a rare breed of sheep. I bought it from the most lovely Etsy seller that I have dealt with so far and it is stunning. I absolutely love the colour, it is perfect - I asked for rubies and wine and that is exactly how the seller dyed it. It's so amazingly soft and silky that I confess to spending quite a bit of time gazing at it admiringly and fondling it!. It has a really pretty sheen to it too.

The problem is...I think it might be a little bit too short *sigh*. And therein lies the problem, because I am more than a little afraid of Roxy ending up with her nice blonde curls chopped off and a big red afro in it's place. The locks stretch out to be quite long - between 7 and 9 inches, but in their curly state are more like 4 or 5. I was planning on using a really interesting rerooting technique that involves tying a knot in the middle of the plug and threading it through two adjacent holes, but the shorter than anticipated length makes it so that only the traditional knot method is possible.

I don't know what to do - should I chop off her hair and go for it, or should I get a coolcat scalp for just in case I don't like the result? I have heard that the coolcats don't fit as well as they could...and it is an added expense. Any advice from any super duper re-rooters that secretly read my blog but never comment?

Out of the box

2010-05-12T22:15:00.006+10:00

My newest (and probably final) factory girl is here! Unlike Ash, I kind of like her straight away, even though her catalogue of faults is far more extensive. I wonder why that is....

She has the obligatory ick matted hair. There was actually melty rubber band in it! Thankfully it hadn't bonded into her hair at all and I could just pull it out. She's had a hair treatment and is looking better already.
Her scalp is a very different skin tone to her face - that I'm not very pleased about at all as obviously it isn't something that can be fixed! I'm wondering if I should just put her reroot on a coolcat scalp instead or maybe try to swap it for a scalp of the same skintone. She also has a bit of a gap between her scalp and faceplate. You can see from the pic how nasty looking her hair was.

The poor girl got saddled with a bad body too (maybe that's why I feel a connection with her :P). Different coloured torso and legs, a few little black marks here and there, a little gap in the join where none should be. A shame because she has the pink nailpolish arms that I like so much. I'm thinking of popping her on a Pure Neemo Flection - yeah baby!
She has a wonky eyelash (saw that in her auction pic).
Her mech works beautifully, and the special green chips are really lovely. I don't like the ambers or the pinks, so I'll change them out ASAP.
Most annoyingly (as I wanted to preserve her makeup because I liked it), she has some unexpected flaws on her face. There are a few little speckles of blush here and there - even in her eyelashes. Her blush is uneven and she has some flaws in the glossy finish on the plastic on her forehead. *sigh* Lena, you really need to take better photographs! I scrutinised the auction pics for ages without seeing these problems :( I was tempted to see if I could send her back, but the postage is so expensive it really makes it impractical.

I'm wondering if I might be able to somehow sand her while carefully preserving her makeup or if it's a lost cause. Such a shame, because I'm finding her cute in the extreme which I was not expecting at all! She immediately told me her name is Roxy and I think I'm going to like her :)

My first Blythe custom

2010-05-09T15:54:00.006+10:00

I've had so much fun the last few days "making over" Ashling. I wasn't too sure about the look that I wanted for her, so I just kind of played with colours and blush until I got something I felt reasonably happy with.

I'm glad that I did the work on the Basaak first, as I was not at all nervous about pulling her apart and I had a little bit more of an idea of how the pastels behaved. I'm not really happy with her lips, but I think that until I get some MSC so I can build up the colour some more, they'll have to do for now. If it becomes apparent that I just can't do lips at all, I'll send her away to an Aussie customiser to have this done. Originally I gave her green pastel eyeshadow, but I wasn't happy with the colour once it was on her as it looked kind of yellowish. Since I already have a Blythe on the way with yellow eye shadow I went with some a neutral brown.

As you can see, I've managed to tame her hair a little now as well. When it was still wet I made it into ringlets and when it dried it looked great! Sadly during the process of putting her head back together they have kind of fallen out. Still, there is no arguing that her hair looks much much better than when I started and I have decided that for the time being at least, she can keep her hair as is.

I've given her some new chips too, olive drab and plain baby blue (which I'm not as keen on). Initially I took out the plum ones that she came with, but I've since put them back in. I think they might be the same purple/plum chips that PAM has and it's about as close to having a PAM that I'll ever get!

2010-05-07T14:39:00.004+10:00

The scalp was dry today, and since I've taken Ashling apart in a frenzy last night ans sand matted her and because I was too lazy to put her together for the photo, I just plonked it on top of Jonesy. It does not fit at all - but you can get a better idea of how it is looking now compared to when I first got it.

I've since read that once a curly scalp has been washed you shouldn't try to brush it or it will frizz, naturally I brushed it as soon as it was dry so it doesn't look as good as it initially did (it's been brushed in the pic) - but it's still much better than it was. I have read about another method of treating hair so I'm going to try that out tonight. It's a bit more time consuming, but the results looked well worth the effort.

My eye chips arrived from We Play With Dolls today (super fast!!), I now wish that I had ordered the foils to go with them, but I'm too cheap to order just those and pay for postage twice, so will have to wait until next time. I was shocked at how easy it was to remove the chips. Every pair came out on the first try!

Blythe hair secrets

2010-05-07T10:24:00.012+10:00

When I got my fuzzy haired factory girl, I really needed some advice on how to fix her hair. I've been trawling the internet and asking nicely on the forums in the hope that some of the expert Blythe people will share their hair taming secrets with me. Apart from the hot water rinse, here are a few different methods that people have had success with.

1. Coat hair in conditioner (human hair kind), put in ziplock bag and run boiling water over it. Leave overnight and then rinse out thoroughly. Put in foam rollers for gentle waves. This was for a Kenner, not sure how it would go on a Neo.

2. Wash hair with laundry detergent, rinse. Then boil water and mix with fabric softener. Let soak for a few minutes. Rinse. Then twist hair into ringlets and let them dry overnight. I have to say that this looks really really good - check it out http://www.flickr.com/photos/squidslipper/3357586478/in/set-72157623207111178/

3. Wash hair with hot hot water, comb through conditioner, rinse and repeat. Finish with ceramic straightening irons (eep! this sounds potentially damaging - try this one at your own risk! I must admit, it did look nice though). Think it's best if you want a really straight look.

4. This is the method WoodSprite (on Flickr) uses...and it's nothing short of amazing. It's kind of lengthy and sadly involves using a product that I'm pretty sure is not available here, but I'll be scouring the shops for an equivilent for sure! http://www.flickr.com/photos/woodspriteblythe/2616138089/in/photostream/ You must check it out! It is the best guide to hair rejuvenation that I've seen.

Here is a brief summary of the steps:

- Prepare doll by wrapping face and body in cling film. Wrap cord around neck and slip arm through pull ring.
- Give hair a good brush through.
- Fill a little bowl (just enough so the hair will be covered) with about an oz of Chlorox Ultimate Care bleach (this is the product that I can't get) and boiling water. Soak for 15 - 20 minutes.
- Without rinsing, comb through hair first using wide toothed comb, then a fine tooth comb.
- Rinse and shampoo (using whatever it is that you like to use...she uses dishsoap).
- Then prepare bowl again with boiling water and fabric softener (same amount). Soak for 15 minutes. Comb through.
- Reheat mixture in microwave until hot. Soak for another 15 minutes. Comb, rinse thoroughly, de -plastic your girl. At this point, she uses scissors to trim any damaged or weird hairs.
- Now you leave to dry. If there are curls, give them a little scrunch from time to time. When it's just a little bit damp, put a little bit of leave in conditioner in it (she uses a Garnier one). When dry you can use a tiny mist of shine spray.

I especially like her advice about not brushing the ends of the hair after the treatment...which I went and did to Ashling after her hot water rinse, ruining the cute curls on the end of her hair (her hair still looked loads better though!).

I used a variation on method 4 on Ash's hair (without the Chlorox step) and it was very successful. I twisted it into ringlets to dry and here's how it came out. I didn't have any leave in conditioner, so I left that step out.

Hot water - the miracle treatment!

2010-05-06T16:29:00.004+10:00

I cannot believe that it's Thursday already. This is insane! I've got to work on my group assignment (otherwise known as "I must do all of the assignment because the rest of the goup are complete losers that don't care if they fail"), but I was feeling a bit stressed out about it all, so I took a little bit of time out to do an experiment on my newest victim, Ashling.

As anyone who reads this blog or follows me on Flickr will know, I hate her hair. Horrible horrible carrot red frizz. I tried to curl it to no avail, the frizz returned within minutes. Since I'm planning to chop it all off and reroot her anyway, I thought I might attempt a hot water treatment on it. I've always thought it seemed like such a risky thing in that there's a chance the hair could melt if it's not done properly, and also once the curl is gone it's gone for good. Only a boil perm will get it back and those can have unpredictable results. So anyway, off I went and did it, and you know what....it's tamed it. It's still wringing wet, but it's much much longer and the curl is only on the ends. She seems much less Susan Boyle and more Nicole Kidman now. If it looks ok when it's dried completely, I may even keep it. Who knew that a bit of hot water and a brush could do that! On the down side, it's still falling out :(

What happened to my weekend??

2010-05-03T19:02:00.008+10:00

So much for running up a dress - this weekend has been eaten up by painting and an impromptu trip to Movieworld (which I will admit was fun!). Miss B had an absolute ball, which is great because the poor little thing was pretty entertaining herself for most of the weekend while P & I were up ladders.

It's a bugger of a room to paint as it has a long hallway that's part of it - one coat of paint takes more than 4 hours to apply. We have one more day of it ahead of us so that we can do the trim and then I can move all my sewing gear and Blythe collection (I have 3 now, plus a fake - does that count as a collection?) into it. I can't tell you how wonderful it will be to move everything out of it's temporary home in the dining rooms and bedrooms. The clutter makes me feel uber-stressed.

I've had another thought as to my factory girl's reroot. I'm going to do a blended colour I think, of two different blondes and a red similar to the one she has. These hair swatch pics are from My Little Customs. Stunning colours aren't they?

The red Wensleydale locks have been dyed and purchased and hopefully will be on their way to me very soon. I got them from this etsyian www.etsy.com/shop/jennyct13 who runs a shop called Jenny Fields Fibre. Her prices were very reasonable and the service was great - she discussed the exact shade of red that I was after with me and dyed it up specially and had it listed within 48hours. I'll let you all know how the wool is like when it arrives but I'm pretty confident that it will be fantastic.

I'm itching to take this girl apart and start her faceup. I don't think she'll be staying in one piece for much longer at all!

The deed is done...pretty much

2010-05-02T07:52:00.009+10:00

Last night I decided that there was no point in procrastinating any longer and gave Jonesy the chop. For better or for for worse, her hair is now bobbed (more or less!). It still needs a little tidy up - cutting dolls hair is harder than I thought. Especially on a girl with exorcist-like neck swivelling tendencies.

It was kinda painful chopping off that lovely hair :( It was so gorgeously silky and sleek and the colour looked so wonderful at that length (sigh). Oh well, it's done now and there's no going back. It is still a little long I think.

Which leads me to my next hair dilema - the factory girls. I've decided that I can't live with the crunchy, shedding, ginger frizz any more than I'll be able to live with the blonde dreadlocks on my next to arrive girl. I confess to fiddling with the colour saturaion in the curlers photo. In real life her hair is a not very pretty shade of orangutan ginger and it's not nice at all. I guess this that means two reroots are in order. Sounds horribly ambitious, but I'm planning to just take my time as I don't know when I'll be able to get my hands on another bait girl at the right price anyway. Besides, I never thought I'd say this, but I kind of like rerooting. It's oddly satisfying.

So, the girl that's blonde will be getting a deep red reroot in Wensleydale wool (so she'll be curly). The seller is really lovely and she's dying it to order just for me. I think it will give her eyeshadow a bit more punch than the blonde hair she currently has. She will get Ashling's (ginger ninja's) reddish painted scalp.

The ginger ninja, Ashling will get her scalp but I'm still tossing up what colour hair to give her. Part of me wants to do a shiney white mohair, but I'm wondering if 2 mohair girls is too many - and besides, what if it's much harder to do than the saran? Mohair is expensive and I don't want to mess it up. So Ashling will probably be a saran girl - I'm thinking silver or platinum blonde or a mix of the two.

This is Hi Ho Silver from Restore Doll.

I also like this one, it's called Monroe

Or...I could do a fantasy hair colour on her. A blue green like PAM. Or a pastel peach like Peach. I just can't decide. And therein lies the problem, because without knowing for sure what her hair colour will be, I can't plan her face-up or buy her new eye chips. I guess it will come to me eventually, but for now, she's not telling me anything.

Oh, as an aside, I just want to clarify that Jonesy isn't wearing the play smock that I've got in my shop. I made three of them and this one is an "oops" - I put the pockets on slightly crooked so I decided to keep it rather than sell it as it's not perfect.

Deboxing a factory girl...not quite the same

2010-04-30T16:25:00.011+10:00

I ran into the post office in my lunch break to pick up my red haired factory girl and I was dying for the day to end so I could go home and see what she looked like in person. So here it is - the great deboxing.

The box got damaged but she was OK.

Mostly because she was wrapped in bubble wrap like some kind of coccoon.

And here she is in all her glory

You can't quite tell from the photographs, but she has most of the faults that I warned of in my Factory Girls post (ironic huh?), none of which were disclosed. Still, I bought her to customise and for that she will be fine. Here's her list of "issues".

Bad hair - it looked ok in the auction pic, but it's kinda ratty. A lot came out from just running my hands through her hair. Her curls have crispy ends - to be honest I think my Basaak had better hair, albeit thinly rooted. I don't know if she'll be keeping it. I've just given it a quick wash and put it in curlers, but if it keeps coming out it will have to go.

Mixed body parts - she has transluscent legs and a dark smudge on her back. On the upside, she has pink nailpolish - pretty!

Scratched face - I tried to photograph it, but couldn't capture it. She has a scuff on her forhead and a green scratch near her eye. Hopefully they will both sand out.

Scratched eyelids - her lids both have a line of "wear" on them where they have been rubbing on something inside her head.

On the bright side, her eyes do work, and I still got a great doll to customise, which is what I wanted her for. I kinda hope her hair turns out to be ok and stops shedding all over the place as I don't mind the colour. On the other hand, I've seen some very beautiful red wenslydale locks that would look amazing...and also some gorgeous white mohair of the shiny variety (mmmm shiny!)

Right now she's in curlers, waiting her turn to get prettied up. I don't even have anything much for her to wear that doesn't clash horribly with her hair! I will need to sew her something just for her I think. She'll have to be patient as I'm very busy this weekend. Besides, I still have a blue bob to cut.

So close, yet so far...

2010-04-29T17:03:00.004+10:00

My redhead factory girl is trapped at the post office. Oh why did I not take a sickie today as I was considering?! For the record, I am actually not 100%...and worse still is that I can pinpoint the exact moment I came into contact with this lergy - a boy coughed in my face (so disgusting - who does that??) at the supermarket and I thought to myself "yep, bet I get sick" and a few days later here I am all icky and blocked up.

So anyway, I have to wait until tomorrow after work to pick her up and the suspense is killing me! Zumpf and Sadifairy from Plastic Paradise have bought her sisters and I think it's so cool that this online Blythe community make it possible for me to know that! They both live in the US, so it's extremely unlikely that I'd come across this info if it weren't for the magic of forums and Flickr.

I've got some ideas from the community about the bits that make up my blonde girl too. Rumour has it that her eyes belong to Q-pot or possibly Christina the Bride and her face is either Mango's (most likey I suppose) or excitingly, the not yet released Nicky Lad. I don't know that I will keep her as a blonde with that colour eye shadow now... I think a deeper colour would suit her better. I'm open to suggestions if you have any! I want to get the saran ordered straight away so I can get started.

A new girl on her way....

2010-04-28T11:39:00.005+10:00

What can I say? I am weak in the face of a potential bargain and for some reason I seem to be preferring my Blythes ghetto these days. I've bought another factory girl (I have justfied it to myself as she's to be my Mothers Day present - even though I know she won't be here in time). One look at that peachy skin and bright blue eyes and I could not help myself - she's super sweet!

I'm itching to do another reroot and I needed a victim that has awful hair as I'd like to do one on a stock scalp this time and can't quite bring myself to chop off a nice head of hair. As you can see my new factory girl certainly fits the bill. Her hair is revolting, but her face and eyes are quite nice so I'm thinking I'll keep her mostly stock and just give her some new chips in place of the pinks and yellows. I really love those green chips! I wish I knew which face and mech she has - I have no idea. I might have to put a few feelers out into the community and see if anyone can shed some light on this.

I'm leaning towards giving her platinum blonde saran possibly with bangs...but that could change. I really do need a blonde in my collection.

I can't quite fathom what the appeal of these dolls is. An offical NRFB Blythe arrives in a beautiful box, dressed nicely and once her hair is given a quick brush is near perfection. These girls turn up wrapped in newspaper in a scruffy old cardboard box with their dreaded hair, scratched make-up and mismatched body parts. I think part of it (appart from the greatly reduced price) is that there's that feeling that you can take this tatty doll and make her into something beautiful and unique. Take a look at the Flickr group created just for these rejects and you'll see what I mean. http://www.flickr.com/groups/1344817@N24/pool/

A mini shop update

2010-04-26T18:22:00.005+10:00

I say mini, because it's erm...one dress. Can you tell that I went back to work last week? hehe

I didn't even get to do a lot of sewing over the long weekend because I've been busy doing something infinitely less pleasant - painting. It is taking a ridiculously long time because the room has a long hall leading into the main part of it, so there's miles extra cutting in (don't I sound all painterly!). Mr P and I have basically spent 2 full days in there and all we have done is the undercoat. We would have been at it today as well if he hadn't gone and injured his knee in the lamest manner possible. Other people hurt themselves playing sport or having spectacular accidents. Well not my husband - he's mananged to injure himself during the extremely risky process of sitting down! How crazy is that?! Ironically he'd been on our very high and scarily sloped roof moments before clearing leaves out of the gutter without incident while I fretted anxiously at the bottom of the ladder. The injury occurred when he went to plonk himself down in a chair on the verandah to have a beer when he was finished!

Anyway, to that end here is the one and only dress that I managed to make this week. Miss B is campaigning very hard to keep this one, and I will admit that it's one of my favourites too. I love the itsy bitsy collar and the ruffled underskirt and the black and white colourway stops it from being too overly cutesy. I have plenty of the spotty fabric though, so I can always run up another one for her.

Do you notice my model? I did hesitate to put in on Jonesy as she isn't a pure-blood Blythe and collectors might be less likely to buy the dress, but in my defense, she does have a Blythe body, and I think she looks good in it with her blue hair. As you can see, I still have not worked up the courage to cut her it. I really like it just as it is...but I will cut it - I will!

Factory Girls on Ebay

2010-04-25T22:17:00.007+10:00

It's a scary thing buying your first Blythe, and now it looks as though there are even more pitfalls for a new collector to avoid with the arrival of the latest fakes (that are sometimes incorrectly listed as being Blythes) and now the "factory girls".

The Factory girls are a bit of a mystery - nobody knows exactly where they come from and there are several theories. I've heard that they are prototypes of new Blythes that Takara are considering making (some don't make it to production), that they are made of stolen parts, that they are made of parts rescued from bins (which would account for some of the very bad scalps I've seen). While I don't know for certain which theory is true, what I can tell you is that they seem to be made from a mix of parts from different dolls. You might get Mango's face plates, an eye mech from Nostalgic Pop and hair and body from Simply Peppermint. When all the parts are in good shape and the skin tones match, you can find some really beautiful and unusual girls for a good price.

Lately though, I've been seeing a lot of Blythes from a certain ebay seller that are clearly very poor quality and I considered how easy it would be for a new collector to be ripped off. Unfortunately, until you have a bit of knowledge about these dolls they all tend to look much the same and many of the Blythes on offer at the moment for bargain basement prices have some really bad faults that are sneakily disclosed by photo only, not in the text of the listing. Unless you knew what to look for, it would be all too easy to hit the Buy It Now button while you were all excited about the seemingly too good to be true price and end up with a bit of a misfit as your first Blythe.

These are a few things that I've noticed in these listings:

1. Really really bad hair. Knots, frizzies, melted(!), no thatching (partline), lots of missing plugs, very odd colour (greenish streaks), extremely thin (ie you can clearly see the scalp), very bad and uneven haircuts.

2. The scalp is a different skin tone to the face.

3. Grab bag of body skin tones. Arms, torso, pelvis and legs - a lot of the time there is more than one skin tone mixed up, often they are not the same colour as the face. Sometimes both arms or both legs are different colours.

4. Front and back face plates are different skin tones. Not always obvious in the pics - look closely.

5. Obvious downward gaze - would require repair.

6. Big gaps between joins on body.

7. Sneaky photos. One seller in particular has two sets of photos on some of their listings. One is the actual set (the top left hand ones), the other is in the text of the listing and are photos of a lovely freshly deboxed stock Blythe. Be careful to note that the doll you are bidding on is the one at the top, not the one in the description.

8. You may not even get the doll you think you are bidding on. One seller states that you will get a doll with the hair and makeup of his choosing. This means that he will send you a Blythe, but not necessarily the one in the photos. Given that most of his stock appear to be flawed, this means that the doll you receive may have flaws that you find unacceptable.

That said, I've heard of people getting some really beautiful and unique dolls this way. Many have received perfect Blythes, others were happy to get a doll suitable to customise at a great price (which is what I'm hoping will be the case with mine), or even just a source of parts for other customs or repairs.

If you are at all unsure, ask around in the Blythe forums or on Flickr to see if others have had good experiences buying from the particular seller you are thinking of purchasing from. You might get a bargain, but there is always an element of risk involved in purchasing items that don't pass through quality assurance.