Delays and Dalliances

I haven’t been able to make any more progress on refurbishing my barbie fridge or any of the other furniture I have received because of the stinking weather. :p Every day it has been hot, humid, stormy and mostly overcast. So right now I have half of a old barbie chair painted with the other half waiting for a drop in the humidity. I’m also still waiting for sun to try a second type of bleaching experiment on the sweet roses fridge which involves sunlight, but I’ll get more into that later.

I imagine I should just work on Cookie some more, but a migraine has kept me in bed most of the day, and I’m just feeling too yucky to motivate much. XP So basically I’ve been spending this down time with my laptop in bed and looking at other dolly sites and such to satisfy my dolly obsessing. I managed to find a couple interesting dolly blogs that have a good deal of 1:6 scale diorama info or eye candy, which I thought I would share.

The first one is Corsetkitten’s Workshop:
http://corsetkitten.com/blog/
This blog is heavy into 1:6 scale dioramas and fashion dolls, but she does have some Blythe and Momoko. She has some “making of” tutorial type bits on making 1:6 scale dioramas and also makes some of her own miniatures. Lots of informative dolly posts as well as just random doll blabber which is fun to read too!

The second site is Nerea Pozo:
http://nereapozo.blogspot.com/
This blog is pretty much Lati tinies and Blythe exclusive, though occasionally I see some postings on minis. The big thing here though is the eye candy! She makes these incredible little dioramas for Lati tinies or Blythe dolls that she sometimes sells. There is less so much tutorial information here, but looking at all the eye candy is sure to give you ideas, and they are just too gorgeous not to look at. Also if you visit her domain, nereapozo.com you can also see some of her custom Blythe and Blythe artwork.

I would absolutely love to hear of any other sites other people may have found, because it’s always nice to have new sites to visit, especially when you are ill in bed. Feel free to comment and share any other dolly links, but do keep in mind that if you post more than two links my spam filter is going to flag it for me to check before it can appear.

Mature Body 20cm BJD, Doll Values and Other Musings.

Recently I’ve been kind of…er…”pre-shopping” for a new doll. I know I want one, and money-wise I’ve saved and I am close to being able to get a new BJD, or if I wanted, I could already get any Pullip, Dal, Taeyang or Blythe I wanted….well maybe not so much “any” Blythe. Anyhow I’ve been leaning towards just getting another BJD because Pullip and Dal offerings as of late haven’t interested me, plus I have to admit I am a little disenchanted with Pullip since I’ve been having so much body troubles with her. I ended up taking her off of her 25cm SBH because despite all of my efforts her neck was still flopping and since her new wig it became even worse. In the end, I am far more pleased with my Dal, and would probably buy another Dal again in the future, but as of right now, not another Pullip unless a to die for design came out.

Anyhow I digress on my Pullip misgivings…..So I’ve been looking at the possibility of getting a new BJD, and I know that I no longer want anything beyond MSD size. With all of the mature bodied MSDs out there, why would I possibly need a giant 60cm+ doll just to get a more mature body shape? Besides that, I prefer smaller dolls as they are just easier to handle and you have more miniature options available to you, especially since the advent of the American Girl Dolls, and now those larger size Dora dolls. Anyway I am interested now in the even smaller BJD, especially any size that would be a nice fit for my current Pullip house or I would even go so tiny as to get a doll that would work in my 1:12 scale dollhouse that my grandfather built for me. As I got to thinking about it even more, I thought to myself, “I wonder if there are any mature bodied 20cm dolls out there” so I searched and lo and behold there were!

20061211124945_mLimhwa makes a barbie size BJD called ToYou. For a while though they stopped making them, but recently a new ToYou was offered called Sara, and she is quite a beauty. However Limhwa dolls only have certain ordering periods and seem a little difficult to get in that regard, but I will still keep them in mind. I also came across Soom’s Mini Gem series, which again are mature bodied 20cm dolls. I absolutely love their doll called Aren, which you can see in the pic I posted. So I’ve started seriously considering a “barbie sized” BJD because they would work my my new dollhouse and would be easy to clothe. I need to figure out though how easy it is to find tiny wigs and eyes though before I jump into that, and I also have to wonder how difficult doing a face-up on a tiny doll would be….there are these type of factors to consider. Plus I love all those itty bitty tinies out there too. Heh, I know I probably mull over things way too much but when you don’t have a lot of disposable income you tend to really ponder large purchases more. In the end though I probably have a bit of dolly overload from looking at waaaaay too many dolls.

Anyway after looking around for BJDs I also decided to see what people were selling secondhand on DoA and eBay and such and I seem to be noticing a trend in doll values, and that is that they seem to devalue as soon as you buy them. I saw a few people for example selling brand new dollies that were still mostly boxed that they just couldn’t “bond with”. These dollies were being offered at a lower price than what you could buy new at the maker and were seriously comparable in newness. If you have an older dollie before double jointing became commonplace, there is no way you could get full value for your dollie again…or so it seems. You see, as of late I’ve been considering selling my DIM Danbi as I have fallen out of love with the larger dolls and he spends a good deal of time in his box. However I have been reluctant to sell him because he was my first BJD, that and the fact that it looks like perhaps at best I could sell him for $125 less than his purchase price.

Of course dolls like Unoa and such seem to retain their value well, but I find it really funny that Pullip dolls can double or triple in price in 5 years whereas a BJD will most likely devalue. Blythe is another dollie that seems to keep her value too, as dolls that are only a couple years old may already be double their original value or more depending on edition.

Well, I think I’ve probably rambled on enough about dolls, so I think I shall sign off for now….and keep on musing over the possibility of purchasing another doll.

Dolly Dolly Volume 16 Arrived!

dollydollymsdpageActually my Dolly Dolly book arrived on Saturday, and I just now got around to scanning in the page that features the MSD clothes. Anyway the pic to the left features the separates you can make in MSD size, to see a bigger pic, just click the pic. There are also a lot of other doll patterns in this book for other sized dolls, but you could definitely resize the patterns to fit any doll.

There are lots of other cool DIY stuff in this book as well. There is a whole feature on making fake sweets for your dolls, and also a nice feature on how to make fake silver jewelry for your doll using a special silver art clay. I don’t know if you can get the silver at clay state-side or not, but it looks like fun. There is also a bunka style doll project you can attempt as well. Aside from all the DIY projects there are tons and tons of awesome dolly pics that can give you lots of ideas for projects. There’s quite a lot of Blythe in the book, but there is also a good amount of BJDs and a smattering of other dolls. I must say that I just enjoy picking it up and thumbing through it just for the eye candy. 😀 I would definitely consider buying more of this book as it’s just plain awesome and fun! Just to note though, it’s all in Japanese, so to get the full benefit you need to be able to read Japanese.