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The Christmas Dolly Haul. :D

Well as you can clearly see, I got my first full size Blythe! She is a Nicky Lad, and I am so very pleased with her. I love the stock outfit she comes with, and wow, the quality of these dolls are amazing compared to Pullips and Dals. Blythe really lacks any of those fragile feelings you have about Pullip and co. Of course Blythe lacks the pose-ability that Pullip and Dal have, so I guess it is kind of a trade off. One of the things that surprised me the most though about Blythe is that she really looks downward compared to Pullip and co. Sometimes I think it can add some challenge to photographing her, but it’s not nearly as challenging as her super glossy face! Haha, yeah, as soon as warmer weather hits here, I intend to spray matte her ASAP!

The rest of the dolly related goods I got were for the dollhouse. My wonderful cousin got me a bunch of the Office Lady re-ment sets so I could start accessorizing my desk and bathroom areas. Above are some of the things from one of the sets. The mini clips, stapler, paperclip holder, organization box, and pink calculator are all re-ment mixed in with random barbie and Liv items….ah, though the coconut juice is re-ment as well. The Office Lady sets also have a lot of nice mini coffees too. One latte cup has a nice heart swirl in it, just like you see in adverts and there was one set that even came with a tiny creamer and sugar stick. This is probably my comic geek showing through, but these sets each came with these lovely little illustrated foldouts featuring a different girl using the items in her set. I think I got as much of a kick out of those illustrations as I did the items! XD

Last but not least I finally acquired a toilet for my dollhouse bathroom (no pic yet). It is part of the Babysitter Barbie set and you can actually flush it and it makes a flushing noise. It is really too funny…..HOWEVER….it also make a noise, presumably of the baby sister doll humming while she uses the toilet, and this little flap in the toilet flips over from the blue water scene to a doody scene….yes seriously. That part is a little annoying since you can accidentally set it off by bumping into it, but flushing resets it of course. I’ll have to get some pictures of it when I have time.

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Barbie Chair Repaint

I was finally able to finish my Barbie chair repaint project after the humidity and storms broke a little bit yesterday. I’m not sure what set this chair came from, but it was imprinted with the date 1992. I was surprised to receive this chair in the bag of Barbie goods I got from my aunt, because I have never seen a Napoleon backed Barbie chairs before. I consider this one of my most successful repaints so far, and I think it will be a nice addition to the living room of the dollhouse.

After having a success with repainting, I’ve been considering repainting the sweet roses fridge I have since all of my “whitening” experiments have failed. I started by soaking the fridge in bleach, and after several hours with no change I decided to give up. Next I thought I would try the hydrogen peroxide and oxi-clean bath, but after soaking all day and night with no change in color I gave up and used the solution to clean the bathtub, lol. So after chemical lightening failed me I thought I would test sanding a small corner of the back side of the fridge, which actually lightened the fridge slightly. I decided against sanding to lighten the plastic however, because the amount of work that would be required to sand and buff the entire fridge was out of proportion with the results. I’ve figured out how to remove the pink shelves inside, but I still haven’t figured out how to remove the pink inside door shelves from the door. This presents a problem for repainting, thought I imagine I could just tape over the inside of the doors and not paint them. Anyway I’ll stop my rambling for now and just leave you with my before shot of the barbie chair before the repaint.

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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.

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Dolly Find!

newdesk
I went and did a little thrift store shopping with my cousin when he was out here a couple weeks ago and I found this cute little vintage desk from the 70s! It works great in Edie’s room, and then I was able to move the armoire down into the nearly empty living room, yay. Besides the desk there was some other furniture that came packed together with it, which were a beige armoire and vanity set complete with seat, as well as a small table and chair. These toys were made for a type of doll that was produced back in the early 70s and turned out to be perfect Pullip and Dal sized items because they are a little more oversized than the Barbie furniture and thusly are a better fit due to the added height of the head size on Pullips and Dals.

Anyway I got the whole bag of toys for only $5.00 at my local DAV, so I am going to highly recommend thrift store shopping to search for doll clothes and furniture. The DAV and AmVets are better though than your run of the mill Goodwill because they have more toys and they are packed in plastic bags. Goodwill seems to only have a lot of larger toys. Also it is possible to find bags of dolls/doll clothes as well. I saw a pack of doll/doll clothes there that I was tempted to buy for $3.00, but the bag was heavy on the dolls and had less so much clothes. I think there is a certain amount of luck and timing to get a good find, but when you do it will totally make your day! It totally made my day to find that little desk, which subsequently I researched online and came to find that it is actually worth around $50-$60 these days! (O-O)!!

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Dolly Find – Eraser Miniatures

crazerasers

Ack! I realized that I have been neglecting this blog! Lately I’ve been trying to focus a little more on my comic work, so it’s making my other hobbies suffer. I am hoping though to be able to have a chance this weekend to play around with my dollhouse and the new miniatures I have gotten for it. Then maybe I can post some pics! I also have a DIY Pullip Bed post I need to make at some point as well…..Anyway on with the eraser miniatures though.

I found these “crazerasers” in the Easter section at Target the other day. They are around with all of the Easter Basket toys. Anyhow these are the perfect scale for Pullip & Dal, and they are cheap at only $1.19 a set. Besides the two sets seen here they also had a bathroom item set, some sports sets and another food set that I have forgotten about. Now as cute as these are there are a couple drawbacks, but I think the drawbacks can be forgiven for the cheap price. Drawback one is that the little separate pieces, like the sausages in the fry pan, actually have a little nub underneath them which plugs into a hole in the skillet. If you, like me, do not want the nub, you could just carefully carve it off with a Xacto blade since they are erasers. The other drawback is that they are going to need some trimming, as some pieces will have a little fringe at their seam edges from the molds. Again though that is easy to take care of with an Xacto blade.