Dolly Find – Costume Hair!

The restaurant we had dinner at tonight also happened to have a Dollar Tree in the same plaza with it, so after dinner I went in there to have a browse to see what kind of doll things they may have, and lo and behold I found these dress up hair headbands in there. I’m unsure as to what the fiber is as of yet, but I suspect it’s either nylon or kanekalon. The fiber is coarse but very soft, and to be frank, it’s no more coarse than an Iplehouse wig I have. The color on these two is an interesting plum-pink color that can change a little bit depending on lighting, the pic on the left shows more of the true color. Each headband has I would say roughly 2 long hanks of hair on it, which does not include the braid that follows the headband. At a dollar each I figure these will be perfect fodder for my first attempt in trying to weft and make my own custom doll wig. I’m not sure how long these will be in the stores, or how long Dollar Tree keeps stock of things, so if you are interested you’d better get out there and grab some! They also had blonde, brunette and a natural redhead.

Website “Window Shopping” XD – Mandarake

So I guess I’m “re-discovering” Mandarake after hearing someone gush about a new dolly purchase they made through them. Considering I’m always late to the party it seems, I’m sure everyone knows about this place, but if you don’t then keep reading, heck keep reading even if you do know cause it’s fun! 😀

I had already known about Mandarake and in fact I had ordered used manga from them back in the day when I was a more avid collector of manga. Apparently however back then I never bothered with any other sections of their site, and in truth I was not much interested in dolls back then either. Now that I am revisiting I am discovering they have this huge inventory of pre-owned toys and dolls, that I have been happily browsing for about an hour. In my idle browsing I have discovered that they sell a great deal of second hand Pullips, Dals and Blythes among other things. The Pullips and such though I found surprising because for example I saw a hard to find old Namu doll still in his box going for about $80ish, and an old Pullip Street going for a little less. Now I know that many collectors have paid quite a lot more for those dollies before, and even presuming you tack on EMS shipping, I think you’ll still pay less than you would finding those dolls on the secondhand market here in the US. With this said I think it’s possible to get a good dolly deal if you know what you’re looking for and keep track of the going market.

Aside from finding the occasional bargain, Mandarake also appears to have lots of vintage doll goods. There’s plenty of old school Liccas and Jennies to go around as well as a bunch of older dolls I don’t even recognize. Of course Mandarake knows when they have a good vintage item, so there will be no bargains there….then again I don’t know the going rate for a lot of those types of dolls, so I could be wrong. There’s also a ton of other little toys and knick knacks piled onto those pages, for example I just came across an old 50s bunka style doll, and a cute little egg shaped dollhouse chair, all for reasonable prices and I know it’s nothing I can never find around here. So basically if you have time to kill and some spare moo-lah in your wallet you might go have a browse to see what you can see. 😉

Fufufu….to be honest I’m scouting for something in particular, but I’m gonna keep quiet about it so I don’t jinx anything. 😉 Here is the link: http://ekizo.mandarake.co.jp/shop/en/ enjoy! <3

Dolly Find – Itty Bitty Clippies XD

When I was at Target the other day, I happened to notice that they have these teeny-tiny hair clips in now. You can find these in the main hair accessories/brushes aisle, which in Midwestern Target stores are located across from the shampoo. Anyway these are the smallest clips I’ve ever seen there, and they work very well for tiny BJD, and are also cute on MSD sized dolls. I haven’t tried them on any SD sized dolls yet since I only have a boy doll who does not cross-dress. XP Back to business though, these tiny hair clips are made by Goody, and they are part of their girl’s line. You get 18 clips per pack, and they are not very expensive at around $2.50 per pack.

Well, happy shopping!

Dolly/Dollhouse Find.

I saw a tip on Youtube that told of miniature cookie cutters in a packet of mini buttons at Michael’s, so I went out looking for them in the afternoon and ta-da I found them. This set is a Xmas set and is mostly mini buttons, which isn’t a bad thing if you like to make clothes for Brownies, PukiPukis or Lati Whites. The really awesome thing though is the miniature cookie cutters that come with the set that you can see shining silver in the packet. These cookie cutters aside from being good miniature fodder have the potential to be good polymer clay cutters for making your own homemade mini cookies. I haven’t had a chance to try them out yet, but I will note that they are made of plastic which is unfortunate. Anyway when I get a chance to try them out I will be sure to make a follow up posting about it, or I will edit the information here.

Barbie Sweet Roses Fridge – Refurbishment

One of my aunts is an antique dealer and knowing I was trying to put together a playscale dollhouse, she kept an eye out for old dollhouse furniture for me and found some of the Barbie Sweet Roses furniture from 1987. She actually found more than the fridge for me, there is also a kitchen set, a cabinet, sofa, chairs and a few other things, most of which are from the Sweet Roses collection. Anyway I decided to tackle the fridge first as I have been wanting a new fridge since I kinda mucked up the repaint of the hot pink barbie fridge I had.

This Sweet Roses fridge had been in an attic and it has yellowed with age and heat. I know that originally the fridge was white, and inside there is some light pink detailing. The great thing about this Barbie fridge is that it’s quite a bit deeper than the current barbie fridges on the market, which means it can hold more cute re-ment food! But more importantly this Barbie Fridge from the 80s is more to scale than the newer fridges, meaning when Pullip goes to open the top freezer, she will actually be looking into the freezer and not looking at the top of the fridge. This old fridge is also much better put together as well, for example the shelves inside are nice and level and don’t sag like the latest fridge does. XP

So the first stage of refurbishment was to scrub down the fridge which was a little dirty, and to get the old yellowed and torn decals off of it. It took some effort to get the decals off, because the glue was really holding them on there. With the newer fridges, just a 15-30 minute soak in hot and soapy water will pretty much remove the cecals easy, but this one required more elbow grease. In the end after a soak in warm soapy water wasn’t doing the trick, I broke out the isopropyl alcohol and rubbed it down, finally removing the decals.

After removing the decals I noticed that the plastic underneath wasn’t as yellowed as the rest of the plastic, which is unfortunate. You can see it just barely in the pic above. Now this leads to me to decide what to do next. I’ve heard that putting yellowed plastics in a bleach or hydrogen peroxide bath can help remove yellowing, but I’ve also heard that it can make the plastics more brittle. I have also considered a repaint, but after my last failure, I’m not too keen in wrecking yet another fridge. There is also the fact that the way this fridge it put together means I can’t separate parts nearly as easily for repainting either. Whatever I decide to do, I’ll probably continue to post the results here.

For now though I have placed it in my dollhouse kitchen and been messing around with furniture arrangement. My kitchen is really coming along now, especially since my mother found me the brown re-ment china cabinet when she was shopping in Pittsburgh. The dimensions of the Sweet Roses fridge works really well for my kitchen, it fits neatly in the space between the two windows, but I would need to make some sort of cabinet to go in the space between the red re-ment kitchen and the fridge. I would also eventually like to make some red wall cabinets to match and pull the room together more. Still a lot of work to do, but little by little I am getting there. 🙂