Tiny Tuesday - CPK Little Sprouts

                                                                       

 I picked one of these up at Toys R Us and I'm kind of impressed. For some reason, I expected these to be bigger than they are. In real life they're about an inch high. So, it is quite impressive how much they look like Cabbage Patch Kids! It's immediately obvious what she's meant to be, which I think is pretty cool for something this small.

  According to the list that came with her, this girl is named Joelle Indie. But with the high, blonde ponytail and big smile, she reminds me of Jojo Siwa, so I'm calling her Jojo.

  I didn't take a lot of photos because she doesn't really do much. Her arms are fixed. Her head turns but not very far or well, because her hair gets in the way. Her legs move but not independently because they're attatched to each other. You can, rip her in half, accidentally of course, but it shows her construction.

AND she's the perfect size to be a Cabbage Patch Kid for a Kelly doll! (Excuse how dusty the Kelly is, she's the only one I could find that had clothes on!)

 I DO wish there had been more painted details. Her teeth and the flower on the front of her outfit could easily be picked out with paint. But that not surprising given how small she is. And the quality of the paintwork she does have is really good, not sloppy like it often is on tiny toys. If I went to Toys R Us more often, I'd probably have a bunch of these. Luckily, nobody else seems to sell them.

The Great Azone Headache.

 I have always wanted an Azone Pure Neemo doll. They're not so expensive as to be completely unaffordable and they're very cute. But I never knew how to get one. Azone themselves only sell within Japan. Other online shops do sell them but their pre-orders usually sell out in minutes. You can buy them on Ebay but the prices there are completely unreasonable. And then I stumbled across Mandarake.

  If you haven't heard of Mandarake, they're a chain of shops in Japan that sell second hand (mostly) collectables. Even better, they have an online shop that ships internationally. And they generally have Azone dolls. The prices are a bit all over the place. Some things are way more expensive than they were originally. Some things are way cheaper than they were originally. But almost all of their prices are a lot more reasonable than Ebay.

 Possibly my favourite thing about Mandarake, and machine translated websites in general, is the translation mistakes. One line of Pure Neemo dolls is called Ex-Cute, except it never translates as that. Ex translates as basically any word starting with E. Effort, ecstacy, example, except, extreme. And frequently Cute is replaced with a random C word as well. So far my favourite mistranslation is when Ex-Cute was written as Escort Crouton! (This isn't specific to Mandarake. It happens on Hobby Link Japan, Hobby Search Japan, Ami Ami, and even Azone's own website.)

 I got to thinking. Pure Neemo dolls, I decided would be a lot more fun to buy if you had characters in mind for them. Since a lot of their dolls are based on anime and manga characters the work is kind of already done for you there. But I'm more difficult than that. I wanted mine to represent my own characters. I've spent most of my life making up characters and stories for them. Browsing through the dolls and thinking about this, I realised that my characters usually fell into a few archetypes and I decided to make up new characters, which are really just composites of old characters to be represented by these dolls.

  I've already ordered one. If I get money for Christmas, I plan on combining that with my dolly savings to buy two more. The one I've ordered is Little Witch of the Snow Railli (or Rilei, or Riley, or Raili, or Reili - clearly it sounds like Reilly and the spelling isn't important.) She's my Ghost Girl. Currently I'm seesawing between Marcella and Celestine for her name. The next two I want are to be a little Goth Girl and a little Bubbly Girl. Their names will be Tristessa and Piccolina. (In case you're concerned, I wouldn't name an actual human something like that. But since these dolls are so cartoonish, I feel I can be quite silly with their names. I plan on eventually naming one Butterscotch McMustardface.)

 This is pretty much where the problems started. Pure Neemos come in a variety of sizes. And I want Piccolina and Tristessa to be the same size. But Mandarake don't list the sizes of their dolls and because they're selling them secondary market, they're generally from a variety of years. I decided I wanted these two girls to be small or medium. I researched what doll's clothes fit small and medium Pure Neemos. I made lists of which dolls would be good fits for the characters almost like I was casting a movie or something. I felt very confident and very clever and like I was an expert.

 And then something happened. I stumbled across several different pieces of information that changed everything. You see Pure Neemo's have had different bodies over the years. Advance, Flexion, Full Flection. And it seems they haven't all been the same size. There's also just been a new body released (some places call it the Emotion body, some places call it Pure Neemo 2) which doesn't fit the previous body's clothes. One source said that after 2013 what was originally considered a small, was relabelled as a medium. One source said the sizes changed again before that. Another source said the sizes have changed again since then. Another source claimed the sizes have never changed and people are just getting confused.

 At this point, I was so confused (and annoyed that all my research was useless since I didn't know which sizes the sizes I'd read about referred to) I felt like I was having a stroke. I had a brilliant idea. Look up the different sizes in doll shops and see what heights they list for the dolls, if they list heights at all. I was so hopeful. I was sure this would fix everything in my brain. It did not. Yes, some shops do list the dolls heights. But it seems when deciding their heights they don't do anything silly like measure them with a ruler. Oh no. Instead, it seems, they hand them to whoever is closest, that person looks at it and says "Ah, I'd say that's about 25 centimetres." and that number is what they put on the website. At least that's my theory since I saw five different dolls with the same body type, from the same year, all in different sizes all listed as 25cm, and I also saw the small body (in the same body type) variously listed as 23, 24, 25, 26 and 27 centimetres!

 I have never been so confused in my life. It's possible that dolls released as a small prior to 2013 would have been labelled medium after that date. It's possible that dolls released as a small on the flexion body are the same size as the medium full-flexion body. It's possible that that information only applies to certain special release dolls. It's possible that the sizes have changed many more times than that. It's possible that absolutely no size change has ever happened. But right now - I have a migraine from thinking about it and can only blindly hope that if worst comes to worst, I can buy Piccolina and Tristessa replacement bodies that are the same size and switch their heads around.

 It probably would've been easier to just magic up more money (it would require magic), go to Japan, and compare them myself.

Tiny Tuesday

I had to pack away the Shopkins and Lol Surprise doll AND Twosies today because the Giant Baby kept doing dangerous things to get to them and steal them. In betwern weeping copiously and muttering about how this does NOT mean I'm growing up, I took this picture of Lol Surprise accessories.

It's been a long time. . .

  The last two and a half months have been tough. Continuing staffing problems meant I spent eight weeks working twice as many shifts as usual, we all got sick with various things and everything has just been crazy busy. I thought I'd still get time to write here, but whenever I had a quiet moment, I just collapsed into a puddle.
  Of course it did not help that the Giant Husband tends to forget everything he's told as soon as he hears it. (He's not horrible, just thoughtless sometimes.) Which meant I spent a lot of that time feeling like I was taking care of everything at home or like I was the only adult in the house. But we all managed to survive.
  I'm back to working my usual amount but for the time being all of my shifts are when the Giant Baby is at daycare, so I'm still not getting any time to myself. And when I do, mostly stolen from sleep time right now, I'm working on my costume for my work Christmas party.

  We finally got the Giant Baby a big boy bed. I liked his cot because he couldn't get out of it but the side of it was only up to his crotch and he was nearly as long as it. But I really like his bed. Mostly because it means I'm not having to lift close to twenty kilos over the side of a cot. And he hasn't actually realised that he can get out of it by himself yet. On the downside, while he was in the cot he always wore sleep bags. They're convenient and they meant he couldn't kick the blankets off or lift his legs high enough to climb out. Now he's in a bed, blankets are safer. He's less likely to hurt himself falling or climbing out of bed if he has all his limbs. Unfortunately he hates blankets apparently, and refuses to use them which meant we had to relearn how to dress him for bed if we wanted him to be warm enough.

  The next Giant Baby project (besides continuing to try to trick him into either bloody talking or eating his dinner) is toilet training. Don't worry, I'm well aware that toilet training is both boring and disgusting, so I won't be writing about that here. But if all my pictures start looking rushed and damp, they probably are.

  I've had a few issues with the LOL Surprise dolls lately. Dolls coming with only one shoe, or the wrong outfit and accessories, or accessories that have been caught in the bag seal so they're melted and wrecked. The first two I actually contacted the Australian importer about. I would like to say they were great but they weren't particularly. Yes. They mailed me replacement parts but they also said that "due to the secret surprise element, the production process of these dolls leaves no room for error and mistakes like these simply don't happen." Which is a giant load of bulldust. If these mistakes simply didn't happen MGA wouldn't have set up a dedicated email address to deal with exactly that issue. Seriously, that exists, but it only services the US. But I'vealso found the failure rate to be roughly fifty per cent! One doll with something missing or broken could be a fluke, two could be bad luck. But when it's three and then four, in a month, that's a pattern. That's a production issue. I also can't help but wonder how many kids out there have gotten one of these with a missing shoe or something and their parents have said either "Oh well. Don't worry about it." Or "Don't be silly. They're so small, you probably lost it." But for the price that they are, I expect better. Especially since the fancy pantsy packaging means you're ostensibly paying twelve bucks for what is at best a seven dollar toy.

 I hope I can make more of an effort to write more now that crazy time seems to be over. We'll see. Meanwhile, if anyone reading this knows of any other doll blogs that might be worth reading, could you please leave a comment so I can have a look? A lot of the ones I used to read don't post very often anymore and I need my dolly fix! 

Playing with dolls

My Wellie Wishers doll arrived last week and she is very, very cute. I like her even more in person. The only disappointment is her pigtails. One is a perfect sausage curl. The other is a curly mess. They're also uneven. At this point I'm on the fence about whether to try to fix the wonky one, or just take them out. In the end, I'll probably decide the ringlets are too much effort and take them down. Right now I haven't fixed them or taken them down.

 Since I'm home sick today, I decided to play around with a few of my similar sized dolls and see who fits what. First everyone tried on Willa's outfit. (I'm thinking of changing her name to Willow. Willa sounds weird to me, like it's supposed to be something else but I'm mispronouncing it or something. I know I'm not but it just sounds wrong to me.)

 Anna looks almost painfully cute in this. (Her hair's a tiny bit messy because the Giant Baby is a little confused about who she belongs to.) The clothes fit well, but I couldn't get her feet into Willa's boots.

  Molly looks cute too. The clothes are a little loose on her but not badly so. The fit is a little weird but I think that's mostly because of the weird shape of Molly's shoulder area. The boots fit her too, but they were so loose around her legs that they looked ridiculous.

  I really like they way Tabitha looks in this! But in all fairness, I like the way Tabitha looks in most things. The clothes fit her well, but her feet were too long for Willa's boots.

I actually really like Willa's outfit! And it looks like it's going to be one of those outfits that more or less fits and looks good on most dolls.

 Next, just for fun, I tried Anna's dress on everyone. (But not her cloak because it's a glitter-shedding monstrosity.)

 It's a little tight across Willa's bust but fits her as well as it fits Anna. (It's quite tight on Anna's waist.) Even Anna's boots fit. Willa makes a pretty cute Anna.

 I was surprised by how tight this dress was on Molly! I kept thinking of her as the thinnest doll here (especially after everyone tried Willa's outfit on) but this dress was probably tighter on her than anyone else. The side seams on the bodice were straining. I'm putting this down to Molly's different body shape, or witchcraft, or something.

 This fit Tabitha weirdly. The Chrysalis dolls are quite sway backed and the waistline of Anna's dress hit pretty much exactly where Tabitha's tummy sticks out the most. Consequently it took a couple of tries to find a pose that didn't make her look pregnant.

Next everybody tried on Molly's dress.

Willa looks quite cute but also a little boring in this. Also, I could only get the bottom press stud to do up, it was too tight across the chest and shoulders and quite loose at the waist.

On the other hand it was far too big for Anna. But a bit tight around the arms.

I really, really like this dress on Rowan. It doesn't fit perfectly, but I don't really care. At the moment this is her dress. It looks very Madman era on her, to me. It reminds me of illustrations in early 1960's kids' books.

 Next I tried Rowan's original outfit on Molly and Willa. That was cheating a little bit. Because I know it's the most forgiving outfit of all the ones that came on my 14 inch Chrysalis dolls. The dress is stretchy and the jacket has loose sleeves, so it fits almost everyone.

 It fits Willa quite well, except the sleeves are too long. But I don't think it suits her. It's too grown up, or too realistic or something. The style of the outfit, doesn't suit the style of the doll.

  Molly looks super cute though. Even though she's wearing Rowan's boots, they're way too big for her. To me, in this, she looks like a child wearing one of those obscenely expensive designer fashion brands.

  I also tried Willa in Molly's flower girl dress and it's pretty cute on her. It would probably look better if I had shoes that fit her though.

 And I tried the shirred, poppy sundress on Willa. Which probably shouldn't need to be called "trying on". The design of that sundress means it's really forgiving about who it fits.

 I kind of wish I'd had some red ribbons or poppies or something to put in her hair.

Lastly, on a whim, I tried another one of my Helen Kish Chrysalis dresses on Molly, because I thought it would suit her. It did.

  I'm going to have to skip my Word of the Month project for September. We're all sick here. But on top of that one of the girls that I work with is going on holidays and another one just quit, so I'm pretty much going to be living at work for the next few weeks, which sounds like so much fun, that I'm already growing a stomach ulcer in protest. But I will be back at that next month, and I am still working on getting those other patterns on here in the meantime.

Word of the month wrap up. Sundress pictures.

 I now have an armload of dolly sundresses! I had to make one. I ended up making three shirred sundresses, four standard sundresses and four party dresses from the standard sundress pattern! Grand total of ELEVEN dresses! (One was for my 18 inch doll and the pictures of her did NOT turn out so will need to be reshot.)

The dress that started it all. . .

  I'm quite happy with how this one turned out. I couldn't draw up the shirring as tightly as I would have liked to because 1. The printable fabric I used can run when wet so I wasn't brave enough to try steam blasting it with the iron; and 2. The elastic I used is extremely cheap and nasty and melts when ironed. After I'd made all the dresses I discovered that you can draw the shirring up more by just pulling on the ends of the elastic but it was too late by then.

I used pretty much the same design to make this dress for Molly, my Maru Mini Pal. . .

 I didn't realise until after I'd made it that Molly is kind of weirdly shaped in the shoulder area. Her shoulders are more the shape of a bisque doll's shoulder-plate than human shoulders. And so a design this strappy makes her shoulders look very slopey and in general makes her look lopsided and awkward.

  But the same dress also fits my Disney toddlers. . .

Although if I was making this for this doll, I would probably make it a little shorter.
AND it also fits my 14 inch Kish Chrysalis dolls. . .

This is Tabitha, a re-wigged Piper, and I LOVE this dress on her. This combination of doll and dress is definitely my favourite from this project!

  Then there are the procrastination dresses that I designed and sewed while I was putting off learning to do shirring. I made patterns, then had fun designing dresses. I worked with four doll sizes. My 14 inch Kish Chrysalis dolls, my 12 inch Kish Chrysalis dolls, my Maru Mini Pal, and my Wilde Imagination Patience dolls. Each size got a sundress and a party dress. Although in all honesty there were only two sizes because the bigger Helen Kish dolls are the same size as Maru, and the smaller Helen Kish dolls are the same size as Patience, other than a few tweaks of skirt and shoulder strap lengths.

  I really like this dress I made for the 12 inch Chrysalis girls. . .

 Originally I was going to adapt the same design for the 14 inch girls (I wish I had) but instead they got this. . .

Which I don't hate but it's really just not my style either.

 Molly got a cute little flower themed dress. . .

Which looks a lot better on her than the shirred one, I think it's the wider shoulder straps.
And it also looks alright on Ariel. . .

  And I discovered that Patience is a LOT of fun to design for. Because she has a fairly cartoonish face, I feel I can be a bit silly when designing for her and it's o'kay because she can get away with it! Nevertheless her sundress is fairly sweet and restrained. . .

I totally designed that as an excuse to use that fabric!

 While I was still planning those, I saw a flower girl dress in a shop window and thought to myself it looked like it could be made from the same pattern. So I made this for Molly. . .

 Then, of course, I had to make party dresses for the other dolls!

 My bigger Kish dolls got this. . .

This one didn't turn out how I expected and I'm not completely happy with it. But I do have an idea that it made be salvageable with a belt, but I forgot about that when I was taking the pictures and right now (while I don't love it) I'm accepting it as it is. It reminds me of the sort of dresses that people put on their daughters before sending them to a portrait session involving an ornate, vintage tea table that is, for no obvious reason, in the middle of an orchard or wheat field. (And of course all the photos must be printed in sepia tone or some other artistically faded effect.)

  My smaller Kish dolls got this dress which is definitely more fun. . .

 It had been meant to be rainbow coloured. Each tier a completely different colour. But I couldn't find the meshy gauzey stuff in four colours that worked together. It would have had to be three pastel and a fluorescent, or three brights and a pastel, and similar combinations which wouldn't have worked. So I compromised with all pink.

 I had most fun designing Patience's dress. It is definitely inspired by some of the dresses worn by various dolls based on the Tiana character from Princess and the Frog. And whilst Alice's colouring could not be more different to Tiana's, it still looks pretty cute on her. . .

Although I really probably should have styled her hair before I took these pictures.

And of course while I was taking the pictures for this post, I had to take some extra, just pretty pictures. . .

I HAD to share those two pictures of Molly, mostly because I spent an obscene amount of time editing all her flyaway hairs out of the pictures! I have discovered that I do not like her hair. It looks pretty and silky. It feels pretty and silky. But there's a curve to it, that won't go away, that's completely out of scale; and it gets flyaways like you wouldn't believe.

Even if  I don't like the dress, I do like this picture of Amarie. It reminds me of the old promotional photos for Heloise's dolls.

I don't know how I quite got this lighting in the next picture. . .

But I like it.

And of course I had to get a picture of the two littlies in their sundresses together. . .

Although Arden doesn't look like she's enjoying herself anywhere near as much as Lydia!

And then, because I loved her in that dress, I got some more pictures of Tabitha in the poppy sundress. . .

I also set up a "beach" and took some themed pictures. Unfortunately most of those are the photos that did not turn out right and no matter what I did, I couldn't fix the colour and contrast in them but here are the few that I do have. . .

Gwendolen takes a look at Adriel's sketch

Eloise waits for the other girls to come and play horseshoes with her

But they're too busy collecting shells, and complaining about all the broken ones

Arden and Lydia have decided to try to dig through to China!

But it didn't take long for them to get tired out and give up!

I still plan on making PDFs of the patterns to put on the blog but, I haven't gotten around to it yet. It's probably going to be another week depending on how much real life insists on intruding. Also I will be adding "How to make a doll's shirred sundress in any size", so more to come soon!

So much to talk about!

 I've been having a massively dolly few weeks. I've ordered a Wellie Wishers doll and she should arrive soon. I can't wait to play around with her and she'll probably turn up here at some point.
  I finally went over to the dark side and bought an 18 inch doll which is something I've been thinking about for a while but it took my ages to decide on which one. I want to talk about that, I also want to get another one soon.
  I got a chance yesterday to take photos of my dolls in the sundresses I made. I'm not 100% happy with the pictures though. My camera tends to oversaturate reds and brighter colours. So half the photos look (to me) annoyingly high contrast. The others (that aren't brightly coloured) look washed out but I'm not sure if that's just by comparison to the others. I'm going to have another look tomorrow and see if I was just being insane when I looked at them last night and either post them tomorrow or reshoot and post them later.
  I also spent a gift voucher I won at work on Our Generation accessories. I finally got to play with these yesterday and discovered that (as I suspected) most of the items are beautifully in scale with my 14 inch dolls. Weirdly there seem to be more things that are too small for them than too big!
  And while I was taking photos, I finally took the opportunity to play with my bjds and find out if any of the dolls clothes I have fit them. I'd just discovered that my 14 inch Kish Chrysalis dolls, my Maru mini pal and Disney princess toddler dolls (the ones with the freaky reflections eyes) could all share clothes. I've read that Wellie Wishers are the same size as the Disney princesses, so hopefully they can join in too. Unfortunately it turns out that my two bjds (a Dollmore Zihu and an Iplehouse kid) don't fit any of the clothes I have. They're too thin for the 14 inch doll clothes. They're too tall (and probably too fat, I didn't check) for the twelve inch Kish doll clothes. And Patience's clothes are far too tight and won't even button. But I still took some photos of them, because that's really what I bought them for and I've never gotten around to it. So here's Claudia, my Zihu, wearing a Chrysalis dress that's been cinched in with a clothespeg and hopefully I'll get time to write more soon.

Tiny Tuesday - Gift 'Ems by Jakks Pacific

 Gift 'Ems are one of those toys I'd seen online and liked the concept of but also had kind of assumed would never show up in Australian shops. And then, when I'd forgotten about them, I found them at ToysRUs on the weekend!

  These are another blind box toy that looks like a wrapped present with a little figurine inside. The box has a lid that can be removed and hinged panels that fold out that make a little display for the figure inside.

 The figures are themed by countries, then further borken down into day, night and beach themes. Mine is from Hanoi in Vietnam, from the regular day line. The back of the display box has pictures of the city the figure is from.

 The figures are very simplistic. Their only articulation is that their heads sit on a ball joint. They have a hole in their feet that fits over a peg in the display base to hold them in place.

I love the concept of these. But I'm not blown away by the execution. The whole thing is . . . kind of boring. I kind of wish there was something more to it. Maybe little cards that explained something about the featured city. Or have the backdrops look like a room of some kind and include some kind of accessory. Or just make the doll somehow slightly interesting. I love the little gift that folds out into a display but I really feel it has the potential to be more and really for seven dollars, this was not worth it.