What the hell, Mattel?

 Seriously Mattel, are you ok? Is everything ok at home? Have you maybe been dabbling in the party scene and maybe popping some pills? I'm concerned right now.
  I know Barbie isn't super popular at the moment, but you're kind of phoning her in at the moment aren't you? Yes, she got new bodies, which is great for you because that means parents are going to have to buy three times the amount of clothes for her. And let's be honest, her clothes are pretty uninspired at the moment. Is that what you're getting the work experience kids to do? Or are you just doing it on your lunch break? Because frankly you can get Barbie clothes of the same quality and with better design in no name packages from bargain stores. The Fashion Fever dolls ten years ago were amazing. I'll bet if you added that level of detail and design to her outfits now, she might not soar again, but she'd do better. Your mainline dolls right now are of cheaper construction and more poorly designed than your supermarket dolls were ten years ago. How is that not a problem?
  And American Girl. I'm not into American Girl. Not being American, I've never even seen one in real life, but I've seen the website and I don't know what to say. You had a lovely line of sweet, ridiculously over-priced, dolls with historically accurate costumes and you decided to "update" them. Now their clothes are definitely not as historically accurate, they've been popified and cartoonified and while stile being loosely historical you've clearly decided that children have no concept of history and that you have to semi-modernise their outfits to make them "accessible to today's kids" or some such piffle. While you haven't quite succeeded in making them cheap and tacky, you're certainly on your way and surely you're losing the spirit of the entire line.
  And Monster High. Your "revamp". No, it's not a revamp. All you've done is simplify the face-paint and replace any subtle colour in your palette with eye meltingly bright ones, and replace well thought out fashion options with boring dresses made from crazy digital prints. (I say crazy because I'm being polite, they're actually hideous.)
 And Ever After High. I'm not going to say anything about the new faces because I think you can guess I don't like them but exactly how many drugs were you taking on the day you approved THIS? A playset that's a chamber you insert a doll (or anything small enough to fit) in, the playset then sprays the doll with glue and then glitter. WHAT!? Who is going to buy that? No parent is stupid enough to want that in their house and no kid has enough money to buy it. Granted there are people I hate enough that I would happily plant that in their homes, but anyone I hate that much - I'm not buying their kids gifts.

Seriously Mattel, go to rehab, see a shrink, take a gap year, talk to someone - plenty of people love you and would be willing to help. But whatever it is, you need help.

Update - Back to work!

So all my doll stuff was put on hold while I made ridiculously elaborate costumes for a party the Giant Husband and I went to. Thankfully that's over and done with now. The party was fun and we won a holiday in Queensland for our costumes but it was a LOT of work.
I cheated in the costumes a little bit. Instead of ruffs, we had frills. I made paned sleeves for the Giant Husband's shirt but having done that I flat out refused to make the legs of his pants with panes as I had originally intended. I started making a bum roll to hold out my skirts properly but in the end decided it would be easier to just tie a breast feeding pillow around my waist.
 If you're curious I have pictures. I've blanked out the Giant Husband's face at his request and yes, I am aware I'm making a stupid face in my picture but unfortunately it's the only picture I have of my costume. And yes, I am aware it makes me look roughly the size and shape of a sofa but I'm ok with that.

Work and costumes and all sorts of nonsense. . .

 All of my doll projects are on hold again. Yep. I'm a horrible negligent doll-owner.
 The damaged Baby So Beautiful doll finally has her new wig and face. Her wig isn't quite what I wanted but it was close and available so it will do. I may restyle it though. Now she's sitting on my printer, wrapped in a cloth nappy - to keep her clean; waiting for clothes. I still don't know what I'm doing about her clothes.
 The brunette Baby So Beautiful is similarly sitting wrapped in a cloth nappy in the bathroom, waiting to be redressed and put back on the shelf. This is mostly because she's in a corner of the bathroom that's out of the way. I keep forgetting she's there and when I remember, I'm already doing something else, so I make a mental note to fix her up later, and promptly forget she's there again.
 Not Glinda's dress is in a zip lock bag on a shelf in our loungeroom. Still not finished. Nearly finished, though. Will eventually be finished.

 Everything was put on hold because a month ago the Giant Husband and I received an invitation to a costume party for the end of November. I (stupidly) suggested I make us costumes. Fantastic Elizabethan costumes. The Giant Husband (even more stupidly) said "You're not going to be able to do that." He says he was talking about time constraints. Doesn't matter, because the second he said that, I had to make them even if it kills us all, because that's how my brain works. Except, since then, I've been working twice as much as usual which has left not much time for sewing. Now there's a month to go and I'm ridiculously behind and about to have a nervous breakdown over the whole project.

 We have to go as famous people from history or now. I'm going to be Elizabeth I. He's going to be Francis Drake. His costume is based on a portrait of Drake. (Not started yet, though, except making the pattern.) Mine isn't going to be historically accurate. It's not based on a particular picture or anything. My starting point was actually one of the dresses worn by Miranda Richardson when she played Elizabeth I in Blackadder. But I've made some changes mostly based on what materials are available and what I'm going to have time and skill to actually do. There's no standing ruff because I have no idea how to do that, won't have time and think it looks incredibly uncomfortable. The fabric won't be perfect - we couldn't afford for me to buy the sort of satin brocade I really would have liked so I'm using tapestry upholstery fabric. And when I drafted the pattern, I did something weird with the stomacher so it's not quite a stomacher anymore. Seemed like a good idea at the time but not sure how I'll feel about it when the dress is finished.

Since I started making this dress I keep thinking back to a princess dress my mum made for me to wear to a costume party when I was twenty. I bought the fabric, two months in advance but didn't own a sewing machine. I kept considering hand-sewing it but my mother kept talking me out of it. "Don't worry." she'd say, "Don't hand-sew it. I'll bring my sewing machine around tomorrow and help you." Except she was always too busy to actually show up. Eventually she came on the day of the party, made the dress herself in about an hour and a half and then breezed off again. In the end, I was grateful that she'd made it but I really wished I'd hand-sewn it because Mum had made it how she wanted it to look, not how I wanted it to look. And because it was made in a hurry, almost everything we'd planned was left off and frankly it fitted fairly terribly. That dress, I've decided is the bar for this costume. I know this dress may not turn out fantastic or exactly how I want but as long as it turns out better than that dress, I'll be happy. At the end of the day, I suspect it will either turn out amazing or I'm going to look like a couch.

The old princess dress. If not a couch, I could have definitely passed as a footstool.

Shibajuku Girls Namika

Shibajuku Girl Namika's big eyed stare.

  Is it weird that I bought this doll even though I didn't like it? . . . I didn't dislike it. Mostly I was just curious and wanted to know more. When these dolls started appearing in Australian stores earlier this year, I didn't pay too much attention. I dismissed them as a new Cutie Pop doll but over time their chalk pale faces started to haunt me. I was intrigued and had to have a look at one.

  When I went to buy mine, the only two in stock were Namika and Shizuka. Shizuka nearly won the day because she has one blue eye and one green eye but her white and powder pink outfit seemed washed out to me, I preferred Namika's school outfit and odd socks. Plus Namika has pigtails, so it wasn't really a hard decision.

Artwork of the dolls from the back of Namika's box.

  Shibajuku Girls are inspired by Harajuku fashion, they even have a section on their website that explains what that's all about. To me this explains their bizarre pallor to an extent and their almost anime style eyes and features. The strange matte pallor, I'm guessing, is supposed to resemble a resin ball-jointed doll. And their facial features are almost anime style, but weirdly not. And this is the problem I have with these dolls. Everything about them is almost and not quite which means even though I'm a relatively articulate person, I find it almost impossible to talk about them, or describe them, or even decide what I think of them.

  One thing I can explain quite clearly is that I think they've missed the mark on the Harajuku thing. Yes most of the characters have brightly coloured hair (I'm disappointed that Shizuka's is blonde with pink streaks in real life, and not the ombre it is on the box illustration, though) but they're fashions aren't "wild". They're quirky but not close to Harajuku. To me, these outfits look more like what an Australian woman that admired Harajuku fashion but was too self-conscious to actually wear it, would wear. Yoko and Koe aren't wild or crazy at all. And Suki looks like a hipster who sells jewellery she's made out of vintage buttons at farmer's markets and she probably made that dress from vintage pillowcases while sipping a gluten free, all-organic, soy mocha frappe. This bugs me because they're dolls! You don't have to be coy, or self-conscious, or shy about what you dress them in, because they're dolls. They don't care. Be as wacky and wild and crazy as you like. Your average six year old when allowed to dress itself, is dressed more creatively than this! They could have so much fun with this, creating crazy, fun outfits for them, I'm pretty sure I could entertain myself for about six weeks designing wild and crazy clothes for them and they'd all be better than these designs, which quite frankly are a tad boring. I really hope if these dolls continue, they have some more interesting clothes in future.

  On the Shibajuku website there are little bios of the characters. Koe loves animals - a LOT; Namika loves learning - it starts by saying all learning but the rest of the bio focuses on science so I'm thinking Namika likes science; Suki loves colours and food and is possibly on drugs (the bio doesn't say that explicitly, I'm reading between the lines); Yoko loves reading, and writing, and music and spooky stuff and possibly would've been goth or emo if the designers weren't too self-conscious to do that. And Shizuka of the odd-coloured eyes loves everything that hasn't already been mentioned - she's shy but likes decorating herself (?), kittens, fashion, music and being the most under-developed character in the line.

 I always feel weird about these bios for doll lines. They're either an annoying list of stereotypes "Namika likes learning, no wait - Science!" Or completely random "Shizuka likes kittens and pretty things and playing drums and all the other things I didn't manage to fit in the other bios!" Why not have someone that likes learning but for once not have maths or science be their pet subject? Like maybe history or geography. And why does the almost goth/emo girl always like writing or art? Why not gardening or cooking or competitive swimming? Why not go with something different for a change? They're always either the same old things or completely without cohesion at all.

  The big selling points of these dolls are supposed to be the hair accessories they come with that kids can share with the dolls. Each doll comes with four. I'm not big on sparkly hair accessories to begin with so I wasn't overly impressed by these but I can see how they'd appeal to a six year old girl. Unfortunately they're not particularly well made and even though they'd hardly been handled, two of them were damaged within two hours of unboxing the doll. Although realistically, most little girls will have lost them within two hours of opening the package so perhaps this isn't a massive issue anyway.

Dang it! Tiny glittery things falling off all over my house!

  Anyway here's Namika in her box.

Help! I'm trapped in a cardboard tomb!

And out of it.

 I spent a while inspecting this doll, trying to decide what I thought about her. Her skintone is strange. She's very pale but it's not a luminous Apple White type pale. It's a matte pasty "I live in my parent's basement" kind of pale. Her eyes have an anime sort of style to them, but then the irises are shaded like they're trying to make the anime style realistic which comes off a little weird. She has real eyelashes but the shape of her eyes makes it hard to tell where her upper eyelid starts and finishes, and they look like they're not quite in the right place. Also such fine eyelashes clash a little bit with the bold, chunky, cartoonish facial screening. I don't mind the glitter eyeshadow, but I think that the glitter they've used is too big to be in scale with the doll.

Giant confusing eye!

Her facial sculpting too is almost anime but then there's a little too much detail in the nose in particular to actually come across as anime in person. And what's with the purple lips? Did she drown?  And most perplexing of all (to me at least) her hands and feet are freakishly tiny!

There's NO chance she's standing on her own with these!

  There's also a seam down her lower leg from her knee to her big toe which on my doll's left leg in particular is not as closed as I would like it to be, and makes me wonder if it's going to open and possibly fall apart over time.
  Her jointing is as impressive as it is disappointing. Her head has no up or down movement, it only turns, and the further it turns, the further upward her face points. This is irritating. Her shoulders, hips, elbows, wrists and knees all have full rotational movement though, and move nicely, which is excellent. But her ankles have no joint at all which is annoying. And since she can't stand on her own, doesn't come with a stand and doesn't fit other doll's stands particularly well, how useful is posability to her?

  Her clothes are nice, if a little boring and cliched, and I definitely like the socks. Everything seems to be fairly well made although the woven tie on her blouse is not sewn in place or hemmed which makes me wonder how it would hold up to ordinary play. And the skirt, while it's clearly supposed to represent a pleated skirt, isn't pleated and tends to stick out weirdly. But the strangest part of her outfit is this . . .

What horrific dolly orphanage did these underpants come from? I despise painted on or moulded on clothing on dolls, but I would have preferred painted on underwear to these. These should be the underwear she hides in the back of the drawer for emergencies and never ever wears.

  But my big question was, since she's thirteen inches tall, can she share clothes with other dolls? The answer is a resounding maybe. I couldn't find any shoes amongst my junk to fit her. Her feet are so thin and brittle feeling that I was only willing to try flexible shoes on her and her feet are flat which rules out most Barbie shoes right away. But clothes were a different story.
  Her proportions are actually quite different to most other dolls but I decided to swap some around for fun.

  I started with Barbie and they swapped fairly well. Barbie's bust made Namika's top sit weirdly and the skirt was almost indecently short. And Namika's socks did NOT want to go over Barbie's legs. But Namika looked kind of cute in the Barbie dress, even though it is a little longer and looser on her than it is on Barbie.

It doesn't look like they like each other very much.

  Next up was Monster High and Ever After High. I only have one standard size doll from each line and the seventeen inch dolls' clothes were clearly not going to fit. Nor did the standard ones. Namika couldn't even get her hands through Frankie's sleeves and Darling Charming's dress came nowhere near being big enough around Namika's torso. They both got to try on Namika's outfit though. But there was no way her shoes were fitting them.

 I think Frankie looks kind of cute like this.

But I don't think Darling is a uniform kind of girl.

  Next I tried a clothes swap with Moxie Teenz Tristen. Tristen's top fit Namika a lot better than I would have expected but her skirt was way too lose. And Tristen frankly looked like a stripper in Namika's clothes.

  Next I tried a swap with a Mary Kate and Ashley doll, I think they have one of the Skipper bodies but I'm not one hundred per cent sure. This was a pretty good fit but also weird. Mary Kate or Ashley's clothes looked way too mature for Namika and Mary Kate or Ashley's face looked too adult for Namika's outfit.

  Then I tried a swap I really didn't think would work, I was just messing around by this point. Moxie Girlz and Namika. And the fit was surprisingly good! And the proportions of each dolls outfit actually suited the other which was nice.

Lastly I tried Namika's outfit on a doll that's either a Wee Three Friends doll or a Star Team Stacie - they're the same doll and I have boxes of them. Unfortunately, their clothes were accidentally thrown away years ago, so I didn't have anything of theirs for Namika to try on. Which is upsetting since Namika's clothes were such a good fit on Stacie that I'm pretty sure they'd fit well the other way around too.

  So after all this what do I think of Namika? In all honesty, I'm still as confused as hell. If I had to describe Namika in one word, that word would be inconsistent. She's anime,but she's not. She's posable but you can't pose her because she can't stand up. Her clothes are fairly well made, except for her underpants which are an abomination. They're touted as having Harajuku style but if they do it's an ultra-conservative westernised version. For every good point, there's a bad point. It's almost as though someone had a vague idea for these dolls and they got rushed into production before anyone was clear about what they were making. 

  Having said that Namika has grown on me. I think she's sweet. She's cute and as long as I don't look at her too closely, I like her. She's going to sit beside my computer as a mascot until I get tired of her. But I have no interest in buying another one. I think there's still hope for this line of dolls. Give them chunkier shoes so they can stand up and clothes that are actually bright and colourful, wild and crazy and you could actually have a really cool doll. But mostly, I think Hunter Toys needs to actually decide what kind of doll these dolls are before they're going to go anywhere.

A Little Light Rambling

  I haven't gotten much of anything done lately. The Giant Baby and I took turns having a bad cold. Then it was time to try to wean him off the antacids he's been on his entire life. We're supposed to try this every three months to see if he's grown out of reflux. He hasn't. Not only has he not grown out of it but the experience was so harrowing that right now as far as I'm concerned, he can take the antacids forever. Then, just as he was starting to seem more like his usual self, his Dad left him in a dirty nappy while I was at work and he got his first ever nappy rash and it was nasty. And he was miserable.
  All of this has made the Giant Baby uncharacteristically fussy and clingy. Even now I can't get him to nap in his cot. He will only nap in my arms, on the couch or in the car. Which limits what I can do at nap-time. I don't want to spread sewing stuff out and then have to madly scramble to put it away when he wakes up. Mostly because I'm pretty sure I'd miss something and he'd get hurt. I can't spread doll stuff all over the lounge room to take photos. Partly because turning enough lights on to take photos will wake him. Partly because if he wakes up, he will turn into a tornado of rage grabbing dolls and my camera and anything else he can reach.

Mega-Toddler! He'll hide the tv remote and then scream because you take too

long changing the channel.

  And he's turned into Mega-Toddler. Can't reach something? Screech. Can't find Mum? Screech. Don't want to do something? Screech. Want to do something? Screech. Every day he falls over or bumps into something at least once, gets told no, tries to do something he's not allowed to do or doesn't have the skills for yet or that isn't physically possible. And his response to all of these things at the moment is screaming. Which is super-fun.
  His Grandmother taught him to say please. I honestly had no idea he was old enough for manners. So now, if he wants something he shrieks "Ease!" in a voice that makes Elmo sound like Barry White. Even better, when he gets angry (usually because the first please didn't work) he'll keep yelling "please" but it sounds more and more like "arse" each time he says it until I start to wonder if he's going to turn into Father Jack Hackett from the tv show Father Ted. Although if I could teach him to say "drink", "girls", "feck", and "that would be an ecumenical matter." perhaps we'd have some kind of routine on our hands. The Giant Husband says this is not allowed.
  Meanwhile between the Giant Baby, housework, work-work, and everything else, by the time the Giant Baby goes to bed at night, I'm too tired to do more than scroll listlessly through my pinterest feed for five minutes before going to bed myself. So my projects have been temporarily put on hold.

  The dress for Not-Glinda in particular has hit a snag. The bodice is done. I need to make the skirt and attach it. Except I have no intention of hemming it by hand which is a problem. I can't use the sewing machine when the Giant Baby is sleeping because it wakes him. I can't use the sewing machine when the Giant Baby is awake. Because there is nowhere in the house that I can set up the sewing machine that he can't get to. . . actually since the doors in our house don't close properly, there's just nowhere he can't get to full stop. So it has to wait until there's a weekend when I'm not working and we don't have plans, when I can talk the Giant Husband into taking him somewhere, even the other end of the house would do.

  The Baby So Beautiful dolls are progressing. Slowly. I'm putting money aside for a new wig for the bald doll. I want screamingly red, wispy ponytails for her. I have a vague idea of what kind of clothes I want for her, but I want to see her finished with her new hair before I make my final decision. At the end of the day it will almost certainly be a simple, high waisted dress. I don't think I will try to make her clothes that disguise her injured hand after all and I think I'll go for something cute rather than something fashionable so it dates better.

  I recently bought a new play doll. A Shibajuku Girl doll. I want to write a review of her here because before I bought her the only reviews I could find of the line were Mum-blog reviews which more or less read "Amphetamine and Lobotomy received this doll for review. They both thought she was pretty. Amphetamine loves her long hair. Lobotomy hasn't stopped playing with the accessories since we opened the box. The end." Which is great but doesn't answer any of the questions I have. Like how is she different to other dolls? She's taller than other fashion dolls but is the extra height just her giant head? Can she wear other dolls clothes? What's her jointing like? What sort of quality are we talking about? How well made are her clothes? And most importantly do I like her? Strange as it may sound I don't know if I do or not. I'm intrigued. But I don't know what I think yet. Possibly because I haven't even had a chance to open the box yet. I have a few extra shifts at work this week, but if I survive that, the Giant Husband has promised to amuse the Giant Baby on the weekend so hopefully I can get that done then. And hem Not-Glinda's skirt.

And now back to the battlefield.

New doll! Tonner Deja Vu Anne De Toile

Not going to lie - I'm a little bit intimidated by how grown up she looks.

I'll bet her family never have to have toast for tea because

she forgot to defrost real food!

This is my first new doll in almost forever. . . nope, that's a lie. This is my first new ridiculously expensive doll in almost forever. Having a baby means that suddenly if you say "I'm going to buy a three hundred dollar doll.", instead of muttering "Whatever" and hoping you don't expect him to pretend to be interested, suddenly your husband laughs and laughs and laughs and laughs. And you laugh too because clearly it's a joke because the Giant Baby outgrows ALL of his clothes every twelve and a half minutes, so all your spare cash is spent on miniature clothing that doesn't even fit your dolls! (Seriously, the kid isn't even 18 months old yet and he's already wearing a kid's size 3!)

 But recently we got our tax refunds and made an agreement. He could buy a stupidly over-priced pair of gaming headphones, if I could buy a ridiculously expensive doll. And I surprised myself by immediately going to the Tonner website and ordering a Deja Vu doll. I've been fantasising for a couple of years now about how great it would be to have an Iplehouse BID or KID. I've been kicking myself for never buying a Bethany doll for my Helen Kish Chrysalis collection. But when I had the opportunity, I didn't hesitate. I ordered an Anne de Leger and even though it surprised me, I don't regret it one bit.

 When the Deja Vu dolls first appeared, I wasn't impressed. The storyline concept was kind of interesting but the dolls just didn't do it for me. (Also on the pages for each individual doll, Tonner used to have little paragraph long mini-stories. That seems to have vanished from the website and there are just extremely factual descriptions of the dolls.) Frankly, this face sculpt has always made me think of. . . a more inflatable kind of doll, if you get my meaning. I think it's supposed to look like the sort of face of a heroine on the cover of a romance novel. And while I can see that, the other thing is always my first thought.

Even now, most of the Deja Vu dolls, I feel pretty "Meh" about, but I really like the Anne de Leger character. Not her name so much, which I always misremember as Anne Legree, as in Simon Legree the villainous slave owner in Uncle Tom's Cabin. Probably not her story either (I think it was something about her suffocating because she locked herself in a trunk to surprise her lover, who never publicly acknowledged their relationship anyway) which makes her sound pretty dense and hopeless - but her clothes! Her lovely Georgian clothes. Afternoon Stroll and Countryside Visit are my absolute favourites but, oh well, I missed the boat on those ones. The one I have Anne De Toile was the only one available when I ordered mine.

 Anne took forever to get here, or maybe about ten days, time blurs, it's hard to tell. Waiting for the baby to go to sleep that day, so I could open her up was one of the hardest things I've done! This warning on the side of the box made me laugh.

With shipping and Paypal's crappy exchange rates, this doll cost me $350! You don't need to warn me!

If anyone under 14 tried to touch it, I would bite them!

(And if I was insane enough to give a $350 doll to a child, I would be too insane to read this!)

 Anne was covered with tissue, when I pulled it back, she looked like she'd had her neck broken.

Seeing this is what reminded me of the story of her locking herself in

a trunk, like a gigantic moron.

 Two little bits of card were on top of the tissue paper covering her. One is a little instruction card explaining how to remove her hands - because apparently not everyone has had an Ever After High or Monster High doll. The other is her certificate of authenticity which explains that she's an edition of 200 and a convention doll.

This will definitely be the first thing I lose!

 I have mixed feelings about this. Yay! I have an Anne doll! Yay! She's a special convention doll! And if you add in the amount it would cost to travel from Melbourne to America for a doll convention to the original cost of the convention and doll, there is no way I am ever going to be getting a convention doll from a convention. BUT I can't help feel, if I had gone to that convention, and bought a convention exclusive doll, I would be pretty annoyed if afterwards the same doll was made available to just everyone online. But it also makes me feel extra pleased with her.

Stuck to the inside of the box were three little plastic baggies.

The staple that held the hat in place, was through the hat, which made me swear, 

but I removed it carefully and I don't think you can tell.

 These held her shoes, earrings and hat. (Note - I realised after I took the photos for this that I've put the hat on the wrong side of her head. Don't care. Prefer it this way and keeping it this way.) 

For some reason I am a little disappointed by her shoes. I honestly don't know why, I just can't put my finger on it. But I still like them. Red shoes go with everything! Although I had a little trouble figuring out how to use the poly bands to hold them on.

The hat. . . well, the hat is a hat. I really don't know what else to say about it.

Then there are the earrings. I'm not a big fashion doll person. I don't really go in for grown-up dolls. And, I guess I'm not experienced with things like this. She's still not wearing her earrings. Because for the life of me, I cannot work out how to put them on! Yes, there's holes in her head. Yes, I would assume it was just like Barbie - stick the post in the hole and push. BUT when I try this they go in for about two millimetres then hit something inside the head. From the angle they're going in on, I'm pretty sure they're hitting the back of her ears and then I worry that if I try to force them, they'll end up sticking out the side of her head! Will, hopefully eventually work this out later, either jiggle them until they go in on a different angle or cut the posts shorter or something. Maybe.

On the upside with earring posts this long, if she ever became a spy or something

she could use these as shivs.

 I like her face more than I would have expected. Especially the fact that the facepaint is fairly neutral and muted. A doll with dramatic face paint is going to look out of place wearing a lot of things, but fairly neutral facepaint goes with almost everything. (And as I type this I'm realising something. I planned on displaying this doll. Just displaying her, not doing anything like redressing her. But so far in this post, I've pointed out that her shoes and facepaint will go with anything, which makes me suspect that part of my brain is planning something that it hasn't told me about.) My one quibble about her face is her eyelashes. Her incredible sky-high eyelashes. They reach right up to her eyebrows. But only in places. They're too long but they're also staggeringly uneven. Like a four year old cut them with a butter knife. I'm considering evening them out but I'm also considering how horrifically wrong that could go and wondering if I actually care that much.

Her left-eye in particular has very uneven lashes.

I'm also not hugely impressed by her hair. The colour is amazing but it's dry and producty and wiry and that bothers me. But I'm actually starting to realise I am incredibly fussy when it comes to doll hair and while I'm not in love with her hair, I can definitely live with it.

Anne in all her glory!

I don't think her dress is one of the more impressive Deja Vu dresses but it is lovely. I love these kinds of prints! There are lots of little ruffles and ruching (I love ruching!) and the lace is real, actual lace made from something other than scratchy, nylon mesh. Which is unusual to see anywhere these days. I love the tiny cameo! I love the sort of pompadour/bustle effect in the way the back is drawn up! I love the amount of detail that's gone into it! 

 I have two issues with this dress. The underskirt is an actual underskirt and goes all the way around (Yay!) but the back half of the underskirt (from the side seams back) is just cheap, white, lining fabric. I'm ok with that - makes the doll cheaper to produce and reduces bulk which can be a problem in layered outfits in small scales. What I'm not ok with is how far forward the lining fabric starts. The overskirt doesn't automatically cover all of the lining fabric. When you stand/pose her, you then have to fiddle around adjusting her overskirt so it covers the fake bit of underskirt.

Fake underskirt!

ANNNNND. . . still fake underskirt

This bothers me because it seems so lazy. If they'd made the patterned part of the underskirt just a couple of centimetres longer on each side, they could have avoided this altogether. I feel sure that at some point in the planning process someone must have brought this up and was probably told "Nah, don't worry about it, leave it." 

 But except for it making me feel a little grumpy and OCD, the underskirt/overskirt issue is really minor. Her sleeves on the other hand! I had a horrible time photographing this doll because I could not pose her arms! Seriously! Her sleeves end in gigantic frills, which have a layer of toile over a layer of stiffened tulle. The trouble with this was that if I posed her so her hands were pointing anywhere but down, she was attacked by the sleeve frills! It was like they'd become sentient and were out for revenge. And when I was done, I was so done with fighting her sleeves, that I kind of plonked her on a shelf rather than even trying to pose her nicely.

HELP! It's got my hand!

Who walks around with their hand like this anyway?!

 All in all, even though she's not perfect, I love this doll. While I have perhaps focused on her faults a tiny bit here, that's because her good points are so obvious to me that it doesn't occur to me to point them out. I'm starting to worry that she's going to move onto my way-to-long-list of dolls to make clothes for. . . actually maybe I could make a slightly more grown-up version of the dress I'm making for Glinda/Not Glinda for her. . .

And, as usual, some photo-spam to finish

Doll Collection Refresh Update - Patience and Baby So Beautiful

 I'm actually a little surprised about how much I've managed to get done.

 Starting with the Baby So Beautiful dolls - Cecily (the blonde one) is back on the shelf. I managed to convince myself to leave her hair alone so all she needed was a dust, a couple of grubby marks wiped off and her clothes washed. I didn't even bother to take any after pictures. She's no different. I did however take a couple of pictures of her locket while she wasn't wearing it.

These lockets came with all Baby So Beautiful dolls and were for the child to wear.

Kathryn (the brunette one) is a little more trying. Her clothes had yellowed a fair bit and it took a couple of washes and soakings to get them clean again. Her hair is a disaster. It seems that originally there was a rubber band around her little topknot ponytail and over the years it has decayed. About half of it was still around her ponytail, the rest was scattered through and stuck to her hair in fragments. I think I've gotten it all out now. Her curls are another issue. I had this happy delusion where I would comb her curls around my fingers and they would be like new and perfect and trouble free. . . no. Her curls got even more messed up while I was picking out the rubber band and are at the moment a frizzy mess. Currently she's waiting to have her hair washed and new curls put in.

The third doll, Kirralee, the dog attack victim has been given a good wash. So have her clothes. I cleaned the paint off her mouth. I wanted to use non-acetone nail polish remover (what I've always used in the past) but couldn't find any, so I used Isopropyl Alcohol. That was me being impatient because I really don't know if that's ok for using on vinyl. It's just what we happened to have in the house and actually did a good job of removing the paint (better than the nail polish remover would have) and since I washed it off straight after, I'm hoping it won't cause any problems later.
 It took ages for me to decide how I wanted to do her face. I didn't want to use acrylic paint - for reasons I won't go into here because this post would get way too long.  I decided to use pastels and possibly water colour pencils. I ideally wanted to use a spray on sealer but I'm pretty sure that would ruin her eyes. I toyed with the idea of cutting the shape of her lips out of a vinyl tablecloth or something, to make a mask so I could spray her face but it would only affect her lips. Ultimately I decided there were too many ways that could go wrong so I'm simply using a brush on, waterbased, craft sealant I happened to have around the house. I'm not sure this sealer is the right thing to use. In fact I have the same concerns about it as I do about acrylic paint, but it was the best option I had at the time.

Not finished yet. Going to take a few more layers yet.

Also the sealer was wet when I took this photo.

 I also tried scrubbing at the staining around her mouth with a magic eraser but I'm pretty sure that has soaked right into the vinyl and if I wanted to scrub enough to remove it I would have to scrub until vinyl was peeling. So I abandoned that and decided to pretend it was dribble rash. And I have absolutely no idea yet what I'm going to do about her hair and clothes in the end. At the moment I'm leaning towards dressing her in something I like and ignoring her mauled hand because I haven't yet come up with an idea for concealing it that I like.

Now, onto Patience. . . and just a warning, I am going to contradict myself several times between now and the end of this post. In fact I will probably sound like a crazy person by the time I'm done.

Wonderland Patience looks nervous about her new look.

 Alice-Patience (I try to just call her Alice, but in my head it's always hyphenated as Alice-Patience) is back on her shelf. Her clothes have been washed. Her hair has been washed and straightened. I could have straightened it more but it was sticking back in a slightly wild way that reminded me of the original Tenniel illustrations so I left it. I decided not to recurl it. Mostly because I don't like curling doll hair (not for fear of damage, it's just incredibly dull) and if something is going to happen even every five years that damages the curls so they need to be redone - ugh. Too high maintenance. It's not worth the effort. (Please forget I said that when I start talking about the other Patience.) I also discarded the idea of rewigging her because I am kind of in love with the colour of her hair. 

 Two sections of Alice-Patience's hair were tied back into little ponytails, then joined each other to make one small ponytail at the back of her head. I cut the threads securing these with nail scissors. I thought it would be easy but the threads were actually sewn to her head which made it more complicated, it also made her look a little bald in back but luckily that effect brushed out. I also had to cut off a lot of hair to get the length even. It was very uneven with it's factory cut. I am never cutting a Patience doll's hair again. Because her big, old, floppy, head just kept wobbling about which made me terrified of cutting at all, thinking if her head had moved there was no way I'd be able to get it even.

New headband!

 To finish her hair, she's got a headband I bought from Dollmore. I was just looking for a black Alice-band but when I saw this one I had to get it. The blue goes with her dress and the cat reminds me of the Cheshire Cat! The headband isn't quite long enough and little bits of her hair kept escaping, just above her ears, so under the headband there's a clear poly-band holding her hair in place.

Don't tell them all of my secrets!

 She also needed a new friend. For ages now Alice-Patience has been hanging out with the white rabbit that came with the large Alice in Wonderland Lalaloopsy doll. But the Giant Baby stole that a while ago, and now I have no idea where it is. So now she has a small Lalaloopsy of Dorothy Gale to play with and they seem to get along pretty well.

Dorothy's book is just weird!

The other Patience. . . Patience as Glinda or as I was calling her - Not-Glinda, is still a work in progress. She got a new name. I wanted to make a Georgian dress for her, so I decided to name her Georgette. . . except since I changed her name I'm constantly refering to her as Gilda. So perhaps her name is still a work in progress as well. Glinda/Georgette/Gilda is where I start to sound like a crazy person. I wanted to redress her because I found her original dress too pink and frilly and puffy. So I'm redressing her in a late-georgian gown of coral coloured silk, which I have to admit is quite pinkish and frilly and puffy! I'm not curling Alice's hair because curled doll hair is too high-maintenance. But at the moment I've washed the product and messy curls out of Glinda/Georgette/Gilda's hair and plan on recurling it neatly. It's almost as though this particular doll is encouraging me to do things completely out of character.

 Meanwhile, I think I said last time that both my Patience's have rooted hair. No they don't. Only Alice does. Glinda/Not Glinda is wigged. And once you wash the curls out her hair is down to her knees! At the moment I'm about halfway done on her dress. I suspect that the design I came up with is a little over-ambitious so I'm taking it slowly so I don't make any stupid mistakes. (Although another part of my brain is pretty sure that the design probably looks more complicated than it is - but that's the part of my brain that tends to make me make mistakes so I'm ignoring it.)

Sorry for poor quality!

Above is the design I'm working from, and yes, it is drawn in a child's colouring book; and no, I can almost guarantee that the finished dress will not look exactly like that.

 I've run out of things to say, so I'll finish with some Alice-Patience photo-spam.