What have I been doing?

We had the Giant Baby's birthday recently. We got him a Thomas the Tank Engine train set and some extra trains. If I were to do this again, I would get even more trains and forget about the actual train tracks for a while because he doesn't really care about them yet. I ended up getting most of the trains second hand from ebay because those things are expensive!

Here's a fun game - guess which item cost more. . .

Surprisingly both were fifteen dollars! Even more surprisingly both of them were reduced from eighteen dollars!

 I finished the pony that I was making for my work friend. At the last minute, I decided it wasn't impressive enough, so I made miniature packaging for it too. Complete with cartoon horse pictures that I changed to look like this one and a blurb on the back of the box. Unfortunately I never thought to take a photograph of the back of the box, which was the best part.

 I also finished Not-Glinda's dress a while ago. Since last time I showed it here, I finished the back opening and added fastenings and a belt. Also I put the petticoat she came in, under the skirt which really helped with the overall look. Originally I planned on giving her an elaborate hairstyle but as I was making the dress I kept thinking of it as a little girl's first "grown-up" dress, and I think the natural hairstyle fits in with that pretty well. I've been putting off taking photos of it, thinking I would get a light tent made to take the photos in. (I've made a small one, but she won't fit in it.) But this week I decided to just get the photos over and done with before I completely forgot. They're not anything to write home about but they're done. I also named her. Instead of being weirdly referred to as "Not-Glinda", her name is Charlotte now.

 I know it's more usual for dresses of this period to have the bolero effect come together at the centre front, instead of meeting with the side seams but my starting point was this portrait of Alexandra and Elena Pavlovna, and then other portraits of the same two sisters, perhaps this was the fashionable style of court dress in Russia at the time?

 Ordinarily I would write this dress up properly and share the pattern but because I started this so long ago, I have absolutely no idea where the pattern is now. I'm pretty sure it was thrown out but it may turn up one day.

 I've made a small photography light tent (which I've used in a few of my recent posts) as a test, to see if it worked before making one large enough to photograph dolls in. So far, I've found it more useful to eliminate glare in brightly lit areas than with lamps. BUT the one time I've attempted to use it with lamps, I got it all set up before discovering that one of the lamps didn't work so that really wasn't a fair test. I wanted to get the large box made today and written up over the weekend but with the amount of housework and boring household sewing I have to do, I can already see I won't get time.

 My two Baby So Beautiful dolls are still unfinished. One needs a dress and I just can't settle on what I want to make her. The other really needs a new wig but I'm resisting replacing her original wig even though it's hopelessly dry. Strangely, the driest part is the fringe, which is the only part I have never heated or boiled.

 At the moment, I'm working on making underwear for my Dollmore Zihu. She's supposed to be the character Claudia from Interview with the Vampire. If you don't know the story, Claudia is a child (about five in the book, about ten in the film) that is turned into a vampire in roughly the 1790's, gets hopelessly spoiled, has a bunch of psychological problems because her mind is maturing but her body is not and dies tragically in the 1880's. Cheerful stuff. But her clothes in the movie are magnificent. I plan on making her random regency era garments but also recreating the dresses from the movie. Especially this one which is absolutely glorious! I copied that one years ago, as a dress for a "When I read I dream" Stacie size doll, but it's kind of embarrassingly bad to look at it now. The hardest part in recreating the movie costume will be finding fabrics in the right fibres and colours for a decent price. But I have a fabric that will do beautifully for the bustle dress, when I'm feeling brave enough to make it. Right now I'm making simple drawers and a petticoat, then a regency style dress, aiming for midway between boringly simple and too hard to make with all of them. I'm doing the underwear first because it's the part I'm least interested in, so if I didn't make it first, I'd probably come up with an excuse to skip it all together.

 I also have two Barbie projects underway. Firstly, I was recently reading about conservation of plastics and it seems plastic's biggest enemy is humidity. It's recommended that plastics never be stored wrapped in plastic or synthetic fabrics or in sealed plastic containers. Instead, they should be wrapped in natural fibres (so cotton, unless you really want to wrap them in finest shantung silk), or paper towel, or (randomly) coffee filters. And stored in cardboard or wooden boxes. So I dug out these ladies. . .

And on the right near the bottom is my old Claudia doll. I couldn't work out how to get her

dress off, so she's been packed away wearing it.

And have been sorting them by doll and head mold, and cataloguing them, wrapping them in paper towel, tagging them so I can see what they are without unwrapping them and repacking them in cardboard boxes. It's way more tedious and time consuming than I expected when I came up with the idea. (It also explains why I was so skinny when I first moved out of home. Clearly, I was spending all my money on dolls instead of food!)

That project gave me the idea of getting a Made to Move Barbie and switch her head with another Barbie. I've also arranged to get one of each of the new body type Barbies (one tall, one short, one curvy) for Mother's day (which is Sunday week in Australia) and plan on doing the same with them. I still need to research head swap techniques that can be done just with hot water though, because I'm not buying a hair drier just to swap a Barbie head or two.

 Hopefully I'll have a more interesting report soon.