Catching up

 Now I have a wonderful space for making and a bunch of new toys, and I haven't had a chance to use it!
Partly because I'm an idiot. I had money to burn and the Giant Husband encouraged me on spending it all on stuff for my room. Sooooo I bought an overlocker. But I forgot to buy overlocker thread. So I couldn't use it. I bought a twin needle pintucking foot for my sewing machine. But I forgot to buy a twin needle. So I can't use it. I bought some Jo Sonja's paint for airbrushing. But I forgot to buy any flow medium (thinner). So I can't use it. Best of all, I bought an air brush and compressor. I had assumed the airbrush would come with an air hose. It arrived first and did not come with an air hose. So I ordered one. The compressor came with one.
Since then I've been too sick to function. I've still managed to get a fair amount done with the storage in the wardrobe in my room. I got two cheap, galvanised shelving units from Bunnings, and a bunch of cardboard postage boxes from Officeworks to store stuff in. And I've got most of the stuff I forgot to buy, except a twin needle. And I need to dust the dollhouse and get the furniture back in.

I also have plans. I have a large Lalaloopsy that used to be my niece's that I'm turning into a witch. I'm thinking what to do with the Kindi kids. Donatina has volunteered to have her head ripped off. And she wants to be a genie. I don't know what to do with the others yet. I have a sundress in my head that I want to make for Tiny. Then I want to start working on some half finished projects, I have around the place.

I got some of the Capsule Chicks by Moose. They're little blind bag, fashion androids. They come in 5 capsules packed inside a little vending machine - which the Giant Baby has claimed and is in love with.

They're pretty cute. I love their faces. They haunt me, but after a while they all start looking like Ellen DeGeneres to me. They fit together kind of like a Nendoroid or Cu Poche, with great articulation. On the downside the pieces in each pack  are randomised, so you get enough pieces to make a doll but the pieces don't necessarily "go together". For instance the girl on the right has mermaid legs and a halo. So she's an Android-mermaid-angel? That sounds like something the Giant Baby would make up. And they don't come with standard checklists. Instead they come with these "fashion magazines".

I find this format confusing and would much rather have some sort of list that clearly tells me what goes with what.

I've also kind of got a new Cu Poche. I bought her head and hair when I bought my first one. Her outfit came free with my Alice. Then I figured I may as well buy a body and have a whole doll!

That's an actual tiny zipper on her jacket! Which is cool but also I NEVER want to have to do up a zipper that small again!

That's it for now. Hopefully now that I'm feeling better, I can actually start doing stuff!

Something Special!

A distant cousin posted this on ancestry.
It's my Great-grandparents with their three oldest daughters in about 1920.

Look how short those skirts are! And what enormous bows!

The little girl with the doll is my grandmother.

New friends!

There have been a couple of doll lines I've been looking forward to lately. One was the Poopsie Rainbow Surprise fashion dolls. Poopsie is a line of terrifying, cracked out looking unicorns with a slime theme. I think you feed them slime and they poop it out or something. I'm not sure, but they scare me. But they have a new line of blind box fashion dolls, that are human, don't look as drug addicted as the unicorns, and are actually pretty appealing. Then I found out that they're also ninety dollars each and noped out on those.

The other one is the Shopkins Kindi Kids. They have a little eating gimmick that they do and they're kind of cute but I thought they had potential to be great, with some modifications. Mainly I hate the glitter eyes. I wish companies would stop giving things glitter eyes. They're horrible.

I thought, maybe the eyes can be modified? I know I read on somebodies blog (sorry, I don't remember whose) about someone removing the eyes of one of the Disney princess toddlers with the Royal Reflections eyes, cleaning off the decal and replacing it with a print out of eyes they preferred. I thought, maybe you can do something like that with these, and decided to order one to take a look. (I actually emailed Moose and asked if the heads are removable. They say no. We'll see about that. Mwa haha haha!)

I couldn't chose which one to get. I love the white hair with rainbow streaks, and I love the expression on the blue haired girl's face. By the time I had decided to get both, I had started feeling bad for the green haired girl, because her outfit doesn't go with the others and is frankly ugly. So I rationalized with "If I order three, I get free shipping." and ordered three. Then the Giant Husband bought me the last one on the weekend.

Now I have four Kindi Kids and frankly I'm not even sure what I'm going to do with them!

Update:- The Giant Baby and I unboxed these and had a play tonight. Both of us say Marsha Mallow and Peppa Mint are our favourites. Marsha Mallow because she has rainbow hair. He also likes Peppa Mint because she came with ice cream. I like Peppa Mint because I feel bad for her. Her hairstyle is a mess - Cindy Brady pigtails but with added crazy curls at the top. Her outfit looks like something a two dollar shop knock off would be wearing, instead of coordinating with the other girls dresses. And she's the only one that can't eat her snack! The others can take a bite of the food they came with. Peppa's food changes colour. That's it. Which makes sense she's the only one that doesn't have an open mouth. I am feeling insanely indignant on behalf of a doll. Whatever I do with these dolls, I'm going to make sure Peppa Mint turns out to be the best one!

Craft room revealed

Yay! I have a craft room! Haven't had a chance to take pictures before today because both kids are sick, it was Tiny's birthday on Sunday, and I've been desperately making up photo books of the kids to get printed because the Giant Husband accidentally deleted all the photos on his phone!

So, when I say the craft room is finished, it's not quite. I'm still working it out. I'll probably still be working it out for another six months. Because it's a working space more than a decorative space, so over time some things will need more convenient places, and others will be pushed into the background. But here we go anyway.

This is my main storage area and of course the dollhouse. We went through a million different ideas for a table to put the dollhouse on. At one point I suggested building one, thinking we'd get a sheet of MDF and screw pre-bought legs on. The Giant Husband hijacked that idea and decided MDF was nasty, and pine was too cheap, but he was going to build a table. But it got too ambitious and started sounding ridiculously expensive, (and like it would never happen), so I decided to go with my original idea of two (very cheap) Ikea tables, even if they were black, to leave more money for other stuff.

 The dollhouse needs a good dust, and some minor repairs, so the furniture is all in boxes under the table for now.

A closer look at my storage area. There's a space left for my overlocker (which should be delivered tomorrow), and heaps of fun stuff in boxes. I brought the ironing board and iron in, because I'm a terrible housewife, and only ever iron when I'm sewing. 

The boxes are Sistema Storage boxes. They usually come with compartment trays in them, and the way their clips work - they're designed to act like a hinge, so you don't have to take the whole lid off, put it down, think "I'll put that back when I know I'm finished", then spend 45 minutes looking for it later. Sometimes planning for the fact you're disorganised and unreliable is a good thing!

Some of the boxes still aren't labelled. Some are empty. Because I want to get some cheap, toolshed type shelving to put in the wardrobe to store more boxes of stuff on. So some stuff isn't in it's permanent home yet because I'm not sure if it's going to stay up here or go in the wardrobe.

The other side of the room has my shelves of dolls and craft/sewing books and my little Aldi sewing table. At least one doll is naked because I completely forgot to dress her until I uploaded this picture. The dolls on these shelves are going to move around about nine million times before I settle on their actual places.

And of course my little table can be wheeled under the window and unfolded when I need it. I've got a feeling though, that within six weeks, unfolded under the window will be it's permanent home.

And of course my three favourite things in here?

A folding step stool, because I'm short and it's easier to have one just for in here.

A cereal box rubbish bin. It's easier to get little threads and scraps of paper to stay in here than an actual bin.

And a make-up case sewing box. I bought this years ago when I was trying to find a sewing box. They were all hideously expensive, garishly cute, or had no way to separate stuff inside. I like this because it wasn't expensive, it's plain and it has trays inside to separate things. I'm not showing you the inside though because it's a horrible mess!

So that's what I've been up to. Hopefully now that I have my own space, I can be a little more productive!

Cu-Poche and Nendoroid

I recently decided to buy a Cu-poche. I've wanted one for ages but somehow I've never bought one.
While I was looking online for a Cu-poche, I kept coming across Nendoroids. And I couldn't help noticing that there are more Nendoroids, more places sell them and they tend to be a little cheaper. Which led to the question "Do I get a Cu-poche or a Nendoroid?", and because I have no self control, the obvious answer was BOTH!

If you don't know what Cu-poche or Nendoroids are - they're small, posable, plastic figures with big heads, usually based on characters from anime or video games or movies. They're not overly expensive, usually under fifty dollars, although before we moved, our local EB Games (video game store) had them priced closer to two hundred dollars! They're about ten centimetres (four inches) high and come with accessories, and extra faces and hands that can be interchanged between figures of the same company.

So here's a quick  comparison, with terrible photos, taken on my phone, at night. I actually know absolutely nothing about the characters they're supposed to represent, so don't be surprised if I don't know why they have weird stuff going on.

This is my Nendoroid

My first impression was that she is cute as a button. I seriously fell in love with her straight out of the box! And she came with a whole heap of accessories!

There are weapons that strap to her arms and legs and a radio and planes and some sort of battleships type table thingy. None of the accessories are really my style, but there are a lot!

She also came with extra faces and hands. . . and arms, and legs, and glasses. Nendoroids aren't very posable in themselves. They're jointed at the neck and hips. Posing of the arms and legs requires removing them and replacing them with other parts.  This particular girl has hands that pop off and her arm is made in two pieces - the puffy bit and the lower bit. These attatch with pegs and can swivel at the joint though.

The green thing is a tablet that should be attatched to one of the hands but it came off when I tried to put that hand on her arm.

On her back is a hole for attaching her stand, and for some reason wings on her lower legs.

So what do I think? She's beautiful. I love her face. I love her colouring. Looking at her makes me smile. AND I had to restrain myself from throwing her out the window.
Her arms fall off. All the time. If not at the shoulder, at the elbow joint. If you try to fit her accessories to her, her arms drop off AND break into pieces. Her tiny legs mean she has no hope of standing up on her own. But she doesn't fit on her stand.
Apparently those are common Nendoroid issues. I'm told if I heat her with a hair dryer she'll go on her stand. Except every time I think about her, her bloody arms drop off and then I'm too annoyed to even try to remember if I even own a hair dryer.

Now meet my Cu-poche

I like her tomboyish, almost scruffy, face and hair. It's cute. She did not come with as many accessories.

She has a stand, a backpack in two pieces, and a tank with a leash . . . I'm not even going to try to work out why.

She doesn't have as many severed limbs either.

Just two extra faces and two extra sets of hands. The Cu-poches have jointed limbs, so you don't have to switch out their body parts to pose them - or worry about losing all the extra limbs.

Her base has a magnet in it, and so do her feet, so she can stand on her base without a stand. Actually, she stand pretty well without the base. She also comes with a stand piece that fits in a hole in her back, like the other girl. With the added bonus that it actually fits in the hole in her back!

She's not perfect. One of her foot magnets comes out, which means she stands better without the base. I'm guessing this is a common problem since the instructions show you how to glue the magnet back in. And I can't show you her wearing her backpack, but that's my fault. I dropped the little peg that attatches it to her back and can't find it.

But here's a picture of her walking her tank .  .  . as you do.

And my favourite thing about Cu-poches?

They come with a little baggie to store all the bits in!

So my Nendoroid is clumsy, bits dropping offy, but beautiful with a bunch of accessories. My Cu-poche isn't a pretty and doesn't have as much stuff, but way more fun! Especially now she has friends!

Looking at Alice, and her shoes and headband, I can't help but wonder if Lol Surprise, or Kelly doll stuff will work with these girls. I definitely need to find out!

Craft room update

I don't want to post pictures of the craft room until it's finished, so I've used a picture of Tiny instead.

Progress is slower than I expected. I thought I'd be able to build all the furniture in one day. Turned out not. The big kitchen benchy thing took all day, and I could barely move the next day. (If you're wondering, the Giant Husband was willing to help, but not allowed. I'm a control freak and he would not have survived.)

And I don't think I realised the sheer volume of stuff I had to sort through! There is an insane amount of stuff! On top of which, the Giant Baby has been having some issues. He's a gigantic ball of energy, some days I have taken him for ten kilometre walks in an attempt to tire him out so he'll sit still for five minutes. It doesn't work. He doesn't stop moving. He never stops talking. Which means by the end of the day, I'm too tired to get too much work done.

BUT now I only have to do maybe one more nights work sorting, then get the dollhouse in there and it'll be all done! YAY!