My Collection. Part One.

 I'm going to show you my doll collection over the next few weeks. There's not really anything particularly unique or rare or valuable, and it's a lot smaller than it was six months ago, when I got rid of everything that I wasn't in love with or attached to.

 I'm going to do this in parts, otherwise the post would get REALLY long and realistically, I'd never get around to posting it. Also, the photos will be taken with my phone and probably won't be overly fancy, because this is an exercise in distraction, not art.

 AND I'm going to try to keep a tally of some sort, of how many dolls I have. Because I have no idea and I'm curious. So here we go . . .

Today I'm going to show you my Top Shelf Dolls. No, not super expensive, like top shelf whiskey, but mostly too big or too ratty to waste actual shelf space on. So they live on top of my bookshelf.

This poor girl is Lola Doll.
When my sister and I were very small, she named all of her dolls Mary (after the Virgin Mary), and I named all of my dolls Sally or Sarah (For no reason that I remember.) So my Mum came up with the idea of naming our dolls after the people that gave them to us. This was given to me by my Nana's sister, Auntie Lola, and so was named Lola Doll.
 Before she belonged to me, she belonged to either my Dad's cousins, or their daughters, I don't know which, and I don't know who she was. She was pretty battered already, when I got her. And while I loved her desperately, I think the only damage that happened because of me, is a set of stitches down her back. I saw a Shirley Temple movie as a kid, where Shirley finds a diamond necklace inside her teddy. I was too young to understand it had been hidden there, and thought that was something that just randomly happened. So for years, whenever I got my hands on scissors, I would cut open dolls and stuffed toys, to "check" for valuable jewels!

This is another relic from my childhood. Actually it's a replacement, I bought in an op shop. This is Baby Come Back. She walks away from you, then turns around and comes back holding out her arms. I remember insisting on sleeping with mine, even though she was made from pointy hard plastic with very creaky joints! The creepiest thing about these dolls, you turn them on by tilting their head forward, and turn them off by tilting their head back. But they're stiff. So to turn them off you have to grab their body in one hand, their head in the other, and violently jerk their head back. It feels like you're snapping the poor dolls neck!

 This girl is a Baby Dolly Surprise. The child Dolly Surprise dolls were only about ten inches tall, but the baby is about fifteen inches. Dolly Surprise was a line of dolls, in the late eighties, that had "growing" ponytails, like Crissy. But motorised. Motorising these dolls probably seemed like a fantastic idea at the time, but most of them don't work anymore. This girl's hair still winds up shorter but if you try to make it grow, it just makes a gear grinding noise and you have to pull her ponytail to make it work, which is probably what stopped them working in the first place. Kids pulling the dolls hair to make it grow faster, will have stripped the gears.

This is Laura and Sophie, my Journey Girls. I am so glad that I got these girls before Toys R Us closed. Laura's outfit is a mix of her original outfit and some pieces from the Positively Perfect range. I think Sophie's outfit is mostly original, except her shoes which might be from a separate shoe pack. There's a good chance that in five or so years time, these will be given to my kids. But for now, I like them too much to get rid of them, or trust kids as small as mine with them.

These are my NPK dolls, redressed in Our Generation clothes. Their names as Chloe and Madison but, even though I named them, I can never remember which one is which. These are awesome dolls and much prettier and realistic than most eighteen inch dolls. They are filled with potential that in their factory state, they don't quite fulfil. Ultimately I want to do SOMETHING with them. But I do not know what.

This is Saskia. An Our Generation Raphael, rewigged as a girl. Her dress is off EBay and so is her wig. I wanted her wig to be more of a dark ash blonde or light brown, I can't remember if I ordered the wrong colour or just got sent the wrong colour but I plan on fixing it at some stage.

This is obviously my eighteen inch, Ann Estelle, Calendar Girl. There's not much to say about her, I absolutely love her and would not change anything about her for all the money in the world. The quality of her vinyl, her eyes, her clothes, everything is absolutely awesome!

My two Disney Animators girls. I want to get a HEAP of these and make them over as characters from kid's books. I originally planned for Rapunzel to be Pollyanna, but realistically her slightly petulant expression is more Mary Lennox than Pollyanna. Perhaps Tink can be Pollyanna. I also want a Merida to become Pippi Longstocking but I've promised the Giant Husband, that I won't buy more of these until I've at least done SOMETHING with at least one of the ones I've already got. (By the time these posts are done, you will see, I have a terrible habit of buying dolls to do SOMETHING with and not following through.)

This is one of my childhood My Child dolls named Rhiannon. Except secretly she isn't. My sister and I each got a Ribbons and Bows My Child doll for Christmas one year. Mine had white blonde hair and turquoise eyes, my sister's had strawberry blonde hair and purplish eyes. A few years later my Mum met a lady whose little girl had no toys, and asked if we would give our old toys to her. We said yes. My one exception was not Rhiannon. I would not part with Rhiannon. And my Mum gave them the wrong one. It was an easy mistake to make and it was because of the dress. I loved this dress. None of our dolls came in this dress but they sold it separately at Toy World. I begged my Dad to buy it. He said no. His logic was that the dress was seventeen dollars, an entire doll was thirty dollars, thus the dress was a waste of money. He would happily buy me another doll, wearing this dress, but he would not buy the dress on it's own. It was a big deal. We couldn't find a doll already wearing the dress, so I saved up for months and ultimately bought the dress myself, so of course my Mum assumed that the doll wearing the special dress, was my special doll. And when I saw how happy her friend's little girl was with the real Rhiannon, I couldn't say anything. I just quietly embroidered the name Rhiannon on the back of this doll (I used to embroider my dolls name's on their backs. Badly.) and pretended she was the same doll.

This is a Lalaloopsy Alice in Wonderland. I bought her for three reasons. One I love Alice in Wonderland. Two I wanted the mini Alice Lalaloopsy and couldn't get one. And three, I wanted to see if Lalaloopsy clothes fitted any of my other dolls. They didn't, at least not well.

A stuffed Frankie Stein from Monster High with her pup, whose name escapes me. I think maybe Fidget or Gizmo or something? I need to look that up. It could be Whatsit? I don't remember. I have another large Lalaloopsy that I'm in the process of making over to look like this version of Frankie.

A little stuffed Hermione. I wanted Hedwig. I guess Hermione is ok though. Better than Harry.

A rather grubby Power Puff Girl.

I got this Patty O'Green doll when I was about five or six. She's the small version. I was in my twenties before I realised her name was Patty O'Green. My entire life, I had called her Patio Green, which I thought was a silly name, it was.

And of course Shirley, who is on my list but so far has received none of the attention she needs.

So those are the top shelf dolls. Hopefully I'll be able to post more in a day or two.

Doll count so far : 18