My Collection. Part Three.

I was going to post this yesterday. But I wanted to put everyone back in their original outfits, and the real life kids were chaotic, so I ran out of time.

 Today's dolls are my Helen Kish, Chrysalis collection dolls. These dolls are awesome. They're hard plastic, except for their heads and maybe their hands, which are vinyl. They're fourteen inches tall and they're beautifully jointed, almost like a BJD. I actually kind of want to get a Kathe Kruse Kruseling one day, just to compare the jointing. Kish & Co say these dolls are supposed to be about fourteen years old. I think they look more like they're about nine, ten, or eleven, mostly because they have absolutely no waist whatsoever.

 I took a couple of pictures of one of the dolls to show the jointing.

I know this is probably insane but one of my favourite things is their ears. They aren't hyper-realistic, but given the fact they're about the size of a fingernail, they're still impressive.

And of course, like all Helen Kish dolls, they have beautiful, graceful hands.

What I don't like about these dolls.
How complete their lack of a waist is. It makes it difficult to design clothes for them, that won't look out of scale.
Mohair wigs. Mohair and I are NOT friends. It's unruly and makes my nose itch. Eventually my girls will probably all be rewigged.
How many of them came wearing high heels. Luckily they fit into a lot of MSD shoes. . . If you can find ones that don't have high heels. Lol.

Ok, so dolls.

This is Adrielle, or Adriel. I'm really not consistent in how I spell her name. (Incidentally, if I had my way, Tiny would have been named Adriel, and the Giant Baby would have been Rhidian. If their dad had his way, they would've been Thor and Elizabeth. Lucky for them, they have two parents and normal names.) She has the Wren face sculpt, which is, I think, the most realistic.

I think she's my prettiest doll. She still has her original wig, but not in it's original style, which was a side ponytail. In my head, she's the oldest of my girls, left handed and sisters with Rowan.

And this is Rowan. She should have a pair of goggles, but the Giant Husband used to let the Giant Baby play with her, while I was at work, and they got broken. Apparently, it's no big deal and I could just fix them, but I would rather sulk and give death stares over it.

Rowan has the Raven head sculpt and probably my favourite outfit.

This is Amarie, and her outfit refuses to sit properly. She's been rewigged, to make her look more like this drawing, which I named her after because I thought she looked similar.

I don't really see the resemblance anymore, except they both have lopsided faces. Amarie has the Lark head sculpt.

From one side she tends to look serious or sad.

From the other side, she has a little Mona Lisa smile.

It makes her feel alive.

This is Chiara. I got her second hand, and completely nude, except for her hair ribbons. I named her after a little girl I knew, whose parents were from Singapore, because she was so impressed to see a doll that looked like her.

Chiara has the Song head sculpt, which is supposed to look Japanese but I think looks more Thai, or Indonesian or Balinese. Her mohair wig is super unruly and hates me.

This is Emily. I named her after Emily Starr from the Emily of New Moon book series by LM Montgomery (the Anne of Green Gables lady.) A purist would point out that Emily Starr has purplish-grey eyes, I would counter with that's a pretty unrealistic eye colour. This balletish dress is a pain. The waistband is TIGHT, making it hard to get on, and every finger and thumb gets snagged in the ribbon embroidery on the sleeves.

Emily, like Adriel, has the Wren face sculpt but slightly different face painting.

This is Gwendolen. I got her second hand, at the same time as Emily. Originally she would have had three sashes - a red one, a peacock blue one, and an ivory one; and three pairs of shoes, to match each sash. But my doll only came with the red sash and shoes.

Gwendolen has the Shea face sculpt and has got the most dramatic, make-upy, face paint of all my girls. Her wig needs replacing, I swear it gets boofier by the second!

This is Eloise. Obviously she's been rewigged, she started life as a boy, I wasn't sure how good she was going to look as a girl but she looks better than I expected. Actually in her original wig, she looked a bit  weird, even as a boy. I like her a lot more in this wig.

Eloise has the Phoenix head sculpt, which . . . I don't know, the eyes are weird. They either don't fill the eye sockets or the bit at the bottom is supposed to be lower lids, in which case there's no defined lower edge to the eyes. If I ever got tempted to repaint one of these, Eloise would be the first victim. I probably wouldn't though because every Chrysalis repaint I've seen either looks like a hooker or like she has terrible hayfever.

This is Tabitha. Tabitha's clothes are weird and clunky, also I could have positioned her wig a bit better, before I photographed her. She was the last one of these dolls I got.

Tabitha has the Piper head sculpt. I held out for ages, to find a red headed Piper, and even though most of the Pipers released had red hair, I could not find one anywhere. Eventually my brother suggested getting one that didn't have red hair and changing her wig, so I did.

These last two girls are smaller (twelve inches) and look younger.

This is Lydia. Like Eloise, she came to me as a boy. And it took me until this year to find the wig I wanted for her. In my head, Lydia is Tabitha's little sister.

Lydia has the Peyton head sculpt, which is adorable. If I had all the money in the world, I would buy every Peyton I could find and have them repainted with different eye colours and rewigged in different colours and have my own village of Peytons!

Finally this is Arden. This particular doll (Olivia Primavera) came with either white blonde wavy hair (like my one) or greenish grayish bobbed hair. Her outfit always reminds me of Maggie Iacono dolls.

Arden has the Olivia face sculpt which, depending on the angle and my mood, can look spacey, or petulant, or overwhelmed. I actually really love this face too! Eep! Writing this post is making my want to trawl EBay for more of these dolls. I need to restrain myself!

Something weird I've noticed - I measure EVERYTHING in metric, except for doll heights!

Doll count : 42