My Collection. Part Eight.

 I have a sore, swollen eye and can't really see properly, which unfortunately means I can't do bloody anything, but I'm bored. So I thought I'd write a short post about some new arrivals. I'm sorry if my pictures or spelling are dreadful.

These girls have been on my wishlist for a while, but they don't show up that often in Australia. They're all in need of a little TLC (which,  let's be honest, me being me, they might get in thirty years or so), they're not good examples, I would like to have better ones eventually, but these were cheap, so they'll do for now.

This first girl is Kimberly by Tomy. Kimberly was made in the early 1980s. There was a blonde version and an African-American version. She had a lot of different outfits, mostly sport themed. A school outfit, a soccer outfit, roller skating, ice skating, jogging, cheerleading, jeans and a t shirt, a party dress, a casual outfit with a skipping rope, a nightie, and a dressing gown. There was also a "Gettin' fancy Kimberly" that had a different sculpt with an open mouthed smile and wore a prom dress. 

When I was little, one of our neighbours had a roller skating Kimberly on a shelf in her room. It had obviously never been played with and I always wanted to play with her but was too shy to ask. A long time later, (about ten years ago), I tried to find out what that doll was. And whenever I described her, everyone thought I was talking about Baby Skates, which is similarly dressed, but a toddler, and motorised, which Kimberly is not. I was really, very pleased when I found out she was real and not just something I'd remembered wrong.

Kimberly is about 16 inches tall, with a strung hard plastic body and a cute face. This one could probably do with being restrung, but I'm not even going to think about tackling that right now.

This particular Kimberly has some scuffed and smudges in her face paint, which means I won't feel bad if I decide to repaint her. And while Kimberly is known for having really nice hair, this Kimberly has a terrible haircut and her hair is absolutely filthy. Actually I've already cut it off and thrown it out. She's going to need a wig. And new clothes.

These other two girls are My Beautiful Doll by Hasbro. These are from the late 1980s and I hadn't even heard of them until a year ago. Interestingly, they were sculpted by the same lady that sculpted Kimberly. There were eight different dolls in this line, each one came with a locket and a comb, wearing a party dress. And they all had names. I think my two are Brenda and Rosemary. They're 17 inches tall, with a strung hard plastic body, similar to Kimberly.

Brenda.

Rosemary.

I would have preferred to get at least one that wasn't blonde but these three were sold as a group. You can see more about the My Beautiful Doll line here. I'm not sure if they all have the same face sculpt or not. In the pictures I've found, Rachel, in particular, looks like she might have a slightly different face. I actually even contacted Stefanie Clark Eskander (@stefdesignstoys on Instagram), who designed this line, and asked her. She couldn't remember but she thought some (particularly Rachel) looked a little different, but that may have just been different face paint. I guess ultimately I'm going to have to get a Rachel (another blonde unfortunately) so I can compare them.

These girls are in better condition than Kimberly, but Rosemary has loose stringing too and they're banged up enough that I won't feel bad if I repaint them or scalp them and give them wigs. I actually haven't even been brave enough to take their hair down and see what kind of condition it's in yet.

 

This shows the different bodies of the two kinds of dolls. I'm pretty sure they could share clothes, at least to an extent. Somewhere online it says the My Beautiful Dolls can wear BFC Ink clothes, but looking at this post from Planet of the Dolls, I don't like the way they fit.

I'm not really sure what I will do with these three. As I said, I'd rather have nicer examples someday, but even if I never do anything with them, they're a reminder of a time when dolls had sweet, little, girl faces and nice, little, girl clothes.

 

Doll Count: 81

The Claudia Project Part One

 Yes! We’re still under lockdown, the Giant Baby is even more insanely clingy than usual, and we’re weaning Tiny from bottles for the second time. You know what that means! Time for a long and ridiculously complicated project! Yay!

 Ok, not exactly. I fully expect this project to take years, because I want to wait until I find the perfect fabric for each dress. And I’m starting now, because I got the eyes that I ordered for Claudia, and I want to paint her face so I can get a better idea of how well they fit, so I know if I need to get other eyes instead. But if I’m going to paint her, I want to have an outfit ready to go, because once they have faces, I feel bad for nude dolls.

 If you don’t know, Claudia, is a child vampire character in the book and movie “Interview with the vampire”. My doll will be an amalgam of the book character and the movie character. I plan on trying to recreate the costumes from the movie but also clothes from descriptions in the book and probably some stuff, I will make up because I can.

 So far Claudia’s head looks like this

She still needs eyelashes and eyebrows. I’m a bit nervous about her shading otherwise. It’s very subtle, which makes me worry it’s too subtle. But I’ve mostly used purples instead of my usual peachy browny colours, because I thought it would make her look paler and more unworldly. So I’m trying to keep it subtle, otherwise she may end up looking like she’s smashed her face into a 1980s eyeshadow palette! Trying to hit that perfect point between too subtle and laughable is difficult.

And this is the outfit that I plan on making first.

Yes. That is one terrible screenshot. But (and I suspect this will be an ongoing problem) for a film that was filmed in the dark (more or less), nearly 30 years ago, this was the best I could do for a full length pic. It also doesn’t help that the colours look completely different, depending on what screen I’m watching on, and I suspect a lot of shot silk was used. So I broke it down into details.

The sleeves are sheer and the skirt has an overlay of the same sheer fabric, with gold lines  and dots worked on it. You may remember (if  I remembered to post about it) that I painted this design on some sheer fabric,  when I was first expecting my Iplehouse girls.

  The bodice is satiny with a gold “brocade” pattern. I have heaps os satin this  colour so that’s ok. But I’m not going to embroider it. I don’t think that would work on this small scale but also I don’t think that is embroidery. The “embroidery” has artefacts around it,  and they don’t change from shot to shot. I suspect this is silk  screened. I know some of the men’s “embroidered” waistcoats were silk screened, so that makes sense. But I think the pattern may be too small and delicate for my silk screening kit, so I might try hand painting it onto the fabric.

 She’ll also need straight, white pants. With two wide stripes of lace around the hem. It looks like the lace was edged with blue, baby, ribbon at the top edge. I might try to get the same effect with machine top stitching. Or if that doesn’t work, maybe chain stitched embroidery thread?

And even though she’s barefoot in this picture, I want her to have white stockings and blue satin slippers. Guess what? I’m going to need to work out how to make doll shoes. Yep. I keep hearing that YOSD shoes fit Iplehouse KIDs. They don’t really. Boots and high top sneakers look ok. But really, all the YOSD shoes that I’ve tried are fairly square, which means they look much to wide for these dolls feet. Even with socks. I bought some white satin slippers designed for Tyler Wentworth, thinking perhaps I could dye them. But they are about a millimetre too small. So close that I considered stretching them. But I couldn’t work out how,  and then realised that once I’d stretched  them they would  need to be stretched to go over stockings as well! That would be a lot  of stretch for a tiny,  wee, shoe! It’s probably best that I stop being scared and lazy, and just learn to make simple shoes, in the right colour, that fit.

The big trouble I’m having with this design is the embroidery on the bottom of the skirt. There’s some sort of gold embroidery or beading or something around the bottom edge of the overskirt. That’s easy enough with a narrow, rolled hem in gold thread. But abouve that there is some kind of scrolly, flowery pattern. And I cannot tell what it is.

A new winner of the worst screenshot ever award. And it’s the best I can find. A friend bet she could find a better picture and two hours later, had to concede that she couldn’t. I suppose I have to do the best I can with this picture. And at least, if this is the best picture, I can pretty much use any design that I damn well like. Nobody can say it’s wrong, because nobody else can see what it is either.

Just for funsies, this is the working sketch I made up on Procreate. I’m fairly new to Procreate, and this is one of the first things I’ve tried to colour in it, so while it’s not great, it’s definitely ok.

I had better get to work.

Shipping Frustrations

 Ugh! I give up on ordering anything ever!

I'm waiting for a pair of doll eyes, that shipped from the US in July! They cleared customs over a week ago, and have not moved since!

I tried to order three things from Kmart last week. A file holder, which is a plastic thing shaped like an upside down M, for stacking manila folders in (or if you're me, for putting tablets in while they're charging) and two pairs of bloomers for Tiny. Grand total for my order? $11.50. Shipping charges? $24! Surely that is ridiculous! (If you're wondering I did not put the order through once I saw what shipping cost.)

I ordered a dress for Tiny on Ebay. (Even though her summer clothes from last year still fit, so she needs new clothes about as much as she needs a diamond encrusted potty.) It has shipped from a town that's an hour away from here. And yet Australia Post estimates that it will take two and a half weeks to get here!

Meanwhile we've set up our dance studio as a playroom. It looks like this.

I'm not going to apologise for the mess. The point of the playroom is to contain the mess because NOTHING can stop it. But there are thousands of dollars of toys in there. What are the kids favourite toys?

This box is the Giant Baby's favourite toy. He sits inside it playing for hours.

And these horses are Tiny's favourite. McDonald's has been sticking these in Happy Meals all year.

It makes me wonder why we bother buying toys at all.

Little bit of cabin fever this week. I've been trying to focus on keeping the kids happy instead of housework or stuff I want to do and it's starting to make me a little bit crazy.

My Collection Part Seven. Bjds.

Today's post is going to be a quick one, with terrible photos, because I have done shamefully little with my ball jointed dolls.

Possibly the worst photo I've ever taken, but I don't have time to redo it. You've seen these girls fairly recently. On the left is Elizabeth, my Dollmore Zihu. On the right is Lily, my Iplekid Paige. I've just realised Elizabeth is wearing odd shoes and Lily is only wearing one shoe! Oops! Lily is actually only half wearing that shoe. It was made to fit Tyler Wentworth and is a very, tiny bit too small but close enough that I'm going to see if I can stretch it a little.

This is one of my new Iplekids. They finally arrived a few weeks ago. I haven't done anything with them yet because I don't want to try to give them face ups with the kids climbing all over me. That just sounds like a recipe for disaster.
This girl is Celina with white skin and she will be my vampire girl, eventually. My phone is currently full of inspiration pictures for her face up.

And this is my other new Iplekid, Daisy. I want to paint her to look kind of like Rashida Jones from Parks and Recreation, but in child form. Because that's what the closed mouth smile reminds me of. I'm planning on giving her brown hair and green eyes and naming her Margaret.

These are my Luts dolls. The first one is Kiddelf Bory. The two on head stands are Buzzi and a free event head I got with the others.
My plan was to make Bory a fairy queen or princess and the other two would stay on the head stands and be made into a wood fairy and water fairy or flower fairy or something similar. But looking at the heads today, the event head is significantly bigger than the other two, so perhaps I will put that one on the body? I don't know. But I don't plan on ordering anything to actually make them until international economy shipping is a thing again. I don't know many Australian shops that carry wigs or eyes and I don't feel like paying forty odd dollars shipping on every wig or pair of eyes. So they're probably on hold until Corona goes away.
Once they're done, I'd also like to make some kind of bases for the head stands. Maybe wooden bases? Maybe something out of resin? I'm not sure, this is just a vague idea at the moment.

And then there's this girl. I suppose she's not really a bid, since her head is vinyl and her body is plastic but I'm lumping her in here anyway.

I have no idea who or what she is. I told the Giant Husband that I wanted a little jointed doll to put in a decorative birdcage I have. And he ordered me this off Wish. I suspect she may be some kind of recast but I've never heard of plastic recast before. She's VERY jointed, but her joints are stiff and feel very flimsy, like they'll break if you try to move them. I haven't done anything with her because she doesn't fit in the birdcage so I put her away and forgot about her.

I'm not going to add the disembodied heads into my doll count but I am going to add Mei because I forgot when I made her post. Mei and Barbara's new dresses are not going well. I made a list of what I needed to make them, then when I put in my fabric order with Spotlight (for stuff to make Tiny some summer dresses) I completely forgot to add the fabric for their dresses to the order! And since packages, even ones from nearby, are taking so long I don't want to order anything else right now. So I'm going to see if I can come up with a new idea that uses stuff I already have.


Doll Count : 78