Happy Family Midge! (Thrift store find)

So here's the find from yesterday I was so excited about: Happy Family Midge! Honestly, I couldn't believe my luck when I spotted her. I've been wanting one of these to compare to the Welcome Baby Steffi Love, but the only ones I've seen are the NRFB ones that go for ridiculous prices on ebay. This one, however, was only a few dollars/euro and well inside my budget. I could tell she had a few cracks in her neck, but nothing that couldn't be fixed. She also has one broken click-knee joint, but apart from that she was in pretty good condition: original dress, hair in original hairdo and just a bit messy, no broken fingers or stains - and of course she came with her belly!

Before pic

Hair, before. It's that thin, fluffy fibre - kanekalon, if I'm not mistaken. In my experience, the trouble with kanekalon is you can only boil straighten it a couple of times before it starts to frizz and fry. The tricky thing is, you really need boiling water for it to take, so you have to consider the pros and cons carefully. I haven't tested this systematically though, so I might be wrong about the frizzing being due to heat. Someone mentioned combating the frizz with steam, but I haven't gotten around to try it yet. Midge is in no danger yet, though - her hair looks great after a couple of dips and a combing through.

The braids are mainly original, I just redid a couple of the ends that were starting to ...unravel, I guess?

Back view. The braids aren't another color, they're just wet. 

The neck was a bit worse than I thought at first. There are smaller cracks all around, but also one big crack with a piece of plastic that's threatening to come loose (you can see it just to the left of the seam). To the left of that there's a smaller chip that actually did come loose as I took off the head (and then managed to I flushed it down the drain and had to disassemble the trap to retrieve it). I bought some Loctite gel super glue and I think I got the chip safely reattached and the bigger crack filled in, but I couldn't get inside the neck to fill in the lower part of the crack that's just starting to appear. It seems ok for now, though; I'll just have to be careful. 

(Since the belly is held on with magnets inside the torso, I've been thinking of alternative ways to attach it in case I need to rebody in the future. Magnetic paint?) 

I have to say, this is actually a pretty clever construction. It sounds weird, but having the belly be a plastic shell that attaches with magnets is actually pretty convenient. The shape fits the torso perfectly and looks - well, perhaps not realistic, but not outright bizarre at least, and sometimes with dolls that's the best you can hope for. (I think Steffi Love might have a more realistic post-pregnancy figure, though!) 

Sitting works so-so, but the thing about the magnet-belly is it can shift a bit without falling off. I'm not sure if this is a bug or feature, but it does allow her to sit with marginally more ease, and the clothes hide any illusion-breaking gaps. Of course, franken-Steffi still does it better: 

This is why we Frankendolly. 

Oh, and the baby was still there too! Who are these children who don't pull their dolls apart and lose their clothes and ruin their hair like I used to do?? The baby is actually pretty cute - cuter than Steffi's, at any rate (but sssssshh! Don't tell her I said that). Maybe it's just that the face paint is less wonky. 

All in all, I'm really happy I found this doll. Along with the articulated Sarah Love, this is probably my best find in ages! 

(I also got a couple of Evi Love dolls with cute outfits too, and two 1/9-ish weird old clone dolls with interesting articulation. I'll take some photos of them another day - the clone dolls are more unique-looking so I need better lighting to do them justice.) 

Camera and Clones (and Dreamhouse Midge)

Finally got some rechargable batteries and brought my old digital camera back from the dead. I haven't used it in years since I have (had!) my camera phone, and I don't remember what half of the buttons do, but somehow I feel a bit more confident messing around with it now. All the photos still turn out blurry and underexposed, of course, but you have to start somewhere. At least I have photo evidence of Dreamhouse Midge whom I got today!

Blurry, under-lit photo evidence.

I thought I was so careful, but I still managed to get one with unevenly rooted eyelashes! Typical. I find it hard to be too annoyed, though - she's still a very pretty doll.

quality control

Also found a few interesting looking old clone dolls at the thrift store. I have no idea who these girls are, but they remind me of something, perhaps vintage Steffi Love or '80s Petra. Maybe it's the bubble cut that makes them look more vintage, but I get the feeling they're fairly old (although probably not valuable). The best part is the chin which has a little dimple in it. The bodies are pretty awful and no parts seem to fit together. No stamp in the back or neck. The hands are tiny and the feet are weird and long.

Check out those shoulders!

There were two of these. This is the one with the bad hair...

...and this is the one with the good hair

The third doll has the same face mold but a very different look

(A few more pics @ my flickr, as usual.)

Check that chin!

Doll blogging without a camera...

...just isn't the same. :( My phone is officially dead, my old cameraphone is forever stuck on "landscape" and won't focus on anything closer than the faraway hills (like, say, a doll held at arm's length), and I'm too lazy to make informative MS Paint doodles, so it's just words for now.

Today felt like fall. The berries on the rowan down by the street are turning red, and I'm getting newsletters from online toy stores about back-to-school sales. It's mostly kiddie pools and Justin Bieber ring binders, but look around on the site and what do you find if not the Life in the Dreamhouse dolls! Finally! They're not super expensive like I'd feared, although I'm wondering whether adult collectors (like me. Ahem.) will hunt them to extinction right away. I've decided I'll take that risk and wait until they appear in the brick-and-mortar store so I can pick out a good one - something tells me those rooted eyelashes might be worth checking before buying. Also because my top priority next budget month is a respirator and some protective goggles. No more excuses!

In other doll news, I finally found a seller who offered international shipping and got Movin' On Kenya! The quality is a bit on the cheap side - her boots in particular are really thin and warped plastic - but when it comes to dolls I'll forgive almost anything for a pretty face, and she certainly has one. Unfortunately she has some bad staining - not only on her legs, but also on the head under the chin and in the back of the neck. The hair and angle hides them pretty well, though, and I've got some Remove-Zit on the way, so hopefully something can be done about them.

Oh, and I got two more Twilight Teens! I decided on the basic spooky school uniform Ghostilla (with the cool glasses!) and the coffin-shaped wardrobe set that came with one of the generic zombie girls. Unlike the Super Model line, the hair on these dolls is pretty awful: thinly rooted harsh nylon. Somewhat justified for the semi-mohawk on the zombie, I guess, but really just cheap. Some light staining from clothing in a few places, but not as bad as I'd feared.
I love the coffin wardrobe! It's not very spacious - there's only one clotheshanger anyway - but the quality seems pretty good, the doors close firmly and so does the little drawer on the bottom. It just looks pretty cool and suits the MH girls perfectly, even if it's too small to haunt properly.

Kara got her boil perm... and will probably get about four more, because that's how much practice I'll need to get it right. At the moment she looks more or less like before, except even more uneven. *sigh* At least I figured out an outfit for her. I should tahe some pic... oh wait.