December doll stuff pt. 1

Happy new year! I hope you've had/are having a good holiday. 

Instead of making a new fresh start, I'm beginning the year with some old leftover photos from December.  

This cheap doll set caught my eye at the local... well, I sometimes refer to it as a dollar store, but most things cost a lot  more than that even though it's mostly junk, so let's just call it The Cheap Junk Store. I love The Cheap Junk Store. When I moved here six years ago there were several similar shops, but now there's just this one to cater to all my cheap junk needs. They're great for candy and sketchbooks, but sadly their doll selection is mostly limited to the boring kinds of MH clones with tiny feet. The doll in this set is no better: just your regular Barbie clone with stick legs, but her blouse actually looked pretty cute so I decided to buy it. (Also I love pink plastic tea sets.)

As usual I apologize for the dark and grainy photos.

Boring doll with artfully toussled hair. Or maybe it's just messy. I tore her clothes off immediately. 

World on Ice Belle is on the ballerina Barbie body with a broken neck for now, mostly because the skintones matched. Her molded shoes match the outfit!

As expected the clothes are pretty badly made, but can still be made to look pretty good on the right doll. As usual, it's all about the angle! Ballerina Barbie is a bit too skinny for the skirt, and the apron is just the tiniest bit of fabric they could get away with.

It looks better on the smaller dolls, like Sarah Love here. Kindergarten fingerpainting time, anyone?

(Outside of actual ballet poses, the ballerina body is pretty limited in its posing ability. This is the most natural-looking pose I've been able to coax her into. I assume she's exhausted from holiday preparations.)

Kenya wore it best, though. The pastels match her eye shadow, plus she has a bigger choice of footwear (these are my favorites from the Steffi Love shoe pack).

She fills out the skirt a lot better. The velcro still looks a bit lumpy from the side, but like I said: all about the angle. From the front she looks great!

I'm thinking of replacing the velcro here with a couple of snaps before it tears the fabric, but I'm not sure there will be enough room to put them. Maybe some fabric glue or fray-stopping product might help.

I tried to pick the set with the least obvious faults, but there's still a seam on one sleeve that needs mending. It is a cute blouse, though, and if I find a good fabric that's thin enough I'm going to copy the pattern.  

Meanwhile, Belle is about to take a well-deserved nap under the christmas tree. 

Who's that Belle? It's World on Ice Belle!

ETA: wow, that was fast! She's got a name: World on Ice Belle. Don't know why she needs another face sculpt just for ice skating, but there you go. Also - as I scrolled down through the comments on that photo, I realized I had in fact left a comment years ago, saying how much I liked her face. Well, at least we know my amazing taste has remained consistent through the years. (Also see Jawn Pickles' link below for good shots of her sculpt without the paint.)

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Don't worry, I haven't given up the plastic entirely! On Monday I made a little pilgrimage to the new crafts store, and also took the opportunity of popping into the nearby goodwill. There I found this Disney doll that I'm having a bit of trouble identifying. Her hairstyle leads me to think she's a Belle, but the face mold doesn't look like any Belle I've seen. Back of neck says (c) DISNEY, MADE IN CHINA, body is stamped CHINA. No other markings. I would guess she's a clone, but they're not usually stamped with the original's copyright, are they?

As usual, I bought her for her face. She has a fairly straight nose, closed mouth, and almost Lagoona-like bulging eyes (also the paint is a bit wonky). No holes for earrings, which seems to be unusual among these dolls. I guess that could mean she's a "village Belle" and came in some version of the blue dress.  

The feet are TINY.

The body is kind of weird. It certainly doesn't look like Mattel (although I know I tend to underestimate how weird-looking older Mattel dolls can be). The neck knob makes me think Simba, but I don't recognize this body type from them either. My other articulated Simba Disney princesses has more or less same body as the old articulated Steffi Love, which doesn't really look like this one.

So far the closest I've got to a match is this slightly odd-looking Belle, who according to the comments is an older Disney Store doll. I'm not sure they're the same, but at least that proves there's some variety among the Belles out there. 

Zombie's new dress

Since I'm broke and not buying any dolls this month, I thought I'd sew some clothes for the ones I already have instead. I'm to lazy/tired to wite anything tonight, but basically this was supposed to be a simple, medieval/renaissance/1840s?-ish dress suitable for a zombified peasant girl but things got out of hand a bit. Good thing zombies don't care about historical accuracy. 

Belle's dress on the left was sort of the inspiration/starting point.

Several more badly-lit photos behind the cut. 

Post #101: mostly thrift store finds

Ah yes, the difficult 101st post.

I'm quickly running out of disk space, so I've started uploading my doll pics to Flickr instead. The downside is that after tagging and organizing them (and writing comments explaining why there are 15 photos of a doll's elbow), I'm no longer in the mood for writing a proper blog post about them as well. :( But on the upside, I'm not dead at least. 

Anyway, here's what I've been up to lately, dollwise:

• Upgraded/finished the Steffi Love hybrid!

Since mine was an incomplete thrift store doll I bought a new one to get the baby and the detachable outer belly, plus some clothes that fit. She can hold the baby too! 

• Found two Disney Store dolls at my local thrift store! 

Pretty unexpected, since I'm fairly certain we don't even have Disney Stores here (I guess I'm not the only one who knows about online shopping). 

Their face sculpts are pretty bad imo, I only got them for the articulation. Merida is fully jointed! Rapunzel's click-knee legs might be a case for Dr. Frankendolly. 

Rapunzel's hair is the worst mess I've ever seen, but it might be salvageable for rerooting. Maybe. To be honest I'm still working up the courage to deal with it.

• Stripped Mattel Rapunzel's head!

She was my test subject for The Talcum Powder Temporary Cure for Greasy Hair, but then I decided I couldn't be bothered (note to self: don't test these things on the doll with the MOST hair to comb through). Since her screening was so wonky I decided to just get rid of everything at once. 

This mold is a lot better than the Disney Store one, but she looks a bit creepy without eyes.

I wanted to make sure all the glue was definitely gone, so I scrubbed the inside of the head with sugar AND steel wool. Hard to tell if it made any difference, but at least it probably didn't hurt. The glue-soaked Nikki I rerooted last time had a pretty sticky scalp even after I washed it, so to be on the safe side I gave rapunzel's scalp a sugar scrub too. I don't know if it was sticky before, but at least it isn't now!

L-R: Raquelle, Rapunzel on Simba super model, Liv Katie, Disney Store Merida (from above)

This is one head I'd really like to have on a shorter body (the original was ~25cm), but she's too pink for Simba's Super Models and not pale enough for Obitsu. For full-sized bodies someone suggested Raquelle/Midge, and it looks like Liv Katie might be an acceptable match too.

• New doll: Mattel Belle! 

Probably my favorite thrift store find in a while. Belle from Beauty and the Beast, by Mattel. Not exactly sure which version, but she came in an original dress (stained and missing the apron). As you can see she was also wearing a pair of boots that looked like they belonged in a sci-fi anime rather than medieval France, but at least the colors matched.

(Fun fact: that price tag on her dress has three stickers on top of each other with three different prices. Lately I've come to the conclusion that thrift store pricing is completely random and mostly up to the individual employee, and this only confirms my suspicions. And no, the last price wasn't the lowest. :( )

Her hair was pretty frizzy, but luckily all it needed was a boil perm (it looks like kanekalon, so I'll have to be careful if I do it again). The bangs were a bit trickier - the hot water removed the frizz, but also all the volume, and I had no idea what to do with them. Finally I tried combing them flat to one side, and that turned out a lot better than I could have hoped for.

Then I put her on a Fashionista body and gave her all of Style Teresa's stuff (did I mention she's my favorite?).

I also seem to recall renaming her, but I've forgotten what. Nina? I should write this stuff down.