May the 4th be with you

In honor of Star Wars day I decided to do a little shoot, but  I was lazy so I only grabbed one of my Star Wars dolls and decided to let her take a little tour of the other collections that were already out.
So I present to you, "Rey goes on Vacation"

Here's Rey at her hotel room

"It looks like the Winchesters stayed here before me."

I actually made this diorama for the Sam and Dean Barbie (Ken) dolls I made for my sister. It's meant to be one of those cheap motels they stay at.

 I still need to add some paintings over the bed, I finally found some coasters awful enough to be motel art! I just need to make some frames, or the illusion of frames so I can put them up.

Next she went to visit the German Expressionism Museum,

This is a diorama I made for my Silent Screamers" Cabinet of Doctor Caligari  action figures. I have another one of those big plexi boxes so I'm hoping to do Nosferatu next...at some point.

After that she went to the mall for some shopping but it seems all the  stores were closed for some reason.

The counter is from a 90's playset and the box in the background is a "store front" I've been making for it. I've been organizing my doll collection and trying to put all the orginal pieces together so I can take some photos.

I'm begining to realize this shoot could be called "Rey goes on a tour of all the unfinished projects I have all over my craft room.

To finish off her day Rey went for a drink at the Bratz Pub

"Hey you! Why isn't any of this milk blue?"

But then I decided we needed a background.

Much better! Cheers, and May the 4th be with you.

Ikea Furniture

Ikea has this great living room set scaled for 11 1/2 inch dolls. I actually got this a couple of years ago, but never got around to posting any pics. Here are some photos of when I first got the set and deboxed it. Hopefully I'll get around to taking some photos of them in the cabinet and with some dolls hanging out but since these are what I have now, these are what I'm posting.

The coolest thing about this set is that they are all replicas of items they actually sell at the store so you could potentially buy all these pieces for your living room and then have a tiny copy of it in a cabinet, Ikea inseption! Of course, you will also need to customize a doll to look like yourself.

I already have the coffee table, but mine is red, and I have been considering getting that chair for this thing I want to do to my front porch.

The box itself is very nice. It's covered in drawing of living room accessories that can be punched out and colored (or left as is, they look pretty cool black and white) and used to decorate the background of your living room.

The drawings, like the furniture are of actual items they sell at Ikea, or at least sold at some time, I haven't seen that clock in awhile at the store.

I'm still making up my mind if I want to paint those or not. I will probably end up making copies on cardstock so I can have both.

I just realized I forgot to take a picture of the other side of the box. The bottom is just writing and upc code.


I love how easy to open these boxes are and the stuff is just placed inside in little compartments. no ties to wrestle with or excess of material to throw out.

Here's everything that came in the box. The rug was a surprise. I could kinda see it before I opened it but I thought it was just a piece or cardboard, not actual fabric.

So you get a sofa with a removable slipcover, a shelf, a coffee table a side chair, a rug and a cushion for about $15 which is not bad considering the plastic is really nice and thick. The rug and the cushion are kinda flimsy, but it's still not too bad.  This set is going in my display cabinet, but it would hold up to play just fine.

Here's the shelf unit thingie. You could use it horizontaly of vertically.
It's a really cool piece because you can fill the cubies with all sorts of tiny thing you might want to display.

The first thing I did with that cushion was to cut off that ridiculously large tag.





Here are all the pieces out of the box and in one of my shelves.

They also have a kid's bedroom playset that I got last year for xmas that I will be adding pictures of soon.
I really hope they keep adding one of these every year, It will be fun to have a whole house worth of stuff to display with my dolls. I would like them to do a kitchen next, that would be nice.

Barbie Fashionista new body comparisons - Curvy, Petite and Original

So far I have two out of the three new Barbie bodies so it's time to answer the question on everybody's mind: just how different are the bodies. Right off the bat I'll admit I should have taken more pictures, I should have taken better pictures, but that can still happen later, right now we are going for instant gratification.

For our comparison we have a regular pink box Barbie with the classic high heel feet, a curvy fashionista with flat feet and a petite fashionista with high heel feet. So if you consider that all dolls come with either high heel or flat feet, four body types and a ton of new hair and skin colors, that adds up to all the different looks. I'm really loving that now a Barbie collection can look like a group of assorted people instead of an army of clones.

BTW, I'm sure you noticed Curvy up there found herself a new dress, more on that on the next post about just which clothes can she fit.

So on to the nudity so we can see what we are dealing with:

Curvy looks pretty short in comparison to Original, but is still taller than Petite. You can see this better in the clothed picture.
Notice all the different skin tones, which I think is pretty cool. But back to the actual molds and not the color of what got molded. They all have completely different torso lengths. Original Barbie is a lot more elongated, where I think Curvy and Petite have more natural proportions. The more I look at original, next to the other two, the weirder she looks....I don't mean she's off putting or anything, but it's certainly more obvious to me now than when she was the only body type. I was never one of those people that had an issue with Barbie's proportions. Even as a child I knew she was mean to be a caricature of a woman, not an actual scale model.But now that there are different shapes, I find it very fun.
Here's a closeup of the torsos.

You can see Curvy lives up to her name but I was glad to see that Petite has the body of a small woman and not just a skipper body with high heel feet like I feared. She has smaller boobs and a smaller frame in general but she still have a little bit of curves. I have a special fondness for Petite since that's been my body type for pretty much my entire life, even though I have to admit now that I'm older you might have to stick a bit  Curvy's hips on her to make her look more like me. 

A lot of people have been calling Curvy "fat" but she's about as fat as a plus size model which is to say not really fat, just thicker. I like that her face is fuller and her ankles are thicker so she's pretty well proportioned. She is by far my favorite I'm not sure if it's because she's so different to other fashions dolls or because there is so much detail to her. Probably a combination of the two. 

I like how thick her thighs are, and if you notice, Petite's are thicker than Barbie's too. The cool thing about these dolls is that they have more "human" proportions without looking dumpy, which is a problem I have found with other attempts like Lamilly or Happy to be Me dolls. 

 

A word on that molded underwear: On the one hand I like thatthey have underwear on, specially since they often wear short skirts, and I do recognize that actual underwear is too bulky and then you can't fit clothes in top of it... but the molded pattern, unpainted so it's the same color as their skin makes it look like they have some weird rash.

I know there's more play-ability in leaving it a nude color in case she's ever wearing something where you could see part if the paint (like a bathing suit) but I still end up painting them on a lot of the time. I specially do this with Monster High dolls since they ussually wear the tiniest of skirts.

Well, so that's the end of my overview of the different Fashionista body types. We'll probably revisit the subject later, but right now I'm working on doing a review of Petite and a few Ikea doll furniture sets that I got.

BTW, in case you were wondering, my 10 year old nephew came over the other day and named them Michaela, Alexa and Christina. I'm not entirely sold on Michaela yet, but I think the other two names fit them very well. Alexa is the original and Christina is petite. I thought of using the names in the review but I thought it might just get confusing.

Dollar Store Fairy dress with fabulous shoes

I went to the dollar store to get glass beads to make dragon eyes, when I found this Barbie doll outfit.

 The dress is pretty mediocre...actually it's pretty awful, I was just trying to be nice but the shoes were just too fabulous to pass up: light pearly pink high heels with straps going up to the knees and fairy wings (or butterfly wings whatever) in the back.

I know that packaged pic was kinda bad, so here's a pick of the stuff out of the package. Also badly photographed.

And as a treat, a pic of the shoes that is in focus!

The shoe fits Barbie dolls perfectly the dress however doesn't have a velcro or snap or any other type of closure in back so you just have to wiggle the doll into it and then it all hangs a bit sack-like and not so much like a magical fairy.

Since it fits so loosely on Original Body Barbie, I thought maybe it would fit Curvy Barbie, but no suck luck. Since  Curvy got back, and the dress doesn't open, it wont go though her hips.

I can totally relate to this

 Dollar store dresses are usually not that good but they sometimes serve as a good base for making something else so I'm going to hang on to it and play around with it. A dress so cheap that I don't mind messing up and some really fabulous shoes for my collection, I'd say that's a pretty good deal for a buck. Also, looking at the first in box pic, I just realized I have no idea what I did with that little purse.

Here's another photo of Barbie in her new shoes, this time in a dress that actually fits her even if it doesn't really match the shoes at all.

Curvy Barbie - Sporty

I knew I wanted to get one of these dolls as soon as they were announced. I also knew since she wasn't going to fit into regular Barbie clothes, I was going to get one of the sets that came with two additional outfits. This is why it took me so long to finally get her even though the first one that came out with blue hair was very tempting. A lot of them are very tempting, but since I don't have the money or the space to get all the ones I want I plan to limit myself to one of each.... for now!

I wanted a curvy one first since those were my favorites being that they are the most different ones from traditional Barbie. My two faves were the sporty one and the one with the emoji top (mostly because of the fabulous blue dress that one comes with, which truly shows off those curves). So I just left it up to fate and got the first one I saw in the store. I might still get the other one since having a Caucasian one and an African American one still fall under the parameters of "one of each". Rules were made to be stretched.

So here she is in the box, which btw was a pain in the ass to open. It's not an actual box to open. its the plastic glued to the cardboard and I mean GLUED. but look how cool she is!
And I like that her outfits are things I would actually wear!

And here is the back of the box showing her in her other outfits and some pics of four of the other  sets

 

Here she is in the outfit she comes in. A black dress with a turquoise net overlay, turquoise sandals, a white purse and a black cap. 

I was a little dissapointed that the net doesnt go all the way around but then it has this little detail at the back that makes it cute anyway.

And the best surprise by far was the hat. Usually I hate doll hats. Either they don't stay on properly, or they come attached with a million plastic thingies and if you ever remove them, the hat will never stay put again. So imagine my surprise when not even one plastic thingie! The hat stays beautifully on its own and you can even wear it backwards for a different look.

And while we are looking at a close up, isn't she pretty? I like her minimal makeup, it goes with her look and it also seems more like what a real person would wear. No need to wear glitter to work everyday. She does need her nails painted though.

She has a very cool hair color too. It's kinda brown I guess, with bright magenta highlights that made me think at first she has purpleish hair.

Its really nice and silky too and I'm sure the fact that it's so straight also helps the hat stay in place. I'm sure the curly headed dolls won;t be as hat friendly.

She's supposed to be sporty, but since she's my doll and I hate sports I'm going to take sporty to mean comfortable. She even has flat feet so she can wear comfy shoes! Another thing that makes her different and I love it.

I tried to get a good picture to show you her feet, but it was hard to hold the doll and the phone to take a pic and when I tried to set her down she would just not get into a good angle. But you get the idea.

She comes with blue sandals and bright pink sneakers so that's not exactly versatile. I'll be going on a hunt to find her a few more shoes so she can have options.

The problem with a doll that has different size clothes and shoes is that outfits will be hard to find. but then I think that's one of the things that will make her so fun, the challenge of finding stuff for her to wear.


I know at this point you are expecting the body comparisons and I agree I should have taken the pics, but my friend got me one of the petite dolls for my birthday and I haven't opened her yet. I want to do the body comparisons with all three body types I have so far...maybe also add a vintage one or too also. So I'll try to get that done in the next couple of days.

So lets take a look at her alternate outfits instead. First the yellow skirt and white crop top with pink lines.

I tried to put the skirt a little lower on her hips but she's so curvy that it just rolls up to her middle so I guess it's a high waisted skirt. I thought it looked kinda boxy in the promo pics but it's actually really cute in person. She comes with just one pair of shoes and purse for the two extra outfits, bit it's okay because the sneakers allow her to stand all by herself so she'll be wearing them a lot.

The fact that both outfits consist of two pieces allows for some mix and matching. Here she is with the white top and the black skirt from the other one.

The skirt is sparkly! I couldn't tell that in the box but that's pretty cool. It's a little see through though so she needs to be careful with that back light.

The black and white stripped top is my fave piece and I would like one in my size so I can wear it with leggins, thank you very much.

 

 I don't think you can see it too clearly on the photos but there is pink stitching on the top that matches the sneakers and purse.

I was wondering if the top would work as a dress by itself but that slit is too damn high.

I need to give her a name, I don't want to just keep calling her Curvy Barbie. Maybe Carmen? I'm not sure.

Her shoes and purse are transparent jelly like type and I just happened to have this soap box I got at Walmart to make a suitcase from a tutorial I saw on Pinterest and all her things fit in perfectly, even the hat, so that was a good thing too.

I'll post the finished product once I add the wheels and handle, but even as is it's a pretty good start.

That's it for now. I'll be back soon with Petite review and size comparisons.

Ashley Barbie Doll

I like making and/or customizing doll just for the sake of making them so I love it when someone actually likes having a doll made of them because it gives me a willing victim subject. One of my best inspirations is my friend Ashley. Not only does she appreciate a good doll tribute, but she pretty much looks like a doll already.
I had made a couple of dolls of her before but then she changed her hair color and made it a point to mention she did not have a current doll so I already had it in mind when I spotted this about a month before her birthday a couple of years ago.

The most important thing that it already have Ashley's exact hair color and side part so I didn't have to worry about having to dye or even worse, re-root her.

 Although her makeup and outfit definitely had to go. She also has a bit of a tan where Ashley has none, but we won't get too picky.

I re-did her makeup but I don't have any closeups of that, I'll try to get some next time I'm at Ashley's. The fun part and what I wanted to talk about here was how I made her outfit anyway.

 

You can kind of see her new makeup in this pic and the beginning of the dress.  I realize I should have taken more pictures of the process bit I will make up for it with really detailed instructions.

          1- get an black sock from your stash of single socks. If you don't have single sock stash then make that your step number one. Socks are great for making doll clothes. The knit is perfectly to scale with Barbies and other dolls of that size and if you get a patterned one, the patter will often be to scale too.

I have this issue where my fingernails are super brittle and they often break down to the skin so I have to put band-aids on the tip of my finger so it doesn't keep getting snagged on everything and rip the whole thing off and yet my big toe nail is so incredibly powerful that it shreds the tip of many a sock long before the rest of the sock is worn out. What I'm saying is, I'm glad I found a good use for all this sock bits I end up with.

      2- Since the socks are so stretchy, you don;t really need to have Velcro of snaps on the dress. I just made a simple pattern by tracing the outline on the doll on paper and going from there.

Then I sewed it by hand because I get easily frustrated by my sewing machine. Plus really, why would you bring out a sewing machine for that little thing?

      3-  I was copiying an actual dress Ashley has, so next I had to "screen print" the design. I drew the misfits logo on a piece of paper and then went over my drawing with white fabric paint. I like slick one that comes in the little bottles since the bottle gives you great control for little details. Here's a pic of all the tools you'll need.

      4- Then I took a little sponge square and and place it over the whole thing very carefully to pick up the paint. This serves two purposes 1) it blots out some of the paint  2) it makes a negative impression of the design so that when you press it against the dress you get a positive image.
Also remember to cut another piece of sponge to place inside the dress so the paint doesn't bleed to the back (or the table you are working on)

Here's a picture of the finished dress on the doll

And now for the shoes. I got lucky on this one too, because I already had a pair of boots from another Barbie that looked a lot like a pair that Ashley has, even if it was the wrong color

So I just painted them black and  a bit of varnish to seal it and that was that. Oh and I did touch up the eyelets a bit with a silver Sharpie.

And now here she is, the finished project.

And a picture of her in her box. I just spray painted it black and then added the name with white paint.

  And here is a photo of Ashley for comparison she's doing her Barbie doll pose.

The one correction Ashley had was that the doll did not have any of her tattoos.  But that was easily remedied with a few Sharpies. I also painted her molded undies with some black acrylic paint.

And here are some of the actual tattoos for comparison. It's not perfect, but it's also not bad for something that was done quickly in the middle of a party