Almost done.....

I can hardly believe that it has been more than a week since I last wrote on my blog!  Doesn't time fly when you're enjoying yourself.....or should I say, doesn't time fly when you're cleaning the house, shopping for Christmas presents and running yourself ragged in the quest to get the perfect gifts for family and friends!!!  But thankfully I think I'm done....I just have a bit more tidying up and cleaning to do tomorrow and then that is it......I will 'chill' and if it's not done by Thursday evening, then it's not going to get done at all! :)

My mum and brother are flying over from the UK on Friday morning.  Friday is also my son Brendan's 25th birthday, but he is working all day so we'll not see much of him until the evening.  When I think of time flying I only have to realise that it is now a quarter of a century since he was born....now that really IS time flying.  Where have all those years gone?  I honestly don't know but it really doesn't seem such a long time since he was a tiny little boy and now look at him!!!

Here he is with his lovely girlfriend of 5 years, Virginia....

On the dolly front, my JID Asa in real skin arrived yesterday from Iplehouse, and luckily flew through customs without getting caught for ransom.......which is a bonus in itself!!!  At first I wasn't sure about her, I loved the big busted body and the colour of the resin but was a bit worried that she was too different from my other dolls, she has a very serious face and although I like sad faces, serious faces are something else!  I also wondered if she looked a bit 'sneaky' as her eyes are very small and narrow, like she was squinting or something,  but having now changed her eyes to green glass ones (I intend getting brown eventually) and finding a wig that I feel suits her, I'm really warming to her now!  I think once she has some clothes of her own it will be better too, plus I feel she needs restringing as she is very loosely strung.  I read on DOA that this is normal for IP dolls as it helps to avoid them getting damaged in transit.  I will make time over Christmas to sort her out though.  Here are a couple of photos of her:

Well lets hope it's not another week before I write again........

Lazy Sunday....

Apart from tidying up and putting away some clothes and cutting out a velvet coat in Little Fee size, I've not done much else today, although I did take some cute photos of my Elfdoll Lovely Dami, Anya, taking her little dog for a walk.  Here she is wearing an Ellowyne Wilde outfit by Robert Tonner.  The jacket is quite bulky on her but it is nice and cosy and warm, and just the perfect outfit for a chilly and damp Sunday afternoon walking the dog!!

Playing Frankendolly!

I had the urge recently to play Frankendolly!  By 'Frankendolly' I mean having a go at hybriding a doll.  I've been into bjds (ball jointed dolls) for more than five years now and have always admired people who, when they spotted one they liked, would grab a head for sale on the Den of Angels marketplace and hang on to it until the right body came along.  Sometimes those 'floating heads' as they are referred to, can 'float' around for ages before a body that suits them can be found, but even so if they see another, they go on to buy that too.  But when it comes to 'floating heads' I've never been very good at having them...I suppose it is mainly because I'm too impatient to wait for a body, so want one straight away, or perhaps it is that I worry if I were to get a body from another company to that which made the head, it wouldn't look good.  I'm also one of those collectors who likes to have ALL of their dolls on display ALL of the time, and floating heads just look 'weird' to me....so I've never really looked into it much.

My one experience of buying a body and head separately never worked out well, so it sort of put me off a bit.  Several years ago I wanted a Volks MSD (mini super Dollfie) but they were not within my budget at that time.  I decided to look out for a head and then if I found one, so I would look for a body.  I quite quickly came across a person in Asia selling a very pretty Volks Mika head.  Now Mika is a girl and the boy version is called Ken....and here it gets complicated!!!  The head for sale was a Mika but it had a custom faceup which was quite boyish and the seller told me that her doll, although a girl, had been 'living as' a boy in her house!  Well, I have to admit that to me 'he' looked remarkably like a 'she' to me, so I went ahead and bought him/her.  In the meantime I found a Volks MSD girl body and bought that.....see what I mean, I can't wait!  And once the two pieces were here, I put them together and 'he' became a 'she'.....but it never worked.  For me the doll was sort of 'bitty', even though both parts came from the same company, the doll never quite jelled for me so in the end I sold her. 

So it is with a bit of trepidation that I decided to try to make a hybrid Unoa.  I had a full Unoa Sist up until recently that I bought as a kit from Japan a few years back,  but sold her to buy someone else.  Of course the moment she was gone, so I missed her and wanted to get another!  However, when I bought her she was expensive enough and now they are even more so and I couldn't afford to, so decided hybriding was the route to take.

Today I bought the faceplate that I've been admiring on the marketplace for a couple of weeks.  She is a Unoa Sist, just a couple of months old with a lovely new faceup by a faceup artist on Flickr called 3rd_Strike.  Of course I couldn't leave it at that, what on earth would I do with a faceplate, pretty as it is!!!!  So I decided to search out a body for her.  For the last couple of days I've looked at all the companies I know of (and some that are new to me!) that sell bodies on their own, bodies that fit the idea I have in mind for Sist.  I finally decided on a lovely Diamond body from DollnDoll, and I ordered a head back from the French artist Amaeta!!  So hopefully my Frankendolly parts will arrive sometime over the next few weeks and I can put her together!!!

Here is a photo of the faceplate I'm getting.  The photo is obviously not mine and belongs to the faceup artist on Flickr, isn't she lovely!!!

Nothing else to report, except I think we're going to get rain tonight!

Today I have been busy sewing again and finished another outfit for little Evangeline, my Iplehouse BID Elin.  This one is also for Etsy.....I'm so enjoying sewing for this little sweetie! 

http://www.etsy.com/shop/dambuster01

Here is the completed outfit, it consists of a three tiered blue and white skirt, a sweatshirt top with blue decoration and blue and white knit leggings.  I think she looks so cute in it, the colours really suit her lovely tanned skin!

 

Talking of Iplehouse, today I got a lovely surprise when I went to check on their website.  I'd written to them during the weekend asking about adding something to my order, and their response was that they intended shipping my Asa this week!  I'm so pleased because I only ordered her on the 19th November and so hopefully she will be home in time for Christmas.  I hope that I can leave her box unopened until Christmas Day but I doubt it!  (After all, someone has to check that she is as she should be!!!!)

On the non dolly front, I finished a another really good book yesterday.  It was the lastest Janet Evanovich book, which is number 18 in Stephanie Plum series of novels.  It was great as usual, full of laugh out loud moments.  I read them so quickly though and then I am moaning that I didn't want the book to end!  Is there no pleasing some people, I hear you ask!!  So now I've got to wait until June 2012 for the next installment!  I'm lucky though in that I still have quite a few of her other books to read, so I will fill my time with those.

In the meantime I started another book last night, one which I first read about 30 years ago, when I was just a young thing, travelling up to London and back each day on the London Underground.  It is called The Rats by James Herbert, and I have to say that my taste in books has changed.  For a start I really do not like rats these days (except if they are someones pets) and I really hate blood and gore!  (And to think that I used to work in Scenes of Crime!)  But times change and I've become a lot more squeamish!!!  But I think I'll read to the end of the book now that I've started it, although I'm sure it will give me the willies at night!!!

Apart from that nothing much else to report!  The weather is cold and sunny, quite nice in the sunshine but really chilly in the shade.....and our house, as usual, is freezing, or so it seems to me!!

Argos Christmas advert.....

I just love this new Christmas advert from Argos, this little Alien family remind me of ball jointed dolls in a way...it must be their big heads and big eyes! There is a second one which I must find so that I can share that one too......

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pEI_yGJQdWs&feature=endscreen&NR=1

UPDATE:  Here is the second one! (Although the first one is my favourite!!!)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Erk_wjp0dUY

Enjoy!!!

Elin searches for Peter Rabbit...

Today I finished the outfit I was making for the Iplehouse BID girls and listed it on Etsy.....

http://www.etsy.com/shop/dambuster01

I am really enjoying this girl, and this size of doll, she is lovely to sew for, although I do have to mostly produce all new patterns for her as she has a long torso and shorter legs than a lot of my other dolls of this size. Having said that, she's so cute that I don't mind!

Today it has been rather cold here, but bright and sunny. I'm wearing lots of layers as I cannot stand being even the tiniest big cold....I don't know how people survive in places where they are snowed under for months on end in the winter! Having said that, it does make for nice photos, doesn't it!


Apart from that, I really don't have anything much to blog about, so until next time....

Poor neglected Bloggie!

The last week has been hectic what with one thing and another. I've been sewing frantically and as a result I realised that I'd forgotten all about my blog, so today I'm playing catch-up.

On the sewing front, I've made some outfits for the Iplehouse BID girls and that brought me another commission from a lovely lady in the US who wants me to make an outfit for her incomming girl!

I had put one of my Volks Yosd girls up for sale because I have 5 of them and really felt the need to downsize. So Papi went up for sale but unfortunately despite loads of enquiries and offers to trade, she didn't get adopted. So last night I decided to remove her default faceup and give her a new look. Today I spent hours working on her and am really happy with how she has turned out! I think she will be staying! After all, can a person really have too many Volks Yosds? LOL!

Anyway, here is a comparison photo, old faceup is on the left and new on the right. I know there's not a great deal of difference in these photos but in 'real life' I think she is just that little bit 'fresher' looking!

Apart from that, nothing much else to report on here. I'm still stalking the Iplehouse JID thread and the Iplehouse Waiting Room on DOA.....I hope that my new girl comes before Christmas but we shall see. What with their Christmas event, I'm not holding out a great deal of hope! But if she doesn't arrive along with Santa then at least I will have something to look forward too after the holidays!!