All the best laid plans....

When I knew I was getting my lovely new sewing/embroidery machine, I had great intentions.  I would make little felt pictures and turn them into cards and send one to each of my friends in time for Christmas.  Well that was the intention!

Unfortunately, because I was working so hard on my latest commission, I only got as far as making two pictures and because the first one I did took me about two hours (I still hadn't received my machine manual in English at that point) I decided that maybe next year, if I start about Easter, I can get them done in time.  On top of that, I couldn't get my hands on any of those cards with a little window in them for adding your own picture!!!

So instead, I will show you what I did manage to get done and wish everyone a wonderful Christmas filled with love and warmth and hope Santa brings you something nice from your Christmas list!!!

These are my two finished 'projects'.  I think I was a little over ambitious with my first attempt as I had to change the colours back and forth 20 times!!!  Both pictures are done on wool felt and are approx 10 x 10 centimetres in size!  (there is a mistake in the first picture where my sewing needle got bent but carried on going.....but I'll not point it out to you!!)

I showed this one to my friend who said "I love the birds!"  I thought "Birds? What birds?" and then I saw them!!!  

Thank you for visiting!  

A little Sasha fashion show.....

.....Phew try saying that when you've had a few drops of Christmas 'spirit'!!!

I've been busy over the last week or so, sewing a big commission for a lady in the US.  The outfits are for her Sasha girls and as she has now seen and approved the outfits, I thought I would share some photos on here.  I just have two more items to sew for her and this bundle will be on it's way home very soon!

Beige patterned blouse with tiny brown buttons:

Cream broiderie anglaise blouse with tiny matching buttons: 

Back view showing the pretty edging:

 Plain white long sleeved tee shirt:

First red and white set:

Second red set:

 First dark blue set:
 

Second dark blue set:

Purple set:

This headband is actually reversable but I might add something else to it as I feel it needs something more.....

Tiny flower print knit summer set:

Turquoise and cerise pink knit summer set:

Thank you for looking!  I just hope that the little American Sasha girls will be happy with their new outfits!!!

Something happened on the way to Ebay.....!

I had been looking at my dolls with a view to downsizing...I do this every now and again, especially if I see another doll that I might l like to add to my dolly family....and this was the case recently.  I thought about who to sell, and someone mentioned that a Hope by Kaye Wiggs had recently sold for a nice four figure sum on Ebay.   So I said to myself "do I really need not one but TWO Kaye Wiggs dolls with the same body style? Do I? Really?" and so when we went home a week or so ago to collect some things for Christmas, I decided to bring my Hope back to the coast with me with a view to getting her ready to sell.

Ahh but as we know, all the best made plans........I took some photos, I changed her wig and clothes and that was it.  I realised that I couldn't sell this doll even for four figures!  I'm not greedy, I know that if I have any regrets then this doll will be irreplacable because I'm hopeless at saving money and would struggle to find another even if I could get the money together.  I realised that the doll meant more to me than the money, which would just get spent anyway!!

Not only that, quite quickly over the last week, this doll has actually become one of my favourites of all my dolls!!!  How weird is that!!!!

So she is staying and today I changed her into this knitted set by Stassy Dodge in Latvia.  The set is actually knitted for the Sylvia Natterer dolls who are bigger in the body than Hope, but I liked how it looked on her.  Plus having been brought down here with selling in mind, I never brought any clothes for her!!! Poor girl!

I took her to the beach with us for our usual Sunday morning walk, it was mild but dull and very very still, not a breath of wind.  I hope you like the photos of her :) and warn you there are a lot of them!!!!

Thank you for stopping by my blog today, I hope you all have a lovely week ahead and keep safe and warm!

A bit of face painting!

When I was over in the UK at the Chat n Snap, a very dear dolly friend of mine asked me if I would redo the faceup on one of the BJDs that she'd brought with her.  The doll in question is a Custom House Petite Ai, I think the mold name is Gabby but I'm not 100% on that.  Anyway, the doll still had her original faceup which I think was from about 2003 and although it wasn't in bad condition it had faded quite a bit and as a result looked very pale.

I was reluctant to remove a perfectly good faceup so I suggested that perhaps it would be better if I enhanced it a little and gave her new eyelashes as the original ones were also pale and faded.

I only brought home the dolls head so please forgive the fact that she doesn't have a body to pose on and is actually using a glue bottle!!!

Here is the before photo:

And here she is almost finished, just needing applied upper eyelashes.  I decided to just basically thicken and darken her brows and bottom eyelashes, I gave her new colour on her lips and then I gave her quite a bit of blush to hopefully 'bring her to life'.....

Then I added upper eyelashes.  They are not quite dry here so look wonky, but they are in fact the same both sides!

 I replaced her brown glass eyes with a similar pair that had a lower dome than those she came with, I felt the high dome dominated the eye socket too much and you couldn't see the whites of her eyes much.  She is also borrowing one of my dolls wigs here:

I hope you've enjoyed seeing this little sweetie with her new more colourful look.  Her mum is happy with the finished result so when I can find a box small enough, she'll be heading back home to the UK to be reunited with her body!!! :)

Action figures....but who are they? UPDATED!

A couple of weeks ago I bought a bunch of little action figures from the secondhand market, I thought they might make good 'pretend' BJDs for my bigger dolls as these little plastic figures are multi jointed, although not ball jointed.  I got 5 of them and thought I'd look on the internet to see if they are from a children's cartoon/tv programme/Anime or something.  However, despite quite a bit of research, I cannot find anything similar.  They don't have any markings on them except that each one has a number on the bottom of one foot.

I thought I'd share them on here in the hope that someone might recognise them and might be able to throw some light on who they are and where they come from!  I am hoping that one of my readers, jSarie, in particular, might be able to help!!

So here they are.  They are approx 5 to 6 inches tall, made of all plastic and have moulded on hair, all but the boy with glasses, are multi jointed.  They can stand on their own but not on the artificial grass that I tried posing them on!

This girl looks very Asian with her black hair and almond shaped eyes.  I'm not sure what those brown raised lines are above her eyebrows though!

I think this is a girl because of her pink hair, outfit and pink wings but I could be wrong:

This  yellow haired one, which I think could be a boy, has little 'horns' or at least the 'stubs' of horns on his head, plus a feline sort of tail which is also hinged!  But his feet are more like 'hooves':

This bespectacled boy also has a microphone attached to his glasses.  He isn't as articulated as the others, only having joints at his neck, shoulders, hips and knees.  His ankles and wrists are not jointed, unlike the others:

The gang:

Close ups:

Thanks for stopping by, I hope one of you can maybe throw some light on these 'characters', just out of curiosity!

UPDATE!
A friend of mine in the US sent my photos to her son and he remembered seeing something like these characters in a cartoon on the Cartoon Network TV channel back in the 1990s.  I decided to search on that and have now found the show these characters came from!
It was called Code Lyoko and is actually FRENCH!  The final episode ran on the 19th December 2013!  And he was a little out on timing, they apparently first aired in 2003.  And I found lots of information on Wikipedia, here

A lot of the information I read says that there are a group of 5 students but in the photo below there are six and yet in others there are only 4.  I wonder if there is another little fellow out there waiting to be brought home to join the rest of his friends? :)

So mystery solved!  I'm glad that finally I know who these little dolls represent!

Thanks again for stopping by :)