The end of a very busy week!

My son Brendan and his fiance Virginia came over from the UK last Sunday to spend a weeks 'holiday' here in Spain, but mostly to get some of the plans for their September wedding sorted out.  It has been a very busy week, particularly for the two of them but also for us as we've been running here and there, trying to help as much as we can with their plans!

They now have their invitations, menu cards, and place cards ordered.  The venue has been booked for a while but on Tuesday we went, along with Virginia's parents, to look at all the options available and the menu choices.  I hope the weather on the day will be better than it was as we traipsed around the gardens, it was really cold and pouring with rain!   But we did get a good idea of what will go where, and it's a gorgeous location so I'm sure it'll make the perfect wedding venue.  These are just a few photos I found on the internet, so not my own.....

This photo below shows a of part of their dining room but Brendan and Virginia's wedding dinner will be held outside in the gardens, as will their ceremony.

The wedding rings are chosen, some of the complicated Spanish paperwork has been completed which will allow Brendan to marry here in Spain, and other papers are with the translator to be officially translated into Spanish!  What a palaver that all is!!

Now for my outfit.  Oh boy, where to start!  I now at least have some ideas but still no clue as to what colour I will go for.  I will seriously start looking after Easter.

Apart from wedding plans, I have also been busy with dolly related things.  This week I've made a wig for a lady in the US, almost finished making a pair of Barbie jeans for a local lady, finished and mailed two Sasha outfits to a lady in the UK and finally customised a Kidz n Cats doll for a lady in France.  So here are some photos:

Firstly the Sasha outfits: (all photos were taken inside with flash this week as the weather hasn't been good.....plus our garden is still a mess as I've not yet got to working on it since coming back from the coast!)

Extra socks were requested with these two outfits: (Shoes by Marti Sanders Murphy)

Next the Kidz n Cats custom.   The Kidz n Cats vinyl from last year was very grey toned and had an almost greasy/waxy look to it.  The lady who owns this little girlie wanted her to look more natural.   I removed all her existing makeup, wig and eyes, and repositioned the eyes (which I notice are a little 'off' here so will fix that today), gave her new eyelashes, a complete new facial makeup, and added freckles.  We kept the original wig and eyes as they are really quite pretty.   I hope you like the before and after photos below:

Now as we head into a new week, I'm still ploughing my way through my lengthy commissions list.  My son goes back to the UK on Tuesday and I will get back into my routine after that.

I hope you all have a lovely week ahead, thanks so much for visiting :)

Dylan....finally able to stand alone!

When I received Dylan, my little tanned Linda by the Italian artist Linda Macario I was delighted in the quality of the doll, and I love her little face, I think she's very cute.  However, her posing left a lot to be desired.  I have been collecting BJDs for 10 years now so am not new to them and their little quirks, but this one had to be the worse poser I'd ever had, she was just so floppy.  I'd already hot glue sueded her and then when that didn't help I wired her legs and arms but she continued to be a floppy bundle of resin that just wanted to fall over....in fact she really didn't even get as far as falling because she wouldn't stand alone in the first place.

So I took her completely apart and have now sueded her with 'pliver' (I think this is how you spell it) which is a very very thin layer of leather, and I've cut out circles and added them to every joint, glueing them into the 'receptive' part of the joint using PVA glue.  I then restrung her with new thicker elastic, elastic that was actually meant for a bigger doll and replaced the metal ring inside her head with an S hook.  Well it has finally done the job!  I think her ankles will always be a bit of a problem, they are quite slim, and so they struggle to hold up her chubby body and big head!  But they're certainly so much better than they were!

Here she is with her little wooden cat.  She borrowed these dungarees and blouse from my Sasha dolls, it's great that she can share most of their clothes with them, although she is thinner across the chest and shoulders.

New project...New shoes!

Today I thought I'd take a little break from sewing and decided to make a pair of shoes.  The shoes I chose to make are for the 18 inch play dolls but I am thinking about adapting the pattern to make them in Sasha size, or maybe even Toddler size, although I might have to forgo some of the details as it might be too difficult to sew them in that small size.

I chose to make them in leather rather than the vinyl suggested in the pattern, but I think maybe vinyl would have been a lot easier to use.  For example the white leather parts are approx 2mm thick leather and that, along with the thinner brown leather of the body of the shoes, plus I lined the brown leather with stabiliser, my machine wasn't over keen on so many layers to sew through.

However, they are finished and although not perfect, I'm really pleased with how they came out!  Now to make some small laces for them :)  And of course some turquoise and white striped socks! :)

Hope you all had a lovely weekend and that the week ahead is a great one for you!

Flea Market Mannequins

When we were at a flea market recently, we saw these three mannequins for sale on one of the stalls.  They were all 'old' apparently and quite good condition.  The guy wanted about 70 euros for each one, trying to persuade me that they were 'antiques' and had 'real glass eyes'!  Whether they were antiques I don't know, but yes, they did appear to have glass eyes and rather dodgy wigs!  However it did get me thinking that it would be so much fun to have a room of child sized mannequins!  But no, I didn't bring any of them home with me!  I just thought I'd share the photos though, they were really quite interesting looking!!!

Thanks for visiting!

A Girl for All Time Lydia...

I never really had any interest in purchasing one of the 'A Girl For All Time' dolls but a lovely lady in France asked me to do some work for her and wondered if I would like to trade for her A Girl For All Time Lydia.  I had heard that the dolls were well made and being a UK company, I thought it would be nice to see for myself.  For those of you who don't know of this company and their dolls, more information can be found here on their website:

A Girl For All Time


So the doll arrived yesterday and my first thought was "maybe she's not for me" because she came in her original outfit which, although very well made and containing many pieces, it just didn't seem to suit her.  It is lemon for a start and I felt if made her look a bit washed out with her dark hair and dark blue eyes.  But also because Lydia is the company's Georgian girl and I'm really only into more modern dolls to be honest.  Here is a photo of Lydia in her default outfit, not my photo because I forgot to take a 'before' one!

However, I'm always willing to give things a go, so I undressed her and had a look at her face which I felt was a little bit pale for a girl who's going to be living quite an 'outdoors' life here in Spain.  So I added a bit of colour to her cheeks, some blush to her nose and chin and I filled her eyebrows in a little with black watercolour pencil.  Then it was time to find some clothes for her to wear.

Well it seems that Lydia is no shrinking violet and was not prepared to put on a dress, oh no, this young lady tells me that she is a thoroughly modern miss and wanted to wear jeans, but not any old jeans, oh no, she wanted to wear these torn jeans!  So on they went and then it was a tee shirt and finally matching beanie hat and arm warmers!  Oh not forgetting the denim sneakers of course!  All she wants now, apparently, is a skateboard!!

Now there's a turn up for the books!

 

Lydia is about 16 inches tall and has jointed elbows and knees in addition to the usual joints at the shoulders, neck and top of the legs, however the knees don't hold a pose because they are elastic strung so they just immediately go back to where they want to be!  But she's cute all the same!

My doll shelves are starting to bow with the weight of all these newcomers!!! :)

Thanks for stopping by!

Photos from the Doll Room!

We came back from the coast on Tuesday as I've said in a previous post, and a couple of days ago I thought I'd unpack and then try organising my doll/sewing room a bit, so that I can get back to work.  Oh boy!  It was such a mess, full of bags of fabric, dolls in various 'states of undress', wigs, eyes, shoes and clothes.  It look rather like a tornado had rushed through the room!   So I started out with the dolls, I didn't dress them all so you will see lots of girls (and boys) proudly showing off their all over tan, but I did manage to at least get their 'groupings' done!  So some shelves are relatively neat and tidy....

Here are the Natterers....that shelf is fuller than I realised...OOOops!!!

Here are the Sasha/Gregor kids.....as I only had one with me at the coast, Nuria the redhead, I wonder what on earth was happening here seeing as so many of them are little nudistas!!!  Even the babies!  The mind boggles!

My Little Darlings, my two Boneka Tuesdays Child girls and my little Imaginarium girl share this shelf.....I think a little partying has gone on here too, seeing as the bunting is all hanging down! ;)  But at least they are all respectably attired even if it's still summer wear!

Here are my Blythes....all looking a little boggle eyed!  And I spy another nudista, these girls are going to get me into trouble with the Society for the Protection of Dolls if I'm not careful!

These three definitely look like they've had a bit of a rough night on the tiles, don't they!!  My new girl, Dylan, certainly looks a bit 'glassy' eyed!!!

Oh dear, looks like this lot have lost their wallpaper behind them....And poor Narsha on the left looks incredibly jaundiced, as unfortunately happens with old French Resin, and she is my longest standing BJD having arrived here in August 2006.  All I can say is, it's a good job she wasn't standing at the very back or she'd have blended in with the paint on the walls :(

(I just noticed Elfdoll Hana Angel flat out in the corner.....)

And these three Elfdoll tinies are looking a little worse for wear too....Only my childhood Patch is still standing!

Aha, finally we see a couple of nicely dressed, well behaved little girls in my two Himstedts!  Aren't they sweeties!  I must give these two a bit more camera time very soon!

And finally we have my 'work' table, although it has to be said that there is not a lot of work going on on it at the moment as you can see!  I managed to unpack and line up a lot of my larger vinyl girls but some, as you can see, are still waiting to 'find their feet'. 

A couple of little Disney Animator girls are waiting to be customised....I'll get to you soon girls, I promise!

Well it certainly looks like I've got a ways to go yet before my room is up and running again.  So I'll love and leave you and get on with it! 

Thanks for visiting, I hope you've enjoyed seeing my dolls in my sewing room....even though some are clearly in need of some clothes!!

Andalucian Tiles....

Recently someone asked me about Andalucian tiles but I am having a senior moment and cannot remember who it was!  So I thought I'd put some photos on here and hope that whoever it was will see them.

The Moors ruled parts of Andalucia from the early 8th until the late 15th centuries – 800 years of history and they left behind many legacies including their art and one area of that are the tiles that are still popular today here in southern Spain.   Examples of Andalucian tiles can be seen almost everywhere and my home is no exception!  Our entrance hall has half tiled walls and a tiled floor.  All of our walls and floors are tiled but the hallway is the best example of the Andalucian design. 

This photo is looking towards the street, we have wood and glass 'internal' front doors and approx one and half metres beyond these are the actual doors which open right on to the street.  (Pavement in England or the sidewalk in the USA).  We don't have any front garden and this is pretty typical for white towns and villages across southern Spain.

This area of the house gets a lot of natural sunlight when the 'main' front doors are open, which is most of the day and early evening, so is ideal for plants....although ours are currently in the garden.  

The ceilings are very high and although this corner cabinet, below,  looks tiny, it is actually about 6 foot tall!  I display my Lladro ornaments in this corner, keeps them safely out of the way of the dogs!

Below are a couple more examples of Moorish art painted on this large wall plate and the green vase standing in the corner:

The wall tiles below show a row of 'border' tiles as well as a row of raised 'rope' tiles. 

Finally the floor tiles, which are a mottled beige/sand colour interspersed with smaller (approx 6" x 6") patterned tiles,  which by Andalucian standards are quite plain but I think they work perfectly with the very 'busy' wall tiles and are easy to keep clean!

I hope you've enjoyed seeing this little bit of Andalucian tile art.  If you want to see lots of beautiful examples then there are some gorgeous photos here:

Andalucian Tiles

I hope you will all have a lovely week ahead!