My Sashas get a dusting off.....

It's been ages since I photographed my Sasha dolls so I thought I'd rectify that yesterday and take some photos of a few of my girls....my plan is to photograph all of them over the next few weeks so that they all get a bit of attention. 

Many of you probably thought I'd sold my Sashas as I haven't 'played' with them for a while, but no, they are all still here and still loved!  I had a count up and to my surprise I have 21 Sasha/Gregors, one Toddler and one baby (Oooops! I could have sworn I had less than this!!!).  I sent my brunette baby to the US as a surprise for a friend of mine, she's always so good to me and I'd rather she enjoy the baby than me sell her....so I just have my blond Alberto, who to be honest, is living here on borrowed time!  LOL!  Baby dolls just aren't for me.

So here are a few of my girls.  The first photo is also a photo of 'firsts'.....Millie (named in memory of Milly Dowler who I was reading a book about at the time of the dolls arrival) was my first Sasha and came here in November 2012 from Shelly in the UK.  She is from 1971 and has lovely thick blond hair and a very full fringe.   Her blue eyes were a little bit faded so some time after she arrived, I sent Millie's head back to Shelly for her to repaint her eyes.  I wanted them painted brown and love the way they look now. 

Here is another 'first', she is Bailey, my first wide faced brunette Sasha, as well as my first 'mistake' in that I washed her falling hair.....yes it all fell out, and she became my first wigged doll too, if I remember rightly!!  Bailey is also from 1971 and arrived here, again from Shelly, in June 2013.

I really love Bailey, she has been one of my favourites for some time, but don't tell the others!!! 

Here are Millie and Bailey together, wearing their Ruthsdoll dresses:

And a close up of their faces side by side:

In the next photo are my two blond Gotz Slate Eyes Sashas from the 1960s.  Left is Destin who I bought on Ebay in June 2014 and on the right is Lyric, who I adopted as a 'waif' from Shelly in the UK in August 2013.  Lyric's hair was breaking off at the roots and sadly she lost it quite quickly after she arrived here.  So she was my first Gotz Slate Eyed girl and my first Gotz reroot as I finally got around to rerooting her in April last year.

The two girls in close up.  Destin has a slightly concave face which I love, but I've always struggled to take photos that show how cute she is in 'real life'.  I like how they are quite different too :)

After having struggled with finding the perfect wig for her, I was really pleased with Lyric's reroot as I was able to use original Gotz doll hair from a later doll and I feel it was the perfect shade of blond for her.

Destin, below, often stands like this, as if she has a cute little sticky out tummy under her knitted sweater!!

Next we have three of my brunettes, from left to right, Eden, Willow and Stella:

Eden is the youngest, she's from 1970 and came here, along with her sister, Stella (1969), from a lovely friend in the US.  I had asked my friend if she knew of anyone selling a Brunette and she told me she had two herself that might be looking for new homes.  Of course once she showed me their photos, I just couldn't choose between them....so they traveled to their new home here together, I was going to say "last year" but on checking my records, I was surprised to see that they've been here nearly two years, having arrived in April 2016.

The middle girl, Willow, came from Shelly's the very same month, so all three girls have 'grown up' together here in Spain! ;)   Like Stella, Willow is a 1969 girl, although as you can see, they are only superficially alike. 

Sadly all three girls have some degree of falling hair, but having learned my lesson with Bailey, my first older Brunette, I have never washed their hair and just style it using my hands.....fortunately they all have quite a lot of hair too :)

Eden (1970)

Willow (1969)

Stella (1969)

I hope you've enjoyed seeing a small selection of my Sashas.  Hopefully I will have more photos for you again soon of some of the others :)

Have a lovely weekend!

Big hugs Sharon xx

An early birthday present....

I've liked the cuteness of these little dolls for some time, in fact really since seeing them on Barbara's blog,  Dolls Garden  but it wasn't until I recently saw some of them 'in real life' that I decided that I would like to have one.  So when my husband asked me if there was a doll I'd like for my birthday, I asked if maybe I could have one of these.....the doll in question is a Wichtel by Rosemarie Müller.  Of course being the very kind and generous person he is, he said no probs, and told me to go ahead and order what I wanted!!!

So along comes this little sweetie from Villa le Bosquet in France.  She arrived safely on Thursday of last week and being the 'child' I am at heart, ;)  I couldn't wait to open her box.  She was packaged so nicely, her brown box is very 'natural' looking, sort of corregated brown cardboard, and then that box was wrapped in bright lime green paper.  The doll herself was peeping out through the cellophane front and she was safely tied in with strands of natural coloured rafia.  She was dressed in a very well made and pretty outfit, consisting of a check blouse with short puffed sleeves and rounded collar with real little buttons and buttonholes up the back, then she had a  pink fine needlecord pinafore over the top that did up with buttons and metal loops, and was decorated with an applique flower on one side at the bottom.  This too did up at the back with a tiny button.  Her knickers and socks were white and she had pink real leather Mary Jane shoes from the company Wagner in Germany.

These two photos are borrowed from the Villa le Bosquet website:

As you can see she has a blond wig which is styled into two plaits which are then wound up onto the top of her head and then tied with pink ribbons.  Her eyes are handblown glass eyes from the German company Lauscha.  I understand that these are considered to be the very best glass eyes on the market :)  She's such a nice sturdy little doll and stands very well without needing support, I'm very impressed with her!

In anticipation of her arrival, I decided to make her some overalls so that she could go and play as soon as she got here ;)  and so the next photos show her wearing those and the white short sleeved tee shirt that I also made.

The doll herself is one of a kind in that although the facemould is used on other dolls, the eyes/hair/outfit combination is only used the once.  And her given name is Neele.  I think I will keep that name as I am told it is actually a little flower.

I hope Neele will have lots of adventures here at our house and I look forward to sharing them with you here on my blog.

Have a great week everyone and I hope the sun shines where you are!

Gotz girlies.....

I took some photos of my three slate eyes Gotz girlies to compare them.  I can see now that my newest girl, the blond Destin, has chubbier cheeks than the other two but that they really only show from a three quarter profile view.....from the front her face looks narrower.  Destin also has the most 'preserved' eye paint, although her lip paint is almost gone.  When I see them straight on like this,  I think Destin looks like a slightly younger child than the other two.  However, when viewing them in profile, I think they all look pouty and young looking!  I think Lindt, my brunette girl, is fractionally smaller in height than the other two but it's hard to tell as she is barefoot.  Another difference is that Destin and Lyric have bigger shoulders than Lindt...and definitely bigger than the English girls and boys.

Here's a closeup, with left to right, Destin, Lyric and Lindt...

And individually, closer still.   You can see Destin has quite large cheeks, as does brunette Lindt:

 And here you can see that Lyrics cheeks are less pronounced:

Another close up of the three girls together:

And a full length of all three girls:

I'm very happy with these three girls, I now need to decide if I want to reroot Lyric or leave her wigged....decisions, decisions!

Bertie finally gets some new duds!!!

Poor little Bertie, he's been here for months now and it wasn't until today that I finally finished an outfit for him....talk about neglected!  I don't know why it's taken me so long to get motivated into sewing something for him, I just find the babies a bit of a challenge.  I love looking at other peoples photos of them, I even like looking at this little fellows face as he sits on my Sasha shelf, but I had no urge to sew for him.  However he is now the happy owner of a set of new clothes and wanted to show them off to you.  He even has a hat....although it's not really the weather for this type of hat, when he saw the little fishes I'd decorated it with, nothing would deter him from putting it on right away!!

Bertie likes to play with his friend Stewart Little!

And he particularly loves his cousin Lindt!

 

Lindt gets ready to shop.....

Lindt donned her warm woollen dress, woolly tights and boots, grabbed her handbag and has gone off Christmas shopping......I wonder what she'll buy?

New outfits for Devlin and Liesl...

Today I was going to make a start on an outfit for Emilio, but then Devlin came to me and politely (he's always very polite!) reminded me that I'd said he was next on my list for new warmer clothes!  So I made him a new blue hoodie to match his eyes.  I was going to make him some new long trousers too but ran out of time....but he did get some new socks which I made from a mobile phone pouch!!!  

I don't think little boys are usually so well co-ordinated, but he looked so sweet that I wanted to keep him that way!  (Lovely turquoise sandals by the late great Jean Jensen).

Yesterday I made this outfit for Liesl, my little later Gotz Wibke.  She's been patiently waiting whilst all the others got their warm weather outfits.  The trousers are made from fine needle cord that I got from Norway.   The lovely knitted beanie was made by a dear friend of mine in the US.

Downsizing? Me? LOL, if you believe that, you'll believe anything!

Well I told myself that I was going to downsize.....dolls would be going up for adoption!  And fair enough, I did indeed sell some dolls and my paypal account was looking rather healthy.  Ahh, but as I've probably mentioned before, when I have money in my paypal account, so it burns a hole right through the bottom!  So although my BJD numbers have decreased, I've replaced those adopted out dolls, with ...... yes, you guessed it, Sasha dolls!  Yes, I was the person who initially was only going to have the one, a girl, I didn't want any boys. Erm, then I 'accidentally' bought a boy, so I had a boy and a girl....but then lo and behold I saw my redhead 'waif' on Ebay and just couldn't resist her.....and so we had four! 

But suddenly, I just kept seeing girls that I loved, couldn't resist and could afford......so I brought them home and slowly but surely my Sasha family increased.  Of course I'm completely innocent here, it is all the fault of Shelly of Sasha Dolls UK!!!  Well that's my excuse and I'm sticking with it!

So now I have 9.  Yes, 9!!  Up until yesterday it was 8, but last week I saw another little girl on Shelly's site that I just had to have, and she arrived yesterday.  I had been looking at the later Gotz girls for some time, asking Sasha friends about them and looking at photos on Flickr and elsewhere but I was always a little wary of their eyes, which looked a bit 'staring' in photos so I wasn't sure.  Then I saw a little cutie on Shelly's site, a Wibke, who had repainted eyes by Shelly!!  Absolutely perfect!  I decided to think on it overnight   By the morning, having seen some very cute photos of a similar girl on Facebook, I had decided that yes, Wibke would be coming home to join my girls and boys.  The great thing was, between showing interest and making up my mind, the price of the doll was reduced by £50!!!!  Even better!  So here she is, and I'm really happy with her, she's so cute. I wasn't expecting her to be so petite, I thought she'd be bigger than my other girls but she is actually fractionally smaller even than the older Trendon girls!  I'm really pleased, she fits in perfectly with my darker skinned family.

So introducing Heidi, my little German pale skinned girl with lovely dark blue eyes repainted by the very talented Shelly!  She has borrowed an outfit from another of my girls because she had nothing to wear, but I will rectify that soon enough.  In the meantime, I think this dress suits her perfectly!!