Busy, Busy!

The last few weeks have been very busy for me, I don't mean to neglect my blog...honest!

Anyway, I thought I'd share some of what I've been up to.  There's a lot of talk in the BJD (ball jointed doll) world about recasts, I don't want to get into that subject on here because it's a very emotive subject and I'm going to bed soon and it plays on my mind, but my lovely friend Sue in the UK and I, were talking back last summer about how it is possible to get a cute BJD for a really reasonable price, without resorting to buying recasts. 
 
Soooo we both bought a head each from a company called Alice's Collections in China, the head in question is a Little Peach 1/6 scale head from the company Doll Family and at the time we bought ours, it was $18 plus $5 postage.  I see the price has now gone up slightly to $22 but still very reasonable for a bjd head.  The head comes in five resin colours, normal pink, white, normal yellow, tanned and grey and we both chose the tanned version.  The head comes blank without any body, eyes or wig.  The heads shipped approx two months after we purchased them, so I received mine about November.  We were then going to send Sue's head cap to a company called Resin Soul, also in China, as they have a resin matching service and will make a body to match the head cap from the head.  We chose the 1/6 scale girl body.  We decided to wait until after Christmas to order the bodies.  The bodies would cost $80 each plus postage.

After Christmas, unfortunately, I had a bit of a financial crisis and was unable to go ahead with my ordering of a body, so Sue went ahead and ordered hers.  Unbeknown to me, my lovely friend ordered a body for me too as a gift and she surprised me with this generous present in February!!!  I'm so very blessed.  💖

Sue sent my body and her dolls head to me, so that I could do the faceup on her doll as well as my own doll.

This is Sue's blank doll.....
 

 
We wanted the two girls to be twins, so I worked on them at the same time in order to achieve some sort of uniformity.  

I tried to make both girls as similar as possible but despite all my efforts at keeping them dust free, I managed to get some tiny pieces of lint under the sealant!  I was not a happy bunny and decided to start Sue's doll again.... but for the life of me I cannot find the photos of the finished head second time round, so here, below, is the first one.....

Finally the two heads were finished and I was happy with them.  And today my husband, who is currently in the UK, was able to hand Sue her finished head.  

Here is Sue's lovely girl, who is now known as Ida.....she has a lot of attitude!!!

I made this outfit as a gift for Sue.....

And here is my girl, who is called Sarah....

Sarah also has to wear glasses but she left them off for the above photos!

And here is Sarah in a different outfit:

 

I will take some better close up  photos of Sarah soon, I just need to replace her eyelashes as I'm not happy with the ones she currently has, as I used the wrong glue.

I'm very happy with how both girls turned out.  I'm not a professional faceup artist, but I did my best to bring the girls to life and hopefully I have achieved that!

Thank you for visiting, I will be back soon with the other things that I've been up to recently.

Have a lovely week ahead!

Big hugs Sharon xx
 
 

It's been a while....but a little dolly activity!

Once again I'm writing that I can't believe how neglected my poor blog is!!  I'm beginning to sound like a stuck record, but I have no excuses, I've just not really been in the dolly frame of mind for months now but finally I have a bit of dolly news so thought I would share.

Back in the summer I placed a couple of orders with companies in South Korea for BJDs (ball jointed dolls) and as most of you will know now, you order, you pay and then you WAIT!!!  I placed one order in July with expected shipping date of mid September and another order in September with expected shipping date of late December, and Sods Law, the July order was more than a month late in shipping and even more surprising for me, the September order was a month early!  So both dolls arrived within a few days of one another!!! 

In the meantime I also purchased another BJD from someone in the US and so I have three new BJDs to show you but will start with just two as one is still waiting for her face to be painted.

The first doll I want to show you is a Volks Super Dollfie Midi, she is 42cm tall and her skin tone is a light tan which Volks call 'Sunlight skin'.  She came to me blank and although I bought her secondhand from a seller in the US, she is like brand new with all her defaults still sealed in their packaging.  She is a lovely heavy doll and I had planned initially to send her to a faceup artist to have her face done but in the end I decided to do it myself.  I made a start this morning and finished her a few hours later.  I'm very pleased with how she's come out.  Outfit is by a company called Tree Designs in South Korea.  Now she needs a name :)

The second doll that I want to show you is from the South Korean company, Secretdoll, and she is a Meng, Version 4, in tanned resin.  She is 17.5cm tall and as you can see is a little cutie with her big head and pouty face!  She has a default faceup, wig and glass eyes.  Her outfit consists of corderoy flares made by me and a little knitted sweater by Feltland here in Spain. 

I have decided to call her Marley!

Here she is with Valentine, my tanned Person #21 also from Secretdoll.  The new doll has a much better body and posing ability than the older girl, but I think they work quite well together.

The third girl to arrive is a tanned Adori from Harucasting, also in South Korea but I will keep her under wraps for now until she has her faceup.  Hopefully she will go to my friend Olga, Vainilladolly, very soon, to be made beautiful!!!

In other news I continue to walk in the mornings and go to my aquagym classes and have now lost 44 pounds and 13cm from my waist!!!  I still have a long way to go but am feeling so much better about myself :)

Here are a few photos that I've taken on my walks:

I just spent a weekend with my family in the UK and although it felt bitterly cold to me (and I came back with a stinker of a cough and cold) I had a great time seeing them. 

Some photos from my UK morning walking!!!

Worthing pier:

Elegant houses on Worthing seafront:

Chichester cathedral:

Chichester main street:

Hayling Island:

 
I won't see my son now until about February when he hopes to come over to Spain for a visit, but my mum and brother will be coming here for Christmas from the 18th December!

My son Brendan and his wife Virginia in Hayling Island:

Well, I hope you enjoyed my photos.  Here's wishing you all a great week ahead, thanks so much for visiting!

Big hugs Sharon xxx

Hope for Hope!

Hope is one of my three girls designed by the Australian artist Kaye Wiggs, she is MSD size which is approx 45cm tall, fully jointed BJD in 'sunkissed' resin.  She's lived here, from new, since 2012.  When she arrived I wasn't overly impressed with her default faceup, in fact I thought it was horrible.  The shading was very dark, almost black, and her lips were outlined in the same dark colour.

Arrival photo showing default faceup:

I removed the lips and redid them myself but left the faceup as it was because once the lips were lightened, so the shading didn't look quite so bad.  I also removed the horrible spidery eyelashes too and gave her some slightly softer ones.

But today I decided that I want her to have a whole new faceup as her default one really doesn't compliment the sculpt.  Hopefully she will go to Sweden in the summer to be repainted by a very talented faceup artist, who's work I really admire. 

I took some photos of her today in the garden with a lambswool wig that I made for another of my dolls.  Hopes regular wig has been stolen by one of my Gregors, so I will have to replace that later when she has her new face, if not before.

As Hope looks today:

Some other wigs I've tried on her and rejected:

Redhead - Monique Gold Geneva (I think) in Carrot Red

 

Brown - Monique Gold Ginger in Brown with Electric Blue 

 

Blond - I think this one is from Elfdoll and is synthetic or modacrylic:

And finally, this is how I would like her to look with her new faceup.  This Hope was done by the same faceup artist and the photo belongs to her, isn't she beautiful!