I got back on Tuesday from my five day trip to the UK and I felt exhausted, which is odd because I didn't do that much really! I was really happy to see that my mum is doing so well, she is now walking quite well with either the walker or her crutches, she's also cooking and able to do light housework. The only thing she's not doing is going outside on her own, which is fair enough as the weather isn't good and I'd hate for her to slip over.
Whilst there I did a little bit of shopping and met up with friends. My friend Sue, who I've mentioned several times before here on my blog, brought a parcel over to my mum's house, which I'd had sent to her from Dollstown in South Korea. I will share more of that in a future post. Anyway, it was lovely to catch up with Sue again if only for a brief time.
One of the dolls I brought back with me is Sienna by Kaye Wiggs. I bought her from a friend in the UK who is downsizing her collection. In fact I bought two dolls from her but will show them seperately.
Sienna is in Coffee tan resin and I have to say that her sculpting just blew me away, she is so beautiful. I think that she is my favourite Kaye Wiggs doll sculpt so far. She is so realistic!
Please excuse the dust particles on her face, I forgot to blow them away before taking the photos.
This girl is 43cm tall and has the 'Abby' body, which is the smaller of the two MSD bodies released with Kaye Wiggs dolls. She has beautiful Coffee Tan resin which is darker than my other Kaye Wiggs dolls and is such a pretty dark tan. There were only 50 of this doll released in this colour resin and all of them have had their faceups enhanced by Kaye herself. My girl is number 29.
The wig in the photos is a very dark Tibetan lambswool and although it's very full, I think it's absolutely perfect for her face sculpt. The only problem is, I don't see all the stray hairs in the photos until I've uploaded them and put the doll away, so apologies for all of those!!!
My friend sent her with this outfit as well as two others, so Sienna has some different clothing options until I can sew for her. I love her in these colours, I think they really suit her.
I believe these glass eyes are the ones she came with from Kaye.
I think in the past I read an interview with Kaye where she was asked where she got the inspiration for her sculpts and if I remember rightly she said that she sculpted the faces of the children she saw around her in her home country of Australia. If this is the case then she really is spot on with this one, she so reminds me of the little Aboriginal children that live down there in Oz, she's just gorgeous!!!
Have a great weekend everyone!
Big hugs
Sharon xxx
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
Today I finally got to doing a bit of sewing for my dolls, having spent the first month of the year doing all sorts of other things apart from dressing my dolls.
So I thought I'd make a knit dress, with hat and socks for Dylan, my Robin by Little Cosmos Dolls. I chose this blue knit fabric which is printed with little fox heads because I think blue looks lovely with her tan skin tone. The fabric is actually from a pair of pyjama trousers which I bought from our local Lidl late last year. The striped fabric is from a baby onesie and fortunately matches the printed fabric perfectly.
In other news, I've sold 4 dolls in the last few weeks but still have a way to go....and am still dragging my feet. My son is coming over for a visit from Wednesday but when he has left again, I promise that I'll pull my finger out and get dolls listed on Ebay, there can be no more umming and ahhing, it has to be done 😟
Although I've not sewn for her in ages, I thought I'd share a couple of photos of one of my favourite Sasha girls, brunette Stella from 1969-70. She has falling hair so I've never washed or brushed it, but there's plenty there so she's doing fine. Here she is in a dress by A Passion for Sasha, which I'm ashamed to say she's been wearing since the day she got it....which must be since the spring of 2016!!!!! Ooops!! (Socks by me, shoes by Noreen Walters).
Apart from that I've nothing much else to tell you for now, except to say thank you for continuing to visit and comment on my blog!
I hope you all have a great week and that the weather is not too bad where you are!
Big hugs, Sharon xxx
Today was another beautiful sunny day so we decided to go to the Oriental Garden which is located in Alhaurin de la Torre, Malaga. Although we've driven past many times, we'd never been inside so today we did just that.
Unfortunately we chose a day when they were cleaning out a lot of their water features but this didn't deter us, we still had a pleasant time walking around and looking at the plants, quite a few of which, I believe, are native to Japan.
Of course I had to take one of my dolls with us so that I could get some doll photos too, so I brought along Sienna, my Bastian in Saffron skin by Little Cosmos Dolls. I hope you'll enjoy the photos and seeing this pretty and tranquil little space here in Malaga, southern Spain.
One of several bright red bridges that pass over the water feature...
There are loads of fish in their ponds and also a sign saying not to feed the turtles but we didn't see any, so maybe they're hibernating at this time of year.
Planting up the Poinsettias for Christmas...
Lots of bright red berries...
Thank you for visiting, I hope you enjoyed seeing this attractive and peaceful Oriental park.
Big hugs, Sharon xxx
Today I thought I'd make a dress for Hope, my limited edition MSD sized girl from Kaye Wiggs. It occurred to me that Hope had been here for some time but I'd not sewn anything for her in ages....I checked and was surprised to find that she's actually been in my collection for almost 6 and a half years, having arrived here in July 2012!
If you don't know the history of Hope by the Australian artist Kaye Wiggs, then let me tell you a little bit about her. Hope was sculpted in September 2011 in order to raise money for "3 Angels Nepal". "3 Angels Nepal" is a charity who help rescue young girls who were sold into prostitution and slavery, by setting up manned booths at the border to stop the rickshaws etc before they could take the girls out of Nepal. They also rescue young
boys who are sold for body parts. The sale of Hope raised approximately $90,000 for the charity and some of the money was also used to buy land for growing vegetables etc for the orphanage where they housed the rescued girls. The charity was also able to purchase a water truck and water pumping facilities so that they can now supply water to surrounding villages. This brings them an income so they can continue their rescue work as well as help meet the expenses of the orphanage.
So Hope, in her new dress, got some time in front of the camera. I hope you like this small selection of the photos. The weather was a bright and sunny 23C but was a bit blowy later in the day....and once the sun had started to dip in the sky, so it became quite chilly. But the photos didn't come out too badly, Hope never fell over or out of the tree and the sunshine through the leaves of the tree did make some nice dappled shadows on her :)
I'm sorry the photos are a bit 'samey' but hope you enjoyed seeing Hope again. Tomorrow I hope to start on a new outfit for her sister, Layla, my other doll sculpted by Kaye.
Doll: Hope in Sunkissed resin sculpted by Kaye Wiggs
Faceup: Hope's faceup is by me.
Outfit: sewn by me.
Wig: Monique Gold restyled by me.
Thank you for visiting, have a great week!
Big hugs Sharon in Spain xxx
