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
Most people complain that January goes by so slowly after the rush of December and Christmas but I must admit, that having been in the UK from the 3rd to the 11th, the month seemed to whizz by! I was hardly home when the 31st arrived and brought with it my son Brendan who came over for a week's holiday with us. He mainly comes to see us on his own as he has more holidays than his wife Virginia, so when she comes to Spain she naturally spends the time with her family. Anyway, it was a great week, we did lots of chatting and laughing and of course shopping, Brendan always wants to buy things here that are apparently much cheaper than the UK, so he keeps us very busy!!
Lucy loves having Brendan home!
On the dolly front I have sold a couple of dolls and done a bit of sewing as well as have taken some photos of different dolls who've had a change of clothes or wig. The weather has been lovely, very warm and sunny, perfect weather for taking my girls outside to photograph.....
Here is Holly (formerly Wentje, the doll I showed in my last post), she is a Zwergnase Junior and is 55cm tall. I changed her into this dress that I made ages ago for another doll that has since left for pastures new. I then added a 'shirt' underneath so that it looked a bit different from when the last doll wore it. When I first got her I wasn't sure about her but since I got back from the UK and have had a chance to 'play' with her, she's really grown on me.
Also today I changed the wig on my Little Cosmos Dolls Robin. I've always thought of her as a dark haired girl but yesterday I received this wig from a group order I'd participated in back in the autumn. By the time it arrived, I couldn't remember who I'd ordered it for!!! So Dylan (Robin) tried it and I really think it suits her so she will keep it.
Who'd have thought she'd look so angelic as a blond! Funny how looks can be so deceiving though😉
I also changed my little Sienna (Bastian, also by Little Cosmos Dolls) into this cute outfit by the Gorjuss company. It seems odd to have a coat with short sleeves but it's not cold here now so little Sienna doesn't mind 😉. This girl's face so appeals to me, she always looks so worried, like she's scared she's about to be told off!!!
I made a couple of outfits for my Kaye Wiggs girls, here is Gracie modelling the outfit I made for her....It wasn't quite finished in this photo, I'd forgotten to put the cord through the bottom of the sleeveless hoodie!!
Here we go, the cord is now done and I made another outfit, this time for Hope.
I have a third outfit cut out and ready to sew for Layla, I'll get to that soon I'm sure!
In the meantime, I am off to the UK again on Thursday to see my mum and brother. My mum has been doing very well since her fall and is completely on the mend now, thank goodness. She was recently discharged by the physiotherapists and is now walking well with the aid of a walking stick or a walking frame. I'm only going for five days but looking forward to it....apart from the weather!!!
I have some dolly purchases to pick up whilst over there so hopefully will have some new arrivals to show you on my return.
Have a great week ahead, and for those of you being affected by Storm Ciara, keep safe and warm.
Big hugs
Sharon in Spain xxx
It's been more than a month since I last wrote anything here on my blog but now that the evenings are darker, I'm more inclined to be sitting inside using my laptop, rather than outside so thought I'd do some catching up! I don't like putting the clocks back, the sun sets here at about 6.30pm and I thought that was bad enough until my son, who lives on the south coast of the UK, sent me a photo this afternoon at 5pm UK time, and it was completely dark!!!! We are very lucky here to be honest, as even in the middle of winter, it never really gets dark before about 6.15pm.
That aside, the weather here has been beautiful. The temperature during the day is still in the low to mid 20s centigrade, so I really cannot complain. I think waking up to bright mornings with blue skies and lots of sunshine really does help my frame of mind. And it has certainly made my morning walks easier to get up for!!!
On the dolly front I have been busy. I have recently sold another 6 dolls and a Super Dollfie sized body, so of course that money was burning a hole in the bottom of my paypal account. I ended up buying two dolls, one was an impulse buy and the other was a doll that I have wanted for absolutely ages but had not been able to find within the EU and I was not prepared to buy from elsewhere as I didn't want to get caught for customs charges.
So the impulse buy is by an artist that I've admired for a while but never thought I'd find one of her dolls for sale within the EU. She is a Madeleine by the Australian artist Liz Frost and she is approx 12 inches tall. Madeleine is a tan resin ball jointed doll (BJD) and I adopted her from a friend in the UK....I am thinking that I might give her a new faceup or at least partially redo her as I'm not sure about her current blush. We shall see. The good thing about this doll is that she can share the clothing belonging to the Little Darlings, so that gives her a lot of options as they have a lot of clothes!!!
Here she is on arrival day:
The second doll that I bought recently is one that I have wanted for AGES! I mean a really long time! Probably since she was released back in about 2011. I remember wanting to pre-order her but again the customs charges put me off as she would be shipped from the US. So I decided that if I was to get her then it would be secondhand ... but each time she was for sale within the EU, so I was broke! In the end I sort of moved on. However about three weeks ago I saw one for sale on Ebay and she was being sold in France. The seller had stated she'd only ship within France but several messages later she was coming home to me! She is just what I was looking for. A Kaye Wiggs Gracie in sunskissed skin tone with a default faceup. She arrived last week and she is just so incredibly cute, I'm really glad to have found her and can honestly say that she was worth the wait!!!
Also my new body (I wished!!!) arrived for the Dandelion head I bought back in September. I bought this head actually as a full doll but I didn't like the body so I sold that body and ordered an Elf body from Dollstown. Now I'm very happy with her new look. I took a few very quick photos of her when the body arrived and some photos of the head on the first body....
And some quick photos of her with her new body. I will take more detailed photos soon.
I quickly made her this blue top but need to make her more of a wardrobe of clothes, as I don't have much in this size :) I'm actually looking forward to sewing in this bigger size again after years without a Super Dollfie sized doll, even if she is actually considered to be a 'smaller super dollfie'. 😉
There are some other 'newbies' here but I will leave them for another post. I hope you've enjoyed seeing a brief post of what I've been up to.
Have a great week ahead!
Hugs Sharon x
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
