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
 
 

Angel

Angel received a new camera in the mail.  She fancies herself as a bit of a photographer!  Now she wants a nice strap to hold the camera apparently.....so back to the sewing machine!

Happy Monday everyone!

Rainy Day, Dolly Play...

This morning we woke to rain and as the day went on, so the rain got heavier, to the point that we needed our lights on in the middle of the day!  It doesn't rain that often here in southern Spain but when it does, my goodness does it rain!

I'd planned on taking some outside photos but with the awful weather that wasn't to be, so I decided to set up my indoor 'studio' lights and the second backdrop that I received a couple of months ago from Ebay.  You may remember I posted about the first of the two backdrops here:  

If-you-go-down-to-woods-today   

So the second backdrop arrived and was more similar to the first one than I remembered but that wasn't a problem as they are very cheap.  It needed ironing as, like the first one to arrive, it had been folded down to fit into a smallish envelope.  I used my iron on a cooler setting as the backdrops are sort of plasticised fabric, and I didn't want to burn it.  This one is not as good as the first one though as it has paint/printing missing on the creases, but I guess for the cheap price, what could I really expect! 

I have been changing some of my ball jointed dolls into warmer clothing, so thought I'd use the backdrop to take some photos of the girls in their winter wear.  I attached the backdrop to the wall with poster tack and then, as suggested by Sandi of Xanadu Dolls blog I used the ironing board as the 'table' for the dolls to stand on, and I set up the two photographic lights on their tripod stands.

First to have her photo taken was my Fairyland Mini Fee tanned Chloe, with her German Shepherd dog.....I think there is too much light in this photo but when I turned off the lights, so there were shadows created which made the backdrop look very artificial.  The backdrop has sunrays coming from the top left hand corner as you can see.  This is supposed to represent sunshine coming through the trees.  I believe it looks too artificial and unnatural....(any suggestions gratefully received!!!)

Next up we have Dylan, my Little Cosmos Dolls Robin, wearing a different wig.  I'm not sure it's 'her' but will keep it on for a while.  I think I'll probably go back to the red plaited wig in the end!

Riley Mai, (Ppinkydolls Malisa) hasn't had any camera time in ages, so I took a few photos of her too.  I changed her eyes from brown to these two toned, blue/green eyes.   I'm actually thinking of changing her body from her original resin one to a hard plastic Pure Neemo one....so watch this space! 

 

This poor girl hasn't had a change of clothes in probably a couple of years!!!  So I think that'll be my job for the next few days, find her another outfit that suits (and fits!) her!

Next up we have tiny little Marley, (Tanned Meng version 4 by Secretdoll) who I had been thinking of selling as I couldn't 'bond' with her.  I decided to change her wig and eyes and as soon as I saw her in this wig so I realised just how cute she is, she just hadn't found her 'style'!!!.....she will be staying!!!

Finally we have Gala (Adori in Milky tan by Harucasting).  Gala has had several changes of clothing over the summer but I kept forgetting to photograph her.  But now she is in her winter outfit looking all cosy and warm!

I think what I've learned this photo session is that the studio lights are great for eliminating the shadows behind the dolls but I've come across other challenges.  The dolls look a little bit pale and washed out and the colours do not 'pop' like outside photos do for me.  Also, the tripods on the lights are not really tall enough for the dolls when they are standing on the ironing board, I need to take it all a little lower.  So here we have two studio lights, one on either side of the dolls, and an overhead spotlight bulb in the ceiling.  I didn't use the flash in any of these photos, so it really is purely the studio lights. I think I need to find a way of defusing them!  

Well I hope you've enjoyed seeing some of my little girls today.  I will change some more soon and take more photos....hopefully the weather will be dry and I can go back to taking them outside.

Have a great week ahead!

Big hugs Sharon xx

An Amazing Coincidence!

I feel like just recently I'm always posting about new arrivals and today is no exception, but I must tell you the story behind this latest adoption because it was so funny how it came about.

The doll in question is called Ziya and she is sculpted by the French artist of Youpladolls.  My dear friend Sue in the UK had one of these dolls and I always thought she was lovely, so when Sue mentioned to me that she was thinking of selling her, my ears pricked up.  But it seemed Sue was a little bit undecided because the doll had been a surprise gift from her husband and she wasn't sure if she should sell or not, but the doll wasn't getting any attention.  In the doll hobby we collectors are like "if the dolls not getting attention then maybe it should go to someone who will love it more....bye!"

Anyway, Sue was undecided at that point and I thought that I'd wait until she listed her for sale before mentioning my interest.  I'm such a worrier that I was reluctant to say that I'd like to adopt her in case Sue thought I was after 'mates rates' or something!  So, as I said already, I waited in the hope that as soon as she listed her for sale, I could go for her at the asking price.  Alas, the saying 'he who hesitates is lost' springs to mind because the following day Sue happily tells me that she's sold her Ziya, the doll was snapped up straight away.  Oh well, I thought, it was not to be!

In the meantime, the artist behind the doll had had a stand at L Doll in Lyon, France and the event had just finished so I emailed her to ask if there were any dolls left over, I would be interested in purchasing one.  But within a few hours I'd had a reply to say that there weren't any tan dolls left after the event...so that was that, it obviously wasn't to be!

I decided that I'd just catch up on some emails that I'd been meaning to do for ages.  I started with another lovely dolly friend, Jane in the UK, as I'd owed her a reply for ages.  I started typing out my email, telling Jane all my recent dolly news and about the new arrivals.  Then I told her what I'd been up to and how I'd been trying to buy Ziya and what had happened.  I sent the email and moved on.  

Within minutes an email came winging it's way back to me from Jane.  She'd read about my search and was amazed that she had, that very same day, made a decision to sell her Ziya!!!!  Was I interested in her?  Well, how funny was that! The only reason Jane's doll was not yet up for sale was because she'd not yet got around to taking photos for potential buyers!  So of course I said yes!!!  I would love to adopt her doll and that's exactly what I did!!!

So Ziya arrived a few days ago, she took less than a week to arrive from the UK and she is lovely.  Her name previously was Angeline but I have shortened that to Angel.  Jane sent her wig, eyes, an outfit and shoes!  Such a lovely parcel to open 😃  The doll is tanned and she is MSD size, in fact she is a smaller MSD at 39cm tall.  She wears a 6.5 inch wig and 10mm eyes.  I've not taken many photos of her yet because I've had a very busy week but you can be sure that I'll be taking more photos very soon.

She was a little pale from living in the UK 😉 so I added some blush and some tiny freckles across her nose and cheeks.  They look a lot more prominent in the photos than they do in real life for some reason!  I've not sealed them so they will probably fade or rub off in time.

Here are a few photos of her for now, it was a very blowy day!   I hope you like her!

She has beautifully sculpted hands which you can just see in this photo below....

Well that's all I have for you today but hopefully soon I'll have some more photos.  I will also be posting some vinyl dolls for sale, including Gotz, Zwergnase and others.  I am also going to be selling one of my tiny BJDs, a Lati Yellow Cookie in tan, so if you're interested please watch this space.

Have a great weekend!

Big hugs Sharon in Spain xxx

A New Kid on the Block!

Robin from Little Cosmos Dolls arrived yesterday amid much excitement!  I ordered her back in April and have been waiting patiently for her to come home!

You may remember that I met the artist behind Little Cosmos Dolls, Sandra Locre, back in June at the Dolly Day 2018 in Barcelona, the post about that event can be found  here
and having met her and seen her dolls in real life, I was really keen to receive my doll....so much so that I ordered another of her sculpts from her on my return home!

As you all know, I love pouty faced BJDs, particularly sullen looking dolls, so Robin's face particularly appealed to me when I saw her up for pre-order back in the spring, so jumped at the chance to get her.

Sandra Locre describes Robin: "Robin has an aspect between sulking and sad, but don't be fooled, it is a tactic to get what she wants."  I guess Sandra knows, seeing as she was 'born' of Sandra's artistic talents.  You know there is something particularly lovely about receiving a doll that is created by the hands of a person you've met and like!

Robin is 29cm tall, all resin ball jointed doll.  She has size 14mm eyes and wears a size 6/7 inch stretch wig or 7/8 inch non stretch wig.  Below are some photos of her trying on wigs that I have in my wig box.  I think she looks cute in all the wigs I tried on her but what do you think?  Which is your favourite?

So here she is!  

Well that's just a small selection of wigs that I liked on her, it's so hard to choose but am leaning towards one in particular but you'll have to wait and see what one that is!  Will your preference be the same as mine? 

In the meantime, I think I need to make some new outfits for her too.  She is slightly taller than the rest of my girls in this category so the dresses look 'oddly' short on her, but no probs, I will enjoy sewing something just for her!

By the way, that's her 'nightie' that she's crept outside in.....I guess she thought that wearing it with her boots made it into a daytime outfit!!!

Well I hope you have enjoyed meeting Robin....who may end up being called Dylan as I sold another Dylan to get her!  I do like those boyish names for girls!

Have a great week ahead!

Big hugs Sharon xx

Especially for Kazz!

This post is especially for Kazz, a reader of my blog who requested photos of one of my Little Darlings some weeks ago and I never saw the request until today.

My profuse apologies for the delay in responding.

I used to receive emails when someone posted on my blog so would always know when a comment was made on the latest post or on older posts too, but I no longer get those.  Does anyone know how I can get those notification emails again?

Anyway, without further ado, here are some photos of my tanned Little Darling who is handpainted by Lana, posted especially for Kazz in the UK who requested close ups of her face.  Because she's such a cutie, I've added some full length shots too ;)   I hope they're not too late Kazz and hope also that you don't mind me using older photos that you may have already seen here on my blog.

Sorry that there are so many photos of the same doll, but hopefully this will help Kazz with her decision making :) 

I just noticed that in all the photos she's wearing blue and white, which suits her perfectly and just so happens to be my favourite colour combination :)