Some of you will have already seen this on Facebook but I had to share here. I have a lovely friend in the US who I met through my blog. Many years ago now, my friend, who I will call J, emailed me saying that she'd found my blog and had been reading all the posts. We started to correspond via email and became good friends. We share a common interest in dolls but we chat about all sorts of other things too.
A few years back my friend had a stroke and her emails stopped for a little while. Fortunately though, her husband knows of our friendship and he wrote to tell me that J had been unwell and I continued to email with news of the things going on in my life until J was able to write back to me.
J has often written that she wanted to send me things but I have always tried to discourage her as Spanish customs are so awful and the charges so excessive, and I've always felt that she was way too generous with sending me things, but out of the blue she wrote a few weeks ago to say that a package was on it's way to me and was currently in Madrid. I felt slightly panicked that the parcel was in customs and I would be sent a hefty charge which I couldn't afford. Then J wrote to say that the parcel had now reached my home town's post office and was awaiting collection.
Last week I went to the post office to collect the parcel, which thankfully, had not been caught by customs. The box was big, it had cost a lot of dollars to be sent, but what was inside?
The first thing I saw when I got into the outer shipping box was this......(Please excuse my poor photos, they were taken on my phone!!)
I was sure that J must have been using the tube as protection for what was inside, surely this could not be who was named on the label?
But sure enough, once I opened the tube, there inside was the most precious gift, the little Gotz Toddler Iona!!!! I could hardly believe what I was seeing...
My dear sweet friend had sent me her Gotz Toddler Iona as a gift "to cheer me up" as she knows I have been very 'down' over the last 5 months or so.
I could hardly believe it, my eyes filled with tears that someone would send me such a gift.
Iona came in her original tube, wearing Toddler Elke's outfit (minus Elke's sandals) and carrying her own canvas shoes, her original bag and beanie style hat!! Plus a pair of lovely silky knitted socks that maybe come from another Gotz Toddler?
She is in beautiful condition, with silky soft perfect hair! I haven't undressed her yet as I have been busy with my mum visiting but I will soon take proper photos of her and maybe dress her in something more appropriate for our warm weather. Recently I had to put my little boy Toddler up for adoption, so this little girl will be my model when I start making Toddler clothes, hopefully very soon!
There were two other gifts in the box which I will photograph and share with you here very soon.
I am truly blessed with the dolly friends I have, I can never thank J enough for such a generous and thoughtful gift.
Thank you for stopping by, and for sharing my lovely present with me.
Big hugs
Sharon xx
Yes, I finally did it!!! I sewed an outfit this weekend to sell!
I hope you like it, it has taken me a lot of "kicks up the bum" to get myself back to sewing outfits to sell, but hopefully now that I've made a start, I will make some more :)
Now I just hope that people will remember me and like what I sew!
The outfit consists of a two
tiered ra-ra skirt in cute lighthouse pattern quilters cotton, with
lined yoke and tulle underskirt, white knit tee shirt with intricate
detailing to the front (both skirt and top close with metal snaps at the
back), white cotton sailor hat with gold effect anchor adornment and
'rope' detailing around the edge of the brim, (hat crown is NOT lined),
light blue and white striped socks.
All items made by me in new fabrics.
Doll and shoes NOT included.
Price: £30 plus postage from Spain.
Paypal only, Friends & Family or please add 4% to cover paypal charges.
Thank you.
dambuster0662@gmail.com
Please email me if interested.
And now for the photos....
Thank you for looking, I hope you like it.
Please pop back to see my next outfits which are partly made and hopefully will be completed in a few days!
Have a great week ahead!
Big hugs Sharon in Spain xxx
Last night my husband returned from almost a week in the UK spent with his family and grandchildren. I stayed home to look after the dogs! Whilst Brian was over in the UK I arranged for him to meet up with my lovely friend Sue so that she could give him my Eminor by Harucasting that I recently had sent to her from the artist in South Korea.
Without further ado, here is the lovely girl! (Sorry that the photos are a little repetitive!)
Eminor is named after the artist's favourite chord apparently!
Her resin colour is called Soft Tan and it is very light and creamy.
Her beautiful faceup is by the Russian artist Blisslacosta, I love those freckles which actually are on her forehead too, but only lightly.
The wig I had in mind for her was too big, so she is currently wearing this one which is the colour I wanted for her and very close to the style I had in mind.
Eminor has small eye sockets and she needs to have eyes with a low dome. I wanted brown eyes but those I had were not suitable because of the dome size, so having made these a while ago from resin, I tried them and they fit perfectly.
Eminor comes with two pairs of hands, a pair like the one shown in the photos below.....
And a second pair that are more open hands....I've not tried those on her yet.
She is wearing a raglan sleeved tee shirt that I made some time ago with no-one in particular in mind, and it fits her perfectly. She is also wearing a pair of 'aged' jeans that I've had for ages, they also fit her which is great because up until now I have been justifying keeping them as they fit no-one!!!!
Now all she needs is a name! I will take more photos of her posing soon, she poses beautifully. I will also try to do some comparison photos with other MSD sized bjds that I have here.
Have a lovely Easter weekend, I hope the weather is good and the sun shines down on you.
Big hugs Sharon in Spain 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
The weather here had, until today, been beautiful and it inspired me to get a bit creative....I have so many ideas rolling round inside my head but when I sit down in my doll/sewing room, those ideas just seem to float out of the window...and are lost. But I've recently had a little spurt of creativity and thought I'd share it with you...
Firstly I decided that Anuschka, my Zwergnase Junior, needed a new wig, as her default one, shown in my last post, was really messy and matted underneath her hat so I looked through my wig box and found this one (below) and thought it made a good replacement for her.....it's a Monique Gold wig, I have no idea of the name, but know that once it was a long one, before I got carried away with the scissors!!!! I do like her with messy hair. 😊
So then she got a new dress. I made this using a pattern for Maru & Friends dolls, but the fit is quite good.
Then yesterday I made a wig for my little Irrealdoll Annic. I've struggled with finding a good wig for her because she's got such a tiny head that manufactured wigs, even in her size, seem to have too much hair so they overwhelm her face. I decided to make my own, so I made a head cap with tulle and several layers of white glue, which once hard, makes a close fitting cap. I then used fake fur from a cushion I bought at Lidl, trimming lines of the fur still attached to the fabric, making 'wefts' and then attaching them to the cap, again with white glue. And then once it'd dried, I cut it into the only style I can really do, a bob!!! I'm really quite pleased with how it came out and don't think it overwhelms her at all.
So what do you think?
Apart from that, I have heard that my pre-order dolls will soon be shipping, so that's exciting for me, I hope I'm happy with them both :)
And finally, here is a photo of some poppies that are growing in the dry river bed behind my home.....
I hope you're all having weather to your liking, wherever you may be.....
Have a lovely week!
Big hugs Sharon xx
The weather has been beautiful here and I'm hoping that spring really has sprung already. I went for a walk on the beach with my friend and her dog and decided to bring along a doll to photograph. My friend Julie isn't a doll collector but she does seem to take an interest in my dolls and often says she'll make some knitted items for them.....I'm still waiting Julie!!! 😉
So it was the turn of Neele, my one remaining Wichtel doll by Rosemarie Muller. She's a cute little thing and I thought, with her big wide soled sandals, she'd be a good doll to take to the beach as she'd hopefully not fall flat on her face in the sand!!!
Neele has her bucket but she doesn't have a spade, so I need to find an icecream place that serves their desserts with those spade shaped plastic spoons because I think it'd be the perfect size for her! And what a good excuse for an icecream!
My friend Julie then set up this pose with her dog, Louis....I definitely think Julie has an eye for doll photography, I may have to lend her a doll to take out with her when we walk the dogs again next time!!! 😉
And here's the end result, I think you'll agree a cute shot! It helps that Louis is a very well behaved boy, my dogs would probably have dragged my doll face down through the stones!!!
Apart from that, my selling has continued and several of my dolls have found new homes. A few are still waiting to be adopted, including two previously brunette bald Sashas, a bald Gregor and two brunette Gregors, one of which was rerooted by me. And also my first blond Sasha, Millie, who has beautiful hair and who's eyes were repainted by Shelly of Sasha Dolls UK. She is actually already on Ebay, if you're interested.
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/233156482872?ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1555.l2649
If you look at all my listings you will see the other dolls I currently have listed. If you're interested in any of them, please contact me and I can sell them off Ebay if you'd prefer it.
Before I go, I thought I'd share a few other photos that I've taken recently of various dolls of mine. I'm doing a 'doll a day' with a couple of friends via email, I'm enjoying it because it's making me take photos of my dolls when sometimes I just can't be bothered!!!
Here is Anais (Irrealdoll Annic in Truffle skin) with her new bike which I found on Ebay, it's the perfect scale for her and so nicely detailed.
And here is one of my first Blythes, Hershey who is a Simply Chocolate Blythe that I customised some years ago....
And finally, a photo of Anuschka, one of my Zwergnase Juniors. She is from 2006 and her hair is made of mohair and has got really tangled and messy recently. But these photos don't show that, so I was really happy with how she looks. She has such a great grumpy face!! 😊
Well I hope you all have a great week and that the weather is good wherever you are!
Big hugs
Sharon xxx
It has been a very busy month and my blog, as well as my dolls and my sewing machine, have been seriously neglected. However, having finally made a good start on my selling, I feel a lot less 'overwhelmed' and there does seem to be some light at the end of the tunnel...even if it's only a tiny glimmer, it's definitely there!!!
In the last week I've listed quite a few dolls on Ebay and as a result, I've sold a small Schildkrot Wichtel boy, my one and only Sasha baby, and my little Toddler Erik. I wasn't too concerned about the Wichtel boy or the Sasha baby as neither of them have had much attention here, but I was a little sad about Teddy, my Toddler, because he was a real cutie, but he will be going to live with a nice Sasha collector in the US so I'm sure he'll be well cared for and have a lot of fun in his new loving home.
Bye bye boys!!! Enjoy your new homes!
I will be continuing to add dolls and other items to Ebay, so if you're interested in seeing what I'm selling or who needs a new home, please click on the link below:
https://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/dambuster01/m.html?item=233147670425&ssPageName=STRK%3AMESELX%3AIT&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.l2562
I hope to be adding more items at the weekend, if not before!!!
I also had a lot of dolls here that I'd bought on impulse over the last few years. There were several Barbies, a Fashionista Ken, a Santori Gorjuss doll, some Spanish dolls by Asi and Paola Reina, a couple of Disney Animator dolls, as well as, four Journey Girls that I bought from Toys R Us. Most of the dolls were either brand new in their boxes or had been removed and undressed and then put away. I didn't want to put them on Ebay as I felt the postage for them would be more than the individual value of each doll. So what to do? I made some enquiries and found out that a local group of ladies collect donated dolls for a great cause that really did appeal to me!!! So I gathered the dolls, there were around 25 or so in total and met with a very nice lady who told me all about their work. Some of the women sew, others knit or crochet clothes for the dolls and then they're donated to a charity, Ángeles Malagueños de la Noche, a non-profit organisation, based in Malaga. The dolls and their wardrobes will eventually go to children who's circumstances mean that they don't get much, if anything, from The Three Kings on the night of the 5th January. I was invited to attend the next meeting of dolly outfit makers so I may go and see if I can help by sewing some clothing. Wish me luck!
So now that I'm getting a little more organised on The Dolly Cull, as I've started to call it, and can actually get into my doll room properly, I decided to take one of my girls, Bailey, out with me today when we went to visit Lake Viñuela. Bailey is my rewigged Brunette Sasha from 1971, and is one of my favourites of my Sashas. So I thought I'd share some photos. She is wearing her lovely Ruthdolls dress with brown leather boots also by Ruth and brown socks by me. Sorry if the photos are a bit repetitive, I just think she looks cute from every angle!!!
Well I hope you enjoyed my little update and photos of sweet little Bailey. I will try to keep my blog updated more regularly now that I'm feeling a bit more positive about my dolls.
Thanks so much for visiting, I hope you all enjoy the rest of your week ahead!!
Big hugs Sharon xx
