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Wednesday 29 April 2015

"Lovely Doll" - Pullip Clone

I bought this doll around six years ago, as I thought she would be a good candidate for customisation.

She was sold as a "Pullip Clone" but looking back on these photographs which I took on the day she arrived from Singapore - I don't really think she looks much  like a Pullip, unless you cross one with a Dal - then maybe she does a little.





I guess she does a little around the eyes, but all in all she is quite a bad clone, more like a case of bad plastic surgery or something similar.

Anyhoo, the idea was to use her for custom practice and in the process hopefully making her a little prettier in the process..


The name "Lovely Doll" is not my description or even the seller's it's actually written on the box by the manufacturer... Although sadly she isn't really a lovely doll!

More than anything it's the mouth that's "wrong" - I came to this realization after I had removed her factory paint and prepared her for a new "face"...


To be honest she's been on hold ever since, nothing I do seems to prettify her and it's looking more like I should either "Pullip's Ugly Sister" her or else do a really outlandish custom on her!

I guess I'll let you know when I've worked it out myself !


-:¦:-•:*'""*:•.-:¦:-•* Bratz Genie Magic Sasha Doll *•-:¦:-•:*'''''*:•-:¦:-

I don't really know much about this line of dolls, as I found her by accident one day, and have never seen the Bratz Genie Magic film but I do know... She's so cool even has Henna tattoos down her arms, hands and on her feet!


The truth is I'm not that much of a Bratz fan, I find their lips a little too "bee stung" and I really dislike the feet thing also some of their clothes are downright
slutty.

But every so often I spot one that I just fall in love with - this little lady was one of those, it didn't hurt that she has dark skin either I'm a bit of a sucker for non caucasian dolls.

http://www.amazon.com/

She would have originally come with a Crystal Ball and Arabian style lamp with a magic 8 ball style fortune telling device inside as well as a change of clothes and some gold jewellery, hairbrush etc.

www.ebay.au
As part of this range MGA also produced a Genie Magic Bottle / lounge which to this day I still covet, it has a sliding transparent red door with which to seal it and stop your Genie from escaping and when complete it has cushions and a hanging lantern  inside and a drawer below in which to store her jewels and other bits and bobs.

Maybe one day I'll get around to making her roomier version of a bottle to laze about in. The official one looks a little cramped which is kind of weird if you consider that it's designed for 10 inch dolls, is called a "lounge" and when originally sold came with a Katia doll shown sitting inside it...



Ah well that's it for now.
Take care,

Pedigree Gayle & Ooak Sindy as Gayle


I have always loved Gayle by Marx Toys, ever since the first time I saw one - a few years back, they were not produced or sold in the U.K so I had no idea she even existed until a few years ago when I saw one on Flickr but, I had to have her for my collection, so I went on a dolly hunt and discovered two things, the first being that she is pretty rare, and those people lucky enough to own one, do not often want to part with theirs and who can blame them? This girl's gorgeous!

And secondly, when they do come up at auction (Ebay mostly) they cost silly money ... what's new huh?

It seems as ever my tastes are too expensive for my wallet!

This of course leaves me with two choices I can either give up on ever adding this beauty to my "Sindy" Collection, or I can attempt to make one! But I'm getting a bit ahead of myself here, as you may not even know or remember what she looks like, so here's some pictures I found on an Ebay recently:

Ebay listing that ended on 27th November 2012, doll sold for £175.00 


When Gayle was originally sold in 1978, she was packaged just like Marx's Sindy Doll, the only difference to the packaging, being the name in the heart is Gayle instead of Sindy, her dress is very similar too!



This one (above) is still at auction on Ebay, there are two bidders and she currently costs: £82.00, if you'd like to try your luck; click on the link below:


While looking for images on Google just now, I discovered another version I have never seen before (below), she seems to have shorter hair, but that could just be the hairstyle, I have no idea when this one was produced all I know is She sold on 8th November 2012, after 28 bids took the price up to $188.09 or £116.20!



A while back, I spotted this picture from one of my Flickr contacts:

OOAK Tammy Friend From England Black Trendy Sindy by Nav Sikand (Virgin-Archer on Flickr)


The doll you see above is a one of a kind creation in tribute to the Black Sindy Doll. Nav dyed the doll, rerooted her hair and eyelashes, and repainted her makeup. Nav provides more information about this doll in his auction. It isn't often I see a makeover of this kind, and thought friends of Tammy would find this interesting. (please note, this item is no longer for sale on Ebay, to my knowledge).


                                                                 Isn't she just perfect?!!


He also did the same to a Francie Doll!

                                                             
                                                   OOAK Growing pretty hair AA Francie

OOAK AA Francie with growing Pretty hair.On auction/sale now on evilbay. Please feel free to contact me for details on purchasing if interested. ( Write up Posted under photo' on Flickr by Nav). When another of my flickr friends asked he go her colour so perfect, he replied ...



What can I say? I was inspired, so I got a Clone Sindy (the kind that were everywhere when I was a child in the 80's, and more often than not to e found in Fabric and Wool shops for dolly dress-making etc) that I thought would be a good "Tester Doll" but sadly, my attempt at dying her with Acid Dye, turned her face  more of a berry red than brown and her body didn't take any of the dye at all and remained pink!! 

Then I got the idea to use spray paint, a bit of squirting later, then the obligatory agonising "Don't Touch!" while it dries phase, a re-root and eye paint and I came up with this little lady:


She will have to be redone at some point, in fact I'll probably strip her down and then dye her soon, I'm not happy with her, but I think as a "tester" this technique worked quite well, and she does look beautiful this colour...

I also have a spare Sindy who I'll be dying brown soon, so this little lady will be able to go in the same dye bath with her, when I get round to it, in fact as I am only a few days away from dying a 1/6 body so I can take advantage of that dye bath and do all three at the same time... funs!










15th January appeared to be Zombie Day - Oh My!

My son had an appointment in Swansea  so we parked in the nearest car park which happened to be Toys R Us, as went past the store I noticed the sale signs - yay!

So of course being the massive dollivert that I am and having 15 minutes to spare, I couldn't resist going in, after finding Wydona Spyder "I Heart Fashion" set for £12.49.  I placed it in my basket straight away and wandered off to another aisle to check what bargains were to be had.

I discovered some Novi Starz (sadly no Maillie Tasker) for £2.95 and a large selection of Once Upon A Zombie dolls amongst other things, being indecisive it was hard to choose, so I decided "Sod it, I'll come back after the appointment if I have time"...

So I took Wydona out of my basket and prepared to leave, I almost made it out without buying anything and was feeling quite proud of myself until I spotted six toy vending machines next to the exit ...*sigh*

Having never grown up I cannot resist their twisty turn noise and kerplunk of the capsule landing, so of course I bought two!


The first one I went for was the DC Super Friends, I turned the dial and popped a purple bottomed capsule containing a "Hawkman" figure on a phone dangle fob.


Of course he won't be staying on the dangly thing as he's a new toy for Aki' to play with.


Then I couldn't resist the Trash Pack ones and ended up with this adorable little chubby chick who's obviously eaten so much he's made himself ill - as puke covered baby animals go, this little guy's the cutest!

The capsule he came in is the standard flat bottomed kind which have quite a few uses when making dolls house miniatures - inside this was a cute little wheelie bin - also useful for a dolls house miniature, inside that was my cute little inch high chicky-chubster, which when you think about the capsule and wheelie bin uses works out as pretty good value for £1.00!



In the words of Larry David: "It's pretty pretty good"

After Aaron's appointment he suggested we both go back and have another nose about, so we did only this time, egged on by Aaron I ended up leaving with a huge Hello Kitty bag full of discounted goodies!


And here it all is laid out all neatly for the photograph before I ripped apart all the packaging and got at it all!

Those plastic Tupperware type tubs were 49p for a set of four, after I got home I wished I'd bought more as they are stupidly useful.

When we got home Aaron cracked open one of the two Airfix kits he bought and immediately commandeered them there tubs to keep all the little bits together while painting and gluing it all together.


There were a few different Once Upon a Zombie dolls on offer, but for me it had to be "Zombie Belle" I've recently developed a thing for red head dolls since MGA released Meygana Broomstix Bratzilla so Belle really stood out to me apart from the red hair and how well it makes her eyes pop,  the Belle's were the only dolls in the range that they had which didn't have their eyes on the wonk!


She what I mean about those eyes? Not only that she had the best outfit to my mind, not over the top like a lot of "Princess" dolls and I loved the quirky little skull on her belt.


In terms of accessories these dolls are pretty basic - having only a stand and a hair brush, the stand is the same basic kind you'll find in a Monster High doll box, the hair brush has been given more attention to detail. It is heart shaped - with stitched scars! and has a bone handle and a bow, it's quite cute really.

The only thing I'm not so keen on about this doll is that she doesn't come with any shoes - yeah I know when she died she was most likely wearing heels with that dress and a Zombie's not really likely to be able to keep her shoes on after a while but these dolls have pretty big feet so finding something to fit them when playing dress up is a total pain.

That said in terms of quality , poseability and sheer good looks she makes up for it!

The Curl 'N' Coil Novi Starz were £2.95 each, they only had two dolls in this range "Roe Batik" and "Tily Vizon".


 I wasn't really keen on either but out of the two I felt "Roe Batik" had far more potential for customising than Tily Vizon.

















 I found that the more that I looked at her the more she grew on me and with those cute little extension lead hair clips included I found myself impossible to resist. Before I'd even moved onto the next aisle I'd already envisioned her repainted which hair restyling etc and those adorable little extension leads plugged into one of my dolls house walls!

It seems I wasn't the only person interested in this little girl, both Moogle and Tingle want to play with her too!

Moogle helped me out by inspecting the security of the packaging while I was trying to figure out jut how long it was going to take to remove all that tape and the plastic tabs to release my new Novi Starz doll and get to work on customising her - I'll upload the resulting custom soon.


Oddly on my first time around the shop I didn't notice these DeadStone Valley figures, Aaron actually pointed them out to me then of course being Zombies and having coffins and headstones I was unable to resist buying them!


I fell totally in love with "Auntie Flo" she's just so cute, the writing on her headstone reminds me of Living Dead Doll death certificates, it reads "Auntie Flo lies beneath, she took a deep breath and swallowed her teeth" and to add insult to injury they even included an image of her false teeth on her headstone too!


Each package contains a "Cemetery Plot" in the form of a cardboard grass patterned mount which is similar to a small box lid in shape and can be used to display your collection on a shelf etc.

When the package is in it's unopened state it serves as a backdrop behind the figure.

They also come with a hard plastic coffin or tomb depending on the figure represented, a headstone and of course the figure itself.


The bottom of each coffin or tomb is hinged and has two little holders so you can place your figures feet against it and have them stand up while remaining in their coffin!


I just love the attention to detail on these figures although I have to admit I'm not too sure about Auntie Flo's get up, what was she thinking as she tied that huge bow into her hair? 

Or perhaps her next of kin told the Undertaker to do it to make her look pretty but then if that was the case what about the rest of that outfit?


I couldn't resist "Old Judge Wriggs" either as he reminds me of the Judge Zombie in Paranorman, albeit a tad less Puritan crossed with Judge Jefferies - an 17th Century Welsh Judge also known as "The Hanging Judge" who later became Lord Chancellor - whom I both loathe and am strangely fascinated by,



Judge Wriggs comes with a tomb to rest in and a crooked headstone which reads: "Here lies Old Judge Wriggs laid to rest in his robe and wig." Below this is a small image of The Scales of Justice...

He's obviously been dead a lot longer than Auntie Flo' - the tomb is a dead (pardon the pun) giveaway, has a crack in the lid and headstone as well as a lot of the lining tattered, torn and decayed from inside.

Under each tomb or coffin is a label which contains a code for "Burial Activation" when you visit www.deadstonevalley.com you can type in your code which entitles you to bury three characters in the "DeadStone Valley Cemetary" - you can play around and make your characters (kind of like an online game of "Misfits" using clothing and features from each of the figures in the DeadStone Valley range, name them, write out thier headstone then inter them...

 I know it sounds kind of weird when put like that but it's actually quite fun!!


At the time I bought these little outfits I didn't have an "I Love Minnie Doll" in fact when I saw them in the flesh I didn't much like them, (I have since got one though but only as I wanted her dog and her outfit, but anyway, I thought these two little sets were so cute and knew I'd be able to use them for someone, the fact they were £1.99 each helped sway me too!


Pendle took a liking to the ears and bags and decided she'd try them on for size, that's her happy face btw, I had a struggle to get them back off her as she loves them so much!


Apparently the heart shape bag matches her moss cap or so I've been told, but then what do I know I'm not fairy folk so I guess Pendle has the edge on me when it comes to Fairyland fashion!

These flip-flop keyrings were 25p for a bag of six, they were cheap enough that I thought I could experiment with them and see if I can master the knack of making tiny shoes, so I bought two packets. 

Sadly they are all for the same foot, but I've had some ideas on how I can go about disguising that fact the only problem I can see is that I don't think I have anyone who they'll fit!!

These Monster Beads were also under £1.00 - I thought they might work for pulleys or even mini monster dolls, I haven't quite made up my mind what to use them for but I'm sure when I do you'll be among the first to know!


I nearly made it to the check out without putting anything else in my basket, but then I walked past a display of tiny mystery toys in packets, as I love buying dolls and toys for my toys to play with I couldn't resist buying the Hujoos a Monster University and Lalaloopsy one to play with!

Just when I thought I'd finished and had gotten to the checkout Aaron spots a huge tube of Swizzels Matlow Love Hearts for 50p and on top of that they had the large sized Parma Violets too I was in Nostalgia Heaven so onto the conveyor belt they went too...

It wasn't until I was halfway home and tucking into them that I began to wonder just who the hell "Niall" and "Harry" were and why I should be "loving them forever"and wanting them to"Be Mine" until Aaron informed me that I'd purchased a tube of One Direction Love Hearts - I was so ashamed, still it didn't stop me munching them all!