A Girl and Her Chinchilla

I have a goal this year of putting at least 3 dolls a month up on Ebay. I am new to Ebay in terms of selling. I have been buying there for years, but have always been tentative about selling. I have a thriving business on Etsy and I am very comfortable there. So this is branching out a bit for me.

Last week I put my custom Blythe Gwynn on Ebay and she sold. She was a really good doll, and I feel confident I am selling a high quality product and offering good service. I think that my clients get a very good value for their buck. Even so, my Etsy clients are not necessarily Ebay shoppers. I have to start building an Ebay clientele and that feels like a bit of a challenge to me.

So, with 1 sale, moving forward, let's see if I can keep to my goal of 3 dolls a month. Maybe 4, if I get really ambitious. I still have my etsy store and custom clients to keep up with, but I want my Ebay dolls to be really special and will be adding extra special touches to sweeten the deal.

For Ebay doll #2, which will go up tonight, Tuesday, January 29, (hopefully this link works) I have started a Girl and Her Pet series. Blythes are funny to me. They should have funny pets. So, first girl and her pet will be Analiese, a Girl and Her Chinchilla.

Analiese is my 62nd custom Blythe girl since 2010. She is a beautiful little girl in lovely shades of lavender and purple, with mustard yellow accents. The base doll is a Takara Blythe FBL Simply Vanilla.

I changed out her scalp for a Takara FBL Very Vicky, which is a sandy blondish brown, which I gave a special conditioning and straightening treatment to add shine, giving her long, full-of-body hair with just a hint of wave at the ends. I added in some streaks of lavender saran at the front to give her beautiful highlights to frame her face.

The hair is ultra-thick, ultra-smooth and shiny. Gorgeous. I am really happy with how her hair turned out. I have been experimenting with treating stock hair. A lot of times it will come to me, NRFB, and have a bit of frizz at the ends. Or the waves will be a bit haphazard and the cut is a little goofy. I have been working on remedying that by trying some things. I think I have worked it out and this hair is truly gorgeous.

I gave her faint freckles, dramatic lower lashes and shiny purple with sparkly multi-color glitter eyelids. Her pullcords are lavender cotton floss, braided for strength, with 2 charms that are photos of Analiese encased in heavy domed glass in round, shiny silver-tone metal frames. I think I am going to give that style pullcharms to all my Ebay girls from now on.

Her clothing is various shades of lavender and purple, all designed and constructed by me. Fabrics are silk and silk/rayon, all hand-dyed, cured and laundered. They all have sort of a vintage, lived in feel. The cotton leggings and plastic boots are purchased, but everything else is hand-made.

She has a little purple velvet satchel with a hand-rolled silk velvet rose on the flap, for carrying her little Pet Shop pet chinchilla, Lacey.

My plan is for all my Ebay girls to have pets and hats. Hats have always been my thing, and I have been collecting Pet Shop pets for ages. They make me laugh. They have giant eyes and bobble heads. They go good with Blythe, and Hasbro agrees, as they had the little Blythe and Pet Shop pet series for quite awhile.

I added a little bit of irridescence inside the chinchilla's ears to match Analiese's lips.

Both the doll and her pet will be up on Ebay tonight. She is a beautiful doll. She has great hair, and she has a cute pet. Who can resist?

So Many Dolls, So Little Time

I have done a bunch of dolls lately, and just no time to get them all up here. This doll, Gwynn, is on Ebay
this week. She is a Simply Chocolate (FBL) that I added some cool red-violet highlights into the hair framing her face, gave her a pretty faceup in wine and chocolate colors and gave her a cool rock star chic top with jeans.

Crossing fingers someone wants to take her home. She is a super photogenic doll. I took 20 pictures and not a bad one in the batch.

Here in Vermont, it is cold again. We had our little January thaw, where it went to 45 degrees! We are back to zeros. Eeep. Hope everyone is staying warm!

Happy New Year and Frozen Charlottes

There is a old American folk song, apparently in countless versions called "Young Charlotte" or "Fair Charlotte" or "Frozen Charlotte" that is a cautionary tale of a young girl who is very vain, and though warned by her mother, refuses to bundle up on a New Year's Eve for fear of wrecking her "look". Instead she goes out in a lovely light gown, into a snowy night, hoping to to dance with her beau at a New Year's Ball.

The unhappy news is, she freezes to death on the sleigh ride there and her lover mourns her forever more. Poor girl. Sad story. No one really knows if it is true or not. The tale has appeared as poems and songs and even newspaper stories.

This doll is my version of the poor thing, this time in her white silk nightie. I have already used the name Charlotte, so this doll gets the name Camille. She is heading to Australia, where it is much warmer, and perhaps she will defrost. One never knows.

Here in Vermont, it is so blasted cold as to be unbelievable. I believe today the low was somewhere around -15F. Australia sounding very good right now! Safe travels ghostie girl!