Tangerine

Tangerine, Tangerine. Living Reflection from a Dream... - Zeppelin

Okay, I've probably said it 10 times here, but that is my favorite Zeppelin song. It deserves a doll. Meet Tangerine. She is a gorgeous little orange and pink tones girl, formerly a Simply Vanilla (FBL mold) with a Mademoiselle Rosebud scalp. She's a sophisticated girl with a sophisticated layered, below the shoulders hair style, professionally halcut by hal. Completely customized by me. She comes in the beautiful tangerine gown shown. Hair is easy style. Just wet and shake, then finger comb.



That's part of what I wrote when I listed her on Etsy. She got picked up by a groovy gal in Seattle.

The cool thing about this doll is, it's the first doll I have had that I sent out for a haircut. A halcut to be exact. My friend hal (lower case per him) is a hair stylist and colorist by trade, and he has been giving his scissors a workout on the plastic lovelies. The scalp I sent him had been doctored already, not by a hair stylist, and well, I just didn't love it. I also wasn't even sure if the color would suit me. So, I sent the head (no neck, no body, no nothing, just the head) to hal. Why not challenge the guy his first time out, right?



What he sent back is really a work of art, and it's nothing I have seen before on Blythe. I am thrilled. I love the styling and now I love the color. It just seems to go together. The groovy gal in Seattle is going to get a wonderful doll. It's the same kind of hair style you would expect to receive yourself from a professional salon. It looks gorgeous on her. Just shake and go. For me, this is giving mohair (my former love) a run for its money. And that's saying a lot.



The rest on this doll by me. The usual: Handpainted eyechips, silk gown, carving here and there, new makeup, new lashes. Especially loving her eyelids. All in all, very happy with this doll. I think she is a looker. You'll have to let me know what you think. More dolls to come. I have been customizing with a vengeance, just not enough time to show them off. Stay tuned. Oh, and thanks, hal! :)

More Fun With Mohair - PINK!

Bride of Frankenstein? No, that's just Pinkk, a mohair custom Blythe I finished a couple weeks ago for my friend, Jean Yates. I took that picture before washing and combing out her hair and it struck my husband that she looked like the Bride of Frankenstein. In the next photos you will see her with her hair coiffed more neatly :)



Awhile back, when I first thought I wanted to do more Blythe customizing, Jean sent me a bunch of dolls that she had around and wanted spiffing up. The agreement we had was that for every 2 dolls she sent, she would keep one and I would keep the other. So far I have done 3 sets of dolls like that, calling them all part of the "Serendipity Clan." Jean has 3, I have the other 3. Jean loves pink, and so out of 2 dolls, 1 pink, 1 purple, it is not surprising she picked the pink haired one. It is also not that surprising that she named her Pinkk :)



I'm really happy with how she came out. The pink dye job I gave her is quite variegated and the tonality is that it is lighter on the top and moves out to more vibrant as you get to the tips. I love that look. She has quite a lot of hair, and so it is wilder than some like it, but I love a lot of hair, and it has become just sort of the way I do things. The mohair is kid mohair, so is soft as a bunny, which makes having a lot of it quite desirable to me.



One feature of Pinkk that I am especially pleased with is her eyelids. I had in mind sort of cherry blossoms dropping off the trees. I am really happy with how they came out. I gave her a natural look in lashes rather than going uber glamorous and some freckles. I think the look suits her.



I am having a ton of fun customizing dolls and making costumes for them. I am way way way behind on my blogging and have a lot more to show you, from Monster High dolls that I have done to clothes that I have got for them as well. I will try to get to that sometime this weekend or next week. The hair is taking so long to do, that I just get more and more behind every doll I pick up! Pleased with the results, but who knew it could take so long?!



In the meantime, I turned 50 (!!) a week or so ago. I almost can't believe that. Where does the time go? A friend years back (who was 60 when I was 20) told me that when you get this age you don't feel any different than you did at 20 (true, for me anyway), but you look in the mirror and say, "who is that and what have they done with my body and face?!" I think that is probably true as well :) But, time marches on, and it's what it is. Don't think I will be the one to find the cure to aging. In the meantime I am happy playing with dolls, and imagine I will still be at 90. Wonder what the dolls will look like then?!



Hope you are having a warm spring wherever you are. We have had some lovely days in Vermont. It is in the 60s this week, and not humid, so can't really complain. Would love the 70s, but then the humidity comes, so this is okay for now. Enjoy!

The Fairies are Coming

Okay, I confess. I am on a tear lately. I have been motivated the past month or so to get dolls done that I had set aside, to get more things in my etsy shop and to be more proactive about promoting and selling what I do have, and to sort of consolidate all my crazy creative wanderings into more of a general focus. I tried my hand at making leather masks, and they actually turned out really nice. Pleased about that.



That got me thinking about forest beings, and what that would be like in Blythe. We have woods galore at my house, and most is very deep woods, with all sorts of rock formations. Vermont is loaded with rocks and often they are very picturesque. So, I took my masks and my Blythes and I ventured out into the woods. There I spent some time taking pictures. Which got me thinking more about fairies.



I decided to start a series of fairy Blythes. They would be woodland dwellers. Sometimes they would don masks and convene. Sometimes they would just be pretty and would be the subject of some nice woodland photos. I finished 2 fairies this past couple weeks. I put them both up in my shop.



I had tried my hand at Ebay, but you know what? To me it seems way too impersonal. People don't use their real name. You don't know who they are. Returns are usually not accepted if you don't like what you buy and so on. In my shop, I can offer layaway and I can make sure people are happy with what they buy. And they can see who I am and what people have to say about what they buy from me.



It feels a lot more intimate to me. I like it a lot better, so there the fairies are. And here they are in photos. The pink girl with the white hair is Shiley. The green girl with the strawberry blonde hair is Briar.



I feel really good about them. All the ateration is done by me. I buy my mohair raw. I wash and dye and card and comb it. I root the scalps myself, in a way that I think makes the hair the prettiest and shows off the mohair to its best potential. I carve and paint the faces. I design and sew the costumes. It's really fun for me to do and it keeps me thinking up new things to make and do. I hope you like them as much as I do! Until next time - hope spring has sprung in your neck of the woods!

Hope and Faith, the Blythe Groupies

Yesterday I finished 2 really fun custom Blythes I did in a kind of collaboration with my friend Jean. How it went was, she sent me 2 dolls (both SBL Blythes - 1 Bow Wow Trad, 1 Night Flower). I customized both of them and will send her back one and keep the other. They will be sisters forever.



It all started with a blonde mohair scalp root I did. I went to put it up on Blythe Kingdom for sale. Jean saw it. She really liked it. Somehow in the midst we got talking about customizing some of her dolls. I unlisted the scalp on BK and decided it would be used for a doll for Jean. In the meantime, she sent me 2 dolls instead of 1. I decided to do 2 dolls as sisters. We would call them the "Serendipity Sisters" and they would have virtuous names. Groupies is what we decided would be their story, so they would have to have cute and sexy costumes and long wild hair. I did a second root in a butterscotch mohair color for the second doll.



Upon seeing that hair, Jean decided that *that* was the hair for her. Not the blonde after all. So, the blonde goes to me, the butterscotch goes to her.

Putting together the dolls has taken about 2 weeks. It's been really fun to do. I gave the blonde (Faith) a tad more glamorous look, with heavy lower lid eyelashing, and the redhead (Hope) a more wide-eyed slightly younger sister look. I think both are pretty and I am very happy with the way they came out.



Yesterday, after putting their new clothes on and checking them over carefully, I decided to take some green-screen photos of them and put them into various rock and roll concert scenes. I think they are really funny. Tomorrow Hope will go to Jean. Faith will be staying behind with me. Hopefully they will still be able to meet up for concerts!