Making a Doll's Necessaire

We have both had fun in the past making straw hats for our dolls using materials from PNB Dolls (www.pnbdoll.com), so I was very excited to see their new product, a Necessaire.  Necessaire were little tool boxes used by French ladies to store sewing, personal health or beautification tools.  The kit is at http://www.pnbdoll.com/store/WsDefault.asp?Cat=FrenchFashion&isThumbs=No&curpage=3&Thumbs=.  I was very excited to try this, so I ordered it last fall.  I finally finished it today, and have decided it is an advanced project, and I am very much a beginner.  :)  It was definitely humbling, but I decided to share the pictures anyway!

-- Janet

Outside of Necessaire

Inside of Necessaire (nothing inside, yet)

Odette poses next to her new Necessaire

What Big Eyes You Have!

I have two Kish Olivia Carneval dolls-- one I got at the Modern Doll Convention (http://www.moderndollcollectors.com/), and one I bought afterward to modify (change the wig).  Lately, I've felt a bit bored having two dolls that are almost the same, but was torn about getting rid of one of the dolls.  Then recently I discovered the blog "Dolls Behaving Badly" (www.dollsbehavingbadly.com) and really enjoyed reading about Charlie's adventures with her dolls, especially her Companion Doll (a doll she takes everywhere, yes, everywhere) named Martie.  Martie is a Rapunzel doll by Robert Tonner (www.tonnerdoll.com) who was modified by Jim Dandy.  One of the things he did was he cut out the painted eyes and put in glass eyes-- creating a really neat look!  So, I was inspired to do this crazy thing to my extra Olivia.  Yikes!

Searching the internet for information on how to do this is tough-- maybe there aren't too many people doing this, I don't know.  After thinking about it, I had an idea of how to go about it (my engineering degree is not only good for paying some of the bills, it also helps me with doll projects! :) ).  I ordered glass eyes from Denver Doll Emporium (www.denverdoll.com) and while I was there, I found a cute wig to try out.

I won't go into the gory details, because I don't have pictures (I glued her wig on, and I am NOT taking out the eyes again, installing them was a real bear!) but I found two great sites on how to do this AFTER I had gone through the first iteration on doing this, so I will share those here:  http://www.ehow.com/how_6930664_put-glass-eyes-barbie.html and http://milkshakemelody.com/tutorials/glass_eyes.html.  Pictures of Toni before and after below.  She isn't perfect, but I love how she looks!

-- Janet

Toni, Before...

New Toni!

MIM Fun!

At the annual Junior Doll Collector's Club Tea, the guest of honor was Paulette Goodreau, a longtime artist who has made many wonderful ball-jointed dolls (BJDs; http://www.goodreaudoll.com/) and now has a doll company called Make-It-Mine, MIM.  The girls all received a basic MIM doll (http://www.mimtoy.com/MiM-Basic.html)-- thank you Paulette!  The MIM doll is a neat idea-- she is customizable in many different ways, including wigs, eyes and even body types.

Kairi's birthday is also this month, and it happens that she got the other basic MIM doll, and the mermaid tail.  She had some birthday money, so she bought the MIM centaur.  Kairi took a picture of her extra body types below:

MIM can be a Centaur or a Mermaid

Kairi rounded up some of her doll furniture and accessories, and the MIM dolls (named Catherine and Katelin) now have a home.  Janet was inspired by Paulette's custom face-up of a MIM doll and wanted to try it herself.  If you aren't familiar with the word "face-up", it is the art of adding color to a doll's face to give it character.  Janet bought herself a MIM doll, and painted her fingernails with acrylic paint, and used pastels and watercolor pencils on the doll's face to give it a different look.  Janet's doll is named Edith, and she wears a shocking blue wig.  Below are pictures of the dolls hanging out in their new house, and having a sleepover with Edith.

-- Janet & Kairi

The MIM House

MIM Sleepover (Watching the Movie Rio)