Monday, October 31, 2011

1/6 wonderland at Hobby Lobby!

Went to Hobby Lobby today and examined the Christmas section.  Found a bounty of 1/6th size items! Their Christmas stuff is 50% off this week, too.
 Mini cookie cutters.  Several holiday shapes.  My hand is in this photo (and others) for scale.
Street lamp.  LOVED this one. 
Old school coke case with 6 bottles.  The bottles were glued in, but I'm sure they could be finessed out.  
Tiny tool set.  I'm definitely going back for these.  Ken NEEDS a drill and a monkey wrench.  They also had hunting and fishing gear in this section, but they varied as to how much 'in scale' they were. 


These were the right scale, but they are hard and possibly breakable.  They also had basketballs.  These were in the "decorate a tiny tree" section.

There were several variations on the 'tiny cookie' theme.  Also other candies and perfectly sized christmas lights. 
There were also a ton of things (like tiny police cars or firetrucks) that would work well as toys for a barbie, but I didn't have time to capture them all.  I'm returning tomorrow with my gift card and coupon and will post pictures of my bounty.  




Wednesday, October 19, 2011

Extreme makeover, Ken edition

On flickr the other day, I saw an awesome AA Ken redo (someone else's ken) and I loved it.  So I set out to reproduce it.  First, I found a cheap "beach steven" because he had molded hair without too much height to it.  He also has the newer, more barbie-like head join, so i didn't have to try to reroot the other type of ken neck--score!  Then I used straight acetone to 'erase' his black hair.  Bald Steven.
I used an extra big "doll" needle to root a line of hair across the front of his hairline. 

There were 14 plugs. If I were to do it again, I wouldn't put plugs quite so close to his ears--they weren't necessary and were harder to glue. 

I braided each plug and fastened it with a tiny rubber band. 
 Then came the hard part.  First off, I learned that hot glue would not work.  I like the instant-grab nature of hot glue, but it dried too bulky and shiny.  So I peeled it off.  Tacky glue would have been good, I think, but I didn't have any, so I went to good old Elmers school glue.  I started with the front center braid and ran a line of glue over the top of his head down to the nape of his neck and laid the braid in it.  It held for all of 2 seconds and popped back up.  There was no way to glue the hair down and have it hold...until I thought of pins. 

So I made lines with the white glue in contours around his head, and pinned the braid in at strategic intervals.  I let it all dry overnight, and it turned out pretty good, except in a few places the glue looked a little flaky, like he had dandruff. 


Fortunately, flocking covers a multitude of sins, AND made the braids look "softer", so the flaking doesn't matter. 



Once the flocking glue is completely dry, I will probably go back and fill in a little bit more where necessary.  But for now, the hair is close enough for government work!  I'm tickled. 

Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Look who has arrived in the Memphis area!

And look who came home with me!!!
This will be the first fashionista I ever bought with the intention of keeping head and body together.  I might go back for some bodies later (since I hear Nikki is darker than Artsy) but this one had to come home TODAY.

Set me free!  I actually really like the top and the necklace, but the pants make her look knock-kneed and the shoes are strange.  They'll be going to the kids.  Now for the REAL freedom...

 Aaaah...that's better. 

They had the other "2012" fashionistas too, and I liked one of the other faces, but she was blonde so I waited...I'm not huge on blonde dolls.  "Nikki" has the same freaking face as Artsy, so I'm not going to bother unless I can figure out a skin match with one of my other heads--her skin is still really light.

I also picked up some almost-barbie sized food-shaped erasers, and a Steven that's going to get an extreme makeover.  More to come on him soon.





Monday, October 17, 2011

1/6 club chair


Inspired by the awesome recycled crafts over at http://myfroggystuff.blogspot.com/, I tried to make my folks a club-type chair.  Turned out pretty well, even though I don't like the legs and in the flash you can really see the tape edges.  My 6 year old has claimed it anyway, so I'll get to try again:D  Sitting in it is one of my Barblgangers, (or maybe Dollelgangers?  I haven't decided what to call them).  Basically I'm restyling dolls to look like people in my life.  This one is styled to look like one of my oldest friends, Laura.  The sneakers were the best find (she's a flat-foot) and i'm particularly proud of the glasses.

Sunday, October 16, 2011

This week...

Target has Fashionistas on sale for $8.  Hope my local ones have some of the new non-swappy ones.

Monday, October 10, 2011

Chubby chasing

I love Barbies, but I especially love "barbie" type dolls with plus sized bodies.  I have a Tracy Turnblad doll, two Mimi Bobecks, two plus-sized Raven Simones and two Rosie O'Donnells.  The Tracy has a cute face, Mimi is cute in her own way (with some repainting, but although I tried, I just didn't like the Rosie doll's face.  So I gave her a new head. 


This is the head from one of my many thrift store dolls.  The skin tone is a decent match (Rosie is very pale) and it's one of those big-headed dolls so the scale is right.  Of course, the neck post on Rosie is more comparable to a Ken sized head post, so the neck was a challenge.  I basically slit the back of her neck and filled it in with hot glue.  I tried a bunch of different things and finally stuck with hot glue because even if it's not attractive, it's easy to use.  Her head does not move, of course.  But before it fell off easily, so this is an improvement.

As for clothes, she actually fits more of the Barbie clothes than I expected.  She fits only Ken pants, but some of the stretchiest barbie shirts fit.  But the best thing for her to look both feminine and well dressed are the simple sock dress.  Her feet are slightly bigger than a Barbie's feet, but she fits some of the flatter barbie shoes and also Liv shoes. 

Sometime I'll have to post the original Rosie head I tried to modify by removing the teeth...not a great look.

Thursday, October 6, 2011

To start out, a few modifications

So I finally admit that I have a collection...and have started to display it in my house.  My main concern was that my kids would want to play with MY dolls (they do) but so far it hasn't been a problem.  Plus, taking out a few and working on them a few at a time, displaying them a few at a time, then rotating them keeps it new to me and keeps me out of the stores (well, at least the expensive ones).  A few of my projects...

Mimi Bobeck--starts out with bad hair (not just unattractive, but it melted when I poured boiling water on it) and horrible makeup,  as seen on amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/Mimi-Bobeck-Drew-Carey-Show/dp/B000N67OXW
Now with new hair, new make up, and new clothes (although you can't see them in the pic)


You may not be able to tell from the photo, but the makeup removal was awful--I read somewhere that you could use a dremel and a light touch to remove paint...and while this is true, you can also grind away part of the face that way.  I don't recommend.  I was afraid to use acetone and do a clean slate, so I tried to dremel off just the offending makeup....but it left the surface rough and funky.  But it looks fine from a distance.  I have another mimi, though, and I'm going to do a clean wipe on her since I've gotten my courage up by doing a face re-paint on...





This Mulan.  She was the type with the white painted face (for going to matchmaker), and while I tried to just use acetone on the white makeup, I wasn't able to get all of the white makeup off without wiping her eyes too, so I just did it.  I'm very happy with the results.  Still need to tackle her hair, but the face makes me happy.

My third project was my dreadlock wig--I had looked into ways of making dreadlocks using the doll's own hair, plus gel and glue (disaster), saw a tutorial for making dreads out of wool (which my kid and husband are allergic to), then finally saw Limbe Doll's tutorial for making a dread wig.  It was just what I was looking for. 

This was the result.  I didn't have any knee-highs, so I used a sock, but it still turned out really well.  I'm excited to actually be getting projects DONE instead of just thinking about them and researching them.  It helps a lot that I can actually leave my dolls out now and the kids don't start running around with them.  But of course, in the future, they'll probably be helping me...  Well, helping me MORE...