Let It Snow

Well, we got our first real snow of the season starting last night, into today, and boy, did we get snow. Here on the west side of Cleveland, we got about a foot and a half of snow, which means the east side got even more. If you're interested in weather (like RagingMoon1987) check out "lake effect snow." Cold wet air from Canada comes over Lake Erie, which is currently warmer than the air, and snow then gets dumped on Northeast Ohio. It's natural to me, because I've lived with it all my life, but apparently this phenomenon is only found in a few other places in the world.

I took this picture today, around 2:00 PM local time. The snow today was what we call "wet" snow. It's quite easily packable, which is great if you're a kid making igloos and snowballs, but it's *very* heavy to shovel.

I just took this picture before I started this post. The Dancer just re-shoveled the sidewalk when she got home from work.

Happily for me, I have many projects to work on as the cold weather comes in and the snow piles up this December. Some of it is human related, some of it is doll-related. There is another little girl in my life who likes the LOL Surprise dolls, so I will get to use up some of the fabric that I bought to use in a LOL Surprise little dollhouse that I made for a friend's daughter, back in 2018. Does anyone else in the Northern hemisphere have any fun winter projects planned? Well, I know TheMonsterCrafts does, but I bet she never sees snow like this!

My Collection Part Ten: Keith Haring X Barbie Doll

I picked this doll up fairly recently for a good price, and she gets her own post, because she's relatively new, so this is an informal review as well. Also, I'm selling off her entire outfit, so I took some shots of her redressed. I bought her for her face, which I think is fierce, without coming off as snooty. I have yet to see a Goddess mold face that I don't like. She has decent body articulation, too. And I'm hereby naming her Kelly.

Her knees were covered with cardboard. No idea why.

And redressed. Her hands don't seem to be removable, so I had her drape the faux leather jacket stylishly over her shoulder, since the sleeves are too tight to go over her hands. Girl knows how to werk.

 

So what do you think of her? What do you think of her outfits? She might be losing her black nail polish, too.

Total dolls: 41

My Collection Part Nine: Reading to Alice, Alice in Wonderland and Dorothy by Tonner

And thus we end the overview of my 16" Tonner collection with three dolls who are... not 16" tall. Alice and Dorothy, however, are sized to fit in the 16" range. They have the same bodies as Tyler Wentworth's sister, 12" tall Marley. While I never liked Marley very much, I love Alice, and since The Wizard of Oz is one of my favorite movies, I had to have Dorothy as well.

Reading to Alice is 15" tall, or so. I believe her body has been used for a range of Disney princesses by Tonner as well. It's a bit frustrating that although she was meant to go with the Alice doll, (it's right in the name) she doesn't fit in very well to the 16" line, in my opinion. You can make your own decision with the body comparison shot I'll show below the fold.

I like my Dorothy doll very much, although she does have a few yellow spots on the waist of her jumper. Toto looks a little bit odd, I think. Also, he's resin, and rather heavy for his size, since Dorothy is meant to carry the basket on her arm. I wonder if a stuffed dog would have been better.

I believe Tonner later introduced a Dorothy doll with the 15" body, which is actually more suited to Judy Garland's actual body type in the movie. We'll go with Reading to Alice next. She didn't photograph well for me. She's not typical doll "pretty" but she is striking looking. I'm throwing in a picture of her wearing an Ashton Drake Gene outfit that I took years ago.

Alice in Wonderland is one of the gems of my collection. Her face looks a little blank in my photos, but I love how she looks in person. I bought her nude, but she is wearing an outfit from Tonner's Nutcracker Clara collection, Off to the Land of Sweets. I'm disappointed in the slippers from that outfit. They were made with just a hair too little fabric, so that the back of the slippers pulls forward. I tried to put the slippers on Alice while holding the back of the slipper with tweezers, but then the stitches in the back looked like they were starting to come apart. Maybe somebody else can wear those slippers.

My youngest daughter, The Dancer, owns a Nutcracker Ballet Clara doll, that I bought her for Christmas many years ago. As you can see, she and Alice are basically sisters. Apologies for the first picture being blurry.

Last picture below the fold.

Happy Halloween

My daughter wore this costume to work today. I made the dress and the headband for her, and as Rachael pointed out, I also made my daughter. :) I made this dress for her all the way back in 2013 for a homecoming dance. The theme was A Night at Gatsby's, and kids don't normally dress to the theme of a high school dance, but she and my elder daughter did, and they probably were more comfortable than the kids who wore fancy dresses. She wore this dress again her senior year when she helped out a friend who was going to film school, and acted in a short film her friend made that was set in the 1920s.

As far as doll stuff, I was sick last week, not terribly, but enough that I really didn't have much motivation. I know it wasn't Covid, because Mr. BTEG had the same thing, and he got tested, as he has some health issues that would make it more dangerous for him. I got an ear infection when I was almost done with the cold, so that didn't help. My last Tonner 16" post is on my plate within the next few days!

My Collection Part Eight: Charlotte, Cinderella and Fairytale Basic by Tonner

Charlotte's mold was used for the 16" Miss America dolls, not to be confused with the 18" Miss America dolls. She was also produced many times in her own right, going by the name Charlotte. The two Charlotte dolls that are own are the Vintage Basic Miss America, whom I bought nude, and the Basic Black Charlotte. I have since taken Vintage's hair down.

Charlotte also makes a good model for my Madame Alexander Meet Me in St. Louis fashion, originally made for the Alexandra Fairchild Ford 16" doll. The outfit came on a Judy Garland doll with the Alexandra face mold, which MA managed to make a pretty good likeness. I have since sold off the doll, but I love the outfit, even if the white satin has yellowed. The dress doesn't zip up all the way on Charlotte, though. Yes, this dress has a working zipper!

 

Basic Black Charlotte is wearing her original swimsuit and hairband. I was vacillating on keeping her, because her coloring and face paint is so similar to Vintage Charlotte. Also, the top of her head almost looks flat, because of her hairstyle, I think. I decided to keep her for now.

The Cinderella face mold was a runaway favorite. In addition to all of the Cinderella doll variations made, her face was used for dolls like Phantom of the Opera Christine Daae, Juliet from Romeo and Juliet, and Tonner's Re-Imagination line's Vasilisa. Vasilisa is a Russian fairy tale character, and the Re-Imagination line featured fairy tale dolls in new styles. The doll store Cherished Friends even had a store exclusive Cinderella with the coloring of the owner's daughter, called Amy's Cinderella. The mold was also shrunk down slightly and used for Tonner's Cami doll.

I own Cinderella Basic - Strawberry, and Dreams Come True Cinderella, whom I bought nude. Dreams Come True was wearing a blue ball gown and tiara, representing Cinderella going to the ball, which is why she has a very intricate updo. Also pictured here is my last adult Tonner doll, the Re-Imagination Fairytale Basic doll, in her original clothes.

We have reached the end of my adult Tonner collection, but I still have two more girl dolls and a young teen Tonner doll in my collection, who are coming up next time.

Total dolls: 37

My Collection Part Seven: Daphne Dimples by Tonner

As with the Sydney Chase sculpt, the Daphne sculpt turned out to be a very popular one. Daphne was introduced in the Effanbee Brenda Starr line. Brenda Starr was the name of a long-running comic book series that started in the 1940s. Brenda Starr was a newspaper reporter, and Daphne was a rival reporter. The Daphne sculpt was popular enough that a modern Daphne doll was introduced as Daphne's granddaughter. I'm pretty sure that was in the Tonner line.

My black-haired Cannes Opening Daphne wears a Franklin Mint dress, made for the Jacqueline Kennedy doll. The blond doll is Vintage Basic Daphne.

Red-haired Arrival at Port Daphne is wearing a swimsuit from another Basic Tonner doll. The brunette is Ultra Basic Daphne. She came in a basic white swimsuit, which I can't for the life of me find. She's wearing a Tonner top, sold as a separate, and the black skirt from the Signature Style Tyler doll. I got the Adirondack chairs a few months ago at a local store. Miniature Adirondack chairs are currently very stylish for home decor. Even human size chairs are used outside as decoration, and not to sit on (although of course you still can.) Anyway, those chairs are fairly easy to find in different colors and sizes.

Arrival at Cannes

Vintage Basic

Arrival at Port

Ultra Basic

Ultra Basic's face has yellowed, which is disappointing, but I love all four of these dolls. I reviewed Vintage Basic way back in 2014 here.

Total dolls: 32

A New Idea for Clothing Storage: Collectible Card Storage Boxes

I don't know about other countries, but here in the United States, there are lots of reasons why people might own collectible cards, from sports, to games like Pathfinder, Magic: The Gathering, and Pokemon. And of course, if you have a lot of cards, you need a place to store them. When my last attempt at clothes organization didn't work out (three ring binders,) I decided to try the collectible card box idea, which I'd been considering for a while.

There are many different sizes of collectible card boxes. There are boxes that are about half the length of the box up above, although I've only seen those online. There are also larger boxes that have three or four rows inside for cards. Of course, the boxes, or slots in a larger box, are only one general width, collectible card width. However, that seems to work out really well for things like Barbie-sized shirts and shorts/shorter skirts. Plus, when they are standing upright, I can flip through them, almost like cards. It's not like in a box where they are laying flat, when you might have to pull a bunch out to get to the ones in the middle. At least, that's what I ended up doing. :)

Slightly longer skirts fit in fine sideways.

I've discovered that the length of the boxes that I have, is perfect for knee-length dresses and longer skirts, and pants/capris.

The thing is, and I realized this when I was trying out the 3-ring binder method, some Barbie clothes are so proportionally "thick," that sometimes they almost stand up by themselves. Of course, the box with my shirts in it also works well, because the box is fairly full. However, the skirts and shorts also seem to stay fairly well arranged in their box. I'm sure if I threw the box around enough, things would get out of place, but then again, the box is small enough to not have a lot of room for that.

I tried out the next size box, to see what I could fit. For now, this is going to be both my "ankle length, poofy skirt" box, and my full-length dress box. Since the box is really too long for either, I'm kind of sticking the skirts at one end and the dresses at the other, for now.

Of course, there other lengths, and I may be able to find something a little shorter, length-wise, online. I bought these from our local gaming store, because Mr. BTEG and the Dancer have played games there for hours on end, and I want to support the store. Now that I think this is going to work well, I can experiment with other sizes, too.

Just to share my experience with you, what went wrong with the 3-ring binder method was that I only wanted to use the smallest plastic pouches for my smallest tops, to save space. However, because of the thickness of Barbie clothes that I mentioned earlier, the tops really wanted to just pop right out of those small pouches. On top of that, I quickly filled up two binders (with more clothes than you see here) and both binders were so stuffed that they were too fat to hold their neat triangle shape. I could easily see the binders getting out of control, space wise, plus some clothes were falling out of the pouches, and putting them in a sleeve with bigger pouches would just take up even more room.

Teresa organizes hers in plastic bags, and then in larger plastic bags, by things like doll, year, and what fashion pack it came from. However, I'm not really much of a collector when it comes to Barbie clothes. I don't try to collect all the outfits and accessories from the 1965 Barbie and Ken wedding set (making the name and date up here.) I'd rather be able to find them by top or knee-length dress, rather than what Fashion Fever multi-outfit pack it came from. We take different approaches to our fashion doll clothes, which is fine. I hope maybe my approach will work for one or two of you out there.

I also have outside box measurements, if you are interested in those. I'm not sure how these card boxes are officially measured, if it's from the inside, or what. But this should help you know what you're looking at, when shopping for your own boxes.

Small box:

Length: 7.5 inches, about 18.5cm

Width: 4 inches, about 10cm

Height: 2 and 7/8 inches, about 7cm

Long box:

Length:  about 12.5 inches, about 31cm

Same width and height

If you prefer plastic boxes and can find some in a useful size, great. When I decided to try the "standing up" approach, the only thing I could really find both narrow in width and long enough in length were collectible card boxes. Obviously, they're not going to set inside each other for stacking, like some plastic boxes will. But, they do stack, and maybe in the doll space you have, you'll store them all flat on a shelf or in something like a drawer instead. Anyway, this is a storage approach that I have not seen anyplace else, and I hope if it doesn't work for you, it might spark an idea for something that will. Happy storage!