40th Anniversary Barbie

This won't be much of a review, since this is an older doll. But I wanted everyone to see pictures of this pretty doll I picked up a couple of months ago. I was fortunate enough to find her locally, so that I didn't have to pay shipping costs to get her.

Since she was made to celebrate Barbie's 40th anniversary, she's wearing a takeoff of Barbie's iconic black and white striped swimsuit. She has the Mackie face mold, and she came with two accessories, an anniversary bouquet of roses, and a miniature original Barbie doll. The miniature doll was actually my biggest reason for wanting to buy 40th Anniversary. The mini doll was supposed to be on the pink box next to Barbie, but one of the rubber bands had deteriorated, and the doll slipped down to the bottom of the box. A couple of rubber bands in here had fallen apart; this doll herself turned 20 years old this year!

She's got quite big ruffles at the bottom of her mermaid gown. I think the one ruffle is standing up so much because it was put in the box that way. Her shoes look nice, but the heels have bent in, as happens with a lot of Barbie shoes. Her skirt is unfinished on the inside, but I imagine Mattel was looking at this doll as strictly display.  She does come with a stand, but that skirt is so tight, I don't know if I could get her on it. And her gloves are pretty nicely cut.

I personally love the Mackie face mold, and this doll's makeup is fairly nice too, I think. I like her French twist up-do, although there's a little bit of a "space" in the back.

And I had to take a picture of a Barbie doll holding the mini Barbie, to give you an idea of scale (especially since the mini doll wasn't visible in the big box!)

This is a nice doll to add to my collection. I don't know how much you will see her with my other Barbies, as this doll looks pretty swanky as is, and I don't want to mess with her hair style. She'll probably be in a photo or two at some point, as well as the roses and mini Barbie. Speaking of which, my daughter just walked past my computer, looked at my monitor, and said "Is that a doll holding a doll?" with a little eye roll. But only a little one. She knows her mom's doll craziness, and as she pointed out, her dollhouse when she was little, had a mini dollhouse. :)

#SNAPSTAR Green Stand, and Barbie Comparison Photos

Boy, November really got away from me. I've been trying to get my Vitamin D intake and light box use at the right balance, and there were just too many days where I wasn't up to doing as much as I did during the summer. The BTEG family has also been busy with other things, including making six homemade pumpkin pies for Thanksgiving, but I'll talk about that after the doll stuff.

In the comments of my previous post, Rachael asked if the green stand would work with other dolls. I promised her I'd check the stand with one of my Cu-Poche dolls and let her know. I didn't think it would take so long, Rachael!

Looking at the two stands, you wouldn't think a doll could use both, would you? However, note that both stands have a round peg at the end, and that they are close in size.

Yes, my Cinderella Cu-Poche can actually use the green stand! Now, the green peg is very close to being bigger than the hole in the Cu-Poche back, so it's not a perfect fit, and thus the doll can fall off the green peg very easily. Then again, I haven't done a lot of photography with the white stand yet, so maybe Cu-Poche dolls don't stay on those that well, either.

Since the green stand does work with Cinderella, you know what I had to do.

I green-screened her onto a beach on my beloved Lake Erie, from a picture I took a few years back.

Here's some other examples of green screens I have done. These two are from last Christmas.

 I put Poppy skating into this picture of me taken on the ice many years ago.

And here are Madeline and one of her friends driving down a snowy road.

Lastly, here's a picture from the first chapter of my storyline, which I really need to get back to. I had to dress Hunter in clothes other than his customary green top, which would have disappeared right along with their green background. I do have blue screen capabilities too, but not a nice blue backdrop, at the moment.

Also in the comments, Dana asked if the #SNAPSTAR body could be used with a Petite Fashionista. Unfortunately, the answer is no. Dawn is very much shorter than the Petite Fashionista and the Skipper body, which I threw in for further comparison.

If you'd like to hear about the BTEG family Thanksgiving, continue below the fold.

#SNAPSTAR vs Liv

When the #SNAPSTAR dolls first launched, so many people compared them to Liv dolls, myself included. And since I wasn't interested in the #SNAPSTAR dolls themselves, I really just cared about seeing them with Liv dolls. I was interested in their similarities and differences more than the dolls themselves. When I found a #SNAPSTAR doll for a good price, this was my chance, and if you were interested in comparing these two dolls in more detail, I hope you'll enjoy this.

Meet Daniela Liv and Dawn #SNAPSTAR. In this picture, they don't seem to have much in common, other than inset eyes, and oversized heads.

However, there is one thing that makes them stand out from most other doll lines, and resemble each other. This:

Yep, both of these lines have removable wigs, and both lines also have/had separate wigs available for purchase to change your doll's look. (I say have/had because the Liv line is long gone, although of course you can still purchase Liv items second hand, including those spare wigs.)

Not only do the dolls wear wigs, they both have holes in their noggins for a wig post.

So of course, I had to know if the dolls could swap wigs. One thing I noticed during the wig sharing was that Dawn's wig cap is much harder, kind of like a hat. Liv wigs, at least in my experience, need to be almost peeled on or off. This is not easy either, as the wig cap, while not as hard as a plastic hat, is fairly stiff.

Here's Daniela wearing Dawn's wig. It really does change her look quite a bit, and although you can see some of her painted on hair in the front, it's not a bad look for her.

I could see her wearing one of the #SNAPSTAR wigs that had bangs or something, very easily.

While Daniela's wig did not fit Dawn quite as well, it doesn't appear completely out of place, and it changes her look too.

This wig is loose on Dawn, and the wig cap doesn't touch all of her head. It wouldn't be good for play, as it would fall off all of the time. But it doesn't look bad here, and I like being able to see more of Dawn's face than her wig shows.

Wigs aside, one look at Dawn and Daniela will tell you they can't share clothes or shoes. Liv can wear some Barbie clothes; I do know that. For this post, I wanted to look at the newer doll on the block. Naked doll with clothing and shoe images under the fold.

My Last Halloween Project - Not Doll Related

I made this costume for the Dancer when she was 15. She wanted to wear it to a gaming convention called Origins. She's worn it a few times since, and she wanted to wear it to work today. The bodice desperately needed new binding, and I originally made the off-the-shoulder sleeves too large and too loose. So the Dancer and I drove out to a quilt store to pick out new cotton fabric for the binding, then I made some bias strips. The Dancer helped me rip off the old binding, I machine-sewed the new material on, then flipped the binding over the raw edges and hand-sewed it down. I also folded the sleeve material in half, tacked it together, and re-sewed the sleeves back on to the bodice by hand. She freshened up the fabric paint on the front and back of the bodice. I made this back in the original Frozen I heyday, so I was fortunate enough to find pre-printed material for the skirt. It doesn't look exactly like the movie, but I wasn't up for making a paneled skirt, and hand-painting several panels with the movie-accurate pattern. :P I also found her necklace, and the hair comb that Anna wears with this costume, on Etsy. I'm glad the Dancer has gotten as much wear out of this as she has, and of course she's planning on wearing it when she goes to see Frozen II.

I hope you all had a great Halloween. We don't get trick-or-treaters here, which I find sad. Maybe someday I'll have grandchildren to go out with.

October Instagram Challenge Day 18: Owl

Since a lot of you aren't familiar with the Ever After High characters, here Ever After High character Cerise Hood is helping Ashlynn Ella travel through the Dark Wood safely. Ashlynn is startled by the strange noise, but Cerise knows it's just an owl. Since Cerise is related to wolves (although few people know it) she feels safe traversing the scary forest near Ever After High, as opposed to the Enchanted Forest. I picked Ashlynn as her traveling companion in part because this particular doll is Through the Woods Ashlynn, who is in a story where Ashlynn and some of the other girls become lost in... the Dark Forest. It's also a little bit of a play on birds; they figure largely in the Cinderella story, more in some stories than in others, but Ashlynn doesn't know much about nocturnal birds. That might be overthinking it.

Still working on "we need to look like we're in the dark, but it needs to be light enough so we can actually be seen in a picture" photography. Owl was on loan from the collection of Mr. BTEG.

October Instagram Challenge Day 17: Favorite Treat

Who can decide on their favorite treat? I can't! I decided to just go with some festive sugar cookies.

October Instagram Challenge Day 14: Orange

This theme was blessedly easy to do. I even used the new dress that I won from Xanadu's giveaway, and that she made. I bought several mini pumpkins to put throughout our home, so I used one in this photo. The background is scrapbook paper, and it makes for such a great all-around fall backdrop.

I skipped yesterday's theme. It was "Conjure," and I just wasn't getting any picture ideas. Tomorrow's theme is "Magic," and I'm not getting a lot of inspiration for that one, either. There are several coming up that I will be doing, though, so the Halloween fun is not over yet.

October Instagram Challenge Day 12: Haunted

"Oh, Barbie, I don't want to watch this movie. You know haunted dolls creep me out."

"There's no such thing as a haunted doll. I'm a doll collector, JT; none of my dolls are haunted."

"Well, at least you have most of them in your spare room, so I don't have to see them."

"They're all in my spare room."

"Well, what about that little one there on the table?"
"I didn't put a doll there."

It would be easier with these pictures, if I could do some sort of special effects, but since the picture has to be taken with your phone or your tablet, I find it sometimes limiting for this sort of thing. However, most of the people participating in this are not doing overly complicated pictures, so that helps me feel better. It's still good practice in photography and creativity. There is another doll Halloween challenge going, where the topics are more complex, and the photos have more props and action going on, but I wasn't prepared for that one, as I didn't see it until a day or so before October started. How do people on Flickr and Instagram find out about challenges? I suppose it's just following the right people.

October Instagram Challenge Day 11: Costumes

Barbie found this lovely red satin in her fabric stash, and she's trying to decide what kind of costume she could make with it. Maybe the Queen of Hearts? Do you have any suggestions? :)

Also, I found a NRFB Anne Klein doll at a garage sale for only $12! She will get deboxed at some point, and you'll get to see her clothes and jewelry and a better look at her face.

October Instagram Challenge Day 10: Monster

If I ever wished that I owned a Monster High doll, today was definitely that day. I came up with the idea of having some of the Ever After High girls watching the first Monster High reboot video. This involved making a flat screen TV frame, and getting the image color printed. We don't have a color printer yet, so getting the image done required going to a store. I like this image, but if you lived during the 70s in the US, the paneling is sort of giving me "rumpus room" vibes. :)

October Instagram Challenge Day 9: Yellow

This one was a tricky one for me. I couldn't think of a lot of things related to autumn that are yellow, besides leaves. I did have a picture of one of my dolls next to some yellow violas, but that didn't feel very seasonal. Finally, I just went with Madeline's yellow hat. Fiona has just found it, to complete her Madeline Halloween costume.

Some of the upcoming challenges are a little bit tricky or overwhelming too, but I'm looking at this as a good exercise in discipline. Sometimes, if you really want to get a project done, you need to do the work even if you just don't feel like it. Sometimes, there are real physical or mental health issues, but many people, I think, just don't feel like doing a creative project if the spark isn't there. That's definitely been me in the past, but there are so many things that I want to accomplish, that I want to develop better discipline.

October Instagram Challenge Day 8: Pumpkins

I took this picture at the same time that I went to the farmer's market/pumpkin patch for my Day 5 picture. The white "pumpkins" that you see further back are called ghost pumpkins, but I'm pretty sure they're just another type of gourd.

Mr. BTEG dug out his old recipe for homemade pumpkin pie last Thanksgiving, and the pies were a huge hit. We can wait awhile to buy pie pumpkins, though.

ETA: Nope, ghost pumpkins are just albino pumpkins, and they're orange on the inside, to boot.

October Instagram Challenge Day 7: Baking

I was thinking about getting out a bunch of my doll-sized baking supplies, but then I realized that I really wanted an end result that looked Halloween-y, so I just went with this pumpkin pie. It's easy to find mini cookie cutters and so on that look like Christmas baked goods; finding stuff for other holidays, not so easy. The other advantage to this photo was that I didn't have to worry about the lighting overly much. I think this has the look of overhead kitchen lighting.

October Instagram Challenge Day 6: Cozy

Skipper and her friends are cozily wrapped in blankets, and telling ghost stories by the fire. The fireplace is an old Sindy piece. The fuzzy blanket, I knitted myself. :) If you want to read the story of how I got a new light bulb for this old fireplace, read on here.

I imagine I was involved with ghost telling at some point, maybe a sleepover or Girl Scout camp, but I have no memories. I just wanted to have them doing something related to Halloween.

October Instagram Challenge Day 5: Harvest

I decided that going to the local farm market might be a good place to take a picture with the theme of Harvest. I had my choice for pictures, but I decided to place Masha with the corn. She's one of my Madame Alexander Travel Friends dolls, who hails from Russia. I should have framed this pic better, but I didn't want to stand around too long.

You'll see another pic of Masha at the farm later on in the challenge, but for now, here are a couple of other pics that I took to show some of the other features that a pumpkin farm can include here in Ohio.

Here's a wagon pulling into its "station," which was a bunch of hay bales where people can sit and wait. There's very often a wagon of some kind to take people back to the pumpkin patch to pick their own pumpkin. They can be tractor-drawn or horse-drawn. Just for fun, I'm including a pic of the Dancer, when she came to this same pumpkin patch on a preschool field trip, sixteen years and ten days ago.

Here are some pictures of the corn maze. I got a picture of the entrance, and then played around with the panaroma feature on my phone camera to get a picture of the entire corn field. Apparently it does take a little bit of time to get through the maze.

I also grabbed some produce: apples, grape tomatoes, and mini pumpkins. I like the apples, the Dancer will like the tomatoes, and the mini pumpkins are for decoration. Do you have any special fall produce that you like?