Dolls and Doll-related Items for Sale

Wednesday, September 23, 2020

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

Tuesday, September 15, 2020

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!


Saturday, September 12, 2020

New Items

I'm interrupting my collection photos to show a few new things that I've picked up recently. Two of them are Mattel clothing packs, one from Amazon, and one from a Meijer store. The Amazon pack consists of a checked dress, a striped top, flowered shorts, a beaded hairband and a white bag. While I like the clothes, the waistband of the shorts is a little loose, and also tends to flip over. The legs of the shorts also hang a little bit strangely. But overall, the set is cute. One of my models for this outfit is a doll with the Model Muse body, which I picked up recently. I think she's getting a rebody, but I thought she would look cute here. Her left arm pose should look good, but her hand doesn't come close to touching her body, which doesn't make for a good pose, in my mind.

The next outfit I happened to see in store, and since I'm a Hello Kitty fan, I decided to pick it up, even though I'm not thrilled by all the accessories. The "watch" seems pointless. And I hate the way the glasses look.

However, if you like Hello Kitty, the top alone is adorable. The shorts are usable with other tops, and the hairband fits nicely. The purse with the stylized Hello Kitty, I could take or leave, and a fanny pack? Eh. The necklace also doesn't do much for me, but I've never been a fan of the big, statement necklaces Mattel has been releasing for several years.

I'm happy with these new clothing additions for my Barbie size dolls. Next time, I'll be sharing a new way I've come up with to store some of it. Do your dolls have a whole closet full of clothes, or just a few?

In the meantime, I know Xanadu has been looking for a new photoeditor, so I'd like to recommend one of the ones that I use, which is Paint.Net. It's free, and fairly easy to use for cropping and resizing photos, taking out red eye, and doing some other adjustments and effects.

Tuesday, September 1, 2020

My Collection Part Six: Sydney Chase by Tonner

I believe that Sydney Chase was the next doll released in the Tyler 16" doll line. Sydney was Tyler's friend, and head of a modeling agency. Collectors went crazy over her, perhaps because her face does have more character. I realized that all four of the Sydney dolls that I own are special editions.

I had a problem getting good photos of all the dolls together, maybe because they are so tall. In any case, you know now what the bodies look like, so please forgive the quality of these first photos.

Metro Glamour Sydney is the first doll, and she's in her own photo, because her skirt pretty much takes up the whole picture. I bought Metro Glamour nude, but the outfit she is wearing is a Tonner one. It's made up of a pink knit tube top, pink cardigan, enormous pink skirt over tulle, and pink beaded slip-ons.


I also own Calendar Girl Sydney, Ready to Wear Elegance Sydney, and Ready to Wear Rouge Sydney.

I think Calendar Girl is wearing undergarments from Tonner's Gone with the Wind Melanie doll. RTW Elegance is wearing a dress that I made. And RTW Rouge is wearing her own teddy, and some basic Tonner pumps.


Metro Glamour Sydney




Calendar Girl Sydney




RTW Elegance Sydney




RTW Rouge Sydney


I'm pretty sure these dolls are staying in my collection. I still like them, and Calendar Girl and RTW Elegance especially have a little bit more of an "approachable" look. I love Elegance's mane of curly red hair. I love how Rouge's black hair contrasts with her blue eyes.

Total dolls: 28