LOL Surprise Dollhouse Take Two

In one of my original posts about a LOL Surprise dollhouse that I made for my friend's daughter, I said that there were two little girls I knew who liked the dolls. The other is my niece, and although I wanted her house to be ready for Christmas as well, I kept putting it off. To be fair, we didn't get to see the extended family and exchange Christmas gifts until March. Some of you will remember that the entire BTEG family had a yucky cold through the Christmas holidays, and so we didn't want to spread our germs around. Then came a joint birthday party for the niece, and great-nephew, who have birthdays very close together in January. The three of us wanted to go down to Youngstown, OH for the day, but I think we were still a little wiped out from illness, and the high that day was about 16 degrees F, or about -9 C, so we were a little uncertain about taking a long trip in that kind of cold, anyway. Finally, Mr. BTEG's sister threw a surprise birthday party for her husband, earlier this month. Their daughter is our niece, who was getting the house. We made it to the party, and after most of the partygoers had left, their family and ours exchanged very belated Christmas gifts. Now, let's talk about the house.

I had some good ideas making the furniture this time around. Above, you see Stacie sitting next to what the store called plaques. I'm pretty sure these are generally used for decoupaging or painting or adding some sort of decoration to the front, to make a sign or message to hang on your wall. I painted these, added foamcore rectangles covered in muslin to the flat top, and they became beds. You could add a headboard, footboard, and feet, too. Of course, these particular pieces are only good for very small dolls.

Below you see the house in progress, and in front, a bathtub, chairs and a table. The bathtub and table were originally a box with a lid. The box itself became a bathtub, and the lid got legs added to it to become a table. The chairs were from a hobby store. I attached two beads to the "bathtub" for knobs, but I couldn't get a piece of wire to stick well enough for a faucet.

My work was not the best, but I used four pieces of balsa to make a couch with armrests, then painted it and attached four beads to the bottom for feet.

And below, the house completed and given to my niece. I had a hard time attaching the brick scrapbook paper strips to the front of the house. And I wasn't able to do careful cutting to the blankets that I sewed together with white fabric to make a blanket and flat sheet, and they weren't the same size. I ran out of time through procrastination (how often do crafty people do that?) I also learned that cardboard can warp a lot more than I thought it could, and that it was hard attaching something else to the sparkly scrapbook paper that I bought. But my niece got excited just taking the furniture out of the bag we presented it to her in, and was thrilled with the house. That makes it definitely worth it. She opened the two genuine LOL Surprise dolls that we also gave her and started playing with it right away. I hope she has fun dolly times with it.

LOL Surprise Dollhouse Update

I've pretty much completed the bed, and I've put up the kitchen wall, and edged the floor with Duck Tape.

LOL Doll Surprise House Project, and Two Knock-Off Dolls

I've never liked the LOL Surprise dolls very much, but two of the little girls in my life do. One is the daughter of my friend, who is four. I was trying to think of something unique, related to LOL Surprise, to give her for Christmas. I started thinking about furniture, because I don't know how many dolls this girl has, but from what I've heard, I'm pretty sure she has quite a number already and doesn't "need" more. However, since she's still only four, I was afraid anything I made that wasn't super sturdy, like wood and nails sturdy, would end up getting broken. Which was when I made the (possibly crazy) decision to make a little house. Part of what gave me that idea was some YouTube videos I've seen that show beds for dolls made out of foam core, and glued to a corner or wall of a room box. The house I've come up with for the four-year-old is basically a room box, but it's divided into two spaces, bedroom and eat-in kitchen. I'm taking pictures as I go along to record my work, so here's the first bits I've done.

Cutting out and gluing the foam core pieces together was nowhere near as easy as the YouTube videos show. Of course, Mr. BTEG only had a cheap glue gun, which I borrowed, so I'm not sure if that was part of the problem. I'm also not sure a high temperature or low temperature glue gun is the way to go when working with foam core. If anybody has any experience with this, let me know. I bought a high-temperature one, but then I found a dual-temperature one at another store, so now I'm torn. This box ended up mostly being held together with Contact paper, which was also used to cover the cut edges.

I attached two scrapbook pieces for the floor, wood for the bedroom, and tile for the kitchen. Then I taped on some scrapbook paper for the walls. Some of the paper that I bought is glittery, which I thought was a touch of which a little girl would approve. Of course, the paper sheds glitter everywhere.

The bare white wall on the right side is where a kitchen printout is going, when I get to the UPS store to get a color copy made. I found the printout online. The bunk-bed will be glued in the back left-hand corner. I'm thinking the kind of bed that has space for two on the bottom, with a bunk for one at the top.

Of course, it's easiest to make any kind of doll project when you have a doll to measure things against. However, I wasn't going to spend a huge amount of money on a doll, especially when ninety-nine percent of the LOL Surprise doll ball is stuff I didn't want in the least. So I picked up a couple of knock-offs from AliExpress, which finally arrived today.

I think I got knock-off Sugar, and Miss Baby. These dolls seem to have the LOL Surprise head, but the dresses and shoes are attached to their bodies, unlike the genuine article. I also got a pink bottle and pink seashell purse. Here's faux Sugar, minus her halo, which didn't come with her.

I had a... problem with faux Miss Baby. I realized quickly that her body was on backward! Or her head, whichever way you want to look at it. :) In any case, her toes and her face were pointing in opposite directions. Almost automatically, I twisted her body around so that the toes and face were both on the same side, but Miss Baby didn't have a head mounted on a neck knob, so I ended up with this.

I guess now you could call her Miss Baby Meets the Queen of Hearts. I'm going to glue her head back on, and hopefully it will stay.

The decapitation issue, not surprisingly, was not the only thing off about my two dolls. Their upper arms look strange in color related to the rest of their bodies, although I think Miss Baby is supposed to be wearing white gloves? In any case, the bottom of both dolls hands aren't painted at all.

Also, both dolls have chips off of their hair paint.

Think these dolls will ever become collectible, like clone Barbies and other clone fashion dolls are today?

So, work goes on with the house. I'm going to make the bed, with bedding, and a kitchen bench and table, and of course the kitchen printout needs to go up. I'm also going to put a piece of foam core up on the "roof," not as long as the house, but something the dolls can use as a "balcony." I got that idea after seeing that the official LOL Surprise doll house has one. By the way, the price for the official house is *insane.* You can get it for the low, low price of only $190.00 at Walmart!!! I wonder how many little girls will be disappointed this year that won't be getting the house. Some years, $190 could be as much as we spent on both of our daughters combined, or even less. I've discussed with Raging Moon how production quality issues could affect sales of these dolls, but being what I consider overpriced won't help either. As a matter of fact, that just makes quality issues like missing parts even more unacceptable.

Does anyone have any plans to gift a doll or accessory to a little girl in her life?