Craft Store Haul

This actual shopping trip dates from a while back. I wanted to take care of some other things on the blog first, and then real life went sideways for a while, but I still want to share my fun finds! A lot of these items are for spring events that have passed, but they're all re-usable, so that's no big deal.  I bought all these things at Pat Catan's, which only has stores in Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania and West Virginia. Pat Catan's was bought by Michael's craft store a while back, but still maintains its own stores and identity.

This is probably the least successful purchase that I made, from a size perspective, anyway. The basket is very nice, and I knew it was going to be big for the 1/6 set, but I was hoping it would pass for a storage basket, the kind you have in your living room that you store blankets in or whatever. However, the basket is just too big for that. I'm sure I'll find some kind of use for it.

On the floor is a "magazine" that came with a Barbie fashion set. Basket is definitely too big to store 1/6 size magazines.

Next are some St. Patrick's Day/Irish themed pendants. They're too big for Barbie and friends to wear on a necklace, but I could make them work as decoration, either on clothes or in a diorama scene. I wanted to grab these mostly because they're seasonal.

Next is a jar of items which may not be exciting to most of you, but I think they might be useful for me, mostly for my Ever After High stories and dioramas. I bought a jar of twigs! Yes, I can just get some from outside of my house, but these don't come with any worries about bugs, and I believe they're treated so that they don't start coming apart, like I think most twigs from outdoors would already be doing.

Also in the not-so-exciting category are these small red and green doilies. I bought these because they were cheap, I think I will probably be able to make some use of them, and I thought I might as well grab them because these colors are seasonal.

At some point I showed you some blue and white lanterns that I bought.

On this trip, I bought pink and white lanterns, and a yellow birdhouse. All are good sizes for 1/6.

Unless you sew for your dolls, this pack won't mean much. It is a set of nylon plastic-y bars to press bias strips, ostensibly for quilting. Supposedly, a hook on one end will help you turn the strips right side out, which was the more interesting part to me, as it can be a difficult task, especially the smaller the strip. I do want to try more quilting, but I can also see bias strips being used on 1/6 dresses with straps, or even to make a Celtic design on an outfit. I might not have bought this set, however, except that it was on clearance.

I picked up some St. Patrick's Day scrapbook paper, since I knew that would disappear as soon as the holiday was over. It's not suitable for wallpaper, but I figured I could use it for decoration.

I did cut some shamrock shapes out to use as decoration for my St. Patrick's Day diorama.

You can also see green shamrock lights. Some of the most fun things I bought on my shopping trip were several strings of small lights, a good size for doll dioramas. Again, these are seasonal. I bought the green shamrocks, red hearts, multi-color flowers, and purple butterflies. Sounds like a box of Lucky Charms cereal. XD I want to pick up some red, white and blue lights soon for use in a July 4th diorama. I'm sure mini lights with those colors will be available right now.

Although these crowns are maybe a little small for 1/6, I had to buy them! I think they were only a dollar each, or less, so I bought four, two silver and two gold. Next time I go back, I might buy one or two more if they still have them. I'm sure I can find uses for them. If they were attached to something else (maybe a veil?), they might even look not too out of proportion, as a small crown to wear on the head, with some tiny jewels added. I think it suits the petite girl best as far as size. They would be cute as little princess headwear for Stacie size too.

Lastly, I bought a scrapbook paper book that I loved so much, that I paid full price for it! :O Or at least full price minus my Pat Catan's discount. It is a book of fairy tale style sheets, and although not all of them will work as wallpaper, I think they would all make beautiful backdrops for fairy tale dioramas, and of course the Ever After High crew will be perfect for this. So that's going to be an ongoing project for a while, creating dioramas one or two at a time and putting them up here. I won't put up any pictures now, as I want every new diorama to be a surprise! :) I'm looking forward to it, but of course I wanted to get this stuff up first. It's way overdue as it is.

These items are not doll-related at all, but I've talked about decorating Eastern European style Easter eggs with BlackKitty, so I wanted to show her this endcap display. I didn't pick up any of these things, because I'd already blown my budget on doll stuff, and because we didn't really have any room to decorate eggs for Easter this year anyway. I've seen these items at Pat Catan's for at least one previous Easter, so I'm hoping they'll have these items again next Easter. At some point I really would like to try the craft.

Do you have favorite items to buy at the craft store? How often do you get sucked in buying cool stuff you happen to find?

Browsing at Target, Shopping at Pat Catan's. LORI Adds On, EAH Takes a Dive. Outdoor Furniture!

I've had a cold for over a week. Ugh. While I've not been feeling too awful, I really didn't feel like sitting in front of a computer and composing a blog post, either. But I'm slowly returning to feeling like a human being again, so today I'm sharing some pictures of things I looked at when I was at Target picking up a few things, and also some stuff I actually bought at one of our local craft stores a bit over a week ago.

If you want to get back at a sibling or an in-law for something, nothing says "Ha ha!" quite like giving your niece or grandchild or whomever, the Barbie Sparkle Style Salon, with a comb full of glitter, and a real working sink. Wet glitter everywhere!

Target seems to think there's a new Trolls movie coming out that's going to be a thing. Shrugs.

Jaye reviewed the set below. Apparently most of the pieces work with 12" dolls, so that's positive. I've heard there's another set of little accessories like this one, which I'm hoping my Target will get in before Christmas. In a positive note, my Target has wrapped the LORI section so it still has an endcap, and also is partially stocked into the Our Generation section. Hopefully they're going to rectify the mistakes of Christmas Past and have enough merchandise available on the shelves this Christmas.

Plus, your 6" dolls will be able to have horse riding adventures with new horses, a barn, and a horse trailer. This also gives the already-released LORI car something new to tow. I was ready to head home at this point, so I only took a picture of the horses that were there. I don't know if there will be any other horses released. These horses might at least be able to become ponies for taller dolls.

Also, Mattel has re-released some of the signature Ever After High dolls. I can see the appeal to Mattel of having some dolls of popular characters available in stores, that aren't currently represented in the latest theme lines, like Ballet or Epic Winter. But I'm giving the execution a big fat F. I've talked about this before, but the new Signatures just aren't up to the quality of the old dolls, and yet they're asking just about as much money. When I saw Cerise Hood at Target, I just had to gripe about this.

So here we have Cerise Hood. Less packaging than the original dolls. You don't get the thick diary entry from the character anymore, just that flat card in the right hand corner.

What disturbed me so much was the purse. The picture below shows the purse you get with the current Signature doll.

This purse below? This was the purse you got with the original Signature Cerise Hood. With the lovely checked detail on the top of the basket that made EAH the stand-out line that it was. Seriously, Mattel? It's not like the original dolls and accessories are NOT STILL AVAILABLE second hand and at places like Amazon. It's so obvious the shortcuts you took this time around. Cerise also doesn't come with the ring and chunky bracelet she was wearing before, in this incarnation either. I don't have pictures of my own of those, though.

Honestly, this makes me worry about Mattel's future. Even if I give them the benefit of the doubt and say the quality is going down because of a poor economy, it still doesn't bode well that Mattel had to cut these corners to keep them at a price where people will buy them. Yeah, Mattel lost the Disney Princesses, which was a big indicator of issues in itself, but Hasbro hasn't proven yet that there's huge profitability in that market either. There are two things I know for certain though. 1. Adult collectors alone can't keep a playline doll line afloat. 2. Mr. BTEG informed me that a short while back, LEGO almost went under. Yeah, that LEGO. Which, by the way, has a huge market of adult collectors.

On a happier note, I stopped by a local hobby store called Pat Catan's. It's a local chain; I don't know quite how many stores it has or where. I found a few really great deals!

Back in May, I posted about some mini garden type decorations I saw at a Michael's craft store. Michael's had lanterns on a short shepherd's hook type stand. For $1.19 each, I found just lanterns at Pat Catan's. I'm just not sure why they're described as "sleeping cats" in French and Spanish. I didn't realize that was a term for a lantern.

I also had to snatch up these wooden pieces of furniture which are much larger than the general 1/12 scale that you find at craft stores. The chairs were $3.95 each, the table $1.27. I haven't measured them, but Cerise's picnic basket is still in the picture to give you an idea of what a nice size these items are.

Don't worry, Mr. BTEG. These things will be off of the robotics table by the time that you get home.

You may have noticed that the items above are all Darice brand. Darice is an inexpensive local line of craft items which Pat Catan carries. Apparently, Michael's recently bought out Pat Catan's just to get the rights to sell Darice items; at least, that's the rumor that I heard. Now I wonder if Pat Catan's will disappear as a chain, and if Michael's will jack up the price on Darice stuff. Michael's has a reputation for being more expensive than other local craft stores. I'm kind of hoping that Michael's wanted to acquire Darice items as a way to also appeal to the crafter with the smaller budget, and we'll still get Darice's wide line of items, plus the same good prices.

So do you have any thoughts about new items on the shelves? Crafting? Mattel, for better or worse? I'd especially love to hear thoughts on Mattel, or even any good dirt you have. :)