New Clothes

Okay, I've had these clothes for a while, but this is the first time sharing them online. The first is an outfit by Mattel that I saw in a store and liked enough to buy. It came with everything that you'll see on the doll except for her hoop earrings. I tried to do a jaunty fashion pose, and it bombed, but here you are. I also posed Dani taking a bow for her virtuoso violin performance. :)

I'm not sure why the outfit came with two copies of Amazing Grace. Of course, I do have another Barbie violin, so I could set up a violin duet.

The second clothing item is a beautifully knit sweater (jumper) by DollClothesbyOksana on Etsy. She also sells 1/6th scale knitting patterns.

The sweater is gorgeous, but fairly tight to get on. The item description said that it was for a curvy Barbie, but I might put this sweater on other Barbie bodies from now on. Either that, or keep this sweater on this Barbie forever. Although she'll get mad at me in the summer.

In the process of fitting Barbie into this sweater, I learned that Curvy hands aren't meant to come off. Admittedly, I was prepared that they might not be able to be removed, but I didn't mean to tear the joint.

Oopsie!

Fortunately, I managed to fit the hand back on to Barbie's wrist. Trying to fit those sleeves over Barbie's hands without snagging the sweater was difficult, though.

I have been playing around more with my Cricut. I managed to successfully cut out all the pattern pieces on this PDF, which I turned into a .png, which can be uploaded into the Cricut Design Space. The pieces cut out nicely, even the little arrows at the top. However, I haven't managed to replicate this with just a few pattern pieces clipped from the entire PDF. I need to play around more, but I'm pleased that cutting out pattern pieces that I upload, using the Cricut, looks like a real possibility.

I also discovered that Inkscape and Cricut both use SVG files, or Scalable Vector Graphics. I am going to have to edit my previous post, because it looks like Inkscape may be usable with the Cricut. I just have to study how.

I also have to make more room in my craft/photography area, in order to be able to take better pictures. I definitely have lots to keep my busy, but that should include posting, too!

TRU, Madame Alexander, EAH, Houses, Sparkle Girlz

About a month ago, I got a chance to go to the Toys R Us on the other side of town. This one is connected to a Babies R Us, which makes the store smaller, as Muff told me a while back her TRU is. However, this TRU often has different merchandise to the store closer to me, and as soon as I walked into the TRU on this day, I saw a doll line I've never seen before, and it was already on clearance.

Their story is that they are teenage princesses of the Planets of the Pentangle. When the EVIL Empress Geela takes over their planets, the girls disguise themselves as musicians and form a band called SpacePOP, because why not. Let's hit all of the tropes that we can! It bugs me that four of the five dolls have Greek and Roman mythological names (Athena, Hera, Rhea and Juno), but those goddesses don't seem to be linked in any way to the dolls or their stories. Indeed, Hera and Juno are the same goddess, one from Greece and one from Rome. The fifth doll is called Luna, but her character doesn't seem to be linked in any way to the moon, either. I was surprised to see that these dolls are produced by Madame Alexander. Honestly, I expect better from them. I was even more surprised to see that these dolls were at the MA booth at the 2017 NY Toy Fair, when this group was already on clearance at TRU in January. There was another set of the same doll wearing a uniform outfit, so maybe that's the next wave.

This doll reminds me of Draculaura.

At this TRU, Monster High and Ever After High were piled onto a square fixture with some other assorted toy items. I took a picture of the tall Madeline Hatter (17 in/43cm) and the super tall Madeline Hatter (over 2 ft/over 60cm), just to show you what they look like proportional to other dolls. I've never seen the super tall version in-store before.

I also saw a couple of houses that looked *not bad* for the price, considering they looked like they have some wood construction, and not just plastic. They also seem to come with some furniture that is not just plastic. My daughter would love the ballerina poster and dance barre in the modern house.

Lastly, since a lot of you like Sparkle Girlz outfits as good bargain outfits for your dolls, I took a couple of pictures of the ones that I saw at Walmart a few days ago. To me at least, the pink top outfit, workout outfit, and pink and black sparkle dress seemed new, but I don't keep up very well with these.

Speaking of Toy Fair 2017, what I saw looked pretty boring. Have you seen anything that you are looking forward to adding to your collection?

Some American Girl Accessories

When the Toy Box Philospher visited an American Girl store recently, she admired the play violin, but the block of rosin was missing. I decided to take pictures of the violin we bought for the Dancer's AG doll, and include that item. As I commented at TBP's blog, AG accessories are often more expensive, but the quality and details are often better as well. In this case, the violin included several items that I found with no other off-brand set: a music stand, a doll-size book of Christmas music, and the rosin.

Here's a picture of the violin in the case. It is a very nice-looking set.

Here is where the rosin rests in the case. In the picture that TBP took at the store, the rosin is definitely missing.

And here's the rosin out of the case. A very nice little detail to make the set more special.

Here's the book of sheet music that came with the set. As you can see, this is nicely realistic, although the Dancer has never tried to play any of this. Of course, when she first got the set, she was a very beginning violinist and reading sheet music like this for herself was probably beyond her abilities at the time.

Another example of the difference between AG merchandise and others, for some reason, is the tap shoes. When I looked for tap shoes for her doll, all the other tap shoes on the market had pointed toes. In real life, all the tap shoes with pointed toes that I have seen, in several years of buying tap shoes, are generally lower quality than the ones with rounded toes. So I ended up with the AG ones again, just because I thought they looked nicer to my eye, and more like what the Dancer wears herself. These originally came with a dance costume for AG Girl of the Year Marisol; I was able to buy just the shoes on eBay. The pink bows on the shoes were not a big deal, especially since the Dancer had pink bows sewn onto her own shoes for a recital costume almost four years ago now.

There were lots of excited squeals the first time those sparkly canes came out for practice.

AG Molly's Miss Victory costume also includes tap shoes, with metal taps as opposed to plastic. Molly's line is being "moved to the archives" for now, but I'm sure her merchandise will live on at eBay.