More Scrapbook Paper

Even though I've been spending the huge majority of my time at home lately, I haven't felt in the mood to do a lot of doll photography, craft work, or sewing. I have cleaned up my craft area a little, but the creative item that I've wanted to work on the most is a human-sized afghan that I'm knitting.

I did hit Tuesday Morning a couple of times recently, and got the yarn for the afghan, a few crafty things, a few doll things, and a few pads of scrapbook paper. This pad will be great to provide backgrounds for holiday themed photo shoots.

This one has some wood floor and log cabin images that might work out for doll room settings. There are also a couple of pieces, like the bike leaning against the wall, that might make a good backdrop for photos.

I couldn't resist the fairy tale one, even though I already have a fairy-tale themed scrapbook pad with different images. If I get into a good sewing groove this summer, I may be able to make some nice fairy tale outfits for my Ever After High dolls, and take some "artsy" pictures.

Are any of you working on any doll projects whilst staying at home?

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.

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?

Room Box Design

First off, I have to credit Jatman of JatmanStories, and Mr. BTEG, for some of the ideas that I used to make my room box with swap-able windows/floors. Jatman offers a tutorial about how she makes her roomboxes here.

It all started because I found moving boxes at Lowe's home improvement store, that are made of thicker cardboard than the standard moving boxes. I figured that would be especially ideal for making doll living spaces, so I bought one and brought it home, to do an initial try.

At first, I was thinking about just placing wall and flooring papers in the box permanently. It was Mr. BTEG who suggested the idea of being able to switch floors in and out. How to do it securely, was my question. At first, I thought of using pins, or small bulldog clips. However, Mr. BTEG came up with what I think is a far better solution: Velcro.

So here is the box, with sticky-back Velcro on the cardboard walls. The floor is a piece of foam core with scrapbook paper taped on it with double-sided tape. I felt this was the best way to secure the paper, as glues do not work very well on foam core. This floor admittedly is very patchy. I should have had four pieces of paper for this to work the best, but I only bought three. When I went back to Michael's, they were either out, or they don't carry this paper anymore.

The foam core piece for the floor is cut so it fits exactly into the box. The wall pieces will then stand directly on top of the floor piece.

So on the walls of the permanent cardboard box structure are pieces of sticky-back Velcro loops. On the papered walls of foam core, that I can swap in and out, there are corresponding pieces of sticky-back Velcro hooks. I got the idea from Jatman of using white Contact Paper to cover the raw edges of the foam core.

One wall is stuck to the cardboard box, flush against both the floor and the side of the cardboard box. Then, the other wall is set in, pushed tightly against the other wall, so there is not very much of a visible seam.

The green rug is a sheet of scrapbook paper that has a nice paisley design and also the illusion of texture, which gives it the appearance of a rug. There was a sale on scrapbook paper when I bought this at Michael's, so I bought the same design in at least two other colors. The rug is especially useful here to help hide the patchiness of this floor.

And that's my roombox! It's very simple, but I think the effect it produces is nice. I can cover all three side of the cardboard box with scrapbook paper covered walls, or use the same idea with a larger box, or have a larger box with maybe only two sides for different lighting and photography options. The nice thing about the cardboard box "foundation" is that it is relatively sturdy. I will also be creating walls with cut-out windows, and putting some kind of paper behind the right side of the foam core wall, to create an "outdoor" view.

I hope all of you who celebrated Easter yesterday had a very nice one. Life has been a little chaotic here at Casa BTEG, so I wasn't able to get an Easter photoshoot together. Hopefully, everything that's been making life crazy here will be resolved very soon!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Been really busy today, partially putting this room together. Barbie and the gang are hanging out a friend's waiting for the limousine to pick them up before they head out to enjoy the evening at their favorite Irish restaurant/bar.

St. Patrick's Day is a big deal around here. I actually did see a stretch SUV limousine parked outside one of the local Irish restaurants at about three, and the restaurant had to be packed to the rafters, considering the parking lot was overflowing. I also saw at least three limo-buses driving around, one with people all dressed in green clothes.

The shamrock lights and shamrock paper I got during my latest trip to the craft store. I'll be blogging about that; I picked up a lot of really nice things on that trip. I'll also be writing a post about my new room box set-up, which you can see above. Floors and walls can be switched in and out, and now I just have to create a bunch of nice window and floor sets to use.

Erin go bragh!

Star Darling Sage, with EAH Raven and Farrah

First off, let me say that I blame my latest doll purchase on Doll Dimensions, although I was already feeling a bit of a twinge for not picking up any of the Disney Star Darling dolls when they went on clearance at my Target. But her recent review of Wishworld Scarlet pushed me into taking a special trip to my local Wal-Mart to see what they had left of the line. They didn't have any Scarlets, but I did end up coming home with Sage. She was marked down to $11.00, but when I got to the register, she rang up at $9.00. Woo hoo! Minus the stand, this is the same doll that the Toy Box Philospher reviewed, so you can go there if you want to see all the nitty gritty details. This doll has already been out for awhile, so I didn't plan an in-depth review. I really love Star Darling dolls for their inset eyes, and their fashions, anyway. Let me get out of the way here, that these dolls were produced by Jakks Pacific for Disney.

I've already said that I love her inset eyes. They look kind of freaky from the side, but who cares? She's adorable to look at straight on! Her hair is very silky, except for the curls at the ends of tresses, which are crunchy with gel. Also, I can see now why the eyebrows on the more basic dolls seem to be trying to creep up into the hairline. On these "fancy" dolls, the eyebrow placement makes more sense, because they're placed above the sparkly eyeshadow that she's wearing. I wish they would have done the basic dolls' facial screening differently.

She had already lost her star necklace by the time I took this picture. It really doesn't stay on very well. Her star headband is still attached with a rubber band, so I don't know how well it would stay in. Oddly enough, that rubber band curls down and around her neck/chin joint. I think that would have been very difficult to get a picture of.

This Sage does not have a normal human skin tone, because she is in the form she has when she lives with the other Star Darlings on their planet or wherever. I took a picture of Sage with Farrah Goodfairy from Ever After High, because Farrah also has slightly odd colored skin, being a fairy, I guess. In the comparison picture, I think Sage just makes Farrah's skin look almost normal. Maybe that's because Farrah's skin is not as shiny and translucent looking as Sage's. (By the way, what kind of a name is Farrah Goodfairy? Yeah, The Fairy Godmother does not really give one a base for good name matches, but I need to find a better name than Farrah.)

I knew Sage wouldn't fit into Ever After High clothes, but I wanted to see how Sage's clothes fit Ever After High! I chose Raven as being the best model, based on her coloring.

This also gives me a chance to show Raven's new boots. I read on an Ever After High bulletin board, that Bratzillaz shoes fit Ever After High. I bought a fashion pack to try from Amazon, which had the shoes that I wanted. From the front, they look like granny boots, but I don't think grannies wore stiletto heels. :) They still suit Raven wonderfully. As usual, the stilettos are a thin plastic which bends easily.

I tried Raven's top and pants/leggings on Star Darling Sage just to see what the fit was like. The leggings fit just barely, although I'm afraid Sage would stretch out the waist if she wore them for very long. Raven's top came nowhere near closing on Sage.

However, Raven rocks Sage's outfit! The waistline of the leggings is a bit loose, but they stay up. Raven's boots were a tight fit over Sage's leggings, so I left them off.

As on Sage, the sleeves are just a bit long for Raven's arms. Also, the sleeves still have a good bit of the seam allowance left on the inside of the sleeve, which makes the fit awkward. I'm not sure the picture I took shows this well. I wonder if the prototype Sage outfit was gathered tighter on the sleeves than the gathers on the actual top she wears. That would have pulled up the sleeves a little. You can also see that a lot of the edge finishings are large serger seams. I would care more if Sage wasn't just a play doll to me. Although it makes her original price ($19.99, I think) seem a bit iffy.

Sage's boots are darling, but far too small for Raven. A little silver paint on the buckles would probably look great. Like I don't have enough things I want to paint.

I forgot that Doll Dimensions wondered if Liv high heeled shoes would fit the Star Darlings. I have a pair, so I'll check, and post about it. I have some doll shoes that just came today, that I want to blog about, so I'll throw the Liv shoes in that post.

Two more things:
1. My backdrop was a room scene for Barbie made by Mattel during the Fashion Fever era. I threw some scrapbook paper down on the floor. The only problem is the walls are glossy and tend to reflect light.
2. I still want that Scarlet doll! She's still at Toys 'R Us, for full price. However, she is only $14.99, being a more basic doll, so hopefully I'll pick her up soon. I don't want to wait too long, in case she disappears completely.

Improving Storage For Doll Items

In my experience, doll collecting is a lot more fun if you can easily find what you want, whether that is a new outfit, some jewelry, or even a backdrop or prop for display or photography. I wanted to show some pictures of a couple of changes I've made recently in how I store things related to my dolls.

First of all, I found a few double-decker small storage containers at Target. Unfortunately, these were being clearanced out, but there are probably similar storage items out there. I also picked up some more round stackable containers which are generally sold as a way to store beads for crafting. I already had some of those to store small snaps for doll sewing, but I've decided I also like them as a place to store doll jewelry, and some small accessories like sets of doll dishes. In so doing, I managed to cut down space in at least one of my doll drawers. I went from this:

to this:

The new containers are on top of the old container to show how much less space the new stuff takes

And since my drawer is deep enough to stack the two rectangular boxes on top of each other, it takes up even less space. Coincidentally, most of my 16" size doll shoes fit really well height wise and width wise in this container. In this picture you'll see how a row of shoes fits nicely in the box, with another row of shoes lined up the same way on the other side of the box. The shoes in the top box are loose because most of them are too tall to stand up.

Next, I've never really had a single place to store clothes for my 11 1/2" dolls. They've just been stuck in several plastic storage boxes, since I didn't have anything big enough to hold them all, especially the large, poofy princess dresses. What I ended up getting was an ArtBin Super Satchel. I consider it worth it just because I won't have to buy anything else to store 11 1/2" doll clothes in for a long time. As you can see in my picture, I haven't used very many of the separators available for this box. I might put another separator in on the right side, and put tops and jackets in the new, smaller space, and pants and shorter dresses in the second space. Right now, I also have Stacie size clothes in the top left. In the top right section, for now, are larger shoes, the ones made for My Scene dolls, that I want to keep. I also have my one pair of Liv doll shoes in there as well. I'd like to find a doll who can wear them, and who fits in my collection.

Lastly, like some of you, I've been buying more and more pieces of scrapbook paper, both to use for photo backdrops, and as wall paper and flooring in some of my smaller rooms.

After a couple of pieces of paper got a bit crumpled, I gave in and bought a case specifically for storing scrapbook paper. Sometimes I do hate spending money on storage instead of dolls, or doll furniture or jewelry or clothes, etc.! But protecting and storing what you've got is important as well, so I got a case.

I'd been in a storing-things-the-same-way-forever rut. It was nice to make some changes for the better. And in the end, it works towards the same goal of enjoying what I already have in my doll collection. Do you have any clever ways to store things?