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.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

At Ever After High, the O'Hair twins are giving a tea party for St. Patrick's Day, using a special tea set from their great-grandmother. Madeline Hatter was invited, since everyone has discovered that she'll crash any tea party that she's not invited to, anyway. However, she did bring a tray of delicious macaroons from her father's Haberdashery and Tea Shop. Jillian Beanstalk is the fourth guest.

If the leaves in the forest are green, can a shamrock ever be seen?

The teapot, four cups, shamrock shaped plate, and ten cookies, are a Megahouse set. It also came with a clear spoon and fork, with a shamrock at the top of the handle, and a basket to store the cups. The spoon is on the table in the pics above, although you may not be able to see it very well.

On eBay, I happened upon a duplicate set to this one, only the teapot and cups were white, and not clear.

There were also a couple of other different sets that Megahouse made with a clear/solid version.

In the Ever After High webisodes, Jillian does have some sort of British Isles accent, that sometimes sounds Irish, so we're going with her being Irish. In trying to find out exactly what her accent was, Mr. BTEG discovered that Jillian's voice actress is originally from Cleveland, though. :)

Happy Pi Day!

J-Doll Petit Champlain

It's been a difficult winter for me. I have low Vitamin D year-round, as well as issues with Seasonal Affective Disorder. My therapy light helps, but it's so big that I struggle finding a place to use it. It's cumbersome, and falls over easily.

For a while, I was shirking my regular use of it, and then I tried using a smaller light that my husband got, that looks more like a regular desk lamp. That didn't help me, and I spiraled into insomnia and joint pain. I may have found a workable place for my light, I hope, and I've been more disciplined in using it. I'm actually falling asleep before 5 AM nowadays, but I'm still working on getting things done like I used to. It's taken me days to write this post, even, because I can't seem to concentrate.

None of that is an excuse for why I haven't put up a post about this particular J-Doll yet. I bought her back in June of 2018! I just had other things to blog about, and somehow she got put at the back of the list. But talking about her now makes for a relatively easy post, so her time has come. I've blogged about J-Dolls before, as I own several. They were produced by Jun Planning, and then by Groove. They were made by the same company that makes Pullip dolls, and the bodies are similar to two of the body types that Pullip dolls have had, the Type 3 and the Type 4. If you want to see a comparison of the two bodies, go here. Otherwise, let's talk about Petit Champlain. J-Dolls were named after famous streets in different areas of the world. In this case, Petit Champlain can be found in Quebec City, Canada. She is the second "Canadian" doll to join my collection; the first was Stephen Avenue Walk, who hailed from Calgary. The outfits the dolls wear marginally reference their namesake areas. Petit Champlain's dress is definitely styled after a French can-can costume, so there you go, I guess. Since this new doll has a French background, I'm going to call her Sophie.

Here she is in her box. I picked her up at a Tuesday Morning store for a great price. The price sticker describes her as a "large Pullip." I did find a mini Pullip at Tuesday Morning on another trip, but I'd still not describe Sophie as a large Pullip. Maybe medium-sized.

Her hair was tied back with a small piece of thread, that was slipping down, and was eventually just going to fall off, so I took it off after taking a picture. I should have taken a picture of her from the front with her hair pulled back too, but her hair looked messy in the front from the tie coming loose, which is why I undid it in the first place.

Her outfit is definitely one of my favorites among the dolls that I've bought. She doesn't have a too-small jacket, her outfit hasn't stained her body, her shoes aren't going to fall apart, and the blouse is separate from the corset/skirt combo, so she could wear it with something else, although the pintuck stitching on the front of the blouse is crooked, so she'd probably still have to wear it with something like a high-waisted skirt, or a jumper. I am impressed that the blouse has princess seams, though. Sophie has plastic around her legs to prevent the black lace stockings from staining them. I should redress her at some point, I suppose, but I like her the way she is, too.

Since not all of you are familiar with J-Dolls, here for comparison is Sophie with Rachel, another one of my J-Dolls. Rachel hails from Abbott Street in Cairns, Queensland, Australia.

Once I started doing this review, I realized that I'm not sure where I put the pink hairbow that Sophie came with! I hope I didn't accidentally throw it out, even though it's something easily replaceable. Overall, she's one of my best J-Doll buys, and I'm glad that she's in my collection.

3D Printing Doll Things

I was debating what I wanted to post next on, now that I'm back to everyday blogging, when Mr. BTEG presented me with a couple of doll items that he made for me with his 3D printer. That made me happy, and my choice of post easy. But I'm going to start at the beginning of my experience with 3D printing for dolls, for those of you who haven't been reading me for years, or don't recall previous posts.

In January of 2016, I tagged along with Mr. BTEG at a technical conference he was attending. The conference happened to conveniently be held at a large indoor waterpark, which especially in a NE Ohio winter, is very appealing. Mr. BTEG had already started exploring his interest in 3D printing, and he pointed me to a website called Thingiverse, where I discovered that the late lamented Makies Lab had put up several free downloads for prints, including a tea set. The conference offered free 3D prints, so Mr. BTEG had them make the tea set for me. As you'll see, the set is very primitive compared to some of the other things that I'm going to show you, but just being able to have something printed for your doll like that *snaps* was still very exciting. Here's Meg, my only Makie, holding the tea pot from that set.

Then Mr. BTEG invested in a lower-end 3D printer of his own in January 2018! I had no idea how hard it was to set up a 3D printer to make a suitable print. It can take hours to make sure the printer lays down filament correctly, so that the filament doesn't get shifted, and throw the whole print out of whack. Here's a couple of examples of common prints made to test your 3D printer.

The above are blocks printed out to test the X, Y and Z axis of a print. The background is one of my Barbie diorama walls, so you can see that the blocks are fairly small. I hope you can also see the "shadow" of the Y on the middle block, which meant the Y axis needed some work on that particular print.

The piece above is called a "benchy," and is also apparently known as "The jolly 3D printing torture-test." Obviously, you don't print this out until you're a bit more confident in how your printer is configured. You can visit 3DBenchy.com to check out all the creative things people do with benchy prints. It's also the source for my quote above.

Come see what else he made below the fold!

Twelve Days of Christmas: Day Twelve: Mini American Girl Samantha

Here we are at the last day of Christmas, and Samantha is showing off her Christmas sled. I wanted to show the Christmas tree lights to their best effect, but also the glowing embers in the Sindy fireplace. I bought the fireplace off eBay, and there's a bit of a story here telling how I got the light inside working again.

It is my dream to someday make a doll-size Victorian Christmas tree, with ornaments that look authentic to the period. That may very well end up being 18" Samantha size, as it would certainly be the easiest scale to work with, I think. I certainly enjoyed having all of you around for these last twelve days, so thanks for stopping by, and especially commenting!

Twelve Days of Christmas - Day Eleven: Madame Alexander Travel Friends

The BTEG family is very interested in foreign languages. Mr. BTEG studied Latin, German and Attic Greek, as well as being exposed to Italian growing up. I studied German and Spanish; Mr. BTEG and I went on a college trip to Germany together. Several of the ornaments on our Christmas tree have greetings in another language, so I thought they would be good for a photo shoot with a couple of my 8" Madame Alexander Travel Friend dolls.

My Germany doll poses with an ornament that says Merry Christmas in German, French, Italian, Spanish and English.

My Italian doll poses with an ornament that came in a series. There are only three ornaments; each has a boy and girl in representative costumes of the chosen country. Each says Peace on Earth on the front in the given language, in this case "Pace al Mondo." All three ornaments say Peace on Earth in English on the back.

Italy was the first one in the series, then Spain, then Poland. I really wish that they would have continued this ornament line longer. Only one day left of the Twelve Days of Christmas!