Shadow High Nicole Steel

Here is the third doll in my Rainbow/Shadow High collection. She's Nicole Steel, and she's cute as a button. Her eyes are the most luminous of any Rainbow High doll that I've seen, and her curls are super adorable.

This is Nicole's jacket from her first outfit. Since the Rainbow High students are Sparkle, the Shadow High students are Anti Sparkle. Fortunately, they seem to be moving past that theme with newer dolls. It was getting pretty boring. She has a motif on the left sleeve of her jacket. The cat is related to a band that is made of up three other Shadow High students. It looks very 1930s, and like it could have been on the nose of a WWII plane, at least to me.

This is Nicole's base outfit, minus the jacket. She's a basketball player, and her interest is in street clothes and sports wear. It's nice that the dolls have different fashion styles that they're interested in, but I think this outfit is pretty basic compared to the other dolls that I have.

The fact that these shoes have ties is a little annoying. Of course they come untied, and then they're difficult to re-tie. The backs of the shoes have a sort of lift, to accommodate the fact that these dolls' feet are made to wear heels.

When I took off her shoes to take pictures of her in her second outfit, I got an unpleasant surprise. There are holes on the bottom of her socks.

Nicole needs to learn how to darn.

Here's a picture of one of her earrings. They tend to fall out easily, and I have a short funny anecdote I will tell about them at the end of this post.

When I went to change her into her second outfit, I noticed there are two notches in what I guess is supposed to be a dress, that looks like a sports jersey. It's possible that I made those snips myself, when I was clipping out all the tiny plastic ties attaching the dress to the cardboard. It was still a bit disappointing to see.

Her second pair of "shoes" is really stretchy knit fabric on top of a plastic shoe base. I did find it a nice touch that the shoes had toe caps to slip the dolls feet into. They serve to keep Nicole's toes from showing through the fabric. They might help hold the shoes on better as well, but I haven't moved the doll around enough in these shoes to know.

Her jacket is the most impressive piece of her second outfit. It is a beautiful reflective silver on the outside, and features a faux zipper. The jacket actually closes at the back.

I guess the circles and triangles are supposed to mean something. They look like laundry instruction marks to me. :) When the jacket is closed, the pattern at the back becomes clear. The jacket technically has working pockets, but they are very small and tight, so not useful for much.

The jacket has a beautiful lining. I'm torn between admiring it, and feeling sorry that there wasn't more effort put into the stuff that can be seen. The jacket isn't reversible, and since it closes in the back, Nicole can't even wear it open to show off the lining.

I wish Nicole would have come with a basketball, to make up for the fact that her outfit is lacking compared to some of the other dolls. MGA chose to make a black and silver "purse" shaped like a basketball, that was put into one of the blind boxes that they made. Considering there were 27 different purses in all, buying blind boxes trying to find Nicole's would be rather a waste. Also, it's a purse, so she can't really "play" with it. I think this Barbie basketball is a bit small to look realistic. Just a bit? Other than the basketball, this is her entire second outfit. Good thing I didn't buy her for her clothes.

Also, I forgot to point out in my other posts about these dolls, that they have a "joint" in their upper thigh, so that their legs can be twisted around. 

So, this the second Nicole Steel that I purchased. I took the first one out of her box quickly, to enjoy looking at her. It wasn't until later that I noticed a flaw in her face makeup.

Oopsie

Since she came from Amazon, I just sent her back and ordered a second one. When I started to pack the first one up, I realized that one of her earrings was missing. I looked for it for several minutes, then sent her back without it. It was just as well, because the second doll came without one earring! I finally found the missing one, so she ended up with two earrings after all. The left one, where there was no earring originally, tends to fall out easily. It gets caught in her curls a lot, which is good, because it doesn't get lost, but bad because it takes a bit of work to work the earring out without messing up her hair too much. The right earring also fell out during this photography shoot.

As a review, this one doesn't have a lot of high points. If you're a big fan of sports/play them yourself, you might find her clothes at least a bit more interesting than I do. Except for the jackets, they still aren't as detailed as other dolls, even the rest of Shadow High Series 1. Luna Madison's prime outfit is a bit... interesting, but I like her overall looks better than Nicole's. I bought Nicole because she is just such an endearing doll, not for her clothes. It's actually why I got her third off my list of dolls I'm interested in, just so she has other stuff to wear. I am working with a dress pattern that I have for her, too.

Next up is going to be the doll that I received for Mother's Day. Since it may take me a while to get the doll and all of her clothes out of the box, I'll let you know ahead of time that is Emi Vanda, who is about as different from Nicole as can be. :)

Total dolls: 85

A Pop of Blue

This post is a touch of serendipity. I bought a plant last year to plant next to our front walk, solely because it can exist in total shade, which is what that spot gets. To my happiness, it produced small blue flowers in the spring blooming season, and the plant has gotten larger when it came back up this year, and sprouted more flowers. The flowers are so small, that I thought they would look great with a doll.

At the same time, I noticed that my new Shadow High doll, Nicole Steel, looks great in blue, as I'm working on a new dress for her. So I decided she would be the perfect doll to pose with the flowers, and I think the photos turned out nicely.

Nicole was my latest Rainbow/Shadow High doll, until I received another Rainbow High doll from my daughter, for Mother's Day. :) However, the photos that I wanted to take to review these two dolls will have to wait. Mr. BTEG is in the hospital with an infection, nothing serious, but something that needs to have an eye kept on it.

Here's a picture of the plant that the flowers came from. I've completely forgotten what the plant is called, but it's thriving, so I'm happy with it.

Breakfast at Tiffany's

This past Sunday, I attended a Ladies' Luncheon with a friend who I have known since college. It was given by an Irish-American club on the east side of Cleveland, and my friend has attended several events there. The theme was Breakfast at Tiffany's. There were several gift "baskets" given away in a raffle, and I won one! The theme of my basket was Paint and Sip. Does your country have anything like this? Where I live in Ohio, there are one-night art classes hosted by local organizations, as well as small local businesses that offer you the chance to paint a ceramic item, or paint on canvas, or similar creative things. For adult only evenings, you can craft and also partake of alcohol, and these evenings are called Paint and Sips. I just found out there's a local business where you can get refreshments from a charcuterie board to jello shots at your Paint and Sip evening. This gift basket was a bunch of items for you to have your own Paint and Sip time.

Here's a picture of the table centerpiece, and me dressed in my best Breakfast at Tiffany's outfit.

And here are the items that I won. The paint brushes are awful quality, but I can still use them for something, I'm sure. Everything else is pretty nice, even if all the art items are from the $1.25 store.

The Paint, part one

The Paint, part two

The Sip

You might notice in the last picture that there is a gift card to a store called Meijer. It's like a Walmart, a giant store that offers groceries, housewares, clothes, and lot of items in between. Our local Meijer is actually bigger than our Walmart, but the Meijer closest to me is lacking in one distinct feature: the toy department. Still, I wanted to buy something doll related with my gift card, and I picked out a Calico Critters house.

I already have a couple of Critters animals, and my Cu-Poche dolls and mini Pullip will also like this house. The card didn't entirely cover the price of the house, but it paid for most of it.

To really make this doll-related, I'm going to share a couple of pictures of a Breakfast at Tiffany's outfit that I made for a 16" Gene doll, around 15 years ago. 

I sewed the dress, gloves and wrap, and Mr. BTEG helped with the bakery items. I made this for someone online who was looking for someone to sew the costume for her. She saw these photos first, before she officially bought the outfit. I saw many years later that she had it up for sale. I hope she got a lot of enjoyment out of it while she owned it.

I was going to post about my luncheon experience on Instagram, when I realized that Instagram won't let you post vertical photos, and they get cropped to the point where a lot of the stuff you wanted to show is cropped out. Ugh. I'd rather be able to share these pictures with you guys, anyway.

Has anyone else won a raffle? Was it something you wanted? This raffle was the kind where you could put as many tickets as you wanted towards winning a specific basket, so you would only win something that you were interested in. Have you ever attended at themed event?

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

These dolls are Holly and Poppy O'Hair, from Ever After High. With a last name like O'Hair, they are obviously Irish! :)

Happy Pi Day!

 I agree with Barbie that math is hard, but I do love some pie!

Hinamatsuri

This post is coming a day late, but yesterday was Hinamatsuri, or Girl's Day, in Japan. An important part of the festival is a display of dolls and doll-sized accessories. The emperor and empress sit at the top of any Hinamatsuri doll set. I bought the set above from Re-ment. I had a hard time putting everything together, and tried to use poster stickies to help keep stuff in place. It wasn't until I looked at the pictures that I realized that the emperor and his wife were tipping slightly as a result. Oh well. I still think it turned out cute. I saw that Re-ment also makes a Hello Kitty themed Hinamatsuri set. I've seen Peanuts themed ones as well.

I sewed the dress that our little Japanese girl is wearing. The hardest part was sewing the sleeves. I think I would sew them first next time, before I sewed the sides of the dress.

And Then There Were Two

Yes, I picked up another Rainbow High doll. Well, technically this doll is part of the Shadow High line. Shadow High is Rainbow High's rival school, and the first dolls in this series varied in skin tones and clothing from mostly all white to mostly all black, with shades of gray in between. Shanelle Onyx is the doll who is mostly all black, except for a white streak in her hair, and she's the doll we're looking at today.

This is the way she came, fresh out of the box. I like her outfit for the most part. Her lace socks and strappy heels with black fur looked cool in the YouTube show, but they look a little odd in real life.

Fortunately, she comes with a change of clothes and shoes. I like her second outfit too. There is no slit or clasp on either of her pairs of shoes, so they have to be worked on and off. I don't like that her clothes mostly fit *very* tightly, meaning you have to really pull the sides together so the Velcro can meet. With the black belt that comes with Shanelle's dress, I feel like I'm not getting it closed all the way; I can't get all the Velcro covered by the other end of the belt. At least her hands can come off, similar to the way Monster High/Ever After High dolls' hands could. It makes it a lot easier to put on things like the jacket with ruffled sleeves in the second picture below.

I like her makeup. Her hair is silky soft, with only a little crunch on the end of some of her hair at the bottom of her ponytail.

Her body has some marks and scratches, but those don't bother me for some reason. Also, these dolls have an "unrealistic" knee hinge, which again, doesn't bother me, but I thought I'd show those of you who don't have one of these dolls. 

These dolls have their own names, with personalities and story lines you get to see in the show on YouTube, but the dolls seem mainly designed to display the clothes. As with Mila's dress, for example, Shanelle can't sit down in the black and silver houndstooth skirt. Of course, lots of kids just hold their dolls in the air and make them "talk." This also reminds me that the dolls do come with color-coordinated stands, and a comb. I talked with Dana about whether these clothes would fit curvy Barbies, and the answer is: no. I have a picture of a curvy Barbie/Shadow High doll under the fold.