My Collection Part Four: J-Dolls, Part Two

Here are the other half of the J-Dolls in my collection. From left to right, we have Mari, Melanie, Adelheid, Steffi and Holly.

None of these dolls are in their original clothes. Mari wears an outfit I bought from Etsy. Melanie wears a Mattel top and shorts. Adelheid wears an Only Hearts Club top, and a Shibajuku Girls skirt. Steffi's clothes are all Shibajuku Girls. And Holly wears a Barbie dress. And the shoes are, from left to right, Mattel High School Musical, Re-Ment, Momoko, and the last two are both Mattel High School Musical.

Mari

Melanie

 

 

Adelheid

 

 

 

 Steffi

 

 

 

Holly

 

 

 

 

 

Total dolls: 20

Holly's face seems to resemble some Korean models that I have seen online.

My Collection Part Three: J-Dolls

Well, here we are again, finally! J-Dolls are discontinued now, but they were made by the same company that makes Pullip dolls. They have the same bodies as the Pullip #3 and #4 types. J-Dolls are 27cm tall, and I find them to resemble Momoko dolls the most in the doll world. These are only four out of my collection; the rest will get photographed at a later date. They're all wearing their original dresses, except for Lindsay, who I bought nude. Lindsay also has a new wig, because hers was pretty dry. Lindsay and Anni's shoes are both from Momoko's line.

Lindsay

Anni

Sophie

Rachel

I printed out the new walls and floor with the new color printer that Mr. BTEG bought me as a birthday present. Do your loved ones find you hard to buy gifts for? Mr. BTEG and my daughters feel that way about me.

Total dolls: 15

Romantic Alice Pullip

Alice was a birthday gift from my husband back in July, and I finally freed enough space on my worktable to get some pictures of her. Alice in Wonderland is a popular theme in Japan, and Groove, who makes Pullip dolls, has made several takes on Alice, with Pullip's friends filling in occasionally for other characters in the stories. For example, Groove has also made Romantic Alice in pink and monochromatic versions. And my Pullip Alice du Jardin is yet another "take" on Alice in Wonderland. Alice du Jardin is really stretching the Alice in Wonderland idea. Romantic Alice at least has a blue dress, apron and striped socks, even if the clothes are rather Lolita-esque. I took these pictures at different times of day with different lighting, so don't mind if the color in the pictures is all over the place.

Here is Alice, mostly complete. For some reason, Romantic Alice also came with a lace cape. It's pretty, even if you can't see it from the front very well, as it's not very full. However, Alice can't wear hers, because not only is the neck fastening super tight, but instead of a hook and eye, this cape has a hook and... hook. Luckily, it is an easy enough repair if you can hand-sew.

Alice's dress and apron have net, lace and tucks galore. She wears a chain with three charms: a teacup, a key, and a crown. Her necklace was "Made with Love."

Like other Pullips, Alice has an eye mechanism that lets her eyes look left, right and center. Rachael pointed out that with Pullip Alice du Jardin, her eyes seemed to go farther to her left than to her right. Romantic Alice's eyes seem to go a bit further.

A note about the brown hairbow: it's a pain. It came on the top of her head, with the lace ties wrapped around and around her neck. If you want to see her necklace, or put on her cape, or redress her, or whatever, the hairbow has to be tied at the bottom of her head at the back. Tying a top-heavy bow on a huge doll head that has lots of hair, was not fun. Maybe I'll put elastic on instead.

Even under the net overskirt on Alice's dress, there are tucks and lace, that you can't really see because of the overskirt. And I think this color is the closest to the color of the dress in real life.

A last couple shots of Alice, with and without her apron.

I think it's funny that the first doll I debut in my new roombox is really too tall for it. I will probably add more on top of the wood paneling, but I haven't decided what yet. Most of what I will be sharing pictures of in my next posts will be better sizes, although I do have another new Pullip in the queue. I should be able to improve my lighting for those, as well.

Groove Pullip Alice du Jardin

For a while, I put off buying a Pullip doll, because the JPGroove official website was advertising some kind of future sale, and picturing three dolls that I was already interested in buying. I was hoping the three dolls were going to be sold in a reduced price three-pack. Instead, the dolls were full priced, but you also received two bags of eyechips, two bags of shoes, and a wig. In other words, Groove is dumping stuff from the Make It Own line, that didn't sell. Well, I certainly could use more shoes for my J-Dolls, and any Pullips I might get in the future that have wonky shoes. The spare wig looks very nice too, although I didn't get a picture of it. So I don't have anything to complain about there. You'll see the extra shoes at the end.

When I pulled Alice out of her shipping box and paper wrappings, I had an "Oooooh" moment that I haven't had in quite a long time, when viewing a doll in-box for the first time. As far as I'm concerned, for a higher-priced doll,  you should be impressed when you first view it. I knew exactly what she looked like; I've seen lots of owner pics of her. But just viewing her in person made me excited to own her.

Let's go over her head, clothes and accessories. As you may know, Pullips have a small lever in back that lets you turn their eyes from side to side, and also open and close the upper lids. Unfortunately, I didn't get a pick of the eyes in different positions. And when I closed the eyes, at first I was afraid I wasn't going to get them open again without brute force. It's been so long since I got Alice, that I've forgotten exactly how I did get them open. I'm pretty sure there's also a knob on the back of her head. Either I had to push that in, or the actual lever, to "release" the eyelids. I took some new pictures later to show how her eyes work and made it into its own post, which is here.

Alice's hair is gorgeous, and mostly in ringlet curls, but there are lots of loose hairs that create frizz. I'm very thankful that I have my Pleasant Company American Girl wig brush. I've been gently trying to brush her hair and incorporate some of those loose hairs into the curls. It's only going so-so, though. I may just have to accept some frizz, because it really doesn't spoil her look. What is a problem is that her bangs look crooked. I say look, because I haven't tried yet to re-adjust her wig, to see if that fixes the problem. If not, I'm going to very carefully give her a bit of a trim.

She's a very attractive doll, though not everyone's cup of tea. But I'm fine with her over-sized head, and I love her outfit, which is very well made. It was a little bit startling at first to see the J-Doll body, that I'm so familiar with, with an enormous head and outfit to match, but I'm getting used to her.

It was a surprise, however, to find out that there's no way to attach the huge brown bow firmly to her head. There is a stiff headband underneath the bow, yes, but it doesn't fit her head snugly, and it doesn't seem bendable to where it would fit. So her bow has to be carefully laid on top of her head. Considering her large noggin already makes her difficult to pose, this is just another challenge. She also came with the stuffed rabbit and stand. The rabbit is wearing a small clock-face pendant, as a small nod to the very loosely interpreted Alice in Wonderland theme. I'll tell you a bit later on why she's not wearing shoes.

Her costume consists of a dress with net underskirt and ruffle, an elaborate apron, and ruffled cuffs on her arms. I'm not sure whether those are supposed to be pushed up to the end of her sleeves, or worn as cuffs on her wrists. On the one hand, they tend to slip down and cover her hands in a very impractical fashion if they're worn on her wrists (although what part of this costume is practical, really?) On the other hand, they look strange right below the sleeves, at least to me. Like if they were meant to be there, why not just sew them onto the actual sleeve cuffs?

I called this clothing piece below an apron, because that matches the Alice in Wonderland concept. This is really an elaborate overdress, that could be worn as a dress on its own. I'm going to have to try to get a non-blurry picture of this. The viewing lens on my camera is so small that it's impossible to tell whether a picture is blurry until I upload it. And I've already put off this review for way too long as it is.

Underneath the dress is an underskirt made mostly of net, with a ribbon, a ruffle and lace trims. You can also see her underwear, and her stockings. Those stay on her fairly well, as opposed to most of the stockings that I've gotten with J-Dolls. That may be because these are made of a stretchable knit, as opposed to large-scale pieces of lace, as many of the J-Doll ones are.

Even without all of the fancy outer trimmings, the dress itself does not disappoint. I left the underskirt on, but the dress has its own ruffle with row of lace, tucks in the skirt and puffed sleeves, darts on the front of the bodice, a bib with pleated trim, and neckbow, although that is actually a separate piece. I'm almost scared to untie it, if I ever wanted to redress Alice. Would I ever be able to tie it again?

I only have one ridiculously small quibble with the dress, and that is that the stitches on the outside of the dress are made with white thread, instead of cream, which would not stand out as much as the white. But considering how well the entire costume is made, and how elaborate, that's really nothing but the perfectionist seamstress in me talking.

And now, for the shoes. Oh, those infamous Jun Planning/Groove doll shoes. If you've read any of my J-Doll reviews, most of the shoes don't even fit, although that's nothing compared to the pair that disintegrated before they even came out of the box. You can be sure, then, that I wasn't necessarily going to expect that a nice pair of shoes was going to accompany any Pullip, as oftentimes they wear the same shoes that I've already had bad luck with. From the pictures, however, Alice's shoes seemed like they might be one piece, and even sturdy. And indeed, the pink part is one solid piece, that fits relatively well (the giant rose covers the fact that there's lots of room between the upper part of the shoe and her foot.) The one-piece gold bow and straps are also sturdy enough. However, apparently if something can go wrong with a Groove doll shoe, it will. When they came out of the box, both shoes looked like this:

However, within about fifteen minutes, one shoe ended up like this:

At least the pink part is still one sturdy piece, and the bow hasn't broken into little pieces! Yeah, I may have low expectations here, but at least that means that the parts can be glued back together. Conceivably. I tried Loc-Tite super glue this afternoon, and the glue was more interested in sticking the shoe and my fingers together, than sticking the gold piece back to the shoe. However, that was only a first try. I'm sure there's lots of other things I can try, so I haven't given up yet, although it means Alice did not get to pose in her shoes for this review.

She also came with a stand. It's rather nice, with a large base and nice waist grip. The only problem is that the upright part of the stand is telescoping, which can mean it's difficult trying to stand up a doll with bending knees and ankles. At least for me, Alice wanted to collapse at the knee just as much as she wanted to stand straight so I could fit the grip to her waist. Also, the base and the upright section are two separate pieces, which kept coming apart, as the hole in the base, and the post of the upright section, are both very shallow. And of course, there's the fact that Alice is very top-heavy, but that's nothing to be surprised about.

To sum up, I'm really happy with my purchase. The body is nice, I like the face, the hair is perfectly acceptable as is (at least it's not filled with glue), the clothes are gorgeous, and her hairbow and bunny accessories are cute. I may get a tiny hairclip and sew it to the bow, to keep it in place on her head. The shoe coming apart is something that I would imagine could happen with any shoe with separate pieces glued together.

And speaking of shoes, here are the two shoe packs that came with Alice.

Nothing exciting, which is why I imagine that they didn't sell well. I myself looked at buying these a couple of times and decided against it. But I'm not sorry to own them. You'll probably see them on my J-Dolls at some point in the future.

The two packs of eyechips are not exciting, unless I decide I want to restyle a doll in the future, which is always a possibility. The wig, though. I haven't taken it out of the package because it seems so delicate, but this is the wig I got.

Photo belongs to Groove and is only to show the wig I received.

If I was going to pick a wig, this is the one I would have chosen, being the most elaborate. If you're going to get a wig-with-purchase, why not make it a more complicated 'do rather than a simple short cut? When I say it seems delicate, I only mean that I don't want to disturb those long ringlets until I'm ready to put the wig on a doll. And this also means that I can buy a Pullip who might be less expensive, but whose hairstyle didn't interest me, and swap wigs. Saving money, yay!

How do you feel about big-headed dolls? How do you feel about her Loli fashion? Any tips on how to glue Alice's shoe back together again?

J-Doll Punkka Street

This is the second J-Doll I got during the sale at Groove; the story of that purchase and the other review is here. This doll has been gracing the top of my blog for several months now, but I'm finally getting out her review. As always, this doll is named after a physical locale. Punkka Street is in Finland, "where an old castle sits amid surrounding forests and lakes." The theme Groove chose to use with her was "water sprite." I named her Anni after a Finnish vlogger I watch.

Anni photographs beautifully, but it was hard to capture the real color of her hair. The above picture was taken in our front bedroom, which faces north. I also took some pictures in my bedroom, which faces south. The southern pictures did not accurately capture the color of her hair. The ones in the north bedroom turned out better, plus I took a couple of pictures outside in the sunlight. Here is Anni wearing most of her outfit.

That's the last you'll see of those shoes. They're the same as the ones that came with Stephen Avenue Walk; they're way too big and don't really march the arch in her foot. She also has knee-high stockings, a dress with a thick belt, a small lace jacket, a hat and a purse.

Above she is standing, holding the purse that came with her. The purse is another wasted accessory, honestly. The faux leather has cracked and come off in multiple places, and I think this probably happened to all of these purses, and not just the display model. The color of her purse, shoes and the flower on her hat are also interesting to me. They don't match her hair, eyes, or the beading on her dress, nor do they harmonize. At least the hat is nice, so she could wear it with something else.

Here are up-close views of her jacket and belt. As usual for J-Doll, the jacket is a little on the small size. The belt is really more of what you might call a sash. There's actually a lot of material in it, sewn together in bunches, and decorated with beads.

I was not fortunate with Anni as far as cracking plastic issues. This is what her left arm looks like just below the wrist. Of course, she was a traveling display doll at one point.

And below are a couple of pictures I took of Anni in direct sunlight. I don't think the picture of the back of her head accurately captured her hair color either. It's probably actually closest to the pictures with the northern light. It's very nice hair, not super soft, but not overly coarse either.

She's a beautiful doll, and I'm glad I managed to get a good deal on her. She has too many outfit issues, plus the arm crack, to have been worth full price. Her delicate face and inset eyes are her biggest appeals; she'd make a lovely water sprite.