A Paint Booth

I've been very frustrated with how few days there are where I live that are suitable for spray painting outdoors. Even when I paint things by hand, plastic items seem easier to paint if I've put on a simple coat of Mr. SuperClear or something similar first. I finally decided to buy a paint booth, and was pleased to find out that they are not as expensive as I had thought they would be. Here is mine, folded up, and open, with the LED lights that came with it on. The items on the turntable are parts of a 1/6 scale baby stroller for scale. I'm hoping that I can make some progress this month on all the things that I want to paint.

ETA:

I should have realized that not everyone would know what a paint booth was. :) Just to further clarify, there is a filter at the back of the booth, with an exhaust fan on the back side. I also bought a connecting tube set, that hooks up at the back of the unit. It is meant to be set up with one end in an open window, and sucks the fumes from the spray paint out the window, so you're not dealing with them indoors. The end of the tubing is narrow, so you only have to open your window a tiny bit. I am adding a picture of the back of the booth, and part of the tubing.

It is also used by airbrush artists, and a family friend uses his to paint miniature figures for his tabletop gaming adventures.

EATA:

Here is the link for the model that I bought. I purchased it on Amazon US. I hope anybody that is interested can find one! Also, let me know if this link doesn't work for you, since I'm looking at it through our Amazon account. It is the Master Airbrush Lighted Portable Hobby Airbrush Spraybooth with LED Lighting. Also, I'm pretty sure that I didn't pay as much for it as the price it is listed at now. I think must have bought it when it was on Prime.

A Grail Doll for Christmas

For Christmas 2020, Mr. BTEG gave me the Effanbee Ann Estelle Dottie Delight doll. I'd sold her during a dark time in our lives, thinking I wouldn't regret it, but I ended up doing so. This 10" Ann Estelle has been on my wish list for at least five or six years, and finally this Christmas, I was fortunate enough that there was an Ann Estelle NRFB on the market, and Mr. BTEG had the wherewithal to buy her for me! I'm putting up a group of pictures of her here, so you can all see what she looks like. I'm not counting her in my My Collection series yet, though. I'll do that when I introduce you to my entire Ann Estelle crew.

Did any of you get some nice dolly surprises for Christmas?

Merry Christmas!

My photo shoot didn't turn out exactly the way I wanted it, but here it is. And you can say we have a bit of a white Christmas.

I hope all of you are enjoying your day (or enjoyed your day, for my Aussie friends), no matter what your weather looks like!

My Collection Part Eleven: Hallmark Christmas Barbies

One of Coffee and Dolls' posts reminded me that this is the perfect time of year to take pictures of my three Hallmark Christmas Barbie dolls for the My Collection series that I'm doing. Hallmark is a chain of stores in the United States that sells greeting cards, collectibles, and holiday ornaments. They have made Barbie themed Christmas ornaments in the past, and also some Barbie dolls dressed for holidays. All of the dolls that I have also came with, appropriately enough, holiday greeting cards, which you'll see as a group at the end. Every item that a doll is holding is from my own Christmas minis collection.

The first doll is the Holiday Memories Barbie doll from 1995. Her costume is based on a Christmas card, that was included with the doll. She also came with a Happy New Year 1910 card. Barbie's hat, cutaway coat, overskirt and narrow skirt are pretty close to a 1909-1910 style. Her hair is styled with rolls on either side, to approximate a 1910s hairstyle. The rubber band holding her hair disintegrated, so I had to re-band it. I had a hard time getting a good picture of the back of her hair, possibly because of all the blond reflecting in the light.

Yuletide Romance Barbie is from 1996. Her style era is a little bit more nebulous, 1890s, maybe. Unlike my other two dolls here who wear boots, Yuletide Romance only wears green pumps. She came with two Christmas cards.

Holiday Traditions Barbie is also from 1996. She wears an outdoor outfit, maybe suitable for ice skating or a sleigh ride. She came with one card, bearing a picture of two purple-y roses, to match her costume.

Here are all the cards that the dolls came with. I honestly don't know now where the two cards that fold over came from. The only cards I saw in pictures of the dolls for sale, that I looked at to remind me of their names and years, were all the flat ones. I have a Hallmark Valentine's Day Barbie, but I don't think I have any other Christmas dolls that would have come with cards.

I want to get a modern day doll-size living room with a tree set up before Christmas Day. We'll see how that goes!

Total dolls: 44

Let It Snow

Well, we got our first real snow of the season starting last night, into today, and boy, did we get snow. Here on the west side of Cleveland, we got about a foot and a half of snow, which means the east side got even more. If you're interested in weather (like RagingMoon1987) check out "lake effect snow." Cold wet air from Canada comes over Lake Erie, which is currently warmer than the air, and snow then gets dumped on Northeast Ohio. It's natural to me, because I've lived with it all my life, but apparently this phenomenon is only found in a few other places in the world.

I took this picture today, around 2:00 PM local time. The snow today was what we call "wet" snow. It's quite easily packable, which is great if you're a kid making igloos and snowballs, but it's *very* heavy to shovel.

I just took this picture before I started this post. The Dancer just re-shoveled the sidewalk when she got home from work.

Happily for me, I have many projects to work on as the cold weather comes in and the snow piles up this December. Some of it is human related, some of it is doll-related. There is another little girl in my life who likes the LOL Surprise dolls, so I will get to use up some of the fabric that I bought to use in a LOL Surprise little dollhouse that I made for a friend's daughter, back in 2018. Does anyone else in the Northern hemisphere have any fun winter projects planned? Well, I know TheMonsterCrafts does, but I bet she never sees snow like this!

My Collection Part Ten: Keith Haring X Barbie Doll

I picked this doll up fairly recently for a good price, and she gets her own post, because she's relatively new, so this is an informal review as well. Also, I'm selling off her entire outfit, so I took some shots of her redressed. I bought her for her face, which I think is fierce, without coming off as snooty. I have yet to see a Goddess mold face that I don't like. She has decent body articulation, too. And I'm hereby naming her Kelly.

Her knees were covered with cardboard. No idea why.

And redressed. Her hands don't seem to be removable, so I had her drape the faux leather jacket stylishly over her shoulder, since the sleeves are too tight to go over her hands. Girl knows how to werk.

 

So what do you think of her? What do you think of her outfits? She might be losing her black nail polish, too.

Total dolls: 41

My Collection Part Nine: Reading to Alice, Alice in Wonderland and Dorothy by Tonner

And thus we end the overview of my 16" Tonner collection with three dolls who are... not 16" tall. Alice and Dorothy, however, are sized to fit in the 16" range. They have the same bodies as Tyler Wentworth's sister, 12" tall Marley. While I never liked Marley very much, I love Alice, and since The Wizard of Oz is one of my favorite movies, I had to have Dorothy as well.

Reading to Alice is 15" tall, or so. I believe her body has been used for a range of Disney princesses by Tonner as well. It's a bit frustrating that although she was meant to go with the Alice doll, (it's right in the name) she doesn't fit in very well to the 16" line, in my opinion. You can make your own decision with the body comparison shot I'll show below the fold.

I like my Dorothy doll very much, although she does have a few yellow spots on the waist of her jumper. Toto looks a little bit odd, I think. Also, he's resin, and rather heavy for his size, since Dorothy is meant to carry the basket on her arm. I wonder if a stuffed dog would have been better.

I believe Tonner later introduced a Dorothy doll with the 15" body, which is actually more suited to Judy Garland's actual body type in the movie. We'll go with Reading to Alice next. She didn't photograph well for me. She's not typical doll "pretty" but she is striking looking. I'm throwing in a picture of her wearing an Ashton Drake Gene outfit that I took years ago.

Alice in Wonderland is one of the gems of my collection. Her face looks a little blank in my photos, but I love how she looks in person. I bought her nude, but she is wearing an outfit from Tonner's Nutcracker Clara collection, Off to the Land of Sweets. I'm disappointed in the slippers from that outfit. They were made with just a hair too little fabric, so that the back of the slippers pulls forward. I tried to put the slippers on Alice while holding the back of the slipper with tweezers, but then the stitches in the back looked like they were starting to come apart. Maybe somebody else can wear those slippers.

My youngest daughter, The Dancer, owns a Nutcracker Ballet Clara doll, that I bought her for Christmas many years ago. As you can see, she and Alice are basically sisters. Apologies for the first picture being blurry.

Last picture below the fold.