Zodiac MMGirls Part 1: Earth signs and overview

One beautiful day last November I was browsing the Fortune Days website to see what else they had come up with after my beloved MMGirls. I was very excited to see the entire first page of the MMGirl section was changed - all the dolls there had brown eyes and a zodiac theme! Now, the zodiac series is sold in every doll store but at that time I couldn't find anything about them except the one promo picture for each doll. The suspense was killing me, I knew I'd like them even without seeing the details so I emailed the manufacturer. They said the dolls were already available at their warehouse. About 40 messages later, my order of a full set was on its way.

The Chinese fashion doll Xinyi

Hi there! I have some new furniture and lighting and I hope to do this more often now! Last week I took advantage of a wonderful rainy day to bond with one of my newest dolls - a Chinese fashion doll I bought online who arrived on my very birthday in December. I waited for so long to introduce her because I couldn't get her a decent outfit (more on that later). But she got into some construction dust and I had to wash her hair and dress. I also had to dust my latest order of doll shoes that I hadn't tried on her before and found the one pair that fit. Then, as I was arranging the wet dress into nice folds, I came across this piece of ribbon and literally tied the whole look together. My doll was finally presentable enough for the blog, so I got the camera and some doll companions and went to shoot today's review...

World Doll Day 2015 - a tag

Hey, tomorrow is the second Saturday of June and that can only mean one thing - it's World Doll Day! Now this is very last minute, but I wanted to mark it somehow so I decided to start a little tag. I think this is the kind of thing anyone can put together no matter how busy they are! Who's willing to participate?

The things I haven't blogged about

I'm trying to get back on track with my doll updates and there are many significant things that happened since my last meaningful post (October-ish). As it turns out, being more active on the crafting front leaves no time for blogging about all the crafting :) Or, supposing I can steal some precious sleeping time to blog (like I'm doing now), I still have to use up all the short winter daylight to take pictures, when I'd rather be working on doll projects or take care of stuff that require banks and shops to be open. Anyway, I'll talk about some of the things I managed to do and we'll figure out the order in which they need to posted on the blog. If you expect many pictures, sorry! I swear I took photos of everything but I have no idea where they are... So you don't feel like you've wasted your click coming here, up there ^ is a December pic of Tali the kitten who is now all big and healthy :)

Updates and a rant

It's been a long time since I last posted (or showed any sign of life in the blog community). I was busy taking care of stuff before a trip with hubby in September and I barely had time to finish a draft post before leaving. Then I came back, but I've been sick all this time. We found some new dolls which I wanted to introduce. I wasn't happy with the last "shopping" post where I hurried to take pictures while some of the dolls were still unbrushed. Well, now I took my time to tweak each of them a little. I mean, who hasn't seen a basic Raven Queen out of the box? Old news. But have you seen mine? Anyway, doll pictures ahead!

New faces

I went to a second doll meeting last week. It happened before hubby bought me Twyla but I never got around to editing the pictures for this post so now it's a good opportunity to introduce all the new acquaintances at once :)

Wrist surgery

I took some extra time to prepare this post because I wanted to turn it into a more global tutorial. I was just about ready when Blogger had this annoying glitch for a couple of days. What was up with that? It drove me crazy! I half prepared another post while saving this one for a time when people could actually see it, but now it's fixed, and I know I kept the suspense long enough. I'm happy to say I got to the bottom of the blackening issue, then made a new wrist replacement, and another one for a different (not broken) doll. I now present you a full tutorial for fixing broken wrists/elbows/knees on any doll that uses the kind of joint seen in the first picture. The beauty of it is that it uses common materials and can be adapted for any size and colour!

J-Doll upgrade, part 1: A look at the broken wrist

When you are trying to keep a blog, nothing goes according to the plan. I like to think of myself as a fairly organized person. Yes, I'm slow and overwhelmed with ideas, but generally, I make lists, never skip steps and my stuff has to be in the right place or I flip out on the person who moved it. I take pictures for the blog that I put in labeled and numbered folders, signifying the order in which I intend to write the corresponding posts. Yet there's always some event that disrupts the perfect queue and this is how my promised continuation of the hair care saga has been in drafts for months and also, how today's post came into existence.

One week ago one of the girls from the doll meeting messaged me with good and bad news. Her new J-doll came in the mail, but one wrist was smashed to pieces. She knew mine had a wrist problem as well and asked if I'd fixed it. I had to admit that no, I was reluctant to move it and break it any further. Unfortunately, things don't fix themselves if you do nothing about it. I bought a doll, not a statue. I decided I've had enough of that.

Miniature violin

I know, I know, I was supposed to write about something else but I just received this tiny violin a couple of days ago and it's so neat! I was just going to squeeze a picture of it in the J-doll post then I decided to separate it and I'll explain why...

The J-doll quest

J-doll Lavalle

This is a special post. I'm not much of a reviewer - there are people who do a much better job than me (pretty much everyone in my followed blogs list). I like to buy dolls, swap their clothes and play with them. This time though, I'll make an exception and review a much expected doll that I got recently. I'll concentrate on aspects I found curious or interesting, rather than doing a review by the book. This is entirely new for me, so there are many words and pictures ahead. Oh, and the doll? It's J-601 "Lavalle".

Presents from far away

This will be short. I've been down lately with a nasty cold so I haven't done anything useful. Earlier this year, we bought a doll on ebay, which a kind friend offered to bring home to me. She had been back for a week, but I couldn't go anywhere because of my cold. Finally on Friday evening, hubby managed to get me the doll, and then I received a call from Mum, who said there's a package for me from the USA.