End of Summer, Beginning of Autumn

 Starting with a BJD picture is always a good thing :)

At the end of last month, I was asked to make a blog header by the awesome Adventure Girl - Llinos Cathryn Thomas for her blog 'Biscuits In, Writing Out'. On the theme of writing and biscuits I got out my great-grandmother's Bavarian tea set, some oatie biscuits, a cotton blend napkin and my swish Parker Pen and snapped away. The top ranked result can be seen here! Her blog is filled with funny, insightful and thoughtful things as she blogs about writing, creativity, awesome women, and lots of other fun things!

I really like this time of year. The weather is usually very nice in early September, just in time for kids to go back to school, and I tend to enjoy early autumn far more than summer. Summer for me usually means uncomfortable heat, lots of overtime at work and lots of tourists on their holidays, but by this time of year everyone's gone home, the heat has cooled down and my shifts get less crazy too.

This time last year I was stressing over my impending dissertation, so it's very nice to have a September I can actually enjoy!

B and I have been on a bit of a health kick for the past week, we've been eating really good, healthy food and this week we've started throwing in some exercise. My word. I am aching!

Monday we walked up the Jubilee Path on the mountain Moel Lus (ouch!), and yesterday we walked to Llandudno and back. Today we had a much shorter walk, from Deganwy to Conwy ;) I don't think my poor legs could have managed much more!

This afternoon I came back and took advantage of the sunny afternoon to take some pictures of Morideryn in the garden. The sun hits a lovely spot at the top of the garden and lights up the crocosmia and the old shed at the back, so I thought it would make a nice backdrop for doll pictures.

Here you can see her full outfit, she's wearing a summer dress by Kalcia, white slip by Nine9Style, stockings by Plume Blanche Creations, and the brown version of Dollheart LS000186 boots.

I do dress my dolls in a style that I tend to wear myself - B describes it as 'verging on twee' ;)

 The browns and oranges are really making me feel autumnal :D

Hopefully by the next update I'll be able to show off Gwenllian! Her body is on the way from Thailand and her face-up is almost finished in Scotland. It'd be so awesome if they arrived together and I could put her together straight away.

Incoming!

I've finally paid off the layaway on Gwenllian's body and Viridian House is almost done with Gwenllian's face up, so she is finally coming together at last! It's going to be really exciting to see her in one piece with her new face-up and put her in her Wimukt mori outfit!

As well as Gwenllian's head and body coming in, I have a few wardrobe additions too! Now, I haven't been too bad by buying these because I have sold some dolls and clothes, so I'm actually spending hobby money on my hobby this time, instead of my wages!

The outfit and boots are both by Dollheart - the outfit is LD000502 [SteamPunk2012] - Journey and the boots are LS001219. I know I've said it before, but I love buying Dollheart outfits because there are just so many pieces involved. I can get a few outfits out of one set this way and each piece can be used with other items I have in my dolly wardrobe. Originally I was just going to get the outfit, but then I saw the boots as well and couldn't resist ;)

The deer antler headband is by Kuloft, who make very cute things for dolls from colourful plastic. This was another impulse buy. This is Dal-sized, which means it fits heads that are 8-9" in size. This should fit Deryn and Gwenllian well, but might be a squeeze on my melon-heads, Mafonwen and Tommeliesl, whose heads come up to almost 9-10". Kuloft do Blythe-sized headbands as well (9-10"), but I wanted to try something I know would be smaller just in case the Blythe ones were far too big.

Last but not least, the summery dress is by Kalcia from Etsy. It's going to be Gwenllian's. I think the pattern is very cute and it's going to break up all the blues, greys and browns that she normally wears.

My parents are away on holiday this week, but instead of having wild parties and staying up all night, what I'm actually going to do is finish some BJD projects I've been putting off. I want to re-string Mafonwen properly with new elastic and I want to catalogue my BJD wardrobe [/librarian!] What I really want is to catalogue and photograph everything so that instead of hunting through for the things I want, I can refer to my own guidebook. It should hopefully keep things neat and tidy this way too.

Tommie

As I mentioned in my previous post (Dolls moving out!), I've traded my Volks YoSD Yuh for a Volks Kun head...and here she is!

Her name is Tommeliesl von Dorfli, but her friends call her Tommie. The wig she's wearing was a gift from RREGUI, the person I traded with. Tommeliesl has blonde hair, so this wig will be going to resident brunette Gwenllian, when she comes back from Viridian House. The blue eyes will be staying though - they're 18mm glass eyes from Luts.

Tommie will be a floating head, I don't anticipate getting a body for her at all soon as she isn't one of the main characters in the story, but she is one of my favourite characters so she probably won't be bodyless for long. She definitely needs a face-up though!

How do you solve a problem like Mojito?

I am having style problems with my Unoa Sist. I originally planned for her to have a mint green colour scheme and wear pastels...so far so good. Only, when I did her face-up and tried her wig on her, Mojito didn't look the way I wanted her to look.

So I changed tack. I figured perhaps Mojito wasn't a minty, pastelly girl. Inspired by ClockworkAngel's amazing psychobilly doll Cherry~Sue, I thought 'why not make her a rockabilly chick?'

So, I wiped off the pastel face-up with the mint green eyebrows I kinda liked, and did a more rockabilly style one, with glossy red lips, dark eyeshadow and eyeliner and some nifty black arched eyebrows.

I ordered her a new wig, a natural black one with curls and waves in a rockabilly style. It arrived today and... what an awful wig. I do expect that there's a difference between a wig that looks good on a large doll and a wig that is scaled down for a smaller doll, but this is barely recognisable as the wig I wanted. It is supposed to be black on top and brown underneath (I was going to snip off the brown) and the wig I received is a multitonal brown/black thing. There are even stray blue fibres in there from another wig.

So, I was forced to wash and restyle the wig. It's currently drying on top of a ball of kitchen paper put on top of a bottle so it'll dry in the right shape without putting a wet wig directly on my doll.

I've started re-reading the Hunger Games and now I want Mojito to be all pastels and fun colours again like Effie Trinket. I really don't know what to do with her!!

In good news though, I've received her feet and I got some high heel feet and option part hands as well, so there are more parts to play with as I try and figure out who she is.

Watch this space!

Dolls moving out!

This morning I put two dolls in the post!

My YoSD Yuh is going to a new home in Spain and my Dollfie Dream is going to her new home in York. Carrying the two large boxes down to the village post office was a bit of a struggle! I couldn't have managed any more!

The money from selling my Dollfie Dream has gone towards a body for my Volks Rose, Gwenllian, and my YoSD is being traded for a Volks Kun head. She has her original papers and Volks headplate, and the person I'm trading with is also paying for the cost of a Viridian House face-up for Kun when Caroline reopens her shop.

I am much happier with a smaller collection, I get a bit stressed when I have over 8 dolls because I can't really do anything with them if there's too many! My current dolls are;
Full Dolls;
Volks SD10 Megu - Mafonwen Enku
Volks SD13 School B - Morideryn
Volks SDC Kurt - Klemens-Ruprecht von Klessel
Alchemic Labo Unoa Sist - Mojito Collins
Volks SD13 Rose - Gwenllian Cyffin

Floating Heads;
Volks F-03 (head only) - Mefyswen
Volks Kun (head only) - Tommeliesl von Dorfli

I am pretty excited about my incoming Kun. I don't intend for her to be a full doll, she'll be able to share bodies with my other SD girls and that's fine by me. She is based on another of my characters, a Schkauss girl called Tommeliesl who goes to school with Gwenllian, Mafonwen and Deryn. Schkaussers can be brash and outspoken, but Tommeliesl is quite quiet in comparison.

I have some 18mm blue Luts glass eyes for her and I'll be getting a Leekeworld wig in sandy blonde. Not sure which style yet. Tommeliesl isn't a main character, so I don't expect to amass the same kind of huge wardrobes and wig collections the other ladies expect, but for me a 'complete' doll is one that has their own eyes, wig, personal outfit and shoes and doesn't have to share, so a complete floating head would be one that has their own eyes and wig at least!

Sad Post

My Taid (Welsh for grandfather) passed away yesterday. It's difficult to describe how important he was to me. He supported me in whatever I wanted to do - he was thrilled when I got my BA at Bangor University and without him I'd never have gone on to do my Masters at Liverpool.

I'm happy that I managed to make him so proud. There is more I could say, I will miss him on my wedding day and when I have children. I'll miss him whenever I have any exciting news or career moves. It'll never be the same without him, but he did get to see what made him happiest - he never dreamed one of his grandchildren would make it to the college on the hill he used to look at when he was a young man living in Bangor. He got to go to a graduation ceremony there and it was for both of us. I wish he had made it to Liverpool to see me graduate a second time, but he was ill in hospital then. He saw me in a cap and gown again though, through the pictures we took.

I'm so proud he was my Taid and I'll miss him every day.

ישוע אמר: "אני התחיה והחיים. כל מי שמאמין בי, למרות שהוא מת, אבל הוא יחיה, וכל מי שחי ומאמין בי לא ימות."

Box Opening

This is the first time in a long time that I've had an entire new doll arrive. My last few dolls were floating heads until I could buy them bodies. Getting a whole doll at once is very exciting!

May I present...the box opening of Miss Mojito Collins!

I laid out all her parts to check that eveything was included, and discovered she had no feet!

This was a bit of a surprise! I can't string her without her feet and they're still in London for the time being. Happily, Lolly from Den of Angels was selling some Unoa feet on the Marketplace so I bought those. I don't mind having two pairs of feet for her, I can paint the toenails different colours and mix things up :D

The biggest surprise, aside from Mojito's missing feet, is how big Unoas are! I was prepared for her to be quite small and slim, but she's comparable in size to an SDC girl. I've owned a MiniFee in the past and I think MiniFee are definitely slimmer than Unoa.

 Here's here Leekeworld wig and her Enchanted Doll eyes. I had to remove the resin flash from her eyeholes before she could try her eyes. A quick trim with a craft knife and...

Here she is! The eyes are sadly too big for her, I think she needs at least a 12mm pair to show some white and look good. Her wig fits perfectly though, so I'm quite happy with that.

I can't wait to start putting her together. The next step is to trim off the flash and sand her seams down and after that I can try doing her face-up. I've been watching lots of tutorials to try and get my ideas together. I think I know what I want for her, I just don't know if I have the skill for it.

As a new girl arrives, another girl goes off to a new home! Melangell, my SDC Kurenai, is going off to live with my friend, which is awesome for me because I'm getting my friend into the hobby and I'll also get to still see the doll!