Slow Progress Is Still Progress!

I have been flooded with boxes and goodies all week for my Barbie Dream House renovation into the Monster High Nightmare House! It looks like Christmas morning here! Or, in keeping with the Monster style of things: like Halloween! (Or like Ebay puked all over my porch!) 

I went to AC Moore today to look around and get some decorating ideas. It is the perfect time to do this! Halloween decorations are already going on sale! Up to 50% and 75% off!!! Wonderful stickers and scrapbook pages edgings that will look great at the top of a wall in a DOLLHOUSE!!! I filled one of the drawers!

I am putting the furniture in place so I know how to embellish the walls! Things have moved around quite a bit!

Draculaura had half the second floor but I didn't really like her great coffin bed hidden in a corner! (No one puts Baby's Coffin in a corner!!!)

Now she has the whole SECOND floor!!! (The unfinished coffin in the corner will be black with pink satin inside, filled with black roses!!!)

I found an Etsy shop called Lucid Junkie Designs that makes the most amazing miniature doll accessories! I bought candles, half-burned on a platter, and a jar of Raven's Blood for Draculara! (The candles really look like they were burning!!!)

And Lagoona's favourite food is sushi, of course! Aleksandra at Lucid Junkie makes a plate that makes ME hungry!!!

I also got some pancakes for Robecca Steam that I will show in a future post and Aleksandra makes a jar of "Ken's Tears" for Barbie that just made me laugh so hard!!! Check it out! LOL!

I also got a chaise lounge chair for Skelita that is just amazing! The Etsy store where I bought it is called Monster Nitezzzz!! They make beds and sofas specific to most characters and they were so nice! They sent me some scraps so I can make a rug to match and cover a couple of chair seats! Thanks, girls!!!

Oops! Sorry about that! The chaise lounge is so great that Skelita's sister Boneita lost her head!!! She's back to normal today!

The Coffin Bean, where the girls go for food and drink, is really neat and the colours of the couch and chair look great with the chaise! Some of the food on the shelves came with the set (which I bought on Ebay, WITH a Clawdeen doll, for $9.40!!!) but some of it is an eraser set for AC Moore that are just the perfect scale!

The top floor still needs some work. I just heard from a friend that her daughter has a bed to donate to the "cause"! Yay!!! It's barren up there!

Twyla's dust bunny, Dustin, is comfy cozy in the little bed that came with Abbey Bomidable's bed! But he looks a little worried at the lack of furniture! Nothing to hide under!!!

Right now, I am working on a beach chair that I got at AC Moore for $1!!! It's going to be really nice in sparkly black paint! The shell will be her side table top! It might take a few coats to get the sparkles just right! (Yes, I am OCD like that! I have to get in every crack and corner, just so!) 

I am getting more excited every day! This is going to be so much fun.......

Stay tuned!

Lagoona Gets A Dunk!

Why do toy manufacturers do up a doll's hair in so many complicated ways??? Oh, I know, sophisticated hair-dos make beautiful dolls. But what about playdolls? What about dolls designed specifically for 8-12 years old girls to actually play with, handling and styling hair is a major component of regular play! 

(Heavy sigh.) When I got Lagoona Blue of Monster High, her hair was in a giant side ponytail that I (like any little girl) took out immediately!

Unfortunately, it left her with crazy scraggly hair. Also, I don't know if it was just my doll or if it is every doll in the Dot Dead Gorgeous set of dolls, but my doll's hair was rooted much thicker where the ponytail was so the hair didn't fall very evenly!

I really did like the wave on her head, even if it was super crunchy with product, but it was actually sewn down so I knew this wouldn't last very long.

So, I boiled water on the stove again. I poured it into a bowl in my sink again. I let it cool a couple of minutes and then, because I was afraid it would take out the wave if it was too terribly hot, I put a shot of cold water in there. (I really should get a picture next time I do this but you can probably picture a doll with her head in a bowl. Plus, I didn't want to be fussing with the camera and dunk her too long!!!) Then, just like I did with Rochelle, I put her hair in a dishtowel and pressed it between my hands to squeeze out the extra water. After a quick brushing, it looked lovely! Lagoona looks even more like a mermaid than she did before!!!

I was very pleased that I decided to "dunk" her crunchy wave too!

I was worried that the hot water would straighten her curls but it didn't!

When I dunked and cut Rochelle's hair, it dried very quickly. Longer hair always takes longer to dry so all we could do was sit and wait! (But she lounges so beautifully, doesn't she???)

With the drying and extra brushing, it became obvious that those "side bangs" were going to be annoying! It would need clips or be dampened constantly! These are the things the designers just don't think about when they do those fancy "do"s!

I decided to just brush them over to the other side and brush all her hair back!

And a prettier doll you never did see!

I guess the lesson to be learned here is: be daring, be creative! These are PLAY dolls! They are meant to be PLAYED WITH! So, I guess it doesn't matter what the designer was trying to do to make the doll look pretty in the box! These are inexpensive dolls too so it is fun to let yourself go a little without (too much) fear! I would never ever do this to a hundred dollar doll! But these solid, stable little Monster High girls are so much fun to brush and style and pose! I'm looking forward to more of this!!!

"Til next time.....

Monster High Rochelle's New Hair Cut!

I was really unhappy with the hair on my Monster High Rochelle Goyle. First off, the length of her hair covered up her fantastic wings! How did that get by the designers???

Secondly, my doll had funky hair. Now, from my previous work experience at American Girl, I know that sometimes a doll wig or rooted hair can be "off". It' s a fluke but it happens. My Rochelle had beautiful, wavy hair on one side and a frizzy mess on the other. It was very unbalanced. I had heard of "boiling water treatments". This terrified me but I had heard that they take out the frizz and can really do good things for these saran plugs that are rooted in these dolls' heads!

I was nervous but I took the plunge, so to speak! I boiled some water on my stove and poured it into a bowl in the sink. I waited about 2 minutes so I wouldn't melt her! I made sure that I only did her main hair. Even though her big, rolled curl bangs are crunchy with product, I still really like them and want to keep them, at least for now! I swished her hair around in the water, praying that I was doing the right thing! The bowl was big enough to give all the hair enough room to spread out during the "swishing" part, which only lasted a minute or so! I pressed her hair flat in a dish towel and squeezed out the excess water. Then I brushed her hair out. I was pleased. (I apologize for the tea box! I don't have any good chairs or furniture in scale for these dolls yet so I grabbed what was handy! Besides, boiling water isn't just for doll's hair after all!)

I felt I wanted some length but I wanted it short enough in the back to show off those cute wings! I thought an angled cut would do this nicely. I separated the hair on the sides, using her ears as a guide, and clipped that hair off with some tiny hair clips from the Dollar Tree.

Her hair is amazingly thick! I thought it was best to do the actual cutting in layers so it wouldn't end up slipping and sliding around and ending up all different lengths! Did you ever cut a Barbie's hair when you were a kid? Didn't you think the best way was just to grab it into a ponytail and have at it? Weren't you always shocked it didn't come out as you envisioned it? Yeah. That happened to me. It wasn't going to happen here, if I could help it! I decided to start with the underside and go a little longer than I actually wanted it. (You can always cut more but you can't put it back on!) I knew there would be extra trimming involved! I am really nit-picky and I tend to "fix" a lot! I measured with my finger to try and get a straight line. But I cut from the right side to the middle and then from the left to the middle. Sometimes if you cut straight across a doll's hair, the scissors actually push the hairs to one side and it can get uneven pretty quickly!

Just a note: I used super sharp little sewing scissors! The sharper the better and smaller is easier to maneuver. If you have giant scissors on a little head, you might cut more than you bargained for in a snip! Sharp little tips also come in mighty handy for the "fixing"!

I was pretty pleased with the result, it was longer than I really wanted so I could trim and "fix" to my heart's content! (See, no matter how careful I was, I knew I would still get that jagged part!)

The hair was still a little too long, I really wanted it to fall just above the wing holes in Rochelle's back but I thought it was best to get the next layer of hair even with this before I went shorter. Again, God forbid I made a drastic mistake! I know I didn't want her to have a super short bob! It could have ended up that way quickly if I didn't take the extra steps!

After getting it all even and then trimming it upwards, slowly and carefully, I let the front shanks down. After I did this, I spritzed them with water and brushed them smooth.

The brushed out shanks were much thinner that the back, just because of the quantity, so it was easy to get a relatively thin, flat layer to cut. I knew I wanted an upward cut and I wanted it to be even on both sides, so I used her elbow as my starting point, making sure her head wasn't tipped upward.

I definitely like the angle! The long looks nice over her shoulders!

But she can still clip it back off her face.

The best part is, you can see those cute little wings much better! (this picture was taken right before i cut the sides at an angle. See how nicely the hair tucks right in at the wings?!)

Rochelle was a little horrified at first! Her hair was very thick and a LOT came off! You know that initial reaction to a drastic cut can be very shocking!

But once she collected herself, she was very happy with the style and cut!

It was very relaxing to be free of those tangly locks!

And I was right! The shorter length does make her hat look more jaunty!

Look out, Scaris! There's a new statuesque Monster in town!

So, as her hair dried, I snipped a little more here and there, making it look a little more even. (Hair always looks a little different once it is dried!) But I have to be very careful, I tend to go too far! So, at one point, after I had evened things up and cut the thick back part a little thinner (I did this by making the underside of the back part a little shorter, basically cutting at an angle towards her back. It was ever so slight just so it would lie nicely on her back, rather than be a big clump of freshly cut hair!), I put the scissors away and said enough! I was very happy with Rochelle's new do! I really think this doll should have had a shorter cut anyway! Maybe it was because I got Lagoona and Rochelle together and their hair was very similar? I don't know but I am very happy about it! I was terrified to do it, convinced I would ruin the doll, but I am glad I was brave! And slow, and very, very, VERY careful! But it honestly was easier than I thought it would be!

Hope this helps some of you out there who want to make over a favourite doll, just out of the box, like I did, or because she has been "well-loved"!

'Til next time...........

New Obsessions Need New Blogs!!!

This is the second leg of my doll blogs! I have a blog that reviews dolls under $50 (Affordable Dolls) and you can view that here. But, what to do, what to do when the dolls you buy to review start to inspire you???

START A NEW BLOG!!!

I have always loved dolls and doll houses. Working in the 1:12 scale (the most common doll house size) can be difficult, tough on the eyes! Working in the 1:3 scale (like American Girl, for instance) can be difficult also, tough when you have very small spaces! I have worked in both scales and loved them both! You can get very detailed results but, for the reasons I cited, both have been proved problematic for me. When confronted with the "in-between" 1:6 scale (fashion doll size, like Barbie), I didn't like the choices I was faced with. I was never a big Barbie fan and the high-end fashion dolls (like Tonner) can be very, very expensive! They are gorgeous but they would break my bank! Plus, fashion doesn't really hit home with me, I like a quirkier personality that the fashion models usually have. Doing my doll reviews, I have met my perfect fashion doll! I am totally obsessed with the Monster High dolls! I just love all the articulation! My Barbies never moved like this when I was growing up! You can pose them in amazing ways that convey so much emotion! They have their own little personalities! It is really neat too that they all have completely unique face molds so that when you line them all up, you can see all the slight differences. I have been gobbling these dolls up like popcorn at a movie! A Monster movie!!! At $15.99, or less, because some of these dolls are as low as $12.99 and at Toys R Us this week they are "Buy 1, Get One 50% Off", it is CRAZY!!! I am sold! I used to think they were a little too scantily clad for me but I see know that the clothes are short and tight but it allows the best movement of the doll and allows for more involved poses. Also, some come in pants and there have been shorts and sweats! I sound like I am trying to justify my 180 degree turn around (and I probably am!) but I do see another side. And I am very pleased with the view from here!

I recently went on Craigslist in hopes of finding some second hand dolls or a play set. What I found was an all-wood, 3 story Barbie house for $25!!! I am so excited! I am going to take it apart, paint it black, and personalize each of the floors to go with the Monster High theme! I am really thrilled to have this new project and my brain is going a mile a minute with all the crafty, creepy ideas!

(I LOVE that this has 2 storage drawers!!!)

My ghouls were NOT amused. Pink? Barbie? Whaaaat???

They started the makeover right away!

My ever-expanding band of Monsters will be living in the lap of luxury as soon as I can get supplies! You can watch it all unfold here because I will be going step by step and providing as many directions and/or tutorials as I can! (I say that because sometimes I get too excited and go too many steps ahead to really call them "tutorials"! But I will try my very best to show you what I am doing and how!)

So, STAY TUNED! The gloomiest is yet to come.......