Christmas shopping at LaBelle's boutique...

Today I stayed in as it was cold, drizzly, and pouring down rain. A real miserable day. I caught up on some paperwork but also on decorating LaBelle's boutique for Christmas and got some quick photos. The shoppers are out. 

I also worked on some Christmas cakes for the Santa's candy workshop/bakery. I will have more photos on that later. 

I used the Barbie look red evening Oscar gown in the window and a glitter Christmas tree. You can't see it but to the left is another clear plastic tree with ornaments on it and presents on the Bespaq table. 

I had to keep the props simple because LaBelle's has three large props in it already- the Barbie wardrobe, the Bespaq armoire and the Bespaq curio which holds all of LaBelle's inventory of jewelry. Plus two or three mannequins, two tables at the door with floral arrangements and nail polish displays, and the stage where I have a Christmas tree lit up. It is a large structure but hard to move items around carefully.  (Don't forget to click on the pics to enlarge them so you can see them better.)
Enjoy!~Lisa

Some quick photos of LaBelle's...

I have been awol  for a long time...I have been preparing for my Va. Fashion doll club tomorrow, which I will be doing a demo on how to create miniature breads. Plus alot of hectic stuff, though fun this week, has been keeping me busy every other evening this week in the beginning of June. It has also been incessantly raining which has also got me off my schedule of walking. Today on Saturday was the first sunny day we have had in over a week, but I was too pooped out and also too busy preparing for tomorrow and playing catch up to do anything about it. lol..

I thought I would post something for June..so here are a few photos of my Grande Seduction Victoire dressed as one of the Mademoiselles of LaBelle's helping a customer. I have had her a long time, so long I didn't debox her for a while. I got her out of that scalloped evening gown and into something more professional and chic for working in Romanine's fashion house.

I promise I will have tons of pics tomorrow and hopefully have a blog post up with some wonderful vintage and mod dolls. I've missed blogging here...Lisa

Suits Me Fine.....

I haven't done much except take down the antique store diorama and try to go through the stash to re-do the windows for LaBelle's for Easter. Yesterday I did a little de-boxing of Suits Me Fine outfit by Mattel that I purchased of of my good buddy Karon of Va. who I went to the Fashion Royalty convention last year. She is still cleaning out her Barbie convention and every now and then brings out a jewel of an outfit. She doesn't really collect Victoire as much as I do. And this outfit screams Victoire. Sous les Troupiques loves it.

Here is the outfit in its box if you are interested in hunting it down on ebay. She is not wearing the gloves, purse or hose and shoes as her feet will not fit in the shoes. I am pretty sure it will fit on a silkstone. The gloves and purse for some reason are red.

Here are some more pics of Victoire enjoying her window shopping with Poppys mother in her new outfit. 

They look so relaxed and so deep in conversation...I wonder if Poppy's mother is talking about the wedding and her daughter's engagement? lol...

Now onto a new little find that I had to grab off of Amazon recently. One of my diorama buddies posted about it a couple of weeks ago on Facebook, I forgot who. But I jumped on oppurtunity. 

I have been wanting to do a murder scene in my town for a while now. Kill off a doll who no one knows who he or she is. I have been collecting different props and have a hodge podge of stuff but didn't know how to put it together. Putting together a crime scene calls for a variety of items....such as.........

CRIME SCENE TAPE!

The vendor I purchased this from had only one left but here is a link to another on AMAZON and if you look for others you can find them. There is even biohazaard tape as well which makes all kinds of cool end of the world disaster scenes come to mind, with dollies bunnied up in mini bunny hazaard suits with hazmat clean up things going on. Ok I am weird but so many dioramas are done with shopping in mind...aren't we in the mood for a little breaking bad?? lol...

So still working on the scene and deciding how this scene will unfold and how the tape will be used and what characters will be used. I may have to acquire some other items. I could go all out weird, or all out Sherlock holmes. Sky's the limit. I have always wanted to do this since reading about this lady-

Francis Glessner Lee 

The link in her name explains her work. She was a Chicago heiress who took actual murder scenes and turned them into miniature scenes with the clues replicated into miniatures, and used the roomboxes to teach students in homicide investigation in the 19th century. This was a revolutionary concept. Her background made for interesting study as well and she was an even more remarkable woman. I like to think of doll and dollhouse/miniature collectors as overly remarkable people who are overlooked as people vastly misunderstand the amount of education and patience and attention to detail and understanding of scale and math it takes to do the hobby well, or to take it to an art form. I heard of this lady many years ago in Nutshell News publication and couldn't find much about her but with the power of the internet she resurfaced and I was able to find more about her. My own secret desire to do a murder scene and having worked in security and trained in law enforcement I understand the obsession. Hence, the mini crime scene tape purchase!

All for now!~Lisa

Fabulously Floral has finally arrived!

                                         

                          Fabulously Floral Silkstone Barbie has finally arrived.
  And, she is well worth the wait. There has been some reports that she has been sold out on Barbie Collector's website, I haven't seen this at last glance she appeared to still be available. The trouble to get this doll, at first order when she became available immediately, and I ordered her at full price, they offered her with a free calendar. She was immediately put on back order until 2/24/15 and this was with an order date of 1/15/15! As the February date approached, her backorder date was put further back to March 10th. I then found a message on my order status saying I needed to call Customer Service, which I did. The problems with this doll made me wonder if all the Silkstones would be this way, because I do want Boucle and the little Red dress has only 9100 in its edition. I may pass on that one just to save myself the heartache. 

Oh, I know it's St. Patrick's day! But it seems I'm backwards and since my Va. Fashion doll club meeting post was all about this holiday yesterday,  I've got my blog posts backwards too. Can you tell I'm more excited about this doll than St.  Patrick's day??? lol....
I invite you to check out a couple of blogs like Inside the Fashion Doll Studio by blogger Rebecca Berry, she does some fabulous pics and her friend Rogier of the blog Dutch Barbie World just covered a wonderful new one of a kind he acquired Rebecca took photos of AND the Paris Doll Festival a doll collector's dream convention. He also has wonderful photos of the Sybarites there. He is known as RC Silkstone on Flicker and Barbie collector. 
NOW...onto the photos of Fabulous! That has become my nickname for her....because everything is more FABULOUS in pink. I am looking for the perfect day to take her out for some photos at the botanical gardens before I redress her when the gardens are in bloom. That outfit would look amazing amongst the roses and tulips. Right now, here she is shopping....

I hope you enjoy the photos! I think they turned out wonderfully well since the light was just right. 

LaBelle's windows at Valentine's day...

The windows for LaBelle's boutique in the doll town are done in pink and red and the shoppers are dressed in pink, rose red, black and it's all about the color of love.... Some of my lovelies are shopping and I wanted them all to match. Ever watch TV and wonder on some of these shows how they get the actress, the star, to just stand out from everybody else and it dawns on you, she's wearing a white dress while everyone else is wearing blue, black or some other drab color and her hair is angel blonde ??? Like, even the architecture is stone washed so it doesn't clash with the color of her eyes? That has always amazed me. I think it is wonders what photo shop can do, snicker. Especially in film, it draws our eyes and emotions even more to the storyline. So with these photos I tried to get the colors to tone and see if that played together just right. In the first photos, I made all of the French pastries, the St. Honore, the Religious pastries on the plate, the three tiered pink cake, I wanted to do a chocolate theme but it did not turn out like I wanted to, so I went with a pink theme which matched the clothing I had on hand. The chair and table are Bespaq. In the other window, I made the dress on the Barbie basics model, the end table is also Bespaq. The little felt hearts were so hard to find, they were at ACMoore. Nothing in the way of decoration fit and this is why it was so hard to decorate in a timely manner the way I wished. 

I hope to do some more 'romantic' type of scenes with the guys and have them up by tomorrow here. The cottage interior walls got more coats of white paint which I had to go out and pick up in my travels as I ran out. Won't bore you with more photos on the Extreme Kitbash until further along with more to see.

Hope you enjoyed the photos, and Happy Valentine's day!

Black Friday shopping in Barbietown...

I am not a devotee of Black Friday shopping, or any type of shopping on a holiday. I do like to travel and see the sights, but I abhor crowds so usuallly I stay put and just shop online- the deals are better, lol. That however doesn't mean my dolls do with such boutiques as LaBelle's nearby. 

Enjoy! I will be working on other diorama projects so more photos will be forthcoming.