Mini Brands- My Mini Baby 5 Surprise!

I was in Walmart over the weekend and found the Mini Brands My Mini Baby 5 Surprise! that Grandma Gets Real  had posted about on her Instagram and her Facebook posts. These adorable little infants come with five items, including tiny little velcro panties, and usually some toddler piece of furniture/ equipment. I purchased mine at Walmart for $7.97! The infants come in three color combos, pink, yellow and a mint green. Mine had a pink and white heart shaped fabric pad on the changing stand that assembled quite easily. It came with two bottles, the babys diaper with velcro fasteners, and the soft baby. The race of the baby in my egg that I picked up I am assuming is AA or Indian? Very adorable with sleeping eyes. Goes really well with my AA Poppy Parker and my AA Barbies.

Above is what the Surprise ball looks like and what it contains-

So very very tiny and realistic! Look at the details on her hands and feet!

Brochure inside tells about all of them you can collect. They are so adorable!

Definitely looking for more mini-brands! I encourage you to follow Tanya- aka Grandma Gets Real for more on the Mini Brands!

Va Fashion Doll Club Raffle project progress

 I have had some progress on my Va Fashion doll club raffle project. I had posted about this a week or two ago. I still have touch ups to do, but we have progressed , despite the incredibly damp weather- which has prevented paint and stains from drying as rapidly as we needed. 

I finished the foods, and Chris finished installing the timbers and trims. Pilgrim Ken is as done as I can get him finished, I was more concerned with the table and the foods. 

I made a turkey on platter, four seperate servings of turkey, mashed potatoes, string beans with carrots, pumpkin pie, bowl of mashed potatoes, platter with fresh baked bread, and a cake as well. The animals are a turkey, dog, and cat. The back story is John and Priscilla Alden are celebrating Thanksgiving in their home, waiting for friends to arrive to eat the feast and their dog Prudence and the cat Patience with their pet turkey Old Faithful are excited to welcome their friends and family in their new home. (We were asked to write a paragraph to describe our entry. All of this will be done virtually/ online including bidding with our tickets, and later winners arrange to pickup their entries with the raffles. I am really pleased with how it turned out. 

Enjoy the pics! Happy Early Thanksgiving. 

Spook-tacular October....

I did not post much in September.  I was caught up and am still busy with taking care of my father who had triple by pass heart surgery and is 81 years old, and in astonishingly good health for his age to go through this procedure. The whole month has been taken up with taking care of him, now that he's home, been visiting him in ICU with other friends and family, and then rehab, and so on. As well as taking care of two households, and day to day business. 

I thought I might pull out pictures of dolls as I was going through pictures from the archives of a Halloween /spooky nature and start posting them until I can get new ones up. I am in a holiday sort of mood. Just to get the diorama juices flowing. I did not post very much lately, truth to tell, I haven't had much time to even set up or play with my dolls at all. 

I have ordered a small pure neemo articulated body for my Alice Blythe, so I can continue her customization. More on that in another later, post when the body gets here and a review. 

Since Ihaven't been posting much on my blog, I thought I would do posts with some of my best Halloween or spooky photos of the dioramas I have done in the past for the month of October.  I would like to set up the Gothic Mansion again but I honestly do not see myself having the time or energy with my heavy schedule. I have always, always wanted to do a big Halloween party with my dolls. I just don't have the time and energy it takes right now to stage and build and create the props needed right now, with the family health issues going on.  sigh. 

I hope you enjoy the photos, Lisa...

It's National World Doll Day!

Did you know that June 11, 2016 is the 30th anniversary of World Doll Day?

Here is the link to when it started. Click World Doll Day

I decided to use a photo from the archives, of the Poppies playing with the Barbie dreamhouse with the Kellys, as National World Doll Day has a 

logo with a doll, holding a doll. Mildred Seely began World Doll day by

giving a doll, sharing dolls, with a letter on June 14, 1986. It was meant to spread a universal message of happiness and love. 

So share your story of dolls, or pics of dolls, and get your happy on!

Custom doll- the young Marie Antoinette

As one or two of my previous posts showed, I was working on some custom furniture for an 18th century project. I call this my 'Chateau' project right now. While working on this to take my mind off of my mother's illness and her passing in December 2013, I sketched this out in my sketchbook with ideas I came up with. Like all of my dioramas, it began with so many ideas that it became quite indepth. The original plan was to just do a custom Marie Antoinette doll- but what is she without Louis XVl, the Dauphin and her daughter Marie Therese, as well as her faithful friends of her Court?
Right now I have finished Marie Antoinette's gown and her initial look. I will be making some other gowns for her, but this material I had on hand and so fits the inspirational photo from the Marie Antoinette/Kirsten Dunst movie.

The lit du polannaise divan/settee is all handmade by me - the drapes, tassels, pillows, curtains , cushions. I finished Marie's dress today. She is a Lilac Frost Poppy Parker withher hair washed and restyled into a tall Pompadour style using gel and alot of patience!
Marie Antoinette really did have a pug dog that she brought with her from Austria to France named Mops(Mops is a birthstone beauty Barbie accessory I customized by taking off his crown and making his silk ribbon rhinestone embellished collar- just like the Mops int eh movie) but it was sent back to Austria at the hand-over when the Queen was not allowed to keep anything Austrian. She later sent for her dog Mops to be brought back to her by Courier from her mother the Empress. 
The gown was redrafted from an old MSD sized Arcadia dolls pattern from an old issue of Haute Doll, I customized the skirt a bit because of the fabric. 
This project will be ongoing, and Louis is now in the works, but will probably not be done until late June. I am going to work on the Dauphin and Marie Therese next as well as the finishing touches to the lit du polannaise as well as working on the actual room for this scene. More later!

Sneak Peek...& Art for your dollhouse dioramas

With the ups and downs recently in my life, my routine is all out of whack...Just yesterday was I only able to get the decorations off of my Christmas trees! Today I thought I would get back on track with some sneak peak photos of what I am working on as well as a tutorial and some art photo files for you to copy to make your own elegant art for your dollhouse &/or diorama.
Here is what I have been working on, this is by no means finished, just set up and held together. 

It is a simple curtained aclove, done in the French manner. I am nuts and fascinated by all things French, especially from the 18th century- Rococco and from the era of Louis XVl & Marie Antoinette. I sewed the curtains out of some taupe satin I had, and the pouf drapes are out of a green satin and the same taupe satin. I still have alot of work to do on those curtains, such as cording and tassels. 
The photo is of Marie Antoinette when she was a young Dauphine, the photo frame is an ornament frame from Michael's dollar bins. I was not happy with the glitter on it but it does add a bit of pop to this project, however it is difficult to photograph. I copied the photo from google image search and put it in a special folder on my computer. Cut to fit your frame- and voila! art for your dollhouse! I have wanted to do an art gallery scene for my doll town with a story I have in mind, but have never got around to it since doing research on this project, which will be indepth this year. 
So here are some of my photo files of beautiful Art I have found on the web in my google searches. I love American Primitive as well, but that would not fit into this scene...I admit to a fondness for allegory art with the Greek gods and goddesses- it is interesting how they used these paintings in the 17th and 18th century.

Feel free to right click on the photos and save them to your computer for your usage. If you post them on your own blog, please link back to my blog to give me the credit, is all I ask.

18th century portrait by Jacques Louis David- I think after he was exiled from France. of a young man

 Queen Marie Antoinette, in her later 30's when she did away with the fripperies of her dress, and became more serious

18th century allegory art, of Venus & Cupid? I think

Portrait of a Countess? 

                   One of my favorites of fruit, and wine..

                               flowers and fruit

          18th century lady in a chemise a la anglaise

                lady in dress of the Directoire /Napoleonic period 

                        Two travelers, from the Napoleonic ll era by their gowns

                             Marie Antoinette's two children, Marie Therese, and the Dauphin, Louis Charles

           Bernadotte, a semit relation of Napoleon l, who became King of Sweden

                             18th century gentleman in hunting costume

I hope some of these will help for your focal art points in your dioramas. As you can tell, my style tends towards traditional colonial/ French than towards modern. So many dioramas are done in modern motif and it can be well, boring and uncomfortable looking. I think it is a result growing up in the Southern Region of the East Coast (Virginia) and being around antiques and large old houses which heavily influenced my taste in decor. My dolls have my taste- lol so they are a little snobby as most Fashion Royalty dolls are!

As I get and find more art pieces, I will post them here so you too can make or create your own art. One tip is if you are creating an art studio, is to take these cutouts and modge podge them onto small canvases that you can buy in packs at Michael's in the art department. Frames can be purchased also at miniature shops or in the dollar frame sections of walmart, Target, Michael's and Hobby Lobby. It all depends on your idea of your scene or diorama and how much detail you want. 
Enjoy!