Brisbane floods

I've been glued to the TV for the past 24 hours watching the most surreal events unfold.

Two days ago an 8 metre wall of water that has been dubbed an inland tsunami rushed down the streets of Toowoomba, inundating businesses and homes and picking up cars and smashing them like they were playthings. What makes this doubly scary is that Toowoomba is 700m above sea level, situated on the flat top of a mountain range. The water then rushed through small townships, lifting homes off their foundations and sweeping away entire families.

Right now my own city (Brisbane) is experiencing the worst flooding since 1974 and it looks as though tomorrow those levels will be surpassed. The CBD looks to be in real trouble. I just watched an iconic restaurant float down the river on TV. It is very surreal.

Our home is not in any danger of flooding as our suburb is neither close the the river or in a low lying area, but we are cut off for the time being as more and more major roads become flooded in places. My husband was sent home from work along with the rest of his colleagues yesterday when it became apparent that the water was rising very quickly. To give you an idea of how fast the waters rose, about 1/2 an hour after he arrived home the route he took was impassable. It's not expected that he will be able to return to his office until next week when flood waters recede.

People were panic buying at the supermarkets yesterday. I went out last night to get some pet food and a couple of things as I probably should have done the regular weekly shop (but was too busy watching for updates on the flood situation and fretting about my husband on his motorbike braving the rain, panicked people driving home from the CBD and the rising flood waters) and the shelves were completely empty. Not a single loaf of bread, bottle of milk, pack of flour, rice, pasta or noodles or bottle of water to be seen. All of the potato bins were empty bar a few at the bottom that escaped notice, any veggies like cabbage and corn that keep well were gone and most of the meat was gone too. There are no batteries and no candles to be had. I wish I had thought to take a picture - I've never seen anything like it! You would think that people believed that there was never going to be food again. The annoying thing is that I am sure that a lot of it will go to waste - especially the milk and bread as not that many people have the space to freeze it, and by being so selfish and overbuying a lot of other people may not be able to get anything at all.

My home town of Rockhampton has also been suffering from flooding for the past few weeks and my parents reported that similar behaviour in the supermarkets - people actually had fist fights over packets of 2 minute noodles and a lady bought every last hot dog roll from the local Wendy's! Probably at great expense too....

Unlike the situation here though, the people of Rockhampton are quite used to flooding. The waters rise slowly and most of the time residents have enough time to get their belongings to higher ground and prepare. In some parts of town the flooding is kind of a given event every couple of years. Most of the houses there are Queenslanders built high on stumps and although the water comes partway up the stairs, unless it is a severe event usually people are able to stay in their houses. My first job there was at Boral Gas right on the river and the staff told me that during a flood a couple of years before I started the only way to get to work was to be ferried in by dingy!

I have to say that I have never seen anything like this though.... I'd love to show you some pics but we are being cautioned to stay off the roads on order to keep the way clear for emergency vehicles, and besides it would feel like pretty poor form to be wandering about taking photos of other peoples misfortune. Here is a link to our local newspaper's photo gallery of the event to give you an idea of what is going on.

At any rate, as I said our home is high and dry, my family and friends are safe and we have a little bit of food in the cupboard and that is more than a lot of people have right now.

I have temporarily closed the shop for the time being as I can't guarantee that delivery won't be effected for the next week or so.

Bad Blogger!

I'm so sorry for my lack of posts of late - I've been such a bad blogger but don't worry, I'm still here!

The holidays were/are crazy busy and I haven't had a lot of time by myself to craft, do Blythe bits and pieces or blog which is why things have been so quiet on the blog front. Let me give you a quick catch up of what's been going in in Chez Dollybird of late.

I've been sewing people clothes - a long retro nightie for Miss B (which she loves!) and I'm partway though a skirt for me. I also need to start work on my practice version of my bridesmaid dress for my sister's wedding. I don't have any pics downloaded of the completed nightie yet, but it's from this pattern. The one on the left. I made it in a really pretty cotton lawn in a rosebud print.


Xmas came and went and a great time was had by all, even if our celebration was very small this year. Miss B received a tonne of pressies including the Sylvanian Families dollhouse and furniture. No Blythe under the tree for me, however I must have been a very good girl this year as I got a super-duper DSLR camera! It's a Nikon D5000 and very flash. It was my Xmas pressie and birthday pressie from just about everyone I know. Truth be told I am a bit scared of it. I think I need to do a course!

In Blythe related news, I sent Holly, my very first Blythe away to FrankieDarling to be customised - I'm kinda worried about her travelling so far. As you may know, I'm in Australia and Frankie is in Portland USA - that's a lot of time in the hands of postal workers. I'm wondering if maybe I should have sent Vanilla as I would not be quite so upset if she was to get lost/damaged and she really does need something done to her if she's going to stay here. Crossing my fingers and toes that Holly arrives safe and sound. Aside from the anxiety about her being in transit, I am very excited about the customisation. Here how she looked when I first got her just before Christmas last year.



I've only ever had girls that I customised myself unless you count Poe, who was kinda ruined when I got her really. I think that a number of my Blythes will be customised professionally this year as there are not have that many new ones that I am interested in buying and to be honest, stock girls just don't do it for me at all anymore. This year I would like to get a Simply Peppermint and maybe a Rosie Red. I still need to find an SBL and a BL for my collection as I really would like to have one of each mold.

I also find myself toying with the idea of getting a Kenner - something I never thought would interest me at all! There's just something about their skin that really appeals to me. I think I would get a Raven girl.... I blame it all on Angel~Lily. She does the most amazing Kenner restorations rerooted in Alpaca.

Cinders

Just a quickie post today, to show off Miss B's Cinderella costume. I was reasonably happy at how it came out, especially considering that I didn't have the added expense of a pattern. As I mentioned in my previous post, I used the tutorial from the Make It Love It blog here . Give it a go - it's fantastic!

I love this shot of her. I told her to pretend that she was waiting for her prince. She loves hamming it up for the cameras! Excuse my over-zealous use of Piknic filters - they help to mask the fact that the skirt part isn't the right shade of blue which I must admit annoys me every time I look it.

The underskirt ended up being much more work than the actual dress, but as I mentioned in a previous post a lot of that came from using tulle by the metre, instead of the chiffon on a roll. There really was a load of gathering involved - I think I may just invest in a ruffle foot as I might end up making the flowergirl dresses for my sister's wedding next year and matching petticoats would be super cute. Especially as it is a 50's wedding - squee!! I did take a few shots of the completed petticoat but made the mistake of doing it inside as has been overcast/raining for the past few days here so naturally the photos are horribly blurry and not really blog-post quality. I will try again on a sunny day. Maybe Santa might bring me a fancy new camera for Christmas and this problem will be a thing of the past - hint hint!

I am not really feeling the Blythe vibe right now in the sense that I don't have that longing to add anything to my collection. What's wrong with me? I still enjoy reading the forums and looking at other people's pics on Flickr but haven't been sewing or photographing my own girls for about a month now. I wonder if in part it is because I was so indifferent to Vanilla when she arrived. It's just shy of a year since I got my first one - Holly the PuPe and I remember how thrilled I was with her. I used to pick her up every time I was in the sewing room to admire her and just loved making clothes for her to wear.

In some ways it seems that the excitement at receiving each subsequent Blythe has diminished to the point where I just don't feel it at all anymore. The last 2 Blythe I bought - Star Dancer and Vanilla have barely been looked at once I'd deboxed them and neither of them even have names. Maybe it's time to consider moving some of the lesser loved ones on and getting a Kenner? Quality over quantity ya know ;)

Cinderella, Cinderella

Sometimes I just feel like avoiding certain tasks....and today is one of those days.

I have to finish making a Cinderella costume for Miss B for her school play. The dress is all finished and looks reasonably good, but the underskirt is giving me a whole new respect for dance seamstresses and sewers of those cute little pettiskirts that you see on Etsy. The $70 or so that they charge for those puppies is more than worth the money! I am currently surrounded by acres of tulle strips that need to be gathered and sewn and my heart is really not in it anymore. The tutorial called for non-fray chiffon but I wasn't able to source it locally and I thought that soft bridal tulle would do just as well. Let me just say that this stuff is a real pain to work with! And I'm sure that Miss B will be complaining about the scratchy-ness of it. If I had to suffer through this process again, I would definitely order the non-fray chiffon strips online.

Actually, having seen the costumes that the other kids have, I find myself wondering why I bother going to so much trouble. She's actually kind of conspiciously overdone! Although I don't feel bad for making it as Miss B loves the costume to bits and swans around in it after school, only taking it off for meals and bed! I guess I thought that since she had the part of Cinderella, she should look a bit special and I must admit that I really did enjoy making the dress part of the costume...and probably went to a lot more trouble than was necessary. The truth is that I love making costumes, and in some ways I wish that the culture here was a little more like that of America, with parents going to lots of effort to make things look nice. At least that is how things look from my blog reading Aussie perspective anyway!

The dress was actually not very hard to make at all thanks to the creativity and generosity of a wonderful blogger (Make It and Love It) who posted the tutorial here. I think I love this woman and I'm so grateful to her for sharing the method. You could use it as the basis for quite a lot of different costumes, just by tweaking a few things here and there.

The tutorial is more of a method than exact instructions as there is no pattern provided - which was great for me, as I find printing things to scale and fiddling with sizes to be a lot of extra work when I really just want to jump right in and start sewing. It shows you how to draft your own pattern using an item of clothing to draft the basic bodice and then just adding the extras that make it all Cinderella-y. Here's a pic of my bodice partway through construction before the sleeves were added, complete with untrimmed threads - oops!

The instructions are excellent and very detailed and there are lots of photos of the process. I was a little bit afraid about drafting sleeves, but they worked out beautifully. My only regret is that I cheaped out a bit on the fabric for the skirt and used a synthetic blend that I picked up on the bargain table. The colour isn't right and I think it doesn't have the right amount of body to really make the skirt poof out nicely. Unfortunately I didn't really have that much choice about it as there wasn't any satin that matched the bodice fabric anyway, and besides which, I had already spent a bit more than I wanted to on the materials. It's so frustrating how expensive fabric is here in Australia compared to the States! I also wish that I had cut the bodice a little bit smaller, as it seems to have stretched a little bit, but I guess in the grand scheme of things it doesn't really matter.

Make It and Love It also has a great tutorial for a pettiskirt that you can use to poof out the dress (or just make it for your little one to prance about looking adorable in!). It is pretty straight forward, but kind of time consuming as the huge amount of gathering for the two layers of the skirt seem to go on forever. Hence my procrastination at going back into the sewing room and finishing the damn thing off! I need to put an extra tier on Miss B's to make it a bit longer as the original tutorial is for a younger (and shorter) child, but I think it will still work well and hopefully will give the skirt some Cinderella-y fullness.

Oh well, I'd better get back to it. Endless miles of gathering (well about 30 meters of ruffling, then 10 metres of tulle, then another 5 metres of tulle x 2) await. And they won't sew themselves!

Simpy Vanilla Review

I had planned on doing a review of Vanilla when she arrived, but as I stupidly clicked BIN without checking the listing properly, my Vanilla is naked and I saved a whole $10. Note to self - read the listing before committing to buy, Noob! So at any rate, I can't comment on her stock, which did look quite cute. Especially the shoes, which I am kind of sad about, but oh well, lesson learned!

I was excited when I saw her in the box. Although she was naked, she looked lovely and had such nice straight bangs. So I freed her from her cardboard prison, took off her plastic fringe keeper thingy (her bangs immediately revealed themselves to be crooked - sigh) and popped a dress on her. And was underwhelmed.

Everything they say about her is true. I don't know why I thought I would feel differently. I wanted so much to love her! The thing is, although she does look quite sweet in photographs, she somehow does not feel as good quality as the other Blythes when you see her in person. Her hair is very fine and I can see her scalp through the top, her legs are sticky and super bendy and her face is very shiny - even more so that normal. I compared her to the others and none of them even come close in the shine stakes. I mistakenly thought her eye shadow was grey, but it's blue and her lips and blush are just a bit too bright for her pale skin and hair. Oddly, this doesn't seem to show up as much in photos. Maybe it's just that I am not a fan of the FBL mold. She has a slightly wistful look about her, I think.

So my overall opinion of Vanilla? Great hair colour but very fine hair. If that bothers you pay extra and get Paris. Very shiny face. If you don't want to spray-matte her get Paris. Make up just a touch too dark. If you want subtle, get Paris. So I guess really, I would have been better off getting Paris myself!

On the plus side, she was very cheap and I think she will be a great base to customise. I will be sending her away to have some work done later in the year I think. A bob, boggle, lip carve and face up from a top notch customiser and she'll look a million bucks. But as she is? Not my cup of tea. I would not recommend her for those who like to keep their girls stock in my opinion.

Inner Beauty

I've been thinking a lot lately about handmade Blythe clothes vs factory made. What is it that makes people purchase handmade items from Etsy rather than the cheaper mass produced Sugarmag clothes? For me it's always been about quality and variety. Factory made clothes often don't stand up to repeated dressing (or washing) and after a few uses the seams can start to come away. I also occasionally have trouble wrestling factory made items onto the dolls body, which for some reason doesn't seem to be as hard with handmade clothes. Some things, like jeans have a reputation for staining whereas the handmade ones seem not to be quite as bad, and then there is the issue of variety and dare I say it, individuality. A lot of handmade clothes are one of a kind. There is something kind of satisfying about taking a beautiful shot of your Blythe nicely dressed in something incredibly cute and knowing that there isn't anyone else out there who can replicate the look exactly because a duplicate outfit simply doesn't exist.

A while ago a read a comment comparing the prices of the handmade to factorymade and expressing shock at how much a handmade Blythe garment sells for on Etsy. Not so long ago, I probably would have done the same. After all they are clothes for dolls and use the smallest amount of fabric. It's hard to believe that it is possible to buy a human sized garment for not that much more than a doll sized one.

Having now taught myself to sew these tiny clothes, I can now understand that the reason for the extra cost is not for the materials, but the time and skill required to construct one. Admittedly, if you make mulitple copies of one garment using the same fabrics and trims I suppose that time would be saved. However having soon realised that this assembly line method soon sucks any pleasure right out of sewing (for me at least) I think that it's more likely that most Blythe seamstresses work in much the same way that I do and make each garment individually, taking the time to choose just the right fabrics, trim and little extra touches that make each finished item unique and that is what really adds to the time invested in each tiny dress - extra care and attention to detail.


One of the reasons that I've been thinking about this is that I've been toying with the idea of changing the way that my dresses are finished on the inside. My latest creation, the pink spot/stripe combo has been finished in such a way that there are no visible seams on the inside which I think looks so much better, but I'm wondering if I should continue doing this as the extra time taken should probably be taken into account in my pricing. This first one I am listing for the usual price, although it took me about 3 hours to complete all told. Does it matter to Etsy buyers that the garment is beautifully finished on the inside? Are they prepared to pay a little bit more for that little extra touch or would I be better off just keeping it simple?

Waiting for Vanilla and an awesome competition!

I caved in a few weeks ago and bought myself a Vanilla. There's just something about her that milky white hair and her complexion that I could not resist. For some reason in pics her skin tone looks a little different to the regular fair skinned girls - I wonder if maybe they used a different plastic? I think she will probably get customised though, as she really is very shiny and I find that I don't enjoy photographing the super shiny stock girls nearly as much as those who have been sand matted.

I'm not entirely happy with my purchase, although it is my own stupid fault. A word of warning - before you hit the BIN button be sure to double check the listing to make sure that it's exactly what you wanted. I got a little trigger happy and accidentally ended up buying Vanilla nude instead of new in box. While I did get her marginally cheaper, and her stock isn't super-special, I was a bit sad because the difference in price was a mere $10. If I had decided that I didn't want to keep the stock clothes, I could have sold them for twice that much. At any rate, she ended up costing me a smidge over $100 including shipping to Australia, making her the cheapest Blythe in my collection with the exception of the factory girls. I know she's just a "Simply" and not one of the more pricey and sought after girls, but all the same it's interesting that the prices have dropped so much. Not good for people looking to sell older Blythes though I suppose.

I have been looking at my collection with a critical eye lately and wondering if I will ever manage to bring myself to sell any of them. I never imagined I would say this, but I kind of feel that I have reached the point where I have just about got enough Neos. Instead of madly buying new dolls I will probably gradually send most of the remaining girls off to be customised now and I think that with maybe one or two more fantasy haired girls I will be happy to stop collecting the Neos altogether and maybe begin saving for a Kenner. I would love to have a Miss Sally Rice or even a custom Simply Peppermint but other than that I feel quite content with the dolls I have and could possibly even stand to let one or two less loved ones go. I'm still waiting to hear from Erica about sending Poe off for her new face, and I have reserved a spot with Frankie Darling to have Holly customised (I am so excited about that!). Now it's just a matter of waiting and madly sewing to make up the funds to get the work done!

Speaking of fabulous customisers, I stumbled across this great interview (and competition) with Melly Kay on BlytheLife that I highly recommend reading. I've followed Melly's blog and stalked her flickr pages for a while now ever since seeing her beautiful custom work on a Saffy factory girl (Bubble) and each subsequent doll somehow manages to be even more lovely than the last. Her custom Blythes have a natural life-like beauty and innocence that is incredibly appealing to me - the soft colours and the technique she uses to carve lips and nostrils really brings Blythe to life. I don't normally use other people's photos in my blog as I've never been sure of the etiquette and don't want to stand on anyones toes so let me just say that these are not my pics - they are the work of Melly Kay, so if I am doing something horribly offensive by posting Melly's pics here, someone let me know and I will take them down immediately. The reason I decided to include them is because my descriptions really don't do her work justice - you need to see her Blythes to fully appreciate her skill. These are two of my favourites.

I love this factory Qpot that she worked on.


This mohair girl kills me - she's perfect. The colours used in her face-up and chips complement her red mohair perfectly and her lips and nostrils are so beautifully done. I love the way the lower lashes are so delicate and understated. Not sure which Blythe she started out as, but she sure is stunning now! Whoever owns her is very lucky :)


Who knows, maybe I'll end up sending Vanilla over to her one day to get made over. I would love to have one of her dolls in my collection.

Melly Kay is having a competition right now where she is very generously giving away a beautiful Melly Kay Bohemian Peace custom, Bellatrix. To enter, click the link and read the interview at BlytheLife, and follow the instructions. Good luck to all who enter - Bellatrix is a really lovely girl!