Off with her head!

I tried to love Vanilla, I really did. But in the end her shiny face and stock makeup just a little too much like Frankie the fake's got to me, so it was off with her head! I was a little bit nervous opening her up as I hadn't done an FBL before, but I needn't have worried as it was exactly the same an an RBL.

Possibly not the wisest decision to customise her, but I figured that I would have to sell her as bait anyway (even though she had no scratches or damage) as her scalp is so bad, so what the hell. I might even attempt my first boggle and gaze correction on her. I'm going to try to fill in the massive gap in her rooting with some saran as well. If it doesn't work out, I have a really beautiful Audrey scalp here as a backup plan and if I still don't like her then out she goes. As bait. It's ridiculous really. And yet another compelling reason to get your dolls from Junie Moon - I could have returned her then.

So here she is, a blank canvas - for the time being. Mwah hahahaha! Usually I find the sanded faceplates quite beautiful and delicate looking, but even with no makeup, I'm not liking the FBL so much. She looks a bit dour don't you think?

You know what though, I am really a bit miffed at Takara. I should have been able to sell her without any concern at all as she was NIB when I bought her - their quality control absolutely stinks of late! Just look at how bad this scalp is. I am so not impressed. Especially when I see the lovely thick ones that other people got.


Anyway, hopefully I will like her better with a new faceup. And perhaps a hat!

The restless collector....

I didn't think that this would happen to me quite so soon. After my disappointment with Vanilla I thought that perhaps I was done with buying new Blythe, but the last few days have seen me wistfully trolling ebay and Flickr, not to mention the trade threads on the forums. I'm thinking maybe I should take the plunge, sell one or two that don't excite me and get myself a new girl. Or two.

Right now I am thinking I'd like an Enchanted Petal or a Simply Peppermint (to be customised), or a blonde girl like Silver Snow (I have my eye on one already customised - she's very pretty. Shame I have no funds at the moment until I sell another doll!). I'd also like a Simply Sparkly Spark. She has the best hair ever right out of the box!

Meanwhile, I ordered a blonde bob wig for Vanilla and am itching to sandmatt her, change her chips and see if I like her any better. I have seen some adorable customs on Flickr, but they notably all have much better hair than mine. Maybe I could just cut my losses now, sell her on and put the funds towards Sparkly Spark. Or customise her anyway and sell her if I don't warm to her.

I never did bond with my Star Dancer and I don't have the heart to have her customised as she is in such good condition stock. It seems so silly though, as she's the most valuable Blythe in my collection and I couldn't afford to replace her. What's wrong with me? She's so pretty and I barely give her any attentio - she doesn't even have a name!



Should I hang onto her and see if she grows on me? I don't like to photograph her because of her super-shiney face and I think I'd prefer a blonde with a lighter skintone. Perhaps I'll be saying goodbye to her soon - if I can bring myself to sell her!

Living vicariously!

I love the 50s. I wish it still WAS the 50s! In my little idealised version of it, everyone is nice and mannerly and there's a lot of pie and swing dancing. I've always secretly wished that crinolines would come back into fashion - there's something so feminine and dainty about all that tulle and big full skirts.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, my near 40 year old plump self might raise a few eyebrows if I were to wear a big ol' dress out to Woolworths, but I can always live vicariously through Blythe :) I've been just about sending myself blind making these petticoats but I love them! They really give a dress some umph and they are soooo fluffy and ruffly on the bottom! I originally intended on making a double layered one, just like the one I did for Miss B, but I soon realised that it would have been a petticoat of ridiculous proportions (not to mention double the amount of super-boring gathering) so I settled on the single layered one, which is more than full and fluffy enough to indulge my 50's fantasy.

They take quite a while, and are not particularly fun to make either, but I am kind on obsessed with the end result so I think I will have a few more in me before I'm done with them, I just love the extra dimension they add to a dress.

New fakes or factory teething problems?

There's a new scandal sweeping though the Blythe community - the possibility of a few recent Blythe releases being copied and sold as the real thing.

For a long time now there have been Blythe clones, but up until now they have been easy to spot a mile off and have never branded themselves as Blythe. Blybe, Basaak, Blyth and CCE all look a bit like Blythe, some of them even sound a bit like Blythe. If you were a new collector you might be forgiven for accidentally buying one thinking that they were the bargain of the century only to quickly discover once you unboxed her that they were not a Takara Neo, but for the seasoned collector it's obvious at a glance from the auction pic that this are poor quality clones.

Here's my clone. She cost $25 and looks nothing like a Blythe. Excuse the terrible photo - I knew nothing about how to take a reasonable one at the time!




This is not the case with these girls. These Blythe are being sold as official Takara releases. They come in Blythe boxes complete with the printed inner and are even dressed in exactly the same way as their better quality counterparts. The difference being, they don't look right. And rather than coming from obviously dodgy sellers with barely any feedback, these Blythe are being sold by trusted Ebay sellers with hundreds of sales and 100% feedback - many of the people who have ended up with these dolls have purchased from them several times before.

There is (or was, it may have been removed now) an interesting thread on the This Is Blythe forum that had an email from one of the sellers of a suspected fake. The seller more or less says that the dolls are not fake and have come from a new factory in China that has some quality control issues rather than the usual one in Japan. Their claim is that the dolls are defective rather than counterfeit. Either way, there are some big differences, and I can completely understand why collectors are up in arms about this.

I would love to post some pics of this, but I'm not sure in terms of blogging ettiquette if it's ok to use other people's photographs from Flickr. Click the link here to go to the Fake Takara Blythe Galore photo group. It is well worth checking out. The sellers names are disclosed as well as comparison pics of some of the dolls in question. There is also a Bad Dolly Deals post here. From what I can gather the matter is still being resolved, so in all fairness it is entirely possible that the seller did not even realise that the dolls they were selling weren't right.

So far the dolls that have been discovered to have differences between them are Last Kiss, Urban Cowgirl, Simply Mango, Simply Gauva, Bohemian Peace and I've also heard of a Kiss Me True. When the doll is placed alongside the "real" version, you can see that there are quite a few tiny differences:

- Skintone differs (often darker).
- Scalp and faceplate don't match (but not always).
- Eye shape is wrong. RBLs that look like SBLs...but not quite.
- Eyechips are not quite the same shade as the original version.
- Face is strangely shaped - square rather than round around the eye/cheekbone area.
- Feet are stubby looking and square and the digits are more defined than the Takara.
- Stock is poor quality, particularly the shoes.

So keep on the lookout, join the group and check your dolls if you have any of these releases.

I will be very interested to see what comes of this - it is horrible to think that the $100+ that you spend on a doll might be going towards a worthless fake.

A hairy experiment...

Well known Blyther Aveuch has written a fabulous hair washing tutorial that you can find here. It's quite different to the method that I normally use and uses human hair products instead of fabric softener. His Amarylis Aimee always looks so good (and Amarylis has notoriously frizzy hard to manage hair) so guess what I have been doing today...

Yep - washing dolly hair. All in the name of research of course :) Five girls got the royal treatment today and I am busting to see how it looks when it is dry. I must confess to enjoying the whole process immensely and the human shampoo and conditioner is without a doubt more pleasant to use than smelly fabric softener. I have been curious about this for a while - it makes sense to me that dish soap and fabric softener would be more appropriate for synthetic hair, but there is something kind of enjoyable about using "real" products. I think it stems right back to when I was little and washing my Barbie's hair.

I really should make time to do this more often - it was great fun! During the process Vanilla's name came to me which is nice as I was starting to think she would never have one. Apparently her name is Prickle and she's more quirky than beautiful. I am thinking of doing a little custom work on her very soon to make her a bit more appealing. Or maybe I'll send her off to someone else.... I still haven't worked out how to do those damn lips!

For some of the gang it was their first wash, so I am really looking forward to seeing if there is a difference. I don't know why I don't just do it as soon as I debox them really - maybe I will from now on (should any new Blythe make their way into the house). The drying process will probably take a few days as it's very humid here at the moment. I will have to be patient I guess.

Speaking of the need for patience, I find that I am beginning to miss having Holly my PuPe around. I've been stalking FrankieDarling's photostream hoping to get a glimpse of her! Maybe I should have sent out a doll that I wouldn't miss quite so much, but I really wanted her to be a Frankie custom - guess I will just have to suck it up and wait!

Swoon! A new dolly crush

When I first got into Blythe I could never understand the appeal of Dal with her scowling and (to me at the time) unattractive face.

How things change. For a few months now I've been finding them well....cute. And wanting one. And then I saw this just a few minutes ago, and I REALLY want one!

I think that Tinkerina may own the best Dal in existance :) Is she not the sweetest daintiest creature you ever saw?

It's so odd how tastes evolve. I can remember first seeing a Goldie and thinking she was hideous. And now I want one of those too! Shame my bank account would disagree somewhat. But the Dal...she's do-able. Let the hunt begin!

A little update

Once again, I find myself apologizing for my lack of regular posts. It feels a little trivial to be posting about Blythe when there is so much sadness going on in my city of late. Today workers were urged to return to work if they could, so in a sense it feels as though Brisbane is soldiering on, even though things are far from back to normal.

Over the weekend we ventured out of our immediate area for the first time in a little while. Once to drop my hubby off to volunteer for the cleanup (or attempt to!), and later to catch up with some friends at one of my favourite places, the Riverbend Cafe in Bulimba. Our ex-Prime Minister and current Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd also likes it there and we saw him buying a coffee as he recuperated from the infection he got from floodwater in his foot while helping the members of his electorate. What a guy!

We passed quite a few places on the way there that had obviously been inundated, but with the huge turnout from the public to assist with the cleanup, the worst of the mud was gone and the rubbish had been removed from the streets (that I saw, I am sure that there are still lots of areas that are yet to even dry out). There is still a nasty smell lingering - a nasty, swampy, rubbish tip kind of smell. I hope that it dissipates quickly from the affected houses as it would be very unpleasant to live with.

The response from the community to help with the clean-up has apparently been quite overwhelming - there were so many volunteers that they had to turn people away! I dropped off my hubby at one of the volunteer muster points on Saturday (the traffic was crazy! - soooo many people were there) and after getting all kitted up with safety gear and braving a tetanus shot (a very big deal for him as embarrassingly he tends to faint when he has injections!), the roads were so congested with people helping out that the buses couldn't get through anymore. So I had to trek all the way back and fetch him without him even getting his hands dirty! It is great that so many people were willing to lend a hand. I just hope that the effort can be sustained until the job is done.

On my last post I mentioned that the supermarket shelves were emptying at an alarming rate that left me feeling a little scared. I went back 2 days later and took these pics with my phone (feeling like a dork while everyone stared at me). This is the bread department.


And here is a section of the fruit and vege department - apparently people aren't that keen on celery, shallots or cauliflower - that was all that was left!




I've been busy sewing some bows which I am thinking of selling to help raise money for the Premier's Flood Relief Appeal. They'll be a measley $5 each and are very cute if I do say so myself. I've got a few different colourways in progress - black, white, pale pink, blue dot, red dot, yellow dot and natural linen so far. More pix to come when they are ready - hopefully very soon.

Just to keep this a little Blythe-y, my favourite girl and bow model Holly arrived safely in America (phew!) for her faceup. Shame that she is away right now as I think the bows look really sweet on her - I would have liked to have her here for the photos, but I'm sure the result of her makeover will be worth the time without her.