New clothes for old dollies

Lordy, has this week been nuts!  I didn't mind having seniors at the library, but it certainly made things busy and I'm glad it's Saturday!  Saturdays are almost always slow.  Anyway, lately I have (to my mother's chagrin) been buying clothes for my vintage dolls like the little dresses were going out of style.  Admittedly I could be putting my money elsewhere, but where's the fun in that???  I've got kids that need clothes.  Kids like...oh, like Thumbelina.

To be specific, this is Newborn Thumbelina (which I've shortened to "Lina").  That "newborn" makes all the difference when shopping around for clothes.  Ideal made Thumbelina in a wide range of sizes, and knowing their various labels makes clothes shopping a tiny bit less painful.  Even so, this was the only outfit I could find for Lina.

I love that it's got a bonnet!  One doesn't see baby dolls wearing bonnets much anymore, probably for safety reasons, but since dollies can't strangle or smother a body can gussy up their dolls any way they like.  Usually my handmade getups come from Etsy, but this one came from an eBay seller named diamondlady1956.  Diamond Lady has a small shop with a handful of nice things for various old dolls, but as I said above this is the only thing she had for Newborn Thumbelina.  Now...if any of y'all have the larger Thumbelina dolls (14, 16, or 19-inch models), then there are things to be had for them.  There are also two dresses for Chatty Cathy, but I'm trying not to be too big of a pig.  My Chatty Cathy has some nice dresses already.

Moving along, Lina's friend Baby See 'n' Say (pet name "Elmyra") gets my vote for most improved, though I'm still not quite sure what to do about her off-kilter eye.  Take that back, I know what to do, but it'll just be a cover-up.  For now, instead of having Elmyra fully repaired, I think I'll have her with a mild disability, because anyone can have or develop eye problems.  Anyway, here's how Elmyra looked when she arrived...

...and this is what she looks like now.  I brushed her hair, lightly washed her face, and then came the outfit.

Her little outfit is a Corolle outfit sized for 17-inch dolls.  Admittedly it's a bit of a squeeze around the neck, but once I get that top button fastened Elmyra is good to go.  Well, almost...I do have an eyepatch from TimberCreekCraftsTX waiting for her as well...

...and the glasses finally came!  They're your plain plastic American Girl-sized glasses, and I'm hoping they'll fit Elmyra's slightly wider head.

...eh, it'll do.  At least poor ol' Elmyra isn't sitting around with one white eye like that guy in "The Tell-Tale Heart."  Shudder...it's rare when Poe's writing gets next to me, but that one gave me the creeps.  But Elmyra is good now, and I give kudos to my mother for suggesting the eye patch in the first place.

This next doll is twins, and they get to model two outfits apiece.  They're both dolls that I've spoken of in the past but haven't reviewed.  Say hello to Lazy Dazy (pet names are "Maisy" and "Daisy"; Maisy will always be on the left).

They're both pretty beat-up.  Maisy has some rips in her body fabric that I'll need to fix in the future, both need hair treatment (a simple brushing didn't work), and they're both missing eyelashes.  I'm not sure how to fix that last bit, but I can at least make them aesthetically pleasing.

MamaPsCrafts is a good place to go for baby doll clothes, though admittedly I was a bit skeptical about how these would fit Lazy Dazy dolls.  The listing says they're sized for twelve-inch baby dolls, and Lazy Dazy is twelve inches, but...well, y'know.  In the end I needn't have worried about these fitting.  Both Maisy and Daisy look nice and comfy, but not too much so.  These rompers are lightweight ('cause summertime, that's why), but when winter comes they're covered there too.

Piggies for Maisy, Malden Greenwave colors for Daisy.  Indeed, the whole reason why I wanted that green and yellow getup was because it's Malden's colors.  Even when my contempt for the Malden school system ran Marianas Trench-deep, I still loved that our colors were something besides the standard red or yellow or blue that a lot of the other local teams use.  Clarkton and Holcomb use purple as their dominant color, and New Madrid uses green like Malden does, but for the most part towns around here are red, blue, or yellow.  ANYWAY, these little getups are also sized for twelve-inch dolls and are made of fleece.  They also will fit Emily, the My Lickety Treats doll, if I so choose.  And by the way:  MamaPsCrafts includes free little diapers with her purchases, so if you want your doll's butt covered, you're...well, covered!  Some of the fabrics are also gender-neutral, so if you have a boy doll or one that's kinda ambiguous (like Elmyra kinda is) then you're still covered.

The next doll is yet another of the ones Tam sent to me, Real Baby (pet name "Geneva").  She didn't really need a new outfit, as she's already very well-dressed.

This was a case of "I saw it and wanted it."  Once again, the Etsy shop is MamaPsCrafts, but this dress is sized for...well, for a 21-inch baby doll like Real Baby.

This listing is a little different than the ones that the Dazy twins are modelling, in that it offers both an array of fabrics AND an assortment of styles.  I could've gotten a romper or a dress-and-leggings set for Geneva, but I chose the latter.  The characters on the fabric should look familiar.

I tawt I taw a puddy tat!  <pause>  I DID!!!  I DID tee a puddy tat!!!  I always hated Tweety Bird, by the way.  Bugs Bunny fully embraced his status as "a stinker" (his own words), but Tweety always played the "cute and innocent" card and got poor ol' Sylvester in trouble for being...well, for being a cat!  No, I don't want my cats eating Laverne and Shirley either, but I'm a bit more proactive with protecting them than crazy old Granny was with Tweety.  Either that or Sylvester was smarter than my cats...yeah, that's probably it, LOL.

Like Geneva, So Surprised Suzie didn't really need a new outfit either.  Indeed, she's got two already!  She's got her cute little stock outfit, and a pink party dress.

LOL, reminds me of the parable of the minas:  "Sir," they replied, "he already has ten!"  The Bible I used in high school was an NIV, and I know that particular translation has a lot of naysayers, but the gist of it was the same and I loved how blunt it was at times.  Anyway, Suzie has two outfits to call her own, but I wanted something else nice for her so I got her something for fall...or so I thought.

C'mon, no doll can belong to me without having something from Etsy!  The shop this time is BrierRoseDollClothes, and as with Newborn Thumbelina I think I got the last dress sized for this type of doll.  In the pictures it looked mostly orange, but when I actually got the dress I saw...that it's in shades of pink.

Granted, the lace on the hem IS orange, but for the most part this dress is black, white, and pink.

Drat, I hate Valentine's Day, and I...well, I don't hate Suzie's wardrobe, but I do wish it were a little less monochromatic.  Oh well, the dress looks cute on her so I won't complain.  There are a handful of other things to be found on Etsy and eBay, so I'll go snooping and see what else I can grub up.

That concludes my busy week!  Unless something else comes up I won't be back until next Tuesday.  That's when Malden starts school, and I'll have something...semi-school-related.  It involves a locker, so there's that.

Love y'all,
RagingMoon1987

The Temu baby

Well, I finally did it:  I heeded the call of trendy online shopping site Temu.  Temu offers lots of things for ridiculously cheap, but they also back up their online listings with reviews and owner pics...I think.  Maybe those reviews were done by Temu employees.  But anyway, I ordered a reborn baby doll...sort of (she's mass-produced), and I did this for three reasons.  One, to see if Temu was worth the hype.  Two, her sales pic was cute.  We all know how enticing sales pics can be...and also how misleading they can be.  Three, reviews said she's soft...which is exactly what eBay said about one of my other baby dolls, Mei.

Mei is a Ping Lau sculpt, something I can't resist, but she is definitely NOT soft!  Her vinyl is fairly hard, like that of a Wal-Mart baby doll or a Middleton doll like Adam.  For the record, Adam was not advertised as having soft vinyl...or at least, his Middleton brothers and sisters were not.

I like Adam better than Mei, overall.  He feels like a real baby in my arms, and who could resist that smile?

I will note that while neither Adam nor Mei have squishy vinyl, their cloth bodies are very soft.  With the right tools, both dolls could make superb reborn dolls.  Alas, I don't have the tools, the skills, the space, or the time to get the job done, so that's why I bought my own reborn.  

Bloviating over, my package came wrapped in orange Temu plastic and copious tape, but I was able to get it all cut off with no fuss.  The baby came in this box, entitled iCradle.  Never heard of it...<pauses to consult Google>...yep, they're mass-produced!  Wal-Mart and Amazon carry these, for about the same price (forty to fifty bucks American) that I paid for my doll.  Here's the box.

The box was not fastened shut, so I flipped it open and was mildly chagrined to see that this baby had zero padding.  She does have a plastic bag holding her together, but nothing else to protect her from scuffs.

As it turned out, I didn't need to worry about scuffs too much, but we'll see why in a bit.  Are y'all ready to see her?  Here she is!

Well...her hair certainly looks mass-produced!  See how it's painted like Mei's?

Wait a minute, I forgot to show y'all how the new baby compares in size to Adam and Mei!

Adam and Mei look like bigger dolls, but that's largely because the new doll's legs are molded in a bent position.  My Real Baby, Geneva, genuinely is bigger than the new girl. 

Geneva is just a big doll, period.  She would be a lapful for Sandy McCall, even more so than Salome was.  Anyway, the new doll has visible sutures in her skull.  See her soft spot?

I don't know beans from bull's foot about babies, but I do know that the sutures only tend to be visible when the baby is very small.  I remember Miss Emily musing about this when she was reborning Saskia, because Saskia was clearly an older baby...but she still had sutures visible.  But anyway...my mama calls this baby "Sandra," so I guess that's what I'll call her, but regardless Sandra has visible sutures.  She's also got visible veins in places (Mei, Adam, and Geneva do not, nor were they meant to).  I knew that reborn dolls sometimes have this (one of Miss Emily's dolls did), but with Sandra being mass-produced I wasn't expecting it.  Maybe someone did take the time to reborn this gal a little before I got her.  I had a hard time photographing the veins, but if you look closely you can see one right in front of her ear.  It looks like a little red lighting bolt.

She even has manicured nails!

Pretty cool!  Some folks don't like this level of realism on their dolls, and for other folks a few painted veins wouldn't be realistic enuff.  I'm not picky, so Sandra does me just fine.  She does have more blushing than I'd like in places, though.  Her wrists and her ankles are the pinkest.

I wonder why the joints are the most blushed here?  Babies don't crawl on their wrists and ankles!

Odd blushing aside, sometimes reborn dolls come with accessories and sometimes they don't.  I was delighted to see that Sandra did indeed come with several little freebies.  She's got her own headband, binky, bottle, and birth certificate, and I retained the tag for the sake of future reference.

Here's what the back of the tag says.  It's got a couple of examples of Engrish.

CHOCKING hazard!  LOL, it gets the point across, but I can't help giggling at that.  I love translation foibles!  I want to point out the binky, because...well, because even though it LOOKS like a real binky...

...it's not.  Adam and Geneva won't be using this bad boy!

It's got a magnet in it, as does Sandra's mouth.  Sandra can thus look like she's sucking on it, AND I can turn it any ol' way I want!

Usually babies get the binky oriented in their mouths correctly, but not always.  This comes off easily, by the way.  The magnet holds, but it only takes a gentle tug to separate doll from binky.  I make note of this because we all know how magnets can cling, and how babies can be stubborn!  

I'll also touch on the headband, even though it's just a soft piece of elastic with a lace bow attached.  

It stretches to fit and looks very becoming on Sandra.  It would probably fit Mei and Geneva too, but I'm leaving it on Sandra.

If Sandra is like all the babies I've known, then she probably HATES "having that ol' thing on her head," as my grandmother would've put it.  If Sandra were a real baby I wouldn't force the issue, but since she isn't real I'm having my way, LOL.

Overall Sandra is about what I expected from Temu.  She's a nice doll, but not on equal footing with the ridiculously priced uber-reborn dolls one can find on eBay.  She reminds me a bit of Adley and Annabelle, the two little semi-reborns that visited me at the library last fall, except that like Adam and Mei they were bigger than Sandra.  Even though Sandra isn't super-duper detailed she IS a nice little doll, one that could stand up to gentle play from a child and a fair amount of cuddling from an adult collector, just as Adley and Annabelle could.  She's also a good doll for a newbie to the reborn world, like I kinda, sorta am.  She is soft, just as advertised, and I've never, repeat, EVER had a doll that could hang on to her own binky.  I am curious about what iCradle's other products are like now; do they all come with little veins, or did someone legit work Sandra over a little before sending her to me?  I don't know, and I have no intention to find out since I don't need another baby in this size.  Adam, Sandra, and Mei are quite enuff for me!  Oh yeah, and Geneva, but she's kinda in a class of her own.  For some reason I'm extremely fond of Geneva, and I may do a post just for her one day.  

Baby Love,

RagingMoon1987