Success! Curling my AG doll's hair - quick tutorial

 I've watched quite a few tutorials on Youtube on exactly how you go about curling dolls' hair. Not just AG, but also Barbie and other fashion dolls and MLP. I want to make sure that when I do fix up a TLC doll or pony, I do it right. And there are different techniques to use for different types of doll hair, 

I ended up with some AG dolls who's hair was not exactly in nice condition and I've had great success conditioning it in the past and carefully using my straight iron set at 100 degrees to de-frazzle it. It is definitely a time consuming process (it can take an hour or more) but I actually do enjoy the process. I've just never have been quite brave enough to try curling an AG doll's hair.

The other day, I decided it was time to try my hand at it. I have this JLY #24 who's hair needed a fixing up.

As you can see, it could be worse, but as it was, it just didn't look very nice at all. I did my usual wet the hair, apply heavy condition, comb a tiny section at a time and then flat iron it process. This cleaned up pretty much all of the frizzies and was looking great before I curled it.

I've stock piled curlers for a few years now. I have a passel of different type of curlers that aren't foam curlers (those take forever and a half to dry!) that I have gathered through the years for when I finally get to working on my vintage ponies. And finding the right kind of curlers was far harder than I expected. When I was buying them, I wasn't really thinking about AG dolls. Thankfully, I had some the right size. I'd guesstimate them to being 1" or maybe 3/4" rollers in width. I only had 9 of them, which luckily suited my purpose just fine. Here's how I did it:

I carefully divided her hair up into sections -  3 per side and 3 in the back - and left the conditioner in. I later second guessed this decision as that meant that I would need to still rinse it out of her hair, but I'll get to dealing with that in a minute. I took each section and starting at the top of both the hair and the roller (turned up and down) and wrapped the hair around the roller from the top downward instead of rolling the hair onto the roller with the roller itself. I had a little trouble getting the ends to lay flat and neat. Using perm paper or even a paper towel would have fixed that problem. I'll do that next time. Then I popped the cover on the roller and moved onto the next. 

One thing that I learned was that it is very important for the end result the exact position the rollers are in when you set them. The rollers need to be straight up and down and close to her head. Don't put her facing downward for the hair to dry - if you do, the curls will be dry at an odd angle and it isn't fixable at that point. Sit her down with the curlers resting naturally for her hair to dry correctly. This is how the rollers looked in her hair.

Now to set the curls! I brought a large pan of water nearly to a boil - it was starting to form bubbles on the bottom - and then poured that water into a glass mixing bowl. I did not bring the water entirely to the boil - it will damage AG hair if put straight into boiling water, unlike Barbie who you can. And I know not to dunk the doll's hair into the metal pan as it could melt touching the bottom.

I poured water via a measuring cup over her curlers and then decided to just go ahead and dunk the hair into the bowl. I didn't leave it sitting, I just dunked. 

I left the hair to sit for awhile and then figured I might as well try to rinse the bulk of the conditioner out as best as I could while the hair was still setting. I had no idea if leaving the conditioner in was a bad idea, but it was as it was. I just carefully rinsed the top of her head and very carefully went over each curl with water from the faucet. Dunking it into a bowl of clean cool water would be a good idea too, and likely save on water waste. 

Then I left her to dry for over 12 hours. I originally curled her hair at 3:30 in the afternoon and took the curlers out the 2nd following morning. I wanted to give it plenty of time to dry and set. If you live in a dry climate, you could take them out earlier than I did. I did do a good enough job rinsing out the conditioner while the curlers were still in. Even if it might not do anything for the hair, I'm going to continue leaving the conditioner in every time I curl it the hair as in my mind, it is extra safety going into the hot water.

And here is how she turned out! I am so proud of her hair. It isn't perfect but it really looks good!

Now Delphine is all ready to have her hair styled and be dressed! I'm putting her in the 1850's NOLA style. I have a dress that I made some years back off of the MG paper dolls for her to wear. It's a little worse for wear and needs an ironing, but it is better than nothing.

I'd really like to make her something new as I made more than 1 pattern off of the MG paper dolls, but man, my old AG patterns that I made years ago are a mess! I have my hands more than full trying to figure how what I used to do as I didn't write down much besides 'NO SA (no seam allowances)" and the occasional "cut 1." Or possibly a label such as "Butterfly Lolita sleeve." If I could kick my past self for trusting future me to remember simple basic methods of putting these dresses together, I would. *sigh* My disaster Lolita dress project of yesterday is a post for another day. 

I'll post pics of Delphine when she is fully dressed and ready to go! 1 down, more wigs to fix up and curl!

Garden Prep 2024 - the plans and some things done

 I've been very excited to get to gardening time. I learned a LOT last year - one of which was the differences between determinate and indeterminate tomatoes. Sure, I heard the term when I started watching youtube videos on growing tips. But this was AFTER I had bought and planted all of my tomato plants. I had no idea the growth heights indeterminate tomatoes could go to - I mean really, my garden last year was a mass of tomato jungle! So this year it was no decision - I was going to get determinates and save myself the headache of building 7 foot trellises. 

So in order to get the kinds of tomatoes I was looking for, I needed to strike pretty quickly and get the tomatoes when they were available. While I was waiting in anticipation for nurseries to put out any tomato that wasn't indeterminate, I starting getting my garden area prepped and ready for the tomatoes.

This wasn't a simple task. Last year, I built a cinder block "box" area with the intention of doing raised garden beds for my strawberries. It didn't happen. Instead, I simply lined my strawberries in their pots within the boundaries of this box. This year, I wasn't sure if I wanted to fool with strawberries again, being that last year's strawberry output was a little disappointing. But in the end, I figured I'd give it one more go, and fix up the patch like I wanted.

What I have is a low garden bed that is in between a bed and inground. This year, I added fresh soil and compost, put the strawberries in ground and mulched around each plant in the hopes of avoiding berry rot from the growing berries being on the wet ground. It really looks great. And so far, I've seen all but 2 of my plants growing strawberries.

Next, I went over and over and OVER my plans for the main garden area. It's not really very large - pretty much only 10 X 10 or so. Last year I had a mix of peppers and tomatoes. The peppers were started too late - in June, so we only had one decent harvest. I figured this year, I didn't want to hassle with them, even though I was going to be planting much earlier this year. I rechecked the correct spacing between tomato plants and decided that I would just fill the space with tomatoes. And after much, much driving myself crazy with research, plant garlic and basil between the rows of tomatoes. 

Getting the main garden patch prepped was actually pretty easy. I added more soil and fresh compost and used my cultivator to turn it under and voila! It was ready to go. As of last week, all the tomatoes are in the ground and have already grown a little bit since I planted them. I hope using my smaller regular tomato cages are going to be okay with my mostly Roma determinates. I need to get a few more cages and we are all set. 

I haven't yet planted the garlic. I've researched how you prep your seed bulbs and it's on the docket to do very soon. The basil is a tale for another post!

I had planned to build boxes with untreated wood and sealed with linseed oil for the squash. In the end, I wasn't able to get them built in time, and just have reused the containers from last year. They worked great - it was my support for each plant that was a disaster! This year I will build trellises, but that is still an upcoming project. 

The squash was a little stressful. Admittedly, I got mine in June last year, so I would imagine that I started my search a little early. I still had time - and in face still have time - to start from seeds, but I'd rather not. After more than one failed town trip and quite a few nurseries coming out empty handed, I found what I needed at Menards, of all places! So this year I am doing 3 of those, 1 zucchini, 1 cucumber and 1 pickling cucumber. The cucs I have yet to figure out where I am putting them, but I do know  they will be in containers.

I'd like to grow some pumpkins. I discovered they can be done with a trellis, if you go with a smaller pumpkin. I got some seeds for the sugar pumpkin. Which is ideal, as my plan is really to eat them. I hope I can build a box for them, we will just have to see. I need to get something figured out pretty quickly as I need to start the seeds.

Another thing I am trying this year is lettuce. Right now, my plants are all in pots and doing well. For how long, I'll find out! I've had them for at least 2 weeks, maybe a little longer. I'm planning on doing carrots, and I need to sow those seeds pretty quickly. 

My plan of doing green beans is pretty much out at this point. I bought 4 snap pea plants, and now they are taking the spot where I was going to put the pole beans. I'm still not ready to give up on the beans, but I should probably just accept the defeat and move on.

I do plan to do potatoes. I need to prep the seed potatoes and get them started. I'm going to try the container method and hope for the best.

Annd, I went just a little crazy with the herbs this year! I got things I hadn't tried before and we will see how well they do. I already mentioned that I would do a specific basil post - maybe I'll post about the different experience with the herbs. I have a lot more garden talk to blog about - I'm just kind of doing a quick recap. I regret not blogging about each step of the way instead of just posting it on facebook. Blogging can be a fun "journal" sort of experience, much more in depth than facebook can be!

Calico Critter - How to Change out the Eyes Tutorial

 Ever wanted to customize your Critter with new eyes? Here's how I changed out mine! I am NOT the creator of this concept - I discovered it and figured out my own system of doing it, with the tools that I had one hand. There is another customizer's video that you can watch on Youtube - just type in custom Calico Critter and you will see her complete customization of a Critter, with painting, sculpting, etc. It's quite cool. Since I am only interested with this project of changing eyes, I will explain how I did it. First things first - 

Tools 

*Aleene's Tacky Glue - other glues might work, but I can't say for sure.

*Pins with 4mm heads. If in doubt, take a Critter with you to compare. These are just a smidge smaller than the Critter eyes, but the best I found for both Adult and Child size. Babies need a smaller size.

*Wire Cutters

*Pliers - or I'll show you how I just used my wire cutters

*3mm Half round chisel - here's a link where you can buy just a single chisel

*Small phillips screwdriver or something comparable 

Step 1:

First step is to remove the eyes from your Critter. Take your chisel and wedge it carefully under the eye. Be careful not to come on too heavy handed - your don't want the tool to slip and mar your Critter's flocking. I did that. Once you get it under the edge of the eye, wiggle it a bit and the eye will pop off. It will soar and you will likely not find the cut off piece for awhile. 

Step 2:

That was easy enough! Now you are left with the posts still stuck in the eye socket. It'll look  like this:

It's a little unnerving at this point. :P What you need to do now, is to take your small phillips screwdriver or something comparable to push the post into the head. Do not use something that is wider than the eye socket or you will run the risk of causing it some damage. I don't know what else you can use, but this tool is what I used. It's a screw driver set for miniatures that had different heads on it. I used the star tip, but any round head will work. 

This is how it looks once the posts are pushed into the head. Note: I didn't care enough to take the head off to remove the posts as the rattling doesn't bother me. If it will you, now is the time to take the Critter's head off after softening the plastic with a blow dryer (be careful not to overheat and melt the glue holding the flocking on) and then pop it back on in the same manner. 

Step 3:

Before we continue, let me show you the size comparison between the pin head and the original Critter eyes. You can see the pin is probably a mm smaller. It doesn't matter. 

Now that the eyes are cleanly removed, we will prep the pins! First, take your pin. You want to bend the post down. So do this with either pliers, or if you only have wire cutters, you can still do this. There is usually a tiny little spot at the bottom of your blades where they won't cut. 

Next, you need to cut the post down. Here's a tip: You need to hold onto the post that you are going to cut off, otherwise it will fly into No Man's Land to become a potential hazard. I had a hard time trying to take a picture of exactly how I held it, but I held both the part I was cutting and also the pin head to also keep that from flying off. You just need to be super careful with the sharp end. 

 You want to cut off about half the post. If you cut off more, that okay too, you just want to leave enough of the bent part to help it stay in the head better. Test it in your Critter head to make sure it is short enough not to push the eye back out. Next step, gluing in the eye!

Step 4:

Take your glue and carefully fill in the eye socket. This is where you need to be careful to not overfill the eye. If you do (and I did it) the glue will seep out around the new eye and possibly get on the flocking. You don't wan this, but if it does happen, take your finger nail and carefully scrape off the extra glue. If you catch your over filling mistake before you push in the new eye, simply take a paper towel, roll it very thin and carefully dip it into the overfilled hole until its down to a better level. 

Step 5:

Now it's time to put in the new eye! Carefully and gently push the eye into place. You want to make sure it's in solid and doesn't slide out but don't push it too hard where it sinks back into the head. 

Now repeat that step until you are done! Here's my whole redone Marshmellow Mouse Family.

Time to upgrade my bathroom!

 This came about rather unexpectedly. We had a leak in the second bathroom, and while we were awaiting the plumber's arrival, I did try to put epoxy around the leak in the hopes that it would stop it up so the water would stop leaking out. The only time the plumber could get here was the end of the week - which is tomorrow. Needless to say the epoxy was a bust. But at least the water leak wasn't so bad that it was flooding the whole bathroom and spilling into the neighboring space. What it did do was cause the necessity of changing out the cabinet and sink that originally came in the trailer - while it wasn't ruined entirely, it definitely has suffered some damage. And we really just needed an excuse.

And since we were getting one bathroom cabinet, why not get a second bathroom cabinet for my little bathroom? :D We ended up getting a 24" grey cabinet with a marble (man made marble, not high end expensive marble) sink/counter top. OMG, how exciting!

The sink, counter and cabinet that came built into the bathroom was....not ideal. A plastic round sink which does not work very well with my coffin shaped soap dish. The counter top was this ugly speckled brown, and it also leaned, so we had to keep a neatly folded up towel on the right hand side in the back in order to catch the water. The cabinet was a decent size, but it had a board about 4 or 5 inches from the back where the shelf ended and had another board stick up about 4 inches as a partial wall. Behind that, it was just the plumbing, which boasted a gaping several inch hole in the floor which had to be filled in last year as we had 2 mice get in the house. (Joy.) More about that hole and the foam which sealed it later on in this post....Oh, and the faucet was really not very nice. Let's be real here, I hated it. 

Step one of this project was pretty simply - disconnect the sink and take out the old faucet. We started in my bathroom. The trouble here is that I didn't have the right tool to loosen the bolts. It is a very tight space, and the only thing I had on hand that would work was a pair of pliers which I had to turn straight up and down and loosen it that way as I couldn't get the pliers to fit in the space to turn it right to left. It worked, sink was disconnected, faucet removed, simple.

Next came the fun part....Fun is being used sarcastically here. The cabinet was built onto a frame which was secured via long screws into the floor and walls. They did come out fairly easily, but this is where it got tricky. We basically had to break the countertop off, and then try to tear out the framing once the sides and front got hammered off. 

And it is at this point that tragedy struck. As I was busting the framing away from the wall, in my gusto, I managed to snag the hot water line and break it clean off where the 2 halves were joined together. It was the worst feeling in the world. Water sprayed, frantic voices shouted "turn the water off!" I was so horrified. 

After using the wet vac to clean up the water all over the floor, all we could do, was head to the Home Depot. Luckily it was a beautiful warm day and I didn't have to change out of my wet clothes before leaving. I brought the broken off piece with me, and a very helpful employee found the right Sharkbite coupling that I needed, and the tool that I needed if I didn't fit the pipe in correctly. I also grabbed other needed tools. I came home confident and happy to be able to fix the problem. I inhaled my Taco Bell soft tacos and got right back to work. 

Well, it didn't go as smoothly as I hoped. I didn't fit the pipes in tight enough, so my first try resulted in water spraying out at both ends. And that tool? Really not easy to use! After struggling - in tears, I'll admit it. The thought of having no running water for nearly 2 days wasn't an appealing thought - I was finally able to pop the pieces of pipe out of the coupling, with some much needed assistance to pull the pipe out while I used every ounce of strength on that tool. Happily, it came out and my next try was a winner. All I was out was 2 bloody knuckles.

We called it a day at that point. The next day we had another sink and cabinet to knock out, and also the base of the cabinet that was still left in my bathroom.

On the following day (today), I admit to really not being very excited to work on the bathroom project again. I took out the second sink and faucet and happily left the cabinet demo to someone else. (I already busted one pipe....) I decided the best use of my time was to clean up all the unneeded tools, etc in my bathroom and to start cutting down that mountain of foam that was essentially holding the cabinet base captive as it was all over the back side of the right hand 1x2 and very back 1X2 of the cabinet around the plumbing.

I very carefully - with the help of a screw driver and hammer - pried the plywood off the frame, and then took each piece of 1X 2's off a piece at a time, leaving only that consarded back piece. I slowly worked on sawing down the Foam Mountain. My hope was to chisel out enough that I could simply pull that back piece out of the foam. It did eventually work, but it was a little challenging. There was a piece of linoleum that was folded up against the piece of wood that made it too tight to pull the board out. And I had sawed off all of the foam that I could get to around it. Finally, I bent the staples back flush against the wood, pushed the piece of wood as far back against the wall as I could, bent the linoleum piece forward and pulled and wiggled the board  until I was able to get it out! Woo hoo! Success!

After that, I sawed the Foam Mountain down until it is - I think - not going to be in the way of putting the cabinet in, Which we can't do until we get a jigsaw to cut out the floor of the cabinet to accommodate the plumbing. That foam is just an awful mess. I wasn't the one who put it in, but in their defense, it was a rogue can of foam and a tight space to even get back to begin with. Here's how it looks now. I regret not taking more pics along the way.

At this point, I'm putting more thought into the refacing of the whole bathroom beyond simply putting in the new cabinet. The walls are hideous, and full of dings and dents that need to be filled in. That giant mirror has to come down. The strips all need to be removed and taped and mudded. (You see how the corner has that horrible gap.) I'd really like to have the wall freshly painted before putting in the cabinet. It's a lot of work, and will take some time, but honestly, it's fine not having a sink in the bathroom. It's totally something we can live with so we can take the time to do the bathroom correctly. And man, I'd love to have that bathroom spruced up! 

Project memory Lane - the embroidered coat project

 Don't you hate it when you get those emails warning you how full your Gmail is? I've had that address since 2013 and I used to email a lot. I had pen pals, PMs on MBs, and of course, the random junk that one gets from just being online. I try to keep it cleaned out - ever so often I go in there and delete several hundred emails mostly from Promotions/social. I used to be better about cleaning out my Primary, but I don't do it as often as I need to. Where am I going with this?

Since my email has been around as long as it has, I figured I could just go in there and delete stuff from those early years. This took me down a path of nostalgia. I reread some of my old email chains from one of my pen pals - she was first a customer and we got to be good friends. At least good online friends. And then I also happened to stumble onto emails regarding a commission that I got via Den of Angels. Lucky for me, we had moved from the DoA PM system to emails to allow me an easier time of sending her WIP pics. 

I was thrilled, beyond thrilled to find these pics again. I think this project was likely 3 laptops ago, ha ha, and sadly, with the passing of each laptop, so too was the passing of many of my commission/project pictures. Just rewards I suppose of not bothering to update Flickr like I should have. I do feel the regret still. But any ways, I am so happy to have these pics. I've downloaded them and will mostly likely post them to IG and Flickr so I keep them while those platforms are still standing.

I got this project in the Spring of 2014. I honestly don't recall if she PM'd me after seeing my Open to Commissions thread (which I no longer have) or I responded to a Want to Commission thread. She was looking for a coat to fit her Luts CP Delf Type 1 doll, and it needed to be embroidered with a feather motif. Her idea was for the feathers to be similar in style to a parakeet. The coat was going to be in colors of burgundy and gold. Now, I have veeeeeeery basic embroidery skills, and because of that reason, I was a little hesitant to take it on. With that thought, she had to have PM'd me, as I don't know if I would have pursued an embroidery heavy project. I told her that I wasn't super skilled at embroidery and I wasn't sure if I could pull it off well enough. I remember that she really wanted me to make it for her and so I went ahead and took it.

This was tricky. She had drawn out on a computer program the idea of what she wanted for the motif idea and where these feathers needed to be on the coat. My job was then to take these general ideas and design a motif to fit into the spaces she wanted embroidered onto the coat, within the confines of my pattern. I had to redesign the basic idea for the front she was at first hoping for, as I couldn't get the various motifs - neck, front shoulders and across the back of the coat to seamlessly blend together. Let me also just say here, she was absolutely fantastic to work with, and was open to my suggestions as I really was committed to doing my best work for this project.  Here's my redesign of the front motif. I don't have the pics of her designs that she sent to me, unfortunately. 

I drew all of these motifs onto copies of my pattern pieces to make sure that they fit. Now, the next thing to figure out was how to transfer this to my pieces. The fabric I was using was a darker burgundy twill. That's not the easiest color to draw on with a transfer pencil, and so the journey of trial and error began. To do the embroidery work, I sewed my coat pieces onto cotton, but left the back of the pieces exposed so as to not catch the cotton in the embroidery process. If there was an easier way, I don't know of one. I ended up getting transfer sheets, where you go over the transfer paper with a pencil to transfer the design. That wasn't quite good enough, and so I got a white pencil to go over the blue lines from the transfer paper. While it worked okay, if I hadn't had good lighting, it would have been a struggle. I would occasionally have to re-go over the lines. The original plan was to outline each feather with black embroidery floss and then fill in with the gold thread. That didn't end up working, as it was far too bulky for the delicate design, so I took that out and just went at it with the gold.

The trickiest thing at this stage of the work was getting those neck feathers to go seamlessly from the shoulder motif onto the neck. 

And sadly, this is where my pics come to an end. There was a talon motif somewhere on the coat - I think it was right above where the coat's tails begin. I remember clearly what they looked like, but I just don't have the pics. We must have switched back to DoA PMs at this point. After all the embroidery was done, I still had to line the coat and sew it all together. I ended up going with a thin shiny fabric that matched the embroidery thread. I think the point where I was the most nervous was the lining. I had to be really careful sewing the coat together. Imagine if I had somehow messed that part up and had to fix the embroidery? Thankfully, it all went smoothly.

The embroidery involved nearly 90 feathers. Each feather took an average of 2 hours - more for the biggest feathers, less for the smaller feathers.  It took a LOT of hours to finish. I could only work on it for about 3 hours at a time, and at that point, I was juggling several commissions, which is really how I prefer it. All in all, it took me a few months to finish the project. This is one of the projects that I am the most proud of. I do wish that she had sent me pics of it on her doll. I remember that her doll was in the process of being painted with a lot of tattoos, and so he probably wasn't finished when she got the coat, and well, life has a tendency to just move on. 

Awesome Market Finds - some of my BEST yet!

I started this post on April 7th, but I just got around to finishing it today. 

We ended up going to the Flea Market today as 2 of my party had a craving for DQ, and the only really good one (out of the 3 we have here) just happens to be by the Flea Market. And so 2 of us decided to take a quick walk around and see if anything jumped out at us. I keep hoping that the Dollhouse booth there will restock some more furniture kits, and before today, she hadn't.

I always like to approach the Flea Market the same way - start all the way to the right and make our way up and down each row. I know where the good spots are, but if you only go there, you might miss out on a randomly placed treasure. 

 I was surprised that we came across a dollhouse in the furthest side of the Market that was really cute. But with a price tag of $125, it just wasn't worth it to me. It wasn't in bad shape, but the inside had wallpaper, carpet, etc. etc. and would have all had to be redone any ways. I found a Moxy girl for a family member who has started collecting them (and her hair was an utter disaster! I'll post before and after pics of her hair repair later.) I was so excited to stumble across 2 of those big 24" craft cows made in the 90's by Wang International. I know, it's an odd thing to love so much, but I have dearly missed my beloved Sorcerer Moo since I regrettably sold him off many years ago. These cows were in dreadful shape. And I mean dreadful! Covered in layers of dirt and grime, with discoloring on the hooves and mildew stains all over the muslin body. The price was a little higher than it needed to be, but I wasn't leaving the Market without him. I picked out the one I deemed in better shape (which really wasn't by much, if any) and was feeling so pleased. I have great confidence in the possibility of cleaning anything up.

And finally, as we made a loop towards the end of the Market, there it was. I, of course initially missed it, as my focus was really on spotting Barbie dolls, so luckily my eagle eyed companion saw it. A dollhouse! This one had most certainly seen better days, and whoever put the house together didn't exactly do a stellar job. But for a price tag of $20? Oh yeah. It was coming home with me. I actually got so excited I just grabbed it and started to take off towards the check out before I even looked at the inside. 

The house was painted on the outside, and the color palette screams mid 90's. (I later found out it is the Brookefield made by Duracraft in 1992. I have no idea how long the kit was available.)  It smelled really musty, and it started to quite literally fall apart on its journey home. Not that anything was all that securely glued into place to begin with. Trim fell off. The inside wall divider fell out (and somehow ended up in a bag - I truly have no idea how!) And upon closer inspection I noticed that the outside wall is also coming apart. I think it was put together with hot glue. Never a good idea. Hot glue should only be used to hold pieces together while the wood glue dries when not even copious amounts of tape do the trick. (I had to do that with my Orchid. Just put a dab of low temp hot glue on a couple of places, and then peal off carefully when it's job is done.) 

I know they say that if a house has been put together like that, you need to take it apart and re-glue it together with wood glue. I am not doing that. I would most certainly destroy the dollhouse in the process. What I will do is go in there and carefully reinforce the pieces with wood glue. 

I'm now officially out of space for dollhouses, and getting this fella to fit is going to be interesting. But I am so thrilled to have it. I didn't have a house for the 2 little resin dragons that I got specifically for my Orchid - which didn't work out. Dollhouses have a mind of their own, after all. So this one is absolutely perfect for the Dragon lair. The dragons are the perfect scale and the plans I have are going to be epic! Now, if I could just feel like working on any of my many, many plans, I'll be a pleased panda. 

The twins are here! My AG order arrived

 Wow, that was some fast shipping, Fedex! I didn't expect them today. They got here all the way from Wisconsin in 2 days. I waited until after I ate supper and loaded the dishwasher before I opened them. I also had some Wang dolls come in the mail as well, so it was quite an exciting mail day!

The twins are even better in person than they are in pictures. I will say they are pretty photogenic because they don't look better in person - which I know is a complete contradiction of what I just said. I think what I am basically saying is that they look so good in photos that its not a let down to see them in person and then also they look so amazing in person that they look even better than they do in pictures. That still doesn't make sense, ha ha, so I am moving on.

It's been a long time since I got a brand new AG doll. When did I actually last order one straight from the company? Could it have been the Caroline that I no longer have that I got in 2015 after I heard that they were retiring her? I think so, They have definitely changed the packaging. Instead of rubber bands around the ankles, they have these sort of stretchy bands that you have to cut. And they now have a plastic piece around the neck instead of what I remember being a rubber band or elastic. The hair nets were also on there super tight. I was worried I would pull some hair out, but it worked out okay.

Now, the dolls. Their faces are so very different than each other! Amber (Isabel) has a much rounder face with fuller cheeks. She is utterly adorable. Her hair is definitely not straight across the bottom. She would have been a doll a pickier collector would have sent straight back, as the right side of her hair is about an 1 and 1/2" longer. I am not a picky collector, so I can live with it. I couldn't bear to send her back! Beyond the length issue on her wig, I see no other problems. She has the most gorgeous wig. I adore the 2 toned blonde. Her bright green eyes give her such a unique look. I love it.

Sydney is technically prettier than Amber, but Amber is cuter. (I hate to do that to my dolls, but I can't deny that that's the thoughts that ran through my head.) Her face is more petite. Her hair, OMG. I love the shade of brown with those chunky highlights. Her wig has no issues. Both dolls have thick lovely hair. Sydney's eyes are the most gorgeous shade of blue. 

I am surprised to say that I actually do not mind the "angry" eye brows and I actually like the painted on eye lashes. I wouldn't want them on any other doll. I think the fact that the only 2 I have with them are my latest in date dolls - 1990's - it really sets them apart as my only "modern" dolls. 

The outfits they come in are super cute. I adore Amber's pink platform shoes. I really hope they make another pair of those type of shoes for her in a black. I doubt they will, but I can dream! My favorite thing about Sydney's meet outfit is the shirt that is tied around her waist. It is so very much the era. Her shoes are also adorable. I do plan to get at least her meet accessories as I want her meet hat. I'd just buy the hat if I could as they rest of their accessories I can live without,

I wasn't expecting Amber to come out of her box with an entirely different personality than I had planned out for her. I had written out a quick description of her and Sydney on My AG Dolls page here on the blog. And after I opened her, she did not fit my previous description at all! So gone is the quieter Amber who follows her sister's lead and here is the actually Miss Perfection, compete until conquering Amber. Sydney is also a little different, but not a whole lot. She was always easy going, so I think for her to follow her driven twin's lead is ideal for her.

This was truly some of the best money that I have spent. I adore these 2 and am so happy to have them in my collection. They look great sitting next to my other dolls. I am so exciting to start writing stories with them! Though, now I have to rewrite in my head the first photo story that I planned out with them! I'll go ahead and add my photos, though I will be the first to say that they are not the best. I didn't take the time to set up any better lighting. I need to really figure out how to use my digital camera. At this point, I do a better job with my phone camera.....*grumbles*