Charity roundup - Voodoo bears, art bears, Descendants 2 and more

I'm supposed to be saving up for two things this month, but I managed to sell some stuff and very little keeps me away from charity shops. I'm addicted.

So here's the secondhand stuff i've bought in the past 3 or 4 weeks.




Shortly after I wrote my last charity shop roundup I decided to go back and get the other cursed voodoo bear, so we'll start with that.

I felt kinda bad separating them.

As it was, when I got back to the charity shop a day or two later they'd put the price of their random plushies up to 50p. Bah.
Well still more than reasonable given that box quite often has near new very large plushies in it, but it used to be 4 for a pound. They probably got too many people who only wanted one.

The other voodoo bear wasn't as interesting to me as the first one, the print on the body isn't freaky as all heck, but the fabric nose somehow made it look more like it was howling in anguish so I admit, I drew a little mouth on to save my own sanity.
Seriously without the tiny mouth it was freaking me the hell out.

Like it's sibling it's been all aged and stained up with paint. Least I assume it's paint. This one has red on it too.

It's got the same bulging eye and wierd shaped head.

It's bigger than Totally Cursed, and a sort of pinky beige colour instead of white. The head is a slightly different shape, or maybe it's just that the eyes are positioned a bit lower on the face, but the ears are different and the bodies are totally different shapes. So I don't think these things were made with a pattern, they look to have been OOAK cut out and sewed together on the fly. Random.

Like Totally Cursed, the other bear is quite well made and very neatly sewn despite how primitive the design is.  The bulging eye is really well sewn in there, it's not coming off any time soon.

Probably Not Cursed Voodoo Bear, (Or Probably Not for short)  as i'm calling him is cute, but I think Totally Cursed is cuter and more terrifying just because of the fabric of the body. But they do make a cute pair of bizarre voodoo bears.

And nobody in the house has suffered any massive calamity yet so... maybe they're not cursed after all... or the evil is biding its time.

I also picked this up from Debra a week ago. £2:99 for a plush Chucky? How could I say no?

He was made by Mezco, so he's a well made little thing.

I've always wanted a real good guy doll, like movie accurate giant blank faced thing but the repros are SOOOO expensive and I have never been able to justify a grand for a doll, even if it would be awesome.

I also found this girl in one of my weekly trips into Shooting Star. She's a Moondreamers bear named Ursa Major, apparently. She's from the 80s and needs a clean. Poor old thing.

 

She has a sweet face though. Even if she's missing some nose paint. She reminded me of My Little Pony, but as she was also made by Hasbro that's probably why. 

This girl wasn't a charity find, she was an Ebay find. I've wanted a Kenner Darci for a while and several showed up from the same seller. They were a bit more than I like to spend on secondhand old dolls (£10, what can I say, i'm really cheap okay?) but they don't turn up in the UK very often, especially not the redheads.

She has a little age spotting on her head where it's gone slightly greenish, I dunno why.

You can see the pale spots under my attempt to blush them out.

Other than her vinyl fading, she's in pretty decent condition. Her body reminds me a lot of Jem dolls, apparently that's not a coincidence. Like Jem she has bendy arms and legs and jointed wrists, and she's about 14inches tall.

She has HUGE feet, but I found that she actually fits Makie shoes. Whoo! saves me the hassle of trying to buy overpriced Darci shoes online.

Because she's so huge she is quite awkward to dress. She can wear some stretchy Barbie stuff and will probably fit Jem stuff if I owned any, but I don't.

I also got some wigs and eyes for my newest bjds. Silas got a red eye from Candykittensemporium and a wig custom made by Twinstarsbjd. I wanted a side swept style in navy blue, I love the colour combo on him.

Husband thinks he looks like a fashion model now lol.

Rowan's eyes are also Candykitten and her wig is another by Twinstar. They specially made it with thinner sections at the sides so her horns could still be attached. Now that's customer service!

The final wig I had custom made was for Lu, my newest Makie. I wanted something really bottle blonde, with a red streak for interest.
And I wanted it without bangs so you could see her attitude eyebrows.

They did a great job, it's a very soft yarn wig and suits her I think.

Especially once she has her hat on.

Now, this week hasn't been an easy one for me. It's school holidays which is always stressful, and a very wet school holiday at that so the kids are griping and it's just really stressful.
I'd had enough of them yesterday, so they went swimming with their grandparents while I hit the shops for a little "me" time.

First I hit the charity shops in my local village, where I usually go at least weekly.

Shooting Star haven't had any new dolls for a while but they did have one thing I couldn't resist:

Vintage Bluebird Polly Pocket!

Now of course, the Pollys are long since lost, but the crystal ball playset itself is extremely awesome and at £3 nostelgia was too much, I had to have it.

As a kid I always found Mighty Max and Polly Pocket facinating, the detail in those teensy tiny playsets was amazing! But they were extremely expensive so my parents wouldn't buy me them. I had one Polly Pocket, bought some time in the early 90s with my own pocket money from a small independent toy shop in St Lukes shopping center in Auckland. We didn't go to St Lukes that often, it was quite far from home, but I loved that toy shop. It was painted all black inside for some reason and had so many toys I never saw anywhere else. My usual "toy shop" was Kmart or The Warehouse (another huge store like Kmart or Walmart) so an actual toy shop was a novelty.
If I remember rightly, the tiny little star shaped pendant I had was a good $15, which back in 1995 was a LOT of money, that was 3 weeks pocket money for me! or 3 Goosebumps books! lol.

That little toy wasn't nearly as exciting as the bigger Polly sets, it was small and very simple, but I still adored it.
This however? this crystal ball is absolutely freaking amazing, I dread to think how much this must have cost back then!

Originally it would have had a whopping FOUR Polly Pocket figures! WOW

The top opens up to reveal two rooms. Some sort of balcony with a telescope and a lake/pond with a swan boat.

The next section opens up to er... a crystal carpet.. It's the underside of the room underneath.

The whole thing opens out like this, revealing two more rooms to play in.

From looking online I know this set is missing bits. There should be a staircase that clips on between the lowest room (the pond) and the bedroom section, there should be a load of gems to hide in the various little hidey holes around the set, the birdhouse is gone and it's missing a little necklace piece that slotted into the triangular section on one side of the base.

But look at this glorious thing regardless!

There's a treasure room/powder room (doesn't even girl need a big pile of gold in her powder room?)

Pressing on the statue makes the trapdoor open.

Then there's the living area which features a canopy bed with a bit that lifts out with cushions on for... some reason... and a wardrobe and a chest. When you press the button on the wardrobe a little animal pops out of the chest.

there's a very cramped dining area with an oven jammed in next to it (that's gonna be awkward) and then a little bathroom too (even Polly's gotta poop)

The lowest section features the balcony and a hammock, and a pond that spins around. There's also a little bunny that pops out when you press a button on the side of the pond.
And the picnic spread on the island in the middle opens up for another hidey hole.

Now I just need a polly to live in it. Hah. Too bad I sold the one Polly Pocket I had a few years back, she'd come in a big bundle of random sindy stuff and had no face left <_<
Poor girl.

Oh well, i'll find another one at some point. They're quite expensive on Ebay (like £5 each!) )but given how regularly lost they must have been, it's not that surprising really.

So many must have ended up in vacuum cleaners or eaten by toddlers/pets.

I also picked up Elena of Avalor for £1. She was nude and her hair CAKED in glue crap. It took sooo long to brush that shit out seriously.

I thought she was pretty though, she has a very sweet face. I'm not big into Disney princesses, but I do like the cartoony look of some of their dolls. I think they have a lot of personality.

Her outfit I grabbed in a different charity shop at 25p a piece. I think most of it is My Scene.

Her hair is still a bit crunchy but I don't want to wash it in case that makes it sticky instead. Ew.

From there I got on a bus to the local posh area, which I like to pop to every so often because while their charity shops are about 3x more expensive than my local ones, they get some NICE stuff in.

Fara Kids was my first port of call, I love Fara Kids, they're my second favourite charity shop in the area.

They had a lot of dolls, they always do, but they're £3 each and often not worth that. This time they had 3 My Scene Girls and a My Scene boy (River I think) all in random princess outfits for some reason, they also had a few Barbie dolls and a Hamleys Super Model by Simba. They were odd, had a completely different face to the Super Model line but the same outfits and same body, and were like twice the price. She wasn't very pretty so I left her. £3 for a rather ugly doll just because she was unusual wasn't really justifiable. They also had some TY girls (the big ugly plush things) but I didn't see how much they were. I have more than enough TY girl clothing in my arsenal.

However, as they always do, Fara Kids had their big basket of doll clothes. Just loose doll clothes, and i LOVE to rummage through this.
At 25p a piece it adds up fast, but they have so much stuff and it's almost always in really good condition too. Barbie stuff, Bratz stuff, My Scene stuff, they even had some vintage Sindy stuff! I always wonder where the dolls went.

I grabbed a whole pile of stuff including what I dressed Elena in

I think the red suit is Sindy's Virgin Atlantic uniform.

There's a really nice labcoat I couldn't resist, it even had real buttons!

the striped rainbow jumper is Barbie branded and i'm pretty sure the khaki pants are Bratz, as is the dragon shirt.

There's a gorgeous very light, very fragile lace jacket too. It's quite incredibly still intact and not snagged. Amazing for something so light and delicate.

I also grabbed these. The larger shirt is My Scene boys, it's useful for my Makie boys to have a nice baggy tee to wear. The cartoon shirt is a similar size but I wasn't able to identify the character. It says Ultimate Seven G, but googling that brought up nothing. Anyone got any ideas?

The brown skirt is bratz, the rest I think is My Scene or Barbie except the pink and plaid dress which is vintage Sindy. it's damaged, the collar has come loose but I cannot leave behind actual vintage clothing when I find it. at 25p it's worth it to repair. It was made in 1969, so yeah, definitely worth trying to fix up.
I have the purple version from 69 somewhere around as well heh.

The other charity shops on that high street didn't have much I wanted. One store had a load of Grumpy Cat plushies, which was pretty random, and a weird old antique owl doll/plush wearing a blue outfit with like card eyes. It was weird and they wanted £45 for it so yeah, no way. Another had bizarrely decided to stick all their costume jewellery into large bags and sell them as job lots for £5 each. They were NOT small bags either, pretty hefty things. If I was in the market for a load of random costume jewellery they'd have been great, but yeah... I wasn't. Oxfam had marbles but i'd already mined out the interesting ones last time I was there.

I picked up some books for the kids and got on another bus to the even richer area, the Bridge.

I don't often go to this area because they're expensive, a little further to go to by bus and they only have like 4 or 5 shops along this little strip before the bridge over the river.
Of those 4 or 5 shops, only 2 generally have toys, so it's somewhere I only travel out to if i'm already doing a "hit all the charity shops" sort of trip.

Here my first port of call was, again, a Fara Kids. This one doesn't often have dolls, and today wasn't really much different.

They had a giant 18 inch toddler doll marked "Alexander doll corp" on her head (Madame Alexander then?). Her eyes opened and closed and she had rooted hair, she was dressed in a princess dress. I assume she was a My Life As A doll, or something similar. She was £5 so I left her, her hair was a mess and looked like it'd be a real pain to restore and I just don't collect that sort of doll. Some kid will love her though i'm sure.
They also had a few boring Barbie dolls. Yaaawn.

In their big bundle of random doll clothing (no barbie sized stuff, all larger doll clothing for like baby dolls) I found a Build A Bear Jedi outfit, a complete one, for £2:50. I've been looking for an older version of that costume for a while, the new ones are all sewn together as one piece which is shit. The older one is all individual layers which is way cooler.
It even came with a light saber!
My Sloth "Ensign Slow" got part of the costume, he's coming to see Solo with me so he needed a robe okay?

It as getting late by this point, but I popped into the regular Fara next door to Fara kids anyway, because it was there.

This Fara is odd, because despite Fara kids being right next door, sometimes they still have toys. This time they had large dinosaur toys in the cabinet guarding the jewellery... it was pretty weird.

They also had a big load of sewing stuff including some really nice synthetic suede (but HUGE bolts of fabric, way more than I could justify buying), jars of buttons and a big bag of bead stuff. I was tempted by the bead stuff but I don't really NEED beads.

Now right at the front of Fara was a table of bric a brac, and amongst that was a little bear. I walked past it a few times and barely registered the little thing till I came back to leave and decided to pick it up to see what it was made of.

At about 9 inches tall it's not a big bear, but picking it up I immediately KNEW it was a hand made item. It's needle felted, and extremely detailed. The hours that must have been put into making this thing!

Turning it over confirmed what I suspected, it's an art doll.. or.. art bear?

The poor little thing hadn't just been donated to a charity shop, he'd been sitting in the charity shop so long they'd dropped his price to half, he was £1:75. I decided to take the plunge and bring him home, more out of curiosity than anything.

On the bus I looked up the artist.
She's from Ukraine apparently and this little bear was sold back in 2016 and shipped to "an apartment in the UK" according to the Instagram images.
Looking at her other work, these things were NOT cheap.
it also sounds like he might have had a base at some point (there is a hole in his underside that looks like something stabbed in there)

I think it's sad the little bear didn't end up with a forever home back then and was discarded, maybe it was a gift? or a reminder of a relationship they wanted out of?

Whatever the case,  it's mine now.

The little bear is posable with jointed arms and legs and some limited movement in the head.
I think the pillow was attached to both hands originally as the other hand has some plastic thread looped into it that's come unravelled from the pillow.

Does the symbol on the pillow say anything?

The scarf can come off, the hat cannot. There feels like there's an ear under there, but the hat is sewn into place. This is a shame because the hat is stained and needs to be washed. I dunno what the stains are, i'm hoping they're chocolate and not like.. blood or something.

Maybe THIS is the cursed bear? lol.

Aside from the marks on his hat he's a sweet little thing though, and astoundingly well made. Needle felting is fairly time consuming so making this little guy, complete with felted in SHADING and actual paw pads on all four feet, it's incredible.

It's a small little bear, but must have taken a lot of work to create.

By this point the charity shops had begun to close, so I headed back home with my haul. Not a great haul, but good enough for a day's wandering I think.

Today I popped out again, but not because I wanted to go charity shopping. I'd been on Shpock again. Shpock is very very dangerous lol.

I'd found a lady nearby who was selling two descendants dolls for an insanely low price. Already a load of people had contacted her to ask if she'd post them and she'd declined. Well, by some fluke she happened to live like 10 minutes bus ride away so I messaged her all "i'm local! can pick up!" and for about a week we'd been trying to arrange a good time to meet.

Finally we decided on today.

So I popped onto a bus, went to a stranger's house and handed over £6 for...

These two.

The dolly gods are smiling on me, seriously.

No clue why she only wanted so little, it felt rude to pry and she seemed like she kinda wanted me to just go away now. It IS a bit awkward having a stranger knock on your door and give you money lol.

I have to assume they were an unwanted gift for a child now too "old" for dolls or something.

Anyway, Uma was out of box and Ben is MIB but his box is pretty crushed up.
Still, £3 each is a steal! I mean, I kinda feel like I robbed this lady.
She was very nice.

Uma is INSANELY hard to find here in the UK, in fact there's only one store I know of that even got the Decendants 2 dolls in, Bentalls. In there they're about £28 and last time I checked they only had Ben in stock.

Uma's doll is pretty sure, but she's in no way worth the prices they're asking in this country, seriously.

Her hair is black, teal and er... silver I think.. and crimped. It's dry and sort of straw like if i'm honest, rather like the Monster High Electrified doll's hair. I wonder why or how the secret to soft crimped hair got lost... I mean, they used to be able to make it still soft back in the 90s.

Anyway, her hair looks cool, just don't run your hand through it. It's really coarse.

Under her hat her hair is side parted and has a lot more silvery white.

her hat is stapled to her head, so yeah, it will NOT sit back on her head without an elastic band. This sort of thing drives me INSANE about dolls these days. Like COME ON GUYS, make the hats so they can stay on the damn doll's head without relying on plastic staples! it's just bad design.

Her skin tone is a lovely deep shade, not as dark as some of the dolls we're getting these days, but still a really nice deep tone with a nice richness (some darker skinned fashion dolls can look a bit ashen I find, somewhat grey in complexion.)

She has a tiny little elastic band holding one side of her hair away from her face.
otherwise it all just hangs loosely.

The hat itself is neat. it's a tricorner with molded coral, crab and starfish detailing.

There's two teensy tiny holes in either edge for the plastic staples, but they're really so small you can barely see them.

Her outfit is a cropped teal jacket and a dress with a sort of cutout netting pattern at the hem and a long dangly fabric belt thing.

there's a kracken or something on the front of the dress and gold detail on the sleeves and collar of the jacket. There's a little purple mesh at the collar.

Sadly, her outfit is ALL one piece like CJ Hook's outfit.

It makes it a little difficult to get on and off because of the stiff plether or vinyl or whatever the hell the jacket is made of.

At least it looks quite good ON the doll.

Her boots are odd, as in, they're different to one another. Both have a net motif but while one has little critters caught in the netting, the other had this tassle bit across the toe. I dunno why.

there's no tread on the bottom of the boots, so no hidden details there.

They're pretty nice boots though. The subtle asymmetry is a neat touch.

 She's a lovely doll, but she's clearly been produced on the cheap by Hasbro. I find the prices UK stores are asking for these dolls frankly obscene. I might have paid £18 for her new, but i'm not sure i'd feel like it was really value for money. More I just really like her.

I do kinda wish she had a proper belt though, to hide the top of the tassel belt thing. I think it looks a bit messy and unfinished.

Kinda a shame the Uk never saw the deluxe version of this character either, i'd have liked to compare them.

Ben I haven't opened yet. I don't actually own a Ben doll yet. I found his previous doll really cheap looking. I don't mind molded hair, but his ugly cheap suit turned me off. This outfit looks a lot better.

I still find it odd to think of a teenager as a king, especially as his parents are still alive in the continuity, it's just weird man.. but hey, whatever. King Ben everyone.

I haven't actually seen Decendants 2 yet. It was on disney channel, once, and then they didn't repeat it for some reason. grr.

Anyway, I missed my bus home so had to catch a different bus, which brought me back to my local village high street.

I decided to pop into YMCA and Shooting Star on my way home, as I was walking past anyway. They're the only two shops that stock toys on our high street and YMCA often has very little.

Today however, they had an interesting girl sitting on the table of unsorted stuff.

They said I could have her for 99p.
Shooting Star had a lone EAH Briar for £1:50 including the random clothing she had on. I like to grab EAH dolls for their bodies, they're very useful for hybrids. 

 

The other doll is some sort of Sindy clone, she's pretty poorly made but has a sweet face. I have a soft spot for vintage clones.  

Note the er... fin.. on her arm? That's part of the molding process, a piece that should have been removed before she was packaged in the factory. She has another on her ankle. 

I find it astounding that this has lasted so many years. They snap right off, which I did once i got her home. 

Her body is hollow and crappy, her hair is dry and thin but she's got a sweet face okay?

Also that yellow skirt is gorgeous omg. 

The top i'm pretty sure is modern, it looks like barbie or something. 

Under her pretty yellow skirt that was actually slightly too small she has a pair of very hastily made underpants and very um... round boobs lol. 

The plastic is really thin in places, making her boobs look like they glow. It's funny to me. 

She's marked "hong kong" on her back

I'm pretty sure those are her original shoes as they're pretty cheaply made little things and her feet have indents from wearing them so long. 

I brushed her hair out carefully and discovered it's parted right down the middle, suggesting pigtails were her original style. 

She got the Angelina ballerina dress Briar was wearing, it suits her I think. 

I gave her a nice clean and carefully removed the excess white paint she had pooling under one eye (it was quite a large area of random white paint, made her look like she was crying) 

She scrubbed up pretty nice I think. 

She looks quite a lot like my other Sindy clone. Nurse Clone has a severely deteriorating head though, the plastic is breaking down leaving like white dots all over her face. She's also a lot darker skinned and her paint isn't as bright. 

but they both have the same crappy hollow bodies and squishy squishy heads. 

I rather enjoy them anyway. 

Anyway while I was in the charity shop my luck ran out. I reached over to pick up my bag of shopping and AIEEEE my finger! Something bit me!

The huge crack in Ben's box attacked me, trapping my finger between the sharp edges of the plastic in such a way that I couldn't get it out again. 

I was trying hard not to scream or panic because you know, I was in public. I loudly proclaimed "ow ow ow ow ow" as I tried to free my finger. It took more time than I wanted it to, I couldn't just yank my finger out without causing massive damage and the plastic was digging in pretty tightly. It was too narrow a gap for me to spread it more open and in the end I had to take a deep breath and pull, and hope I didn't gouge too much finger. 

My poor nail bed, the quick took most of the damage and I kinda... sobbed a bit. It didn't bleed much, but it's taken quite a deep chunk out of my finger. Owwie.

THIS is why I hate these stupid plastic boxes all these companies keep using. They're REALLY sharp and rather too prone to shattering like this. I genuinely thought I was going to have to call for the staff to bring me scissors so I could have my hand cut free of the box! It was bad. 

Please toy companies, STOP USING THIS PLASTIC! Not only is it bad for the environment and really hard to trash, it's really dangerous. Toy packaging shouldn't cause injuries, and yet I regularly end up cut or grazed by these sort of boxes while trying to open them. 

This is though, the scariest injury i've had. That panic as I realized what had happened and how tight it was and how hard it was going to be to extract my finger from the trap. ooo it was awful. And hours later it still hurts a lot. 

Suffice to say, i'm not rather too scared to touch Ben's box and try to unbox him, in case I lose another finger to his bloodthirsty box. 

Eeek.