Stuff I bought

I'm not supposed to be buying stuff, i'm kinda stressing about money and I have a big layaway i'm slowly paying off but you know me, i'm weak and when i'm feeling a bit down well... stuff happens.

Also when I am trying to be good all the great deals hit. ARGH...

So here's the things I bought this month/stuff I fixed up:

Camay from last time got blushed so she's actually a relatively even colour. It was a bit tricky as bits of her face weren't taking the pastel so hmmm...
annoying.

Also I think she's a little TOO pink now. *sigh*

After months and months of nothing new in the charity shops I found this girl. The wig she came with was her crappy default wig which is gross and sucks so I stole one of my bjds 5-6 wigs to see how she'd look with a decent elasticated wig on and the answer is, really damn good.

Anyway, Liv Sophie is one of the second? wave ones who had less creepy pale eyes. She's still a bit vacant and staring but she has most of her original outfit and I do love liv clothes and bodies.

I'm not sure what i'll do with her yet. She might lose her head to someone else <_<

But for £2:50 I couldn't leave her okay?

The price of the Hairdorables BFF sets came down too so I grabbed a couple more.

Max and Willow were from amazon themselves, I just got lucky and got one of the sets I wanted heh.

Willow is actually really beautiful.

Max is adorable though his outfit is pretty cheap, especially the jacket. But it's okay.

Her hair has peachy streaks through it and she has a cupcake on her cheek lol.

Max has red streaks in his hair which I didn't expect.

Logan it turns out is the same skin tone as Willow and has similarly coloured eyes. Is it bad that i'm head canoning them as related? lol.

The final set I actually chose because an amazon third party has them listed individually (YAY!) and i wanted a Greg.

Greg is the boy with imo the most interesting hair on both his dolls AND he has hetrochromia which is awesome, but he also suffers from the cheapest shittiest outfits. So hmm.

Gamer Greg has a thin shirt with a little ribbon tie that I was actually surprised was separate and not printed on. Under that he has long pants with a console design on one leg and little sneakers.

He comes with a backpack and a massive controller.

His head is flocked which is nice. It's a little messy in places but it's soooooft.

Kali meanwhile has a really flimsy printed shirt/jacket one piece and leggings with the same console decoration and mismatching boots.

Her handbag is cute and has a space invader on it and she has er.. I think they're pixiated hearts on her cheeks.

I admit, I don't LOVE her.

Greg however is stinkin adorable. Look at these three little goobers! I love these Hairdudables (hahah such a dumb name)

I plan to get the other three at some point when I have the cash free.

On Ebay I stumbled upon THIS picture. "vintage dolls".

Well that's clearly a Sindy doll in the camel swimsuit thing.

I cut a deal with the seller without really knowing for sure the condition of the Sindy doll. She was a gamble, but from the rather blurry photos she at least looked to be complete. I wasn't sure she had all her fingers or hair but figured it was worth a shot given the price.

I haven't a clue what the other two dolls are. The bigger one is missing an  eye chip so one eye is just painted, the chips look to be a slightly yellowed clear piece that slots into a hole in the middle of the eye. Once in they make the blue paint underneath look greenish but i'm not sure they're supposed to. It could just be age.

This girl is facinating because she's really rubbery and squishy, has no markings but her styling is VERY antique. The molded hair is so 50s and I kinda dig it.

Such a wierd baby doll. 

The other doll likewise has no markings but she has sleep eyes. 

My mother exclaimed when I took her out of her packaging "I had a doll like that as a kid!" which means she's probably from the 60s. 

Sadly my mum can't remember what the heck her doll WAS beyond looking rather like this. She had longer hair though apparently.

this girl has rather fabulous curls that go all over the place. 

I suspect the dress is original to her as it fits very very well, the fabric seems contemporary and the poppers are white painted just like 60s Sindy clothing. 

Sadly she's lost a popper. 

the rubbery doll's head wobbles a bit too, which is odd because her head is on a large rubber flange so it shouldn't be too large. Who the heck knows. 

I don't think they're clones, they feel too well sculpted and too well constructed. To be honest, an awful lot of vintage dolls have no markings on them, it makes them really difficult to identify. 

It's frustrating.

Not even any labels in the clothing. GAH.

Meanwhile Sindy got a good wash. She's got some blue ink staining on her leg and a little on her arms which I suspect is probably from some clothing she was in at somepoint. But she has all her fingers (rare for a 60s Sindy), her head is firmly attached and she seems to have most of her hair. Some bits are a bit short but who the heck knows if they were just like that from the factory. Pedigree's quality control was pretty shit.

Her arms and legs are rubbery and bendy but if they had wire inside it's long since perished. It does however place her "birth" at around 1965. She's marked "made in England" on the back of her neck and that's the only marking, which is in keeping with the 60s dolls. 

Notice how one leg is longer than the other? one of her arms is longer too.

no, she's likely NOT a frankendolly, it's far more likely she's what Sindy collectors call a "friday night doll" made from whatever bits they had. Pedigree seemed to work on a "it'll do" attitude when it came to making dolls. It's really not at all uncommon to find dolls with very mismatched parts that are factory original. All the dolls were put together by hand and the theory is on a friday afternoon everyone just wanted to go home or to the pub lol. 

Hence the term "friday night doll". 

Poor Sindy.

While MIE Sindy dolls hair CAN withstand heat (unlike the hong kong ones, eeek) I am always paranoid about using heat on antique dolls. So instead I wrapped her head in a lot of elastic bands for several days until the bangs sat relatively flat.

I also repainted her somewhat faded lips with a little watercolour pencil and reblushed her cheeks with chalk pastel just to brighten her up a little. 

Tiny touches make a big difference I find.

She then got dressed in some vintage Sindy clothes. The shirt is I think from the mid to late 60s while the skirt is actually mid 70s and a little tight around the waist on the much chunkier 60s doll. Her "tie" is a hair tie cut in half lol. 

The shoes are original Sindy shoes in yellow from my large Sindy shoe stash hahah.

Her headband is just a piece of thick elastic because i'm lazy and couldn't be bothered finding anything else. Usually i'd use a bit of ribbon but I didn't have any in a matching colour. 

I think she scrubbed up pretty dang well. 

THIS was her auction photo, for comparison.

I'm pretty pleased with how well she scrubbed up with not too much effort. 

The other thing I did was take Arthur down off my shelf while rearranging and finally work up the courage to redo his faceup. 

He was my first ever attempt at painting a doll this scale (1/4) and while I don't think it's BAD persey, I have gotten a lot better and obtained far better supplies in the few years since.

So... OFF WITH HIS HEAD!

Arthur is a Hujoo Arthur (yeah I couldn't be bothered renaming him lol) so he's not resin, he's ABS plastic. 

It means his texture is a bit different and he has far more obvious seams, which can make blushing a little different.

I always loved his little molded tusks heh.

I'm not sure it's my best work but eh. He looks brighter at least, and the eyebrows are an improvement. 

I can't find my black lashes so ginger shall have to do. They match his eyebrows hahah.

I elected to not do the beard again because I wasn't sure it actually looked that good. Maybe i'll glue some hair to his face or something hahaha. 

He looks a bit less goofy now. Okay he still looks goofy but he's a doll with massive eyes, he's always gonna have a strange goofy look to him. 

I think he looks a bit gentler. 

I did try other eyes, but these 18mm ones just are so tied to his "look" that anything else looks super wierd to me.

He's a funny looking doll but I admit, I still adore him. He has annoying kinda shit jointing, his neck seems always a bit too big for his head but I dunno, I think he's cute. 

Arthur and Auriel were quite happy to go outside in the sunshine and pose for some pictures. 

They're both goofy looking dudes with wierd eyes haha.

It amuses me how Arthur always looks kinda chilled out or happy while Auriel always looks kinda peeved. Auriel is a Resinsoul Wu, so he's Resin and cost probably twice what Arthur did. But i've always been quite pleased by how well Arthur manages to fit in with the resin crew.

Also a few days ago the Wild Hearts Crew dolls I ordered from the US arrived but they're getting their own review. So stay tuned for that.