More Charity and Ebay funtimes.

Some of this is actually stuff I was supposed to add to the last lot but I sort of forgot and it went live before I could edit.

Whoops.

I'm a bum okay?

Anyway,

i've been TRYING to be good with spending, I still have one more downpayment on this bjd layaway but man, poor mental health combined with interesting things hitting shelves after a looooong drought, it just.... it makes it really difficult not to spend money.

And charity shops are my biggest weakness.

Maybe thankfully our local charity shop doesn't get dolls in that often anymore and those they DO get in are often massively overpriced (£4 for a barbie doll? Are you crazy?) so that does rather ease the burden on my wallet.

Still,

let's delve into this

Belle scrubbed up okay actually. The mark on her face came off but her hair is still really frizzy. I need to boil wash it I think.

I do think she's very pretty though.

Off Ebay she got a friend. This is Jeff. He's a Takara Jeff doll, previously known as Ken.
See back in the 80s Takara had the rights from Mattel to produce Barbie and Ken for the Japanese market. They made their own sculpts and bodies but used the Mattel branding.

when they lost the rights Barbie became Jenny and Ken became Jeff.

He's far friendlier looking than the honestly creepy 80s Mattel Kens. I HATE 80s Mattel Kens, they gross me out. It's that manic grin and brick-like body they have, just... *shudder*

Jeff's actually quite cute. Very Anime.

What's interesting is that not only is Jeff a LOT skinnier than Mattel Kens, he's also a lot shorter.
He actually fits High School Musical boy clothes so yeah, he's SMALL.

My other Ebay purchase was this girl.

She's a Mattel Scooba Doo doll from 1964.

I've wanted one for ages but they're not that common to find and especially not in the UK.
She as pretty cheap too which was a bonus.

She has a plush body and a vinyl head with really unusual sleep eyes. They aren't straight, they're angled. It's wierd.

I love that winged eyeliner.

She's missing a few plugs of hair near the front, at some point i'll look into fixing that.

She needs repair to her talk box too so she's currently waiting for us to have some time and motivation to do that. I'll do a blog about it because I think it'll be an interesting project.

I searched and it's really hard to find photos of the inside of one of these dang dolls.

This adorable little guy came from the same charity shop as Belle and Roadkill the Bunny from my last entry.

He was a gift for my husband.

See, he's a Hornby Werebear from the 80s. I immediately recognised him and my husband mentioned a while back that he really wanted one as a kid.
for 50p how could I not make that dream come true? lol.

They transform. Their cute head is like a sort of hood that pulls back revealing their monster face and their paws have little mittens that fold back to reveal the claws.

This one is called Fang and he's adorable.

Husband was delighted. The kids keep stealing the bear though. hahaha.

Auriel is modelling my new bjd eyes.

these are LemonJelly eyes with a black sclera and a gold iris and dragon-like pupils. They're very shimmery and a bit awkward to photograph but kinda cool.

These are for my incoming Dream valley Grayson who i'm still paying off and who won't be here till next year most likely.

The other eyes Lemonjelly did for me as funky green eyes featuring one with two sclera. I knew I wanted that and he was one of the few artists I could find who did such unique eyes.

These are for my other Dream Valley doll incoming. They should be suitably alien and creepy.

Then Oxfam happened. I spotted this picture on their site and was all "OMG SINDY DOLLS!"

I've seen Sindy stuff on Oxfam before but often it's just furniture or horses or whatever. It's unusual to get the dolls.

They were listed as being in "poor" condition and came with a load of furniture and clothes in similar states.

But for £30 I was like "i'm taking the gamble" because from the photo the dolls don't look that bad. I figured they might have some nibbles and some missing hair plugs but they looked to have their feet and hands.

Also, two of them are clearly 70s hard head dolls which I don't have many examples of.

The pile o clothes really interested me too as a lot of it looked 70s like the dolls.

So I pounced and forked out the £8 for a courier because the box was nearly 6kg lol.

And then I waited... and waited....

and finally DHL sent me a dispatch notice to the WRONG ADDRESS.

An address I hadn't lived in for 8 years or more and one Oxfam shouldn't have even HAD!

I was all "wtf!??" and kinda panicked but I managed to get in touch with Oxfam and get it sorted after a bit of hair pulling and freaking the hell out.

So my box arrived and I was of course eager to see how bad "poor condition" sindy dolls were.

The soft headed girl was missing rather a lot of hair. (how does this even happen?)

Thankfully I happen to have hair in the right sort of colour so she got a quick tension reroot to fill in all those empty plugs.

All three of them had to be PEELED out of their clothing thanks to melt.

I suspect they've been in an attic or something a while.

the melt was pretty bad around the hips and arms (it's a reaction between the soft vinyl and hard plastic) so I took a scalpel to it and carefully spent 20 minutes scraping extra material out of the joints so the poor girls not only looked better but could pose properly again.

The inside of the sockets on brunette had basically turned to sludge. Ewww.

Thankfully melt seems to be one of those things you can easily remove and not undermine the structural integrity of the doll. It's softer than the hard plastic of the body and slightly tacky so it comes away pretty easily with a nice sharp blade.

I stripped two of them out of their frankly hideous knitted ensembles.

Knitted trousers are a crime against fashion I swear.

And I turned my attention to the clothing options.

Two pairs of pants had been very poorly repaired so I resewed those and resewed some poppers that had come loose.

a couple of bits are missing their other popper which i need to replace and the apron is missing a string. Which is a shame as it's otherwise in beautiful condition. Wierd.

I had to search a bit through Sindy outfit references but I found most of the Sindy stuff.

Of course we have two slightly different Ballerina skirts, some ballerina stockings, an apron from a playset piece, what appears to be two identical bridal gowns and a veil from a DIFFERENT bridal gown (go figure), some mix and match pieces, Weekender outfit and most of Holiday Girl (I later found the red ribbon in one of the other bundles in the box lol)

I haven't a clue what the silver and pink dress or the pink jacket thing are. They could be Barbie.

There were also a bunch of shoes.

Sadly several odds. The white shoes is Lovely Lively's shoe, the pink one is a ballerina slipper. The brown boots could belong to Holiday Girl or one of the other outfits i'll show you in a moment.

After I gave the girls a quick bath (they were FILTHY, in fact the redhead was so filthy her legs were grainy to touch and for a while I feared it was actually mildew but it wiped right off so hmmm)  I redressed them.

The blonde i'm pretty sure this was her original outfit. It's called Lovely Lively and while she's missing the rivet shoulders of the early ones, she may be a later release as she's using the first ballerina hands (they haven't got hinges so they only rotate) and has no ankle joints.

Her ash blonde hair and rock hard head coupled with that body lead me to think she's quite likely a Lovely Lively Sindy using later arm stock (as Pedigree often did)

The middle girl is a late 70s ballerina. She has a soft squishy head, hinged arms and posing ankles that are both broken (very common with these ballerinas sadly)

I rerooted the empty plugs as I mentioned but that was after I took this photo.

For this picture I put her into an outfit called Blue Skies because I thought it was kinda cool. A bit Rosie the Riveter lol.

The "redhead" isn't actually a redhead at all, her hair is another mid 70s exclusive colour referred to in literature as "bronze". It's a sort of light brown? It's not a very pretty colour but it's unique to my collection.

The outfit she's wearing is called Sporting Life. It should have brown boots but they're really hard to get on without talc.

I actually don't know what the black boots are from, they're a bit big for Sindy actually. Either they're supposed to go over socks or they're for another doll.

The box also contained TWO Sindy buggies. Both have peeling stickers and only one has the arial and steering wheel.

the kids keep stealing them lol.

Hilariously, I found most of those odd shoes above INSIDE one of these. Hahaha.

I admit, I kinda love seeing the old boxes. This is for the Wardrobe from the late 70s.

It's not in terrible condition, thoug the thin plastic bit that clips to the top as decoration has snapped. It was inside another package in the box.

The top shelf is a bit warped but the rest is complete.

there's a mirror, shoe holder and little drawers. cute!

I hung some stuff, though there's nowhere really for trousers and skirts as they won't go on the hangers. Hmm.. oversight?

These weren't even pictured in the Oxfam sales images. It's a set of cleaning supplies and er.. a hotplate?

The mop looks like it would have had a tiny sponge attached once and sadly the dust pan is missing its brush.

the bin has a hinged lid which is way too fun to play with. It's just like a real swing lid bin ahaha.

A "lovely" yellow Sindy bath. For some reason this was fashionable in the 70s.

The brown towel, bathmat and facecloth make it especially awful in my eyes.

Inexplicably there's TWO of these.

Both complete with towels etc.

They're interesting though in that they have a proper little chain for the plug which has a space in the top of the taps and can "plug in" to the tub as well. Though it's just a slot, not an actual plug hole. These baths cannot drain. I like the little chain, it's cute.

Also interesting is that these are actually constructed in two pieces. There's a yellow "box" and then the tub part slots into the box, much like a real bath actually.

I assume it was easier to mold that way maybe?

 Now I THINK the yellow tray belongs to the bathtubs.

The clear tray, tiny brush and tissues I think all go with the vanity set.

The electric heated rollers (omg hilarious) and one set of the combs are I think a set that came carded together.

the other brush/mirror set likely came with Lovely Lively Sindy.

I haven't a clue what the two round boxes are. The white one opens and inside there's a cartoon picture of flowers which is.. bewildering. The other one is a clear box with what looks like a little felt circle inside it. I dunno.

there's also a key shaped magnifying glass. (what the heck?) and the white and pink towel has a popper on it.

I doubt these things are Sindy things, but they're likely contemporary.

the key thing facinates me. It's such a wierd thing.

a key shaped magnifying glass? What?

The vanity has broken legs. 3 of the 4 legs are snapped in various places so it's basically busted. It came with two mirrors, four drawers and one seat.
so... there must have been two of these at some point.

wierd.

the side table with lamp is interesting. It has battery contacts underneath and the lamp should have a tiny bulb in it but honestly i'm a bit scared to test out a 1970s deeply corroded bit of electronics. Eeep.

There's also a bed with bedclothes but for some reason I didn't photograph that.. huh.. go figure. It has the same pattern as the stool chair thing with the vanity.

After doing some digging, I THINK I managed to work out what the three dolls were.

As I said, i'm pretty sure the blonde is a Lovely Lively so this is her original outfit minus the shoes. Her hair should be curled though, but it's gone pretty frizzy over the years.

The brunette is a ballerina so one of those tutus belongs to her but as there's one ballet shoe, a skirt and stockings but no leotard I couldn't restore her to her original state. Instead I put her into the 1980s Holiday girl after finding the red ribbon inside the wardrobe.

her lashes were sparse and had sunk into her head so I had a go at fixing those too. It's not perfect but it'll do.

The bronze haired girl I did some digging and her basic 70s body with squished hands (they seem to come that way, huh?) and screw waist etc seem to point to her being a mid 70s budget Sindy, judging by the clothing in the bundle and info I could find on available haircolours for each release, she's most likely Weekender Sindy (she should be wearing the white shoes on the blonde).

Of course I couldn't resist snapping a shot of my three hard head 70s girls. The short haired girl was a charity shop find a month or so ago and has the same sort of body as Weekender does.

One of the things I like about the hard heads is how full their lashes tend to remain. Though rerooting lost plugs is a nightmare.

their heads are SO HARD.

£38 for 3 70s Sindy dolls who scrubbed up lovely and a bunch of outfits though? Bargain!

I'll likely rehome the majority of the furniture as I haven't got the space but now I have a nice example of an early ballerina body which I didn't have previously, two very unusual hair colours and several outfits I actually genuinely LOVE and have kinda wanted for a while (Holiday Girl is one of my favourite Sindy outfits of the 80s. Husband thinks it's very "Come on Eileen" hahaha) 

I also got a couple more Hairdorables but I didn't take pics because i'm lazy and got distracted by Sindy dolls hahaha. whoops?

Interestingly, I popped into the local charity shop and they currently have a 5 foot tall home made doll house with a bunch of sindy furniture in it ahahah. Oh.. oh if I had the space...

but yeah, a dollhouse almost my height isn't practical right now. ALAS.

One day...

One day i'll have a whole row of Sindy doll houses lol. Least that's the dream.