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Littlest Petshop Blythe

Because it’s the Christmas shopping season I’ve been seeing a lot of adverts on TV for the Littlest PetShop toys featuring Blythe. After seeing a dozen or so of these ads I finally decided that I would look for them in the store the next time I went. I got lucky and there was one of the equestrian themed Blythe sets there, so I went ahead and purchased it. I am also pleased to say that I find them to be of pretty good quality! Now I don’t own a Petite Blythe, but I have seen them, and after reading up on the subject I think I can offer a decent comparison of the two.

The LPS Blythe are the same size as the Petite Blythe, and essentially are the same doll with just a few differences. The LPS Blythes have a ball joint in their neck so they are able to tilt their little heads in all sorts of coy or inquisitive poses, but on the other hand the LPS Blythes lack the closing eye mechanism that the Petite Blythe do. The LPS eyes are a acrylic eye, that whereas they are bright and clear, they are also a little funky with the stylized lines through the iris.

You can undress both, and near as I can tell, ALL LPS Blythes come with removable shoes, though I will say that the boots on my equestrian Blythe is a pain in the butt to remove, and I don’t plan on removing them anytime soon. The hair on the LPS Blythe is actually reall nice and soft and thick. To be honest I think the hair quality on the LPS Blythes is better than Takara Petite Blythes, but I probably haven’t seen enough Takara Petites to be a reliable judge on that.

In the end at only $14.99 at your local Toys R Us, I would say that these mini Blythe are worthwhile. I think having this mini Blythe might inspire me to do something more with my old 1:12 scale dollhouse. I know when a niche hobby like Blythes suddenly wheedles it’s way into the mainstream it alarms a lot of people. For me though, I welcome seeing Blythe become more mainstream, because then that means that she will be more readily available to me. I think some people guard their hobbies like it is something special and is what sets them apart from the “everybody else” and so when they see it become popular they become upset because suddenly they’ve lost their “special” or are in fear of losing their “special”. Those are often also the same people who will then ditch the hobby and move onto another because they want to remain cool or hip with their fringe hobbies. Often these people will then go on to belittle the newcomers to their abandoned hobby. I say nuts to that! A true hobbyist revels in any opportunity to share their hobby or have greater access to the goods of their hobby.

Well anyway I didn’t mean to rant on about cranky posers…this was supposed to be a post about Blythe. That reminds me, I put Nicky Lad on my Christmas wishlist this year. I am pessimistic about the possibility of getting her…..very pessimistic since she takes 1 to 2 weeks to ship and my family puts things off and puts things off….*sigh* so yeah, probably not getting a Blythe this year. 😛

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Delays and Dalliances

I haven’t been able to make any more progress on refurbishing my barbie fridge or any of the other furniture I have received because of the stinking weather. :p Every day it has been hot, humid, stormy and mostly overcast. So right now I have half of a old barbie chair painted with the other half waiting for a drop in the humidity. I’m also still waiting for sun to try a second type of bleaching experiment on the sweet roses fridge which involves sunlight, but I’ll get more into that later.

I imagine I should just work on Cookie some more, but a migraine has kept me in bed most of the day, and I’m just feeling too yucky to motivate much. XP So basically I’ve been spending this down time with my laptop in bed and looking at other dolly sites and such to satisfy my dolly obsessing. I managed to find a couple interesting dolly blogs that have a good deal of 1:6 scale diorama info or eye candy, which I thought I would share.

The first one is Corsetkitten’s Workshop:
http://corsetkitten.com/blog/
This blog is heavy into 1:6 scale dioramas and fashion dolls, but she does have some Blythe and Momoko. She has some “making of” tutorial type bits on making 1:6 scale dioramas and also makes some of her own miniatures. Lots of informative dolly posts as well as just random doll blabber which is fun to read too!

The second site is Nerea Pozo:
http://nereapozo.blogspot.com/
This blog is pretty much Lati tinies and Blythe exclusive, though occasionally I see some postings on minis. The big thing here though is the eye candy! She makes these incredible little dioramas for Lati tinies or Blythe dolls that she sometimes sells. There is less so much tutorial information here, but looking at all the eye candy is sure to give you ideas, and they are just too gorgeous not to look at. Also if you visit her domain, nereapozo.com you can also see some of her custom Blythe and Blythe artwork.

I would absolutely love to hear of any other sites other people may have found, because it’s always nice to have new sites to visit, especially when you are ill in bed. Feel free to comment and share any other dolly links, but do keep in mind that if you post more than two links my spam filter is going to flag it for me to check before it can appear.

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New Mohair Wigs

It’s not the best picture because it’s overcast and rainy today, and well I didn’t put much effort into the picture, but my mohair wigs from Kemper Dolls finally showed up today. I bought this little 6-7 carrot mohair wig in a cute bob style to try on my AE Yara, and I bought another one in black in a 7-8 for my Dollmore Sona when she arrives. I think the shorter hair style makes makes my Yara look older, which was the goal. When I first put it on I wasn’t really so sure about the wig, but it’s growing on me and I think with some more styling it could be pretty cute. I didn’t bother taking the black one out of the bag yet because I figure I’ll wait until my Sona arrives.

Anyway overall I think the quality of Kemper Dolls mohair wigs are very good, and I can definitely recommend their wigs for that, especially since I got the carrot wig on sale for only $7.00! However their customer service left a little to be desired frankly. I ordered the wigs a little over a week ago and they have a order tracking section on their website which strangely they never updated, so I was left thinking that my order was still in “processing” all week. Finding this odd for items that were supposed to be in stock, I decided to email them, but they didn’t get back to me very quickly, and after sending them another email today, finally something got kicked out and I was finally given my UPS tracking number. Apparently the order had been shipped on the 7th, but they just neglected to tell me or give my tracking number. As it is I got my tracking number literally a few hours before the package showed up.

In the end I received good quality wigs, and within a reasonable amount of time, but it irritated me that their communication was poor, since most other sellers I have dealt with have been prompt and good communicators. Perhaps I shouldn’t be so fussy, but well, that was my experience so you can take it for what it’s worth.

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Ddung!

I usually come late to the party in discovering new things, but here I’ll go ahead and gush over the cuteness of the mini Ddung dolls! Ddung is basically a young girl who is not yet school age and has aspirations of being Miss Korea when she gets older. She spends the majority of time at home with her mother who is an underwear designer and her father who is a doll designer.

The Ddung dolls come in two different sizes, mini and, er, regular size…heh. Mini dolls are tiny and about 3.5-4in tall. They work really well with re-ment and some sets even come with their own special miniatures! The mini Ddung also makes a nice sized baby sister doll to Pullip and Blythe as well.Another great thing about these dolls are the price. You can get a mini Ddung with miniature set for aroun $19-$22 so she is very affordable!

Anyway I find the minis so adorably cute that I think she will make it onto my Xmas list this year! If you want to find out more about Ddung you can visit the official English site for Ddung where there is also an online store….though perhaps with a little less merchandise than you can find on ebay. Here is the link:

http://www.ddung.ca/index.asp

On the site too are some cute flash animations featuring Ddung and her parents which are quite funny and worthwhile to check out as well. 🙂 One last thing I wanted to mention though is that after browsing around ebay for Ddung dolls I noticed quite a few bootleg copies of her coming out of China. In fact I really think there may be more bootlegs of her on ebay than licensed merch! Therefore you should probably do your homework before buying a Ddung off ebay, that and if a deal seems too good to be true or the sculpt doesn’t look quite right, then it’s probably a bootleg. I noticed though that a lot of the sellers with legit goods tend to hail from Korea and they like to put authentic in the title and have nice clear pics of the dolls in their original packaging.

Well that’s all for now, so happy hunting!

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Site Facelift

I felt that it was time for a new look, so I started tweaking this cute little girly theme I found online. There are still a few things that need to be tweaked, but I think I will stick with this new look….for a while anyway, lol. I also plan on cleaning up the categories and reorganizing things a I feel the current categories aren’t sufficient enough for easy browsing. Finally I am also considering giving this blog a little name change. I’ve been thinking of changing it to something that could also be a decent “brand name” for when I start making doll clothes again. Beyond that a name that is closer to, or can be easily combined with my domain name would also be a good idea.