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Kinoko Juice Kiki Dolls

I had another dollhouse wallpapering catastrophe, so I thought maybe I’d blog about something more fun, the Kinoko Juice dolls! You can tell from the pic that they are just super adorable, sugar-manga overload dollies, and I must admit I love them so. Judging from the trade show pics I’ve seen online of them they appear to be a little shorter than Blythe and seem to be able to wear some of Licca Chan’s clothes. I am just basing this off of what I have seen at a quick glance on her blog though. You can check out the artist’s blog here: http://kinokojuice.blog35.fc2.com/ to find out more about them, or just look at all of the eye candy. The blog is all in Japanese though, so if you don’t read Japanese you’ll need to use a translator or something.

I hear that these dolls sell out very quickly at conventions/doll shows, and that they are rather expensive. Apparently they run around $900+ depending on the exchange rate at the time, which makes them really pricey, though it appears that they are sold as fullsets? If they are sold as fullsets the price is a little more justified. I haven’t really read enough on the blog yet to be able to tell, but I’ll have to scour that thing one day when I’m feeling lackluster.

EDIT: So I found out that the height of these dolls are 23cm, and the yen price is 90,000. They are all made of resin and have custom eyes. When you purchase a doll you get the whole set, the clothes, the make-up, wig, eyes and so on. The artist DOES have a online shop where she announces a very very limited sale period. Don’t get too excited though, because she will not sell or ship overseas to you. The only way you can get a Kinoko Juice doll is to go to Japan and get lucky enough to be able to purchase one at a doll show, or to be living in Japan and get lucky enough to order one off of her website. I suppose there are always deputy services, but considering the very limited web sales, the likelihood of getting one is very slim.

In the end, even as cute as they are, they are probably not terribly worth the trouble. After all, you can get a full-set Mui-chan for less, and she has a nice faceplate system and lots of extra hands and feet options. That’s just my opinion though. Either way the Kiniko Juice girls are still fun to look at, at least.

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Wallpaper is a Go, Finally!

The picture is a little dark because I just took the photo tonight after I finished papering the kitchen, but there it is, I finally got my favorite woodland paper on the walls! This is also the first time my little Brownie has been near the house as well. Anyway I still have all of the trim-work to do, and of course I need to make kitchen cabinets and such, but I am happy with how things are coming together. I’ve also made some progress on the bathroom, as well as the big bedroom upstairs.

So, I thought I would go ahead and share some advice on wallpapering dollhouses, since it gave me so much grief earlier and I went through a lot of trial and error. First of all, I want to say that I got the best advice from the people at the CDHM forums, which is a nice little miniatures/dollhouse site. It would really pay to go check out the site as there is a lot of good information there overall in regards to miniatures. Here is the link: http://www.cdhm.org/

OK, so after trying Modpodge, Elmers Glue, wood glue and Tacky Glue, I have to say that really there is nothing that is going o work better than wallpaper paste. It will really save you a lot of grief and ruined paper if you just bite the bullet and buy some wallpaper paste. Of course you won’t need the giant buckets of the stuff they sell in the hardware store, but you should be able to find a nice sized tub of wallpaper border paste for a reasonable price. I guess they do make wallpaper paste specifically for dollhouses, but you wind up paying an awful lot for a small bottle of it, while for about the same price you can get 6 times as much of the regular paste.

The second key factor I think is important to successful wallpapering is to achieve a nice even coat of paste on your paper. To do this, probably the best thing you can do is to take an inexpensive foam paintbrush and use it to brush the paste onto the back of the paper. Spread it evenly and be generous, but don’t slather it on there. It’s easy to get a nice even coat if you lay your paper down on some wax paper, this way you can brush clean off the edges of the paper so everything gets fully covered. As it is, paper expands a little when it becomes wet and retracts a little when it dries. If you have uneven coverage then different parts of the paper will expand and contract at different rates and thus create bubbles, buckling and creasing.

The third key factor now is to apply your paste to your paper, then apply the paper to the wall, rather than applying glues or pastes to the wall and then adding the paper. It seems like it would be easier to just add dry paper to the paste covered walls, but like I said earlier, you need an even coating and saturation of your paper. While the paper is still damp, it’s pretty easy to slide the paper into place, and you can use a credit card or your fingers to smooth down any bubbles that may get caught as you lay down the paper. The tricky part comes when you are papering over a window. Usually what I do is to just paper over the entire wall and then cut out the paper over the window after it dries. This is easier than trying to perfectly cut and match a window hole, plus you will place trim around the interior of the window later so you don’t need to be perfect. Anyway the point I mean to make is that the paper likes to ripple a little around the windows, but as long as you make certain that the paper is laying flat all around the window, as the paper dries everything will get pulled taught and straight…in fact you can play the bongos on them if you want to, lol.

So those are my tips for having a successful wallpapering session. I hope everyone building a house can go out and get themselves some super cute paper to put in their houses!