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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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Mature Body 20cm BJD, Doll Values and Other Musings.

Recently I’ve been kind of…er…”pre-shopping” for a new doll. I know I want one, and money-wise I’ve saved and I am close to being able to get a new BJD, or if I wanted, I could already get any Pullip, Dal, Taeyang or Blythe I wanted….well maybe not so much “any” Blythe. Anyhow I’ve been leaning towards just getting another BJD because Pullip and Dal offerings as of late haven’t interested me, plus I have to admit I am a little disenchanted with Pullip since I’ve been having so much body troubles with her. I ended up taking her off of her 25cm SBH because despite all of my efforts her neck was still flopping and since her new wig it became even worse. In the end, I am far more pleased with my Dal, and would probably buy another Dal again in the future, but as of right now, not another Pullip unless a to die for design came out.

Anyhow I digress on my Pullip misgivings…..So I’ve been looking at the possibility of getting a new BJD, and I know that I no longer want anything beyond MSD size. With all of the mature bodied MSDs out there, why would I possibly need a giant 60cm+ doll just to get a more mature body shape? Besides that, I prefer smaller dolls as they are just easier to handle and you have more miniature options available to you, especially since the advent of the American Girl Dolls, and now those larger size Dora dolls. Anyway I am interested now in the even smaller BJD, especially any size that would be a nice fit for my current Pullip house or I would even go so tiny as to get a doll that would work in my 1:12 scale dollhouse that my grandfather built for me. As I got to thinking about it even more, I thought to myself, “I wonder if there are any mature bodied 20cm dolls out there” so I searched and lo and behold there were!

20061211124945_mLimhwa makes a barbie size BJD called ToYou. For a while though they stopped making them, but recently a new ToYou was offered called Sara, and she is quite a beauty. However Limhwa dolls only have certain ordering periods and seem a little difficult to get in that regard, but I will still keep them in mind. I also came across Soom’s Mini Gem series, which again are mature bodied 20cm dolls. I absolutely love their doll called Aren, which you can see in the pic I posted. So I’ve started seriously considering a “barbie sized” BJD because they would work my my new dollhouse and would be easy to clothe. I need to figure out though how easy it is to find tiny wigs and eyes though before I jump into that, and I also have to wonder how difficult doing a face-up on a tiny doll would be….there are these type of factors to consider. Plus I love all those itty bitty tinies out there too. Heh, I know I probably mull over things way too much but when you don’t have a lot of disposable income you tend to really ponder large purchases more. In the end though I probably have a bit of dolly overload from looking at waaaaay too many dolls.

Anyway after looking around for BJDs I also decided to see what people were selling secondhand on DoA and eBay and such and I seem to be noticing a trend in doll values, and that is that they seem to devalue as soon as you buy them. I saw a few people for example selling brand new dollies that were still mostly boxed that they just couldn’t “bond with”. These dollies were being offered at a lower price than what you could buy new at the maker and were seriously comparable in newness. If you have an older dollie before double jointing became commonplace, there is no way you could get full value for your dollie again…or so it seems. You see, as of late I’ve been considering selling my DIM Danbi as I have fallen out of love with the larger dolls and he spends a good deal of time in his box. However I have been reluctant to sell him because he was my first BJD, that and the fact that it looks like perhaps at best I could sell him for $125 less than his purchase price.

Of course dolls like Unoa and such seem to retain their value well, but I find it really funny that Pullip dolls can double or triple in price in 5 years whereas a BJD will most likely devalue. Blythe is another dollie that seems to keep her value too, as dolls that are only a couple years old may already be double their original value or more depending on edition.

Well, I think I’ve probably rambled on enough about dolls, so I think I shall sign off for now….and keep on musing over the possibility of purchasing another doll.

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Dolly Find!

newdesk
I went and did a little thrift store shopping with my cousin when he was out here a couple weeks ago and I found this cute little vintage desk from the 70s! It works great in Edie’s room, and then I was able to move the armoire down into the nearly empty living room, yay. Besides the desk there was some other furniture that came packed together with it, which were a beige armoire and vanity set complete with seat, as well as a small table and chair. These toys were made for a type of doll that was produced back in the early 70s and turned out to be perfect Pullip and Dal sized items because they are a little more oversized than the Barbie furniture and thusly are a better fit due to the added height of the head size on Pullips and Dals.

Anyway I got the whole bag of toys for only $5.00 at my local DAV, so I am going to highly recommend thrift store shopping to search for doll clothes and furniture. The DAV and AmVets are better though than your run of the mill Goodwill because they have more toys and they are packed in plastic bags. Goodwill seems to only have a lot of larger toys. Also it is possible to find bags of dolls/doll clothes as well. I saw a pack of doll/doll clothes there that I was tempted to buy for $3.00, but the bag was heavy on the dolls and had less so much clothes. I think there is a certain amount of luck and timing to get a good find, but when you do it will totally make your day! It totally made my day to find that little desk, which subsequently I researched online and came to find that it is actually worth around $50-$60 these days! (O-O)!!

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Dolly Find – Eraser Miniatures

crazerasers

Ack! I realized that I have been neglecting this blog! Lately I’ve been trying to focus a little more on my comic work, so it’s making my other hobbies suffer. I am hoping though to be able to have a chance this weekend to play around with my dollhouse and the new miniatures I have gotten for it. Then maybe I can post some pics! I also have a DIY Pullip Bed post I need to make at some point as well…..Anyway on with the eraser miniatures though.

I found these “crazerasers” in the Easter section at Target the other day. They are around with all of the Easter Basket toys. Anyhow these are the perfect scale for Pullip & Dal, and they are cheap at only $1.19 a set. Besides the two sets seen here they also had a bathroom item set, some sports sets and another food set that I have forgotten about. Now as cute as these are there are a couple drawbacks, but I think the drawbacks can be forgiven for the cheap price. Drawback one is that the little separate pieces, like the sausages in the fry pan, actually have a little nub underneath them which plugs into a hole in the skillet. If you, like me, do not want the nub, you could just carefully carve it off with a Xacto blade since they are erasers. The other drawback is that they are going to need some trimming, as some pieces will have a little fringe at their seam edges from the molds. Again though that is easy to take care of with an Xacto blade.

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Dolly Find – Mini Gingerbread

ornamentcookies

When I was over in JoAnns today I did some snooping through thier Xmas ornaments which were 70% off and I came across these mini gingerbread ornaments which were meant for the small trees. They also happen to be the perfect Pullip size, and after snipping off their little hoops for hanging, I figure they should be perfect for Pullip an Dal’s holiday cookie tray! Even better was the price which was under a dollar!