Posted on

New Craft Book Arrived

While I was ordering my brother’s birthday gift on Amazon, I went ahead and ordered myself this adorable “Felt Friends from Japan” book. I think it was the felt fawn on the front that really sold it for me, but it also boasts 86 toys and accessories you can make yourself. I haven’t had a chance to make anything out of the book yet since I’m still trying to finish the miniature dishes I posted about earlier, but the book looks very promising

This book has a nice mix of toy patterns as well as accessory patterns for things like coin purses and such. Aside from having patterns to make all of the different kinds of toys, it also has pages of cutout guides for making your own felt applique badges to add to whatever you like. The sewing instructions have lots of pictorial diagrams on how to do things so it should be fairly easy to follow. It also dedicates a page to beginner info on how to do certain embroidery stitches that are used to embellish your felt toys, as well as other tips for beginners. There are also a heaping helping of beautiful, clear images of tons of the cute creations, so the book also has the addes bonus of being full of eye candy.

Posted on

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!

Posted on

Who are we?

strangedolls

My mother and my aunt went to the thrift store this morning without me even though I wanted to go…such bad family! jk XD Anyhow my mother brought me home another random doll pack from there in which there were these two little pipsqueaks. These little girl’s are maybe 3.5-4 inches tall and have their original clothing. I looked on the backs of their heads and found an imprint stating that they were made by a U.D. Co. Inc. in 1977, in Hong Kong. I googled this information and the closest thing I can find are Uneeda’s Pee Wee dolls, which have the same body type, but the faces on these girls are very stylized and remind me of the popular stylized Asian doll faces from that era. The images I’ve seen of Uneeda’s Pee Wee dolls have more typical North American style doll faces.

I am going to keep searching to try to find out what kind of doll these little ones are. As it is their stylization and vintage feel about them appeals to me, so I cleaned them up a bit and have given them a spot on one of my shelves. In the same pack of dolls there was also a vintage looking tourist doll that looks like she is in German dress. She’s cute and has weighted sleeping eyes. She needs a little love though as some of the hair from her braids have come loose. I’ll fix her up and keep her too and if I get around to it I’ll be sure to snap a pic of her too.