Why 'Planet of the Dolls'?

  Ok, so you love your dolls. But do you sometimes feel a little overwhelmed? This blog is called Planet of the Dolls because, yes, it's a play on Planet of the Apes, which is one of my obsessions, (Yeah, I'm a science fiction nerd.), but also because sometimes it feels that way.My house, I mean. I love the movies "Magic", and "Dead of Night", which both have ventiloquist dummies that 'take over' their 'masters', and although I never liked the "Child's Play" (Chucky) movies, I did enjoy "Trilogy of Terror", with Karen Black being attacked and (Spoiler) eventually possessed by a Zuni warrior doll. In this house we have always said that those type of movies should be the most terrifying for us, because there are so many dolls in this house that if they came to life there would be no way we would come out alive. It would be like a plague of locusts or something! Kind of like the scene in "Small Soldiers" where they are fighting the Barbie type dolls that have been brought to life by the soldiers.
  Every now and then I look through my stuff and see what I can possibly live without, in an effort to thin the crowd. When I do this though, I usually end up weeding out very few dolls. I find myself using arguments like, "Well, these two aren't exactly the same." or "This one is so small, it really won't make much of a difference anyway." I recently went through about 4 boxes, (They were small boxes.), of Barbie sized and Kelly sized dolls to see what I could get rid of. Well, I ended up eliminating about 2 Barbie sized and three Kellys. Pathetic.  I've heard of the 'when a new one comes in and old one must go out' rule of doll collecting. I have a hard time with that one. Everything I have I got because I really like it.I rarely change my mind. That's why I have things I've had since I was a kid. I liked them then, I like them now. That's why Ken's fairly safe. I liked him enough to marry him in the first place, so he's not going anywhere.Now recently we made the buy of the century at an auction. I ended up keeping dolls that I hadn't even seen before, let alone been after for ages. These I question, and I may eventually send some of them packing. For now though, I have a Flirty Christina, a weird looking Ratti doll with freckles, teeth, and a somewhat creepy grin, and some others that I might not have even had a desire for had it not been for that darned auction.
  Ken complains that I have too much stuff, but then he goes and buys me more. You're just enabling me Ken! And he spoils me. He needs to learn to put his foot down and say no once in a while. When I whine at the checkout and want that candy bar, (Read: swear that I can make my money back if I bid on that Ebay lot and still keep what I want.) he needs to take my hand and lead me out of the store, (Read: tell me we absolutely can NOT afford it right now.) But NO! He just says, "I trust you. Go ahead. Just don't spend more than X amount of dollars." What can you do with a husband like that?! (In case you're wondering why I defer to Ken on the spending,it's because I make some of the money around here, but it's a drop in the bucket. I've been an at home Mom all these years and I am only starting to try to build a business with my hand made dolls and furniture.)
  I sometimes think, what if we had a really big place, and we could open a doll and toy museum? That would be really cool, and I could keep all my stuff and see it when I wanted to, but it wouldn't be in my way all the time.Well, I can dream, can't I?

Play line Disney Store Brave Merida doll review

 First of all, during a trip to Rural King yesterday for dog food I spotted a couple of things I thought I'd mention. They had some things called 'crystal lamps', which look sort of like Lava lamps for 18" dolls, only instead of liquid with a glob floating in it, there are 'crystals' and when the lamp is turned on different coloured lights go on and off inside. They're battery operated, so they could easily be used in a doll setting without a gigantic cord showing. The other thing was a Bratz doll that is slightly larger than normal. (We don't do Bratz in this house generally. They were always too sleazy looking for my tastes, and I didn't want my girls playing with them. There have been two exceptions. One is my Bratzilla with the red hair and realistic eyes, and Ivy's glow in the dark bathing suit girl. That was comparatively recent, so she was older and didn't actually do anything with her except watch her glow, which is her currant obsession. Glow in the dark that is, not watching the doll.) Anyway, these Bratz dolls were probably slightly taller than a Barbie, and the box proudly proclaimed, "I'm taller". I'm not sure what the advantage is supposed to be. They can't wear any of the regular Bratz clothes, so they'll need a whole new wardrobe. And they'll look like giants amongst the other dolls if the child has regular sized 'fashion dolls'. They might hang around with a Moxie Teen I guess. They aren't even extra articulated or anything. They didn't even have jointed elbows. Just saying.
  So, that said, I'll move on to the point of this post. Our anniversary was Monday and one of my gifts was a Merida doll. I had been "pointing out" to Ken that they were on sale for $5 at Meijers and he actually bought one.

 

And here's the back of the box.

That hair looks pretty impressive. I wish it really did hang like it does in the picture.

She's normally $9.99.The box is simpler than the box for the one I got at the Disney store earlier this summer. This one was way easier to get open, and it wasn't necessary to tear the box up either. All I had to  do was slit the tape on the sides and pull the back down.

 

 

Then I was able to get at the various ties and things holding her in place. There weren't as many of those either. And let's face it, why does doll packaging have to be like breaking into Fort Knox these days? I understand that because there are so many more dolls to choose from, and stores are so big that employees can't watch everybody, that they can't do the open shoebox type boxes Barbies, for example, used to come in when I was a kid. People would be stealing things and switching boxes all over the place. But so much paper and plastic is wasted in making impossible to infiltrate packaging, and then it all ends up in land fills. This doll's packaging is a bit better. There were only a couple of those plastic ties holding her head in place, a couple of threads on her hair, which could be cut or untaped on the back of the box, so her hair wasn't in danger. The bottom of her dress was held in place by merely poking it through a couple of slits in the cardboard, and her ankles were held by those clear elastic thingies.So removing her from the box was fairly easy. Parents would be needed to slit the tape on the edges and cut the plastic things in her head, but that's about it.

             

 

After that all there was to do was lift the backing up and there she was.

 

Freedom!  She comes with a little gold comb, but no other accessories.

Her hair is nice and full in back. I didn't even have to recomb it to fill a space from being hooked in the box.

Her hair is full, with no bald spots. Its also super soft, not stiff from hair spray. I'm not sure how long the curl would last after a child has combed it a few times, but I would think it would look better after combing than the Disney Store girl's hair. She has loads of hairspray, and combing the hair would ruin the 'do I think.

You look vaguely familiar. Do I know your mother?

Speaking of the Disney Store doll, here they are together for comparison. New girl is slightly shorter. Her hair is slightly lighter. Her face is WAY different too. D.S. Merida looks a lot more like the animated version, with that attitude on her face and the...uhh, unusual eyes. New Merida is also a lot paler than D.S. Merida. She's almost ghostly white, in fact. She has a more traditional 'pretty' look about her, with her little rose petal mouth and softer eyes with long painted lashes.

You know what? I like D.S. Merida better!

 

New girl is also less poseable than D.S. Merida. She's jointed at the shoulders, neck, and hips only. So she can tilt her head a little, and her swivel shoulder joints allow her to do slightly different arm poses.

One palm up and one palm down.

Other than the lack of jointing I was also disappointed that her knees don't even bend. They're hard plastic like the legs on the ballerina Barbies with the coloured plastic legs. She has less joints to break all around, which does make her a good doll for a younger child.

At least she can sit in a more ladylike way than D.S. Merida.

She does have some cool shoes though. Ivy likes them too. Here's a close up.

 

And the back.

They're open in the back so they're easier to slip on and off. But the rubber belt could have been better.

 Why couldn't it have been cloth? That certainly couldn't have added to the cost much? Think how much better that would have looked.

  All in all I like her, but I prefer the Disney Store Merida. I wish D.S.'s hair was as soft as this one's hair. But I like the face and clothes better on D.S. Merida, and the fact that she has a lot more poseability. This doll is a better choice for a younger child, or a child who is harder on dolls.

That's it. Bye for now.

Anniversary Presents

  So Monday was our anniversary. One of my gifts to Ken was agreeing to eat out for lunch and dinner. After my lunch of a grilled cheese sandwich, tomato soup and garlic mashed potatoes at Applebees I was ready to pop. I'm really only good for one decent sized meal a day, and he knows it. So when I ate a dinner of a salad,Parmesan asparagus, some bread,and about three little stuffed mushrooms for dinner I was really about to explode. Absolutely miserable. Ken wanted everybody to share a brownie sundae so we could all have at least a taste of dessert, but the girls were too full to have any, and I couldn't eat more than three small bites. You KNOW I was full when I leave a brownie behind! For a fat lady it doesn't take much to fill me up. I'm like a reverse Tardis. I'm bigger on the outside.
  Ken's gifts to me included this Merida.

  I had been hinting...ok. Outright saying that the Merida dolls were on sale for $5 at Meijers, (and then having to again explain, "The 'Brave' girl!") so he bought me one...and promptly left it out where I found it.So I actually had it early, but I didn't open it until the day had passed. I also wanted to compare this one to the Disney Store one I got in June. So I'll be posting a full review of her tomorrow.
  If you read this blog last week you'll remember that I left an absentee bid on an Elizabeth Taylor as Cleopatra doll. Well, I didn't win her. Neither did I win the box of 1920's German dollhouse dolls,or the 1930's doll. But I did win the box containing this girl.

Tessie Talk. Her shoes make her feet look invisible, but they are in fact black.

  She's not everybody's cup of tea, but I think she's so cute! She is, as her collar says, a Tessie Talk ventriloquist doll, made by Horsman. I've always had an infatuation with puppets and ventriloquist dummies anyway,and red haired dolls,and I love Tessie Talk. This is actually my third. They all have different original outfits, which makes me think there must have been a lot of combinations of hair and clothes available.My first has a brown  version of this girl's hair, and my second has long red hair. When I bought her it was in what I always call a 'country singer hairdo', since I grew up in the era when lady 'country and western' singers, as they were called then, had big hair. Like Loretta Lynn...

 ...and Dolly Parton...

Dolly seems to be a pretty nice lady, but that hair! Please! Can you imagine poor Tessie Talk with that hair?! That 'do came down as soon as I got home from the toy show!
    Ken also indulged my love of treasure hunting and we stopped at several thrift shops while we were in the Big City waiting for Emma to get off work and join us for dinner. I found these girls for .59 cents each!

Nancy Ann Storybook dolls. These are the later, plastic ones. They could do with a trip to the hairdresser, but they're pretty nice.

  Ken also bought me this pumpkin headed fellow made by  Gathered Traditions, and designed by  Joe Spencer.     .

There is a girl to match, and bigger size. This reminds me that I need to haul out the Halloween decorations soon. Until next time...

What I Did On My Summer Vacation

  I wrote earlier this summer about my crazy neighbors and how they were making my life miserable. That was a lot of my summer. Our garage was in bad shape, so we had to take that down.

This is what a two car garage looks like when you cut it up and stack it neatly (sort of.).

  Fuzzy nearly got his throat slit undoing the garage door. Apparently you have to unhook something to loosen the tension before you undo the spring...or something. I had been freaking out, telling him to get his head out of the garage door before something happened. But of course, he's 18, so he just said, "Everything's FINE." and went on. The next thing I know he's in the kitchen with blood pouring out of his jaw.SEE?! Why does nobody listen to me?! Ken took him to the emergency room and he got stitches. He had a couple of nicks in his neck too, and it chills me to think that if the cuts on his neck had been as deep as the ones on his jaw he would probably have bled to death before we could have gotten him down the street to the hospital.
  Ken also kept trying to take the garage down from INSIDE it. Who is that crazy? I was in a constant state of nerves until the thing was down.
  Anyway, now that the garage is down I have to look at even more of my neighbor's ugly fence, (That thing looks like it belongs behind a convenience store.)AND their stupid sign:

  'No leaning'. I like to go out in the yard and do this...

Danny Kaye defying gravity in "Wonder Man".

...and there's not a thing they can do about it!
  Seriously, what is the deal with that sign? I mean really. Did they think I was going to squeeze behind my garage, in the foot and a half between the garage and their monstrosity...I mean fence...with my nose to the fence---because that's the only way I could have read that sign. They have another sign on their front gate...the one with the padlock on it...which says '...and do not touch the fence'.Why do they think I have an obsession with touching their fence? Personally, I was glad they put it up, (Apart from the fact that they jumped the property line. But we won't go there. They will, but we won't.), because then I didn't have to look at them, or even pretend to be friendly. ("We hope you don't hate us." Well then why do you do so many things to MAKE me hate you?) I just want to ignore them, and have them ignore me,but they keep making that impossible.I mention the padlock because of it's weirdity. They bother to padlock that gate, but if you go around to the other side of the house to the driveway, or to the back of the back yard,you can just walk into their yard. (In the picture of the 'garage',that corner of the fence where the sign is, that's where the fence ends. There's no fence around that corner.) So what good does the padlock do? It's SYMBOLIC, obviously. They are locking us out. Like I want in. It's like the American flag they put on the side of their garage, facing us. Not on their house or even where they could see it properly, like a normal person would do. They put it there, kind of AT us, obviously a dig at Ken, who is from England.(Their way of saying 'Limey go home' I guess.)
  Every summer they do something to mess up our whole summer, and then lay low in the winter, feasting on their kill.("Ha ha, we ruined their summer again!")I won't even go into all the stuff they've done, like pouring trash cans full of poison into our yard until they killed the huge rose bush that had been planted in the 1940's, or putting a pile of 'cat food' in our yard (to poison our cat or someone else's?), or throwing glass into the other neighbor's dog pen, and then trying to sneakily feed the dog some 'left over noodles', or stealing a piece of the other neighbor's yard by fencing in an L shaped section by the property line because it's a rental and the people didn't know any better . Gad! For not going into stuff, that's a lot of stuff. All I did was have branches growing in their air space. (Ken questioned how far up the property belongs to them and when it becomes God's.)
  Apart from crazy neighbor problems there were the basement floodings and we're STILL disposing of the garage pieces. (Anybody want some free garage?) I am tired. I need the winter to recuperate.I'll need the strength. There'll be another summer next year...

The Story of Tammy and Ken (Not the dolls. Us.)

  Our 24th wedding anniversary is coming up tomorrow, so I thought it would be a nice time to tell the story of how we came to be a couple.The story of our first date is a doosey, so hang in there.

  I think I have mentioned that Ken is from England. His dad was American though, and when Ken's mom died his dad eventually reestablished contact with his high school sweetheart, and ended up moving back to America to marry her, after she was widowed too. Ken came to visit his dad and decided that he liked it here. Just before his 21st birthday he came over again with the idea that, if he could find a job before he was supposed to return to England, he would stay. Otherwise he would go home and forget about living here. As fate would have it, he was hired by a Heck's store in the small town where his dad lived. So, Ken stayed in America. That was 1984, and he hasn't been back since.
  Meanwhile, I lived in another part of the state, but was originally from a place very near his Dad's home town, and not much farther from the place Ken was then living. I was living a bit farther away in 1984 though, having moved to live with my dad when I was 12. In 1984 I was also very into all things British. Almost all the television I watched or music I listened to was British. My favourite comedy, movies, music: it was British, mostly English. I was a total Anglophile.(I attribute it to a harrowing experience I suffered as a child. During the height of The Monkees era, Davy Jones, the band's sole English member, was the most popular. I never liked to go with the popular vote, so I became so sick of him that I rebelled against all things English. I refused to drink tea because, "It's English." (However I still managed to love The Avengers. The English tv show, that is, not the comic book.) One day, to punish me for my anti-Britishism, my sister and cousin chased me and held me down to inflict what they referred to as The English Tea Torture. That is, as opposed to the Chinese water torture. Only, instead of dripping water in slow torturous drops on my forehead, they poured boiling tea on my stomach. Well, it's hard to drop slow careful drops on a writhing 5 year old.)

There must be something to this Tea Torture stuff. My favourite Monkee was Peter, but post Tea Torture I have always had a preference for dark haired men with big brown eyes. That's why I married a blue eyed blonde. Huh?

  I wanted to go to England so badly. I saved my money obsessively for the trip. I finally went in March of 1985, and again in 1986. I even went to Ken's home town, because one of my friends was attending art college there. I lose very few things because I'm kind of obsessive about keeping track of them. But I lost my hat there. I always joke that it sounds like a song from the Beatles parody about 'The Rutles'. Instead of  this:

 ...mine is "I Left My Hat on a Bus in Hull".
   So most people assume that I found Ken in England, but the fact is, he was already here. I've been there twice since he has been there. But the point I was aiming at here is, I think it was destiny that brought us together. So many things had to happen in exactly the right way for us to meet. If he hadn't moved to America. If I hadn't moved to live with my dad. If both of us hadn't gotten jobs with the same chain of stores. If Ken hadn't been moved so many times. If I hadn't come back to work at the Heck's store when I came home from England. I wanted a nice, sweet Yorkshireman, and Ken was sent to me!
  While I toiled at my Heck's, Ken was transferred several times to other locations. As an unmarried guy, and someone for whom work was everything, (This is Ken, so the possible exception would have been food.), he was asked to move to several different stores when they needed someone. He got promotions for doing it, but after awhile he got tired of it. Finally he refused to move unless they gave him something he wanted: to be allowed to take all his vacation weeks at once so he could travel far away to visit someone. The someone was his former girlfriend, whom he still pined for, but who had married someone else. She was getting a divorce so he figured it was time to make his move. So in exchange he agreed to move again. Of course, you're guessing by now that the move was to the store where I worked.

  I remember the night, in July of 1988, that he first came to the store. I was behind the jewelry counter, as usual, across from the service desk, right up front. Somehow I missed him coming in, but the girl at the service desk said, "That guy. I think he was English." Jokingly, I nearly flew over my counter. "Where?!" She didn't know. "What did he look like?" "He was blonde, with a mustache." "Oh. Never  mind." I said, sliding back off the counter. My preference ran to dark hair, brown eyes, and clean shaven.(Fortunately Ken's mustache wasn't blonde. That might have been a deal breaker. I could never stand a blonde mustache. Brings to mind that invisible mustache Martin Mull had when he was young. It's like his mustache is wearing the mustache equivalent of those perception filters from Doctor Who: You know the mustache is there, but you can't quite see it.)

Martin Mull and his amazing invisible mustache. You have to look very closely, but it is there.

   Ken was introduced to everyone that night except me. I did get to talk to him briefly when I went to the office to get my check. I asked for another girl's check too, since she had asked me to get hers for her. Ken was the one in the office, handing out the checks. When he gave me both of them, I  said, "Oh boy! I get two!" I can still remember Ken hanging out of the cash office doorway and  joking, "Yes, but one's a credit and one's a debit!" He smiled and he had my favourite kind of teeth. (My sister calls them 'bunny teeth'.)  I was unprepared for that. Blonde, okay. But he has bunny teeth! I joked back that "I might level out."

  Since it was Friday and I had the weekend off, I didn't see him again until Monday. When the store opened Monday morning the first thing that happened was someone telling me, "The new guy is coming up to put the door on your counter.", (That was something that was supposed to have been done weeks before.) So Ken arrived at my jewelry counter. We talked while we worked and he seemed nice, but when he finished putting the door on, a very meaningful moment happened. He decided to "see if it works" by swinging the door. When he did, it cracked me right in the knee. That could have been the end of any possibilities, right there. But I guess we're both weird. Instead of getting mad, or figuring this guy was a clutzy loser, I joked, "Now let me test it. Put your head right here." He laughed. And that is probably where we started. If I had gotten mad, or he had gotten mad when I said that, (He was my superior, after all.), that would have been it. But we shared an admittedly odd sense of humour and, I suppose, a matched temperament. (To an extent. In those days it was practically impossible to make Ken mad. I however have always had what I grudgingly would call a 'redhead temper'. I only use the biggoted  phrase because I did read somewhere that the same genes which give us red hair also give us bad tempers. That also allows me to claim that I can't help it...)
  So we became friends over the next few months. Because I was familiar with the accents, and because my friend Jenny, (She's the one who was attending art college in Hull.), has a heavier Yorkshire accent than Ken could ever hope to have, I had no trouble understanding him, as most of the employees did. Because of my infatuation with all things British I got most of his references and he got most of mine. That kind of confused him sometimes, as he didn't know my 'history'. Ken has crazy curly hair, made crazier by his insistence on making it lay down, rather than, as I like to say, 'embracing his curliness'. One day some bigwigs were in the store and Ken ran by, desperately trying to flatten his hair. "How's my hair?" he quickly asked. "Is your last name Dodd?" I asked. He gave a stunned look. I never found out if it was at the thought that he had Ken Dodd's hair, or that I knew who Ken Dodd is.

British comedian Ken Dodd, And yes, those are his real teeth.

   Nowdays, when the mustache and hair get a bit too long Ken sort of resembles Einstein.

My husband the genius. No wait. This is Einstein

    He still planned to visit the old girlfriend and, in fact, ask her to marry him. But he was beginning to feel guilty for having some feelings for me in the meantime. (He told me this later.) I was beginning to like Ken very much too. When he returned from his trip he looked so sad. She had turned him down, saying there was 'no spark'. I knew none of this at the time, only that he had gone to visit his 'girlfriend'. One night soon after his return we were closing the store together.(Managers were required to have an employee follow them to the bank.) Just the two of us in the whole place. I remember standing on a cart while he turned everything off in the stock room, and he asked me out. I was 26, but I'd never been on a date. I had been asked a few times, but never by anyone I would have been tempted to go out with.(The first person to ever ask me out was a guy I worked with. It was nearly midnight on New Year's Eve, 1984, and he had asked everybody in the store out at various times, except for me and a middle aged lady named Helen. Helen wasn't there that night...  This set a precedent for the type of offers I got.) I never really wanted to 'date'. I wanted there to only ever be one person. I wouldn't have gone out with anybody unless I already knew I had some feelings for them. The idea of just dating for the sake of dating didn't appeal to me. But when Ken asked me I said yes. (Although I did ask him about that girlfriend thing.) My dad told me later, "I knew you were going to marry Ken." "Why?" "Because you went out with him."

  Being an assistant manager Ken wasn't supposed to 'fraternize' with the employees. (Even though a previous assistant had married one of the employees.) So for our date we had to leave town, so as not to be seen together. The day was overcast, but we started to the Big City to the zoo. (Ken figured that because I'm a vegetarian I must like animals. Not necessarily, but in this case he was right, although zoos have a tendency to make me cry.) When it began to rain half way there we started trying to think of somewhere else to go. Suddenly Ken said, "Have you ever been to Canada?" I hadn't, but I thought it was too far away to go to in a day. "Can we?" Ken assured me that it wasn't all that far, so I said yes, I'd like to go. (Why not? Well, I'll tell you why not...)
  We made it to Canada. In those days they didn't check your passport, which I would have been prepared for  anyway. I didn't drive, but I traveled, so I always carried my passport. Ken had been to Canada before and they had never asked to see his passport. 

  We looked around and had dinner at a terrible Chinese restaurant. It was called The House of Lee, but the sign was hard to read and it looked like 'The House of Noise', so we still refer to it that way. It started to get late so we decided we should head back to Ohio. When we tried to go through we were asked for our passports. I had mine, but Ken didn't. We were detained. Ken tried to tell them that he was an American citizen since birth because his father was American and had registered him in England. (Ken has dual citizenship since he was born in England to an English mother and an American father. If we ever get them their papers, our kids have it too, since Ken can pass on his British citizenship to them because they had the reverse situation to him. And strangely enough, if we bothered to get the paperwork, I have, in a sense, become English. Technically that is.) He tried to show them his Ohio driver's license, which only received the response, "Anybody can get one of those." They finally threatened to put him in jail if he didn't stop arguing with them. He calmed down a bit then, not wanting to leave me stranded in Canada alone. In the end Ken had to call his father and ask him to bring his passport to Canada so he could get home. His dad wasn't too pleased and said he wouldn't bring it until the next morning. That put me in the awkward position of having to call my Dad (I still lived at home.), and tell him that I wouldn't be coming home from my first date that night because I was trapped in Canada. I saved both our hotel receipts to prove we had separate rooms. Canada took us back with no problem. (We actually had trouble reentering the United States on subsequent trips, even with Ken's passport. As soon as they heard his Yorkshire accent there was a problem. Eventually I took to doing all the talking other than Ken's response to "What is your citizenship, sir?", which was limited to "U.S." I figured nobody could detect an accent in that.)
  Being trapped in Canada meant we spent more time together than we would have on a normal date. Once again, my reaction to Ken's international equivalent of banging my knee with a door wasn't anger or even 'This guy is cursed.'. I wouldn't even let him pay for my hotel room because, "It was an adventure." Ken was an underdog, and I always had a thing for Underdog. I just didn't realize I was

 Sweet Polly Purebred.

Just a quick note from Ken Tam I love you (my sweet polly pure bred).

This is The Stuff I Do

I do actually make things.Here are some of my older dolls.They have wooden heads and felt covered wire armatures.Mama Doll sold to a lady who then ordered Papa Doll. I hope she is taking good care of him because he is one of my favourites that I've made.He is about 2 and a half  inches tall, has pockets in his waistcoat and a watch chain made of thread, and spats!Their arms and legs are poseable. Her shawl is removeable.

This lady is polymer clay with jointed legs. Her hat is removeable. She's about 3 inches tall.She's going to be up for sale soon.

 

I make furniture as well as dolls. The chair and it's matching couch, as well as the little lady posing here, will all be for sale soon. She stands just over 2 inches tall and has poseable arms and legs. 

This is one of the newest dolls I've made. He has a polymer clay head, wire armature,sculpted felt hands, and cloth clothes. I made him a pocket watch,and pince nez glasses. I also made the buttons on his vest.

All the better to see you with.

He's just under 4 inches tall. Somehow he came out shorter than I'd intended, making him a very short old fellow for dollhouses.He'll go up for sale soon. Ebay or Etsy, that is the question.

These Raggedy dolls I made sold on Etsy. They measure just over 2 inches tall. They have all cloth clothes and rooted hair.

These little ladies will be going on Etsy or Ebay soon. I'm still deciding which. My earlier wooden head dolls had better sales on Etsy.These are polymer clay, with cloth clothes and moveable arms and legs. They're supposed to look like old fashioned China dolls.

They even have tiny underthings.

Here's the back view. I'm pretty proud of how the hair came out on these.

The back of lady #2. The shawl is removable.

And here she is from the front.

This gives you the idea of how small these ladies are. They make lovely dolls for little dollhouse girls.

Lady #3. I think she is a Civil War era lady.

And the side/back. I made the tiny stands too, out of necessity. There was no way to display them at shows without some way of making them stand up. My website for these dolls and furniture needs work and updated pictures, (All the dolls pictured have been sold.), but if you want to see more of what I have made,the site is Tamsykens.com, and there is a slideshow you can click on in the bottom right corner. I'll no doubt be talking about it on here when I  get these dolls and the furniture listed for sale.

Auction Fever (Well, auction nausea anyway.)

  I wrote this last night, but then was too tired to take the pictures, so it's outdated by a day.
  Well, here I am again at the end of another auction day. I'm absolutely exhausted from watching other people win stuff. Ok, I did win a few things, which is the reason for my other malady: auction blahs. When I spend money I get nauseated! I am going to have to move some of this stuff to justify going, or else I'll just have to crawl into a hole and die.(Which is entirely out of the question.)
  There were some beautiful Stacey dolls today, none of which I won. There was a really nice Todd with blushy cheeks, which I also did not win. None of the Skippers absolutely bowled me over, but there was a very pretty brunette Skooter: which also did not come home with me. Ditto the Father of the Bride Elizabeth Taylor. (Crossed fingers on my absentee bid for Elizabeth as Cleopatra tomorrow.) I almost did better at Goodwill on the way home from visiting my Dad last night.

  I swear this isn't my fault. The computer's acting weird. Not even my computer illiteracy is to blame for this one.

 I got this bunch of dolls, including a vintage Allan,with shoes,this Tangled doll in all her original stuff, Maxie,and these other more boring ladies, all for $3!

  Today I did score a Gene I've been wanting though!Creme De Cassis is mine at last.

   Thanks Ken for the early anniversary present!
   I also got a great Skipper/Barbie case.

  I have been needing some more cases to keep my stuff in. Missed out on the Ken and Midge cases though.
  Nice graphics on this Barbie and Skipper electric drawing set.

  I love dolls of real people that really look like them. Even people I don't especially like. (That's why I have two different Frank Sinatra dolls and a Clark Gable.)

I loved all the little guitars on the other Elvis'...Elvis's....Elvi...but this was the only one I could afford.

  Now here's my question. If Barbie loves Frankie AND Elvis, when is she going to love The Beatles?! Now that one I would buy new! (Well, probably not, because it would be 5 dolls and cost a fortune. But I would stalk it until it became affordable.) If they could make a set of Beatles dolls with head sculpts as good as the Frank Sinatra and Elvis dolls they've done that would be amazing! And they have to be next. (And where does it stop? I don't see anybody else that is on a popularity par with those guys.For the 70's, Barbie loves...? Kiss? The Bay City Rollers? The Bee Gees? See, it just doesn't work. For one thing, I don't think Mattel would let her love Kiss.
  Ken (Husband, not the doll.)loves Coca Cola stuff. He never buys himself anything though. It took me saying that I really like this Coke Barbie for him to make a winning bid.

We had already lost out on a whole box full of Coke Barbies, the Coca Cola soda fountain, (So Cool!!),and Coca Cola Ken. (I said, of all things, we should have a Coca Cola Ken. Other than Ken that is. Actually, Ken can't be Coca Cola Ken anymore, because he drank SOOO much pop that he now has mild diabetes. He used to drink almost nothing but pop, and he's a thirsty guy, so that was A LOT of pop. The guy could drink a whole 2 litre bottle in seconds, and frequently did. Drinking a highly caffinated beverage probably added to his thirst, which made him drink more pop, which made him thirstier...well, you get the idea. These days he is a good boy, (well, a better boy.) who drinks mostly water.
  I got a few stray pieces of vintage stuff, including the rare Sears exclusive Red Fantastic, which is actually not red.

  After finding the Tammy house, last weekend---remember I said I'd never seen it in person? Well, there it was in tomorrow's auction stuff. And better than mine. It had stuff inside and parts of it looked like they'd never been put together. Oh well. Mine was only $5....
  And because the auctioneer was begging me to take it I bought a Barbie Dreamhouse. Unfortunately not the second one. We had that one as kids and I'd love to have that one. Anybody want a Dreamhouse?