Doll-A-Day 2023 #163: Betty Curtis Girl, and That Good News!

   Okay. Here we are back to the Betty Curtis kids. Yesterday we saw the boy, made by NIADA artist Betty Curtis, (and you can see their grandparents HERE.), and today we're looking at the girl.

She's a little over three inches tall.

 She has beautiful ringlets, in what is probably mohair.

Like her brother, she has a stockingette face over a molded shape.

The fine lines in her painted features almost make me think they are decals.

She has sort of mitten hands, except they are those baby anti-scratch mittens, because they have no thumbs. She also has a wire armature and stockingette legs. Like her brother and some other Betty Curtis dolls I've seen, she has a thread around her ankles that I think is supposed to be the top of her socks?

She's wearing a lace slip, and the edge of her dress is stitched on the outside, like her brother's shirt collar.

  She has little faux leather shoes.

 

 As I said, she has a wire armature, so she can be posed.

She and her brother can even sit down. The dog looks like he wants to get loose and run instead.

  Unlike her brother, She doesn't have a Betty Curtis tag. This leads me to think they were probably always a pair.

  Those are today's dolls. 

  And now for that good news I talked about yesterday. I have two pieces of good news. One is that we haven't seen much of our third cat, and Ken can't get him to come up from the basement, but yesterday I got him to! I had to go in and see my boys, and the usual two came out when I went into the kitchen. I spotted the treat container, and as I always did, shook it and 'kitty kitty'ed and called Arky by name. It only took a second, and there he was! He wouldn't come any farther than the kitchen doorway, and he wouldn't take the treats from my hand like he used to. But he did come up from the basement! And he ate a couple of the treats I tossed to him, before going back down to the basement. It's a start! He gets so wild once he manages to get down to the basement. I don't want to shut them completely out of the basement though, because if it gets really hot, they can always go down there to be cool. But he came up for me!! Yay!!!

  The second piece of good news concerns the lost camera memory cards from our trip last Fall. I brought a little tub from the house that contains a lot of little things from our trip. In it I found a memory card. I knew it was too good to be true that it was one of the cards from the trip, because I knew that I had my main card, and Ken's in my bedside table drawer. So those were the ones Ken got from the house and lost. But Ken had his computer on when I found it, and asked if I wanted him to pop it in and see what was on it. He did, and I saw pictures from our 2015 trip to England. But then I saw some from the recent trip. After we went to dinner and came back, he looked at what he had on his computer, (without the card), and there were ALL of my trip pictures from the missing card! That means I got ALL of my pictures back! Because I still have the card I put in when that one got full! (It covered basically the evening before, and the last day of our trip.) I have a bunch of flash drives that were also in the tub, so he can put them on one of those, and I can have access to the pictures, and have them saved in case Kens computer has some kind of disaster, which his computers inevitably do. So I am thrilled! It means we also have all of Ken's pictures from London on, because that's when his camera stopped working, (since recovered), and he used his phone, and my camera for some things. So yay!!!

  That's today's doll. See you again tomorrow!

 

  

Doll-A-Day 2023 #162: Betty Curtis Boy and His Dog

   Today's doll is another dollhouse kid. It's this boy and his dog.

He's about 3 and 1/2 inches tall, and he has a little dog.

  He was made by Betty Curtis, a member of NIADA, the National Institute of American Doll Artists.

You may have seen the post I did recently on the Betty Curtis grandparents dolls. You can see that post HERE. Like them, this little guy has a cloth face over a sculpt, so he has three dimensional features. 

  He also has a hand painted face, and fuzzy hair. I think it's mohair.

  His pants have tiny beads for buttons. 

Even on the back, under his Betty Curtis tag.

His shirt is stitched around the edge of the collar.

He has stockingette legs and leatherish looking shoes.

  He has a wore armature, so he's bendy. He can even hold his dog, which I have to admit, is my favourite part of the set. I love this dog!

He's so cute! You have to look really close to tell, but he's made of pipe cleaners.

Not the kind of thin, crappy pipe cleaners you get at craft stores. These are the kind that were, (are?) sold to clean a pipe with. They are much more solid and not nearly as floppy as the craft ones. My grama used to make things out of pipe cleaners like this. I have a little chair she made, with a woven thread seat.

He has a brown tail and ears, and he even has a pink mouth.

He has a very expressive little face.

The dog is probably more expressive than the boy!

  I got this doll, and his sister, at a miniature show a couple of years ago. They were marked $15 each, but the lady was selling a whole bunch of dolls for half price. That's the same dealer and show where I got the Betty Curtis grandparents, and the Erna Meyer dolls you saw the last two days. They were all half price. I saw a pair of Betty Curtis dollhouse kids similar to these online. The boy even had a dog like mine. The girl had a doll, which mine doesn't have. They were sold by Theriault's for $150! Mine are a bit dirty and worn, whereas those were clean and unplayed with, but I still think I got a pretty good deal. 

  That's today's doll. See you again tomorrow with some good news and another doll!

 

Doll-A-Day 2023 #119: Dollhouse Grandparents

Today's doll is two: this set of dollhouse grandparents.

  They aren't labeled in any way, but after looking at another doll tagged as a Betty Curtis doll, and looking at Betty Curtis dolls online, I'm pretty sure they were made by Betty Curtis.

My stupid autofocus focused on the wrong thing again, so their faces are a bit blurry. But they re so cute, sitting there holding hands, that I had to show you.

  Betty Curtis was a NIADA artist. Niada stands for National Institute of American of Doll Artists. You can see many of her dolls online by Googling her name.

  These two are dollhouse scale, about 6 inches tall. I'm not sure what their faces are made of. It's some stretchy fabric, but there's obviously some form under the fabric, because they have three dimensional features.

The rest of them is covered in something heavier than stockingette, but still stretchy.

Grampa has a beard and mustache.

But he's going bald.

"Them's fightin' words!"

Cool off Gramps. "I'll take ya on right here!"

"Put 'em up!"

While Grampa regains his composure, let's look at Grama. 

I'm not sure what her hair is made of, but it's a natural mix of shades.

  Grama has a pretty little cameo necklace.

She also has some nice vintage lace on her dress.

Under her dress she's wearing a slip, and bloomers, maybe even two layers of bloomers. It kind of looks that way.

   I think their little shoes are made of leather. It looks like leather, but is so thin. It must be kid leather.

Both are bendable. Their arms and legs, and upper bodies can bend. They can't turn their heads though.

They have some nice clothes. I like Grama's dress. The fabric is very thin, and falls naturally on a small figure. 

Grampa has a tie and some very nice suspenders. The metal parts are made of what seems to be foil paper.

  I think the things I was most impressed by were Grampa's beard and mustache, and his glasses. 

They're made of super thin wire. It's twisted on the sides, and at the nose piece. I was least impressed by his stub hands.

"Them's fightin' words..."

Oh give me a break Grampa.

  Those are today's dolls.

  See you tomorrow for another one.