New Hand Painted Dianna Effner Maru and Friends Dolls! And a Sneak Peak at an Upcoming One!

   There's something new from Maru and Friends, and it's pretty great! Two new hand painted dolls, sculpted by the late Dianna Effner are on the website now, and today you're seeing the new doll that isn't on the website yet!

  All three are 13 inch Mini Pal sized dolls, with hand painted faces by Ashley Rose, a certified artist from Dianna Effner's Dreamer's Guild. A certificate of  authenticity is provided, and the dolls are signed by the artist. All three dolls are limited editions of 100 pieces world wide.

  The dolls are all vinyl, and the first two have jointed elbows, as well as the usual articulation at the neck, shoulders, and hips. They have removable wigs, and can wear the other Mini Pal wigs available from Maru and Friends. 

   The dresses are fully lined, and close with snaps. You may have read in my reviews of Maru and Friends dolls how much I love the quality of their regular doll clothes. The fabrics are always so nice, and the clothes look and feel like human clothes, with real buttons and snaps. 

  As I said, there are two of the new hand painted dolls on the website, and I will be previewing a third in this post. First look! 

  Of the two on the  website now, let's start with  Charlize.  

 Charlize has dark auburn hair with red highlights, and a wonderful hand painted Dianna Effner face. She's available with blue or green eyes. Her skin tone is light, and she has rosy cheeks.

   Her dress is made from zibeline silk, (a less cruel silk made of wool or other animal hair which can be sheared. Silk from worms is obtained by boiling the worms alive. This may not matter to you, but it matters to me.), with forget-me-nots with faux jewel centers, on the shoulders.

  Her outfit is completed by underwear, white tights, and black Mary Jane shoes with tiny side bows.

 The second hand painted doll on the website is Isabella.

  Isabella is a blonde with blue eyes. (Unlike Charlize, Isabella is available with blue eyes only.)

  Her dress is a mix of silk and chamois fabric, with a pink bodice and pastel rainbow skirt. The bodice features pleating, faux pearl beads and daisy appliques. Her outfit is completed by underwear, white tights, and the same black Mary Janes with side bows, worn by Charlize.

  Now for the new doll, which hasn't been seen yet! Her name is Willow, and she's my favourite so far.

Willow has great red hair, and blue eyes, a fair complexion, and freckles! 

Her blue dress has an interesting collar style. She also comes with underwear, white stockings, and black Mary Jane shoes.

     These dolls are beauties. They are one of a kind works of art, so they are pricey. Charlize and Isabella, who have jointed elbows, retail for $800, held by a $200 deposit. Willow doesn't have jointed elbows, but  is priced at $545. As I said, Willow isn't on the website yet, but the other two are available for preorder on the Maru and Friends website. 

  That's it! See you soon!

Doll-A-Day 2023 #173: Savannah Mini Pal

   Today's doll is the last one of the three I got from Emily at The Toybox Philosopher when she was selling her dolls  before moving. She's the Savannah Mini Pal from Maru and Friends.

She went to the beach on a dreary day. There was sunshine right before I tried to take her pictures, and then as I was taking them, there was a downpour and she had to duck back into her plastic bag and wait for a sunny day to finish her photo shoot.

  She doesn't have her box any more. That was so she could fit in the big box with big Savannah and my Zwergnase, but she has her certificate of authenticity.

  She is the tiny version of regular size Savannah.

She has the same fair complexion and freckles, and bright red hair.

 

The crack in my lens filter really shows up when I photograph too directly in the sunny direction. On this day it wasn't even sunny and the light still hit the crack in such a way that it left a blur through some of my pictures.

 

But not all of them, and some only faintly, like this one.

I need to remove it. It's only a clear filter, meant to protect the real lens. But it's screwed on so tight that I can't get it off. Ken says maybe we should risk it, and just break the glass out, but we're afraid of scratching the real lens. You know. The one that won't focus properly any more!

  Savannah is very pale. That's not unusual, since she's a red head. Ivy is probably at least this pale, if not more so. But if Savannah had been my mom's kid, she would have been told to "Get out and get some sun! You're pasty pale!", like I was told when I was a kid. And I spent all my time outside!

Mom never caught in to the idea that she had a red haired kid. I was most likely going to be pale. But then, she was also disappointed that I didn't have curly hair, and that I wasn't a boy. 

This was third grade. She tried to curl my hair until she gave up. My hair just wasn't having it.

There's no pleasing some people I guess.

  It was getting pretty windy too. This picture reminds me of one from our trip. (But you haven't seen that one yet.)

She looks so beachy, so I thought a picture at the beach would be perfect. It would have been if it had been sunny. which it couldn't stay long enough to get a sunny picture. There was just enough sun to make a glare in the lens crack.

I don't think I've told you how I cracked my lens yet either. That also has to do with our trip. Our cursed trip. I do intend to finish those posts, and now that I have my pictures back, and some things from the house that I bought on the trip, I can finish the trip posts.

This Savannah is one of the first Mini Pals, so she has the soft, squashy limbs. I don't think they use those at all these days. Her arms and legs are very soft and bendy, (without holding the bend.). The most recent ones have a firmer vinyl. When I tried to hold Savannah by just her arm, it bent and she couldn't stand up straight. You may have seen where I reviewed Chad, the first Maru and Friends boy. He was like this. Although the limbs are soft, and bend easily, the dolls still manage to stand okay. And their arms and legs can move outward. If you can balance them in a spread legged position, they can support themselves fine. 

She did need a prop to stand on this uneven ground. Unfortunately, you can spot it at this angle.

  They also have cute Dianna Effner faces and a really nice feature: They can tilt their heads side to side and up and down. This adds a lot to the moods you can get from them. 

  Since her first try at a photo shoot got rained out, Savannah tried again. It was the first day of the Air Quality Alert, but we did it anyway. I got a few dolls quickly photographed. Then we gave up.

   Savannah is wearing her original dress...

WHAT is in the sky?

...white undies, and shoes.

They match her dress.

They have a texture on the bottoms.

  She also originally had a hat. I swear I got the hat with her, but I must have left it in the box. Both attempts at her pictures were rushed due to environmental conditions of one kind or another.

  Our air is almost back to normal now. Give it another day or two and we should be at our usual numbers. On the day I took the second batch of pictures, Ken and I were out and about and got some lunch. The place we got it doesn't do dine in, and we went sort of across the street to the grocery store for drinks. I looked for a nice place to park and eat our lunch in the car-what I call a car picnic-  and behind the store was the most beautiful forest! The grass was mown on the slope up to a line of pine trees, and beyond that in a slight distance, was a wood. I took some pictures on the slope, and then climbed to the top of the slope to take the pictures you saw the last two days, of Hermione and Harry. That's when I found that there was a small soy bean field at the top, and at the back of that was the woods. It was a very small soy bean field. While I was sitting at the top of the slope, I heard a crash, and looked up to see two deer. They had just burst through the trees at the edge of the field, (thus the crash), and they ran along the edge of the field a short distance, and then popped into the woods again, their white tails flashing. With the overcast sunlight of the day, and all the greenery in an unexpected setting, all sort of hidden in a circle of trees, it looked sort of like a fantasy. There I was, sitting there with a camera in my hands, and all I thought of doing was getting Ken's attention so he could see the deer, which he surely couldn't have anyway, from his location in the car at the bottom of the slope. From there it was impossible to even see that there was a soy bean field. It was a beautiful sight though. I'm sure the camera couldn't have captured it anyway.

  That's today's doll. Don't forget to check out the Doll Book of the Month too.

Review Time: Maru and Friends Tanya Mini Pals Doll

   It's review time again. This time around we're looking at another Maru and Friends doll. This time it's the Tanya Mini Pals doll. 

The Mini Pals are 13 inches tall. Tanya also comes in the larger, 20 inch size, wearing a knitted dress and hat, and sporting long, curly hair. The Mini Pals doll is a little different, but still has Tanya's face and tan complexion. Let's start, as usual, with the box. Tanya arrived in a brown packing box.

Inside the packing box was the cheery peach coloured Maru and Friends box, tied with a sheer orange ribbon.

It's probably for appearances, but I find the ribbon makes it easier to get the box out of the packing box.

  Tanya is attached in her box with ribbons and her parts are protected from the ribbons rubbing by Styrofoam sheets.

She's wearing a hairnet to keep her wig neat.

  

A certificate of authenticity is included.

  Tanya has a cute Dianna Effner face sculpt.

She has 'real' lashes and brown glass eyes.

Her iris' have detail in them that give them some depth and realism.

Her brows are made of individual strokes, instead of a solid line. I'm not sure I wouldn't have preferred her lips to be a darker, more realistic pink, but they aren't bad. She also has lightly blushed cheeks. 

Tanya comes with two beautiful wigs. The one she was wearing when her box was opened is the long, crimped style wig. 

It's a mixture of brown, and red shades.

  

It's quite a mane.

The other wig was a long straight wig with bangs.

It has a mixture of colours too. The colour is pretty realistic. I know I never had two hairs the same colour on my head. Is that just red heads, or is everybody that way?

The wigs attach to her head with Velcro. They stay on really well, but I was having some trouble pulling the wigs down over the Velcro all the way. Is that just me? Or is having wig problems with your dolls a common thing? I'm thinking I had an easier time with other Maru and Friends dolls.

  The crimped wig was easier to deal with than the straight one. I found it a little stiff, and it didn't hang as naturally as I would have liked. I'm not good with my own hair, so doll hair has to be easy to deal with or it's beyond my talents.

  Like all Maru and Friends dolls, Tanya is made of a nice smooth vinyl that has a realistic flesh look to it.

  Her hands and feet have some detail, like palm wrinkles and nails.

She even has a belly button.

  She comes wearing a pair of cut off denim shorts.

If she had a belt she could really wear it because the belt loops are real. The pockets are fake, but the snap is an actual working snap.

She also has a pair of white undies.

  On the top she wears a pink  hoodie.     

                                                       

  I keep saying how the quality of Maru and Friends clothing is so good that they're almost like tiny real clothes, and it's true. 

The hoodie has a little drawstring in the hood, (Which, for safety reasons you don't find in real children's clothing these days.), and it actually works.

How cute is that?! The hoodie closes in the back with Velcro.

The hood has a small opening in the back so her hair can be pulled through is she wants to wear her hood up...

... or, of course she can always leave her hair hanging out the front of the hood.

I didn't try it with the crimped wig. That's a lot of hair for the hood, whether you put it in or out. The straight wig was a bit...stiff? for hanging out the front. Not stiff, but not as limp as real hair would be. I mentioned before that this hair doesn't lay naturally like the crimped wig does. It could be the length. I love the colour of the wig, but I prefer the crimped one. Of course, the same goes for my own hair. I always wanted it to do something besides just hang there, and I used to braid it to get that crimped look. (I later got a crimping iron, but it takes forever to crimp this much hair. Braiding is easier!)

  To finish off her outfit, Tanya has a pair of black boots.

They Velcro closed and slip on and off pretty easily.

  

They have a bit of texture to the sole, like all Maru and Friends shoes.

Because you don't want your doll slipping and falling, do you?

  They're nice boots, but she's a kid. I'd like to see her in some cute tennis shoes or something. That would be cute.

Anyway, onto the articulation. Tanya is strung, and has articulation at the neck, shoulders, and hips. Her jointing allows her to tilt her head in cute ways, making her very photogenic.

She can even tilt her head slightly up or down, but not much.

  Her legs can move outward too.

She can even cross her feet too.

  She can stand on her own if balanced properly and given some nice flat ground...which was not available in the woods where she was posing! But she managed to stand.

  So, to sum things up, I like Tanya's chubby cheeks and cute Dianna Effner face sculpt.

Although I might have preferred her lips to be a more natural pink colour.

 

  I like that she has the combo of brown eyes and reddish hair.

As I've mentioned before, it's a combo you rarely get in a doll, and as a red haired, brown eyed person, it's something I always look for. 

  I love the crimped looking wig.

Both wigs are a lovely colour, but I found the straight one looked more artificial.

  I like her cozy hoodie, and the high quality of her clothes.

But I would have liked her to have come with cute shoes instead of boots. 

But of course you can always change her shoes.

  There you have it in, (and out of), a nutshell. As usual, there's nothing I really hate about these dolls. I can nit pick a few things, but overall, beautiful dolls.

  There is currently a contest on the Maru website for a Chad Mini Pal doll. (You can see my review of my Chad HERE.)You can find the contest by clicking the 'contest' heading on the Maru About us page HERE. The last day to enter is June 24th, 2022, so you still have a couple of days. Good luck!