What I Got at the Doll Show, Part 2: Hollywood Alice and Animal!

   Have I ever mentioned how much I dislike Summer?! It is far too hot here. I've been hanging laundry, pulling weeds, and watering some plants in the hot sun. (I know. You're not supposed to water plants in the hot sun. But it's better than not doing it at all, and with my memory these days, I need to do it while I'm thinking about it, or I may not do it at all.) Here's a tip: Do not buy potting soil at The Dollar Tree. I bought two bags because I needed to do some repotting. When I was pouring it in the pots I thought it looked like the dirt I dig up around my yard, and not like 'potting soil' at all. I think Dollar Tree dug my dirt for their potting soil, because this stuff was dry and gray, and packed down like a rock in the pots in about a week. I'll probably have to go buy some real potting soil and replace this crap. 

  Speaking of crap, since Lori moved to Georgia, I have nowhere to get my horse manure for the plants or garden now. I don't know anybody with horses, although I'm sure Lori could put in a word for me with somebody. Ken and I were talking yesterday about how it would probably be a bad idea for me to haul a couple buckets of poo back from Lori's when I go to see her in October.  

  And that's another thing. Should I even go to Georgia in October? I'm having second, and even third thoughts about it. I wanted to see Lori, and she's really looking forward to it. It's her 60th birthday. She is planning to take her week's vacation, which she hasn't had in years, and she has a bunch of things planned for us to do, but I'm wondering if it's going to be safe to do them. We could just hang around her house, and yes, she is vaccinated. I do have to actually get there though. Ken suggested that if I do go that I take food, so I don't have to stop along the way. I will have to get gas at some points though. I can use the credit card at the pump and not come in contact with people. I hand sanitize like crazy, as I told you. I don't touch any of my things with the one hand I use to touch other things, until I have sanitized. One hand for touching, and the other kept clean to reach in my pocket and get the sanitizer.

  On another subject, Ken is doing the Charlie Brown happy dance because yesterday we bought another FIVE DOZEN, (And 'Baker's Dozen's at that!), ears of yellow corn from the same farmer we got the last two dozen from.

  Don't think Ken can't eat that much corn. Plus, since we got so much I'll eat some too. I usually don't like to eat it if Ken manages to find some, because he enjoys it so much more than I do. It's his favourite vegetable and one of his very favourite foods overall. He wants to share, but I think it's selfish of me, because he loves it so much. It makes him feel good, because I consented to eat some of it!

  Now! On to my doll show purchases!

  I didn't buy a lot of things at this show, but what I got was 'cherce', as Spencer Tracy said of Katherine Hepburn in "Pat and Mike". And I got it for amazing prices. As you may know, if you're a regular reader of the blog, I have pretty eclectic tastes. From huge dolls like the almost 3' tall bobble head rag doll you saw HERE...

...to the tiny thread dolls you saw HERE...

...to the beautiful, hand painted, realistic face of Tonner's Agnes Dreary you saw HERE...

...to this goofy looking kid you saw HERE...

This one is Ivy's. but I have one just like her from my childhood, in a green dress.

...I love all sorts. Today I'm showing you two doll show purchases that perfectly illustrate that point. The first is this little girl.

  She's about 8 inches tall.

She is marked Hollywood Doll.

I'm not sure if these are her original clothes. There's a slight homemade quality to them, beautiful as they are.

She has bloomers and a slip. Her legs have some problems.

But in these clothes she just says "Alice" to me. And you know how I love my Alice stuff. 

She may have been repainted. Her eyebrows definitely don't look original, but her cheeks do.

What do you think?

I'm still trying to decide what she's made of: compo, or bisque?

And speaking of her legs, here's another photo from the front. She appears to have molded ankle socks.

  She has definitely been restrung, because her stringing is so tight that she can't keep her arms in the downward position.

But there's another problem you may have noticed from that sock picture...

Is it just me, or did whoever restrung her, put her legs on the wrong sides?!

That fabric seems old, but is it old enough to be original?

I  haven't taken her bloomers off to check yet. That's  possibly why I was having a hard time getting her to sit down at first. I finally got her seated though.

She seems to have her original wig.

There is a glue problem on the one side. Fortunately it doesn't show very much.

  Overall, I 'm very pleased to have found her. She's cute, and she looks like an Alice, to me anyway.

She was only $5, so I can't complain too much. Her little Alice outfit was worth $5.

  And the second  doll show purchase I'm showing you today is sort of a direct opposite to the Alice girl. He's this guy!

It's Animal, from The Muppets. This is in fact, one of the first Animal toys that were made. (The other was a plastic figure about 4" tall.) He's a puppet. 

He was made by Fisher Price, and came out around 1978. 

  Inside Animal's head there are hand holds so you can move his big mouth...

...and a switch so you can operate his eyebrows!

At 26" he's quite a big guy. He doesn't take up much space though, because he can literally fold up on himself. He's very flappy. 

   I actually gasped and snatched him up when I saw him. I was thrilled to find him. I had one before and sold him, (because he's actually worth quite a bit), and I wanted to find another one to keep. I have told you before about how if you find toys at a doll show, or dolls at a toy show, you're going to get a better deal on them than if you found them at their 'appropriate' shows. This guy cost $10!

   Other than needing his eyes touched up, (which I have done on Muppets before, and it isn't a big deal), he's actually in really good condition too. A lot of them have disintegrating foam that leaves bits all over your arm if you operate him. This one only leaves slight crumbs.

  So those are a couple of my doll show buys. I have more to show you, and I'd better hurry! There's another doll show on Saturday!

(Muppet) Christmas (Carol) in June: Emma's Gift

  First, before  I forget, I know a  lot of us have found some great dolls at Tuesday Morning. Well Tuesday Morning is closing a load of locations all across the country. Some items are already discounted up to 30% off, and there are extra discounts on already clearanced items. The full list of locations that are closing across the country can be found HERE.
  This is sad. They carried a lot of nice things, interesting items that weren't available anywhere else around here, and hugely discounted, formerly expensive dolls. We're losing one in Columbus, where I go to Tuesday Morning, but not one of the locations I ever go to.
  Now, on to today's subject, which is, the gift I made for Emma for her birthday. I have to explain first that I had had this thing designed in my mind for about 2 and a half  years! I think I developed the idea when Hallmark came out with their Muppet Christmas Carol ornament in 2017.

The Hallmark ornament. Kermit's head is too big.

 At the time I said, they should have made him over a rolling cylinder, with floppy legs, so he could walk like he does in the movie. In the movie, "The Muppet Christmas Carol", Kermit, as Bob Cratchit,(with Robin as Tiny Tim on his shoulder), walks down the street singing. The street is obviously round, or drum shaped, and turned beneath his feet, with a green screen background behind him, to give the illusion that he's moving down the street. You can watch that clip from the movie HERE. I had the idea that I could make an ornament like that, using a thread spool for the street,(covered with fake snowy cobblestones.),and a polymer clay Kermit and Robin. If I made his legs joined and put staggered bumps on the spool that would hit his feet alternatingly, making it look like he was walking. I kept meaning to make the ornament. But then I wouldn't start in time  to get it made for Christmas, then not in time to get it made for her birthday. Because of not being able to go out shopping at all these last few months I didn't have much for Emma's birthday, so this was the perfect time to make a gift. Her birthday was a good time to do it too, so she'd have the ornament in time to use it at Christmas. So I started, probably much later than I should have. I had some problems, including not being able to find my clay! I ended up being able to use a set of Sculpey I gave Fuzz, since Fuzz gave it to me because he wasn't going to use it,(In spite of being a very talented artist and sculptor.),but there was no white clay! I remembered I had a whole box of clays my sister gave me,(Another talented artist, who says she can't sculpt.),but there was no white in there either! I finally remembered there was a zip lock bag of extra clay Fuzz also gave me, and luckily there was some white in it. Then, of course, I couldn't find my blade to cut the clay either, or my clear plexiglass bar to roll the clay out with. I'm sure both of those are in the box with my clay! So I resorted to other tools and a porcelain rolling pin we never use any more because one of the handle ends got lost and now the wooden pin won't stay in the middle, so there are NO handles. So here are the tools I ended up using. Keep in mind that these are the sorts of things I use anyway most of the time, because I stink as a artist.

Paint, glitter, paint brushes, wire cutters and wire bending thingies, needles for poking clay with, and a big headed pin for smoothing certain parts, two types of wire, plus a recycled wire from a Chinese take out container. I'll show you where that was used in a minute.

Tweezers, and I actually cut the clay with those little scissors. By the way,that's my mom's pin cushion. It was always in her sewing box and I use it all the time.

One of the tools I used the most, I forgot to put in the picture!

Yes, that is what you think it is: one of those plastic hanger things from a package of some sort. I used it to cut the clay because I couldn't find my blade, which I had even pulled out to use the day before I started on the ornament.
  I was able to get a lot of different colours by mixing some of my sister's more unusual clay colours with Fuzz's more basic colours set. Here are all the colours I used, except the dark red I used straight from the pack for the inside of the mouths.
 

Various shades of brown and green.

And then there was this:
 

The egg carton was to make the fake cobblestones on the spool. I've been wanting to try making stone with egg carton for ages, but this was my first try.  I used the Fabric-Tac to glue the pieces of egg carton to the spool. Afterward I painted it with a mix of green and black acrylic paint to get and old, dirty, mossy stone look, but then I covered it with white glitter anyway. I couldn't find my other white glitter either! So this glitter has too much of a green shine to it, so the snow looks too green. I told Emma I would touch the spool up with some better, whiter snow looking glitter before Christmas.

  I used a box that something from Bath and Body Works came in to put the ornament in.

It ties shut with a ribbon.

  So how did the ornament turn out? For reference, before I show you the ornament I made, here's a still from the movie:
 

 And here's what the ornament looks like.

I took out the flocked plastic inside the box, and lined it with polyfil, which I covered with vintage satin.

And there's where the wire from the take out box came in!

  It turned out pretty good. Kermit ended up being about 4 or 5 inches tall. 

Little Robin is slightly over an inch, and with about a half an inch of leg length, I think.

At least Kermit's face turned out fairly good.

It's harder than you think to make a Muppet and have it actually look like the Muppet it's supposed to. They aren't as detailed as people, but they still have a particular look. I had to do adjustments as I worked, making Kermit's mouth slant downward enough and getting his eyes forward enough on his head. And those eyeballs had to be tilted just right.

Those checked pants are terrible!

Robin could have been better though.
 

Kermit's hat turned while baking, from the weight of it, and it tore Kermit's thumb off! The thumb was still attached to the hat, so I had to paint it black to disguise it!

I goofed on Robin's butt. It ended up being too big, so I cut a hunk off, thinking I would be able to cover the chop because his bottom would be sitting on Kermit's shoulder. Of course, then he didn't fit on Kermit's shoulder properly, so his bottom shows!

I also didn't think about the fact that I'd have to make checked pants!

That wasn't so easy. I got all over confident after making Kermit's checked vest, which peeks out between his coat and the top of his his pants.

The pants were a lot harder! I see I also should really have used that Sculpey stuff that smooths the surface and gets rid of the fingerprints, etc. It sort of melt s the surface of the clay though, and I was afraid it would take over and I'd lose detail. All I needed was to get all finished, and then make the whole thing so slimy it couldn't even be held on to.
  Kermit's coat changes lengths in the movie! In the scene where he's walking down the street, that this ornament represents, his coat is short, and nowhere behind his legs. I think that was so you could see his leg movements better. In the other scenes, and in the publicity still I showed you, above, his coat is long. I compromised by making his coat long, but flying up behind him

Oops. Looks like Robin has a hole in the seat of his pants!

 

  As you can see, there are still fibers stuck to them from the polyfil I laid them on to bake. I also had to stuff it between his legs and under the tails of his coat, so they didn't bake to each other.

His coat tails actually stick out farther than I intended.
 

Sorry about these blurry pictures. My auto focus is still not working and I had to hold it and focus, while also holding the camera. I don't have three hands, but that's what it requires. For some of these I got Ivy to hold it. or it was laid down.

And did the walking action work? Well...no. It did not.

I think I should have jointed Kermit's legs only at the knees...or maybe only at the hips. In any case, I even tried the alternating bumps in the sidewalk, and it still didn't make him 'walk'.

 

  And I got so excited when I finally finished the ornament, very late on the night before Emma's birthday, that I forgot to put on a loop or hook to hang it by! I ended up having to hang everything from Robin's arm!
 

I hope it doesn't break off! I also forgot to put tails on Robin's coat! Oh well. Little boys did wear those short coats back then.

   

  So that's it. It didn't work, after having it all planned out in my head for nearly three years.

 

Doesn't look too bad though.