Doll-A-Day 2019 #229: Stardoll,and Another Christmas in August

  Ok. Christmas in August isn't a thing. Christmas in July is,but I didn't have one then. However,yesterday I made quite a Christmas haul at a yard sale. oddly enough,the last time I posted a huge Christmas yard sale haul,(Even bigger than this one.),it was also August! You can see that haul HERE. I found all these cute ornaments at one of only a couple of yard sales we went to. I made up my own box out of about 3 or 4 boxes of ornaments. They were a quarter each.

There were various Santas and Mrs. Santas.
 

And some snowmen.

The Mrs. Santa on the far right seems to be one of those ornaments that came on a stick, for decorating plants.
 

I might not keep the others,but I love this little lady.

This miniature book will be great for dolls.

As will these eensy needlepoint pieces.
 

I got these two cute girls.

They remind me of the Misfit Doll from "Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer".

There were lots of mice,including these cute little guys.
 

The pink one is the cutest.

There were also these Mr. and Mrs.Santa mice.

And these white mice.
 

The one on the left appears t be missing his nose. How does he smell? Terrible.

And this one in a chimney.

There was a cute dog. Looks like he might be a policeman...dog...or something.

This cute poodle looks surprised.

There was even a Snoopy.

Or maybe it's Snoopy's granny.

Christmas turtles!

There was even Raggedy Ann and Andy.

I think they may be Hallmark ornaments. 

Their faces are flat pieces of felt.

I saw some similar yarn ornaments still in their original bags,and they were marked 1986 Hallmark. These guys just said  1975 Bobs Merrill,which is just the licensing for Raggedy Ann and Andy.

There was this drummer.

I got this little Christmas elf. I have one like her/him,but you can never have too many! Some day I want to do a tree decorated with nothing but my vintage ornament collection.
 

My favourites are these guys!

A couple of them have lanterns,the second one has a candy cane, and the one on the far right has a bell.

They are Kurt Adler ornaments from 1973.

They have cute little flocked faces,colonial era ponytails, and their side curls are pipe cleaners.
 

Today's doll is one I found at Goodwill in Indiana,where I went after leaving Ivy to go to play rehearsal.

She's a Stardoll.
 

I think she's this one.

This is the stock photo for Stardolls on Ebay. I don't see a character name on that box,but apparently her name is 'Space Style'. Huh? She doesn't look very 'spacey' to me.

Mattel made Stardolls in 2011.

This one is not wearing her own clothes. This is a Barbie princess dress I think.

Stardolls were dressed in very current style clothes. My first reaction to seeing her in this princess dress was,'Well, I'll have to find her something else to wear that suits her better.'

From this angle she looks a bit like she has the Lea head sculpt. She doesn't though.

But after looking at her again,I decided she makes a pretty good princess.

Because their proportions are so different,I would think it would be hard to find other clothes that would properly fit these dolls even if you wanted to change them. The dolls were sold as Stardolls by Barbie, but they have a whole different body sculpt,and Barbie clothes don't fit them properly.

This dress is a little short.

They have big Stardoll feet. There's no way you're getting a Barbie shoe on that foot.

Stardolls also have really long legs,and one goes to one side a bit,so they can doll a model pose.

She has molded on underwear.

She can lift her arms up and out.

She has rooted eyelashes.

Stardolls were short lived.There were only eight dolls as far as I know. They were all pretty,interesting looking dolls.

You can see my other Stardoll HERE.
 

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  That's the doll for today. See you again tomorrow.

So THAT'S What Those Are! Claudon Cats

  I have to start this post with an explanation. I have been writing drafts of upcoming posts. Some of them are just titles to remind me of dolls I plan to post on if I do Doll-A-Day again next year. One of them got accidentally posted the other day and 27 people looked at it before I noticed! So for those of you wondering what was up with the Ingrid Bergman post that was blank,there you go. Sorry!
  So today we're talking about some little dolls you may have seen before. I posted about them when I first got them at a yard sale. (That post is HERE.) I bought a bag of miniature houses and these 2 1/2" cats for $5.

These cats were my favourite things in the bag.

   At the time I didn't know who the artist was,and I was having trouble finding anything that even resembled these cats.

The other day I posted their pictures on a Facebook miniatures page and asked if anybody knew who the artist was. Almost immediately somebody came up with the answer! They sent me a link to the artist's old webpage. You can see that page HERE.

His name was  Charles David Claudon. (He went by the name Charles Claudon at the time he was making the cats.) He started by making realistic miniature cats. His business was called Butterfly Cat Studio. At the time he was married to  a lady named Ferbie. (I kid you not.)

 

Ferbie dressed miniature dolls. They decided to make anthropomorphic cats,which Charles would sculpt and  Ferbie Claudon would dress. 

They called the line Kitty Kitsch, (also known these days as Claudon Cats.)

The cats feature hand painted faces and real cat hair.
 

I think that's the whiskers. The hair on their heads looks too coarse, and too long to be cat hair.

They sold the cats at miniature shows from 1981 to 1995,when they got divorced and no longer worked together.
 

They also made some dogs.
 

In 1995 Charles decided to go by his middle name,David,instead of Charles. He was also known as C. David Claudon.

C. David Claudon  went on to publish a book of paper dolls, "The Paper Doll World of David Claudon", and to produce art prints based on his own paintings. 

I did some some additional research and found that,unfortunately, David Claudon passed away in 2016.

If you're interested in seeing more of these wonderful creatures there is an article about them on the website of The Mini Time Machine Museum of Miniatures,which you can see HERE.