First Doll Show of the Year!

   Recently I went to my first doll show of the year. I tried to be good. I don't need more dolls right now, and we have loads of things that require money to be done. But Ken gave me some money to be used at the show for birthday presents if I wanted, because my birthday is fast approaching. I was comparitively really good. I spent almost the whole show having spent only $11. Then it turned to $13 when I bought a $2 doll just to steal the clothes for Tammy World. (Hey, she has to get something, right? At least she thinks she does.) The show was almost over, and I decided to go back and buy one $10 item that I knew I'd regret not getting. But then I bought another $10 thing. At least everything I had bought was small and fit in my little canvas bag with the blog logo and Tammy World's picture on it. Plus I thought I could sell that last $10 item to help recoup the money I had spent.  And then, once the floodgates were broken, the rest of my money flowed out, and on a big thing. I tell myself that it was a super good price, and since it's never removed from box I can always sell it. I'm thinking about it. I would love to keep it, but money and space are telling me otherwise.

  I'll show you what I bought in upcoming posts. This post is just show pictures. And there aren't nearly as many as usual. After that person yelled at me in the comments here on the blog, for taking pictures of her dolls, I felt weird about even asking if I could take pictures. I get my feelings hurt very easily, and being upset over something actually makes me physically sick. No kidding. It always has. I wasn't sure I was going to make it in the period right after the fire. I felt awful all the time, my chest hurt and I felt nauseous constantly.) So I took as few pictures as I could, asked every time, except for the lady with the museum quality dolls. She always lets me take pictures, and she was busy with a customer. I did buy something from her this time too. It was the first thing I bought that day. She had a helper this time, so that's who took my money and bagged up my purchase. But no fear. I went to an antique mall the other day, and got more doll pictures than I got at the show! 

 I think I figured out who complained. She was the only person at the show that day who wouldn't let me take pictures. We had a long talk, about taking pictures, about having red hair, (She said the same thing I always say, that red hair is such a huge part of your identity that when it isn't red any more it feels strange. She chooses to dye hers though. And she thought I was a blonde! What?!), and various things. I still don't understand what the big deal is about 'her' dolls being seen online. Why does that matter? It's not like she sells one of a kind dolls. Lots of people have the same dolls. She doesn't own the copyright on the designs or anything. Although, she did make a point about some people stealing the pictures and trying to sell dolls they don't really have. Of course, that doesn't hurt her. But anyway, we're friendly now. Maybe eventually I can get her to understand why it could actually be to her benefit to have her dolls shown on the blog. More likely I will just not ask her any more and just move on. She had the unique Hansel and Gretel dolls I talked about in this post:

 https://planetofthedolls.blogspot.com/2023/08/doll-day-2023-234-hansel-and-gretel.html

  Below you'll see pictures from the stall of a lady who does own the copyright on the designs of her dolls, because she designs and makes them herself. She is always perfectly happy to have her dolls photographed. She has something exciting coming up in her stuff too, but we'll get to that. 

  And now, on to the show.

  One of the first things I spotted was this doll and her baby. She was laying in a box because she hadn't even been put out yet., for lack of room. I absolutely loved her, but she was out of my price range.

 

She even has her own little chair to sit on.

   She bears a lot of similarities to this doll I own: 

https://planetofthedolls.blogspot.com/2014/01/doll-day-17-embroidered-cloth-doll.html

Look at the baby!

She has some stains on her legs. I think she was priced way too high, because of that, and especially since the dealer didn't know anything about her. But if he sells her for that, more power to him I guess.

  This wooden Boneka boy was nice. He could definitely hang out with Hitty and her friends. And by the way, my Hitty book, (Reviewed here: https://planetofthedolls.blogspot.com/2021/07/the-doll-book-of-month-club-hitty-her.html),  survived the fire.

This is a nice group of older ladies.

I'm not sure this poodle isn't real hair. Ug!

 

This little guy was cute, but expensive. I believe he's a Kish doll, but I don't know his name.

This little dollhouse scale diorama of Tom Sawyer, Becky Thatcher and Huckleberry Finn was made by an artist in the 1950's.

  I wish I could tell you more about the antique dolls, but that's not where my knowledge lies.

 

  I do know this one. This is an Effanbee Bubbles doll. 

  Here are some cute kids.

  

  A bunch of great dolls here. I think the two top, right are Steiff. My favourites are in the middle row.

  Some more really interesting ones. Look at those faces.

  Love the cloth faced dolls. Look at the lady with the baby.

  The velvet Nora Wellings doll, (Top row, third from left.), reminds me how much I regret not buying that one at this same show back in 2020.

 

  Dollhouse dolls.

  I like the girl in pink and blue, the lady in blue with the bonnet, the ethnic doll next to her, and the Eloise on the far right.

  There was a dealer with two tables, who had the most Tammy and family dolls I've ever seen together in one place. They were a bit high priced, and I suspect the guy selling them didn't know anything about them really. Maybe he was selling a collection he got by default, like a death in the family or something, and he pieced things together. There were Pos'n Tammy dolls, wearing regular Tammy clothes, and regular Tammy, squeezed into Pos'n Tammy's stretch jumpsuit. That was kind of painful to see, because I knew the suit was going to be stretched out of shape and size by the time it ever got off that doll. Do you ever see stuff like that and just want to tell the dealer, "Change that doll's clothes! For the love of Mike!"?

Bottom row Tammy is wearing Disney Aladdin's pants.

   This girl had some very penetrating eyes.

  Ladies with tiny heads.

But I liked the kid in the middle.

  I thought I'd be able to read the sign with the maker's name on it in my picture, but sorry! I can't make it out!

  Pretty girl in blue. She's a Madame Alexander "McGuffey Ana" doll. "McGuffey" referred to the McGuffey Readers", reading books used in schools in the late 1800's and early 1900's. The dolls were made for quite a few years, and came in a lot of different outfits, but I think they were originally based on Illustrations in the McGuffey Readers.

  This amazing Baby Snooks, or Fanny Brice doll was in such great condition, that initially I thought she was a reproduction. She was original though, even her tag.

  A gaggle of Blythes. I love the boy, and the girl with teeth!

  This Alice doll tempted me, but I held firm!

  Then there was this Alice. She's  Good Kruger doll. I still held firm. It was a bit easier with her, because she was $50.

  There was a dealer there who I have seen before at shows. In fact, I featured her dolls once before in a doll show post. Her business is called Mysfit Dolls. The founder, Myah, designs and 3D prints her own fully jointed resin dolls. They come in various sizes, but you know I love the tinys! Look at this little guy.

 

  

   The dolls aren't printed in a regular 3D printer the way I imagined it. They are built up somehow of liquid resin as I understand, and are so smoothly made they need no sanding.

 The dolls can be bought clothed and painted, or completely naked and unpainted, so you can customize them yourself. There are also wig caps with attached wigs for sale, so you don't have to fuss with getting the wig to stay on the head. You can just pop the whole head cap off and switch hair!

This girl is so small, but able to sit in her curled up position.

Their faces are hand painted.

  Her little legs are curled up beneath her.

  But Myah is testing out some new, extremely tiny jointed dolls! They are an inch and a half tall!

 

 And still fully posable!

They have inset eyes too! That tiny, with inset eyes! I want!

They were so small my camera was having trouble focusing on them. 

The one on the left doesn't have eyes in, but the one on the right has inset eyes.

  Here's Myah's business card. You can also check out her website by clicking on the link above.

  Myah is very proud of her dolls. She's trying new stuff out all the time. The inch and half dolls are still in the testing stage. She's looking for just the right stringing material that will make them posable, without being too loose, and that will last over time. 

  That's all. I told you I didn't take many pictures. Soon I'll show you what I bought.

Review of Wilde Imagination's Bashful Burt

  This little guy recently came my way.

He's Bashful Burt, from Tonner Wilde Imagination's Sad Sally line.

His big expressive eyes and slightly mournful look appealed to me.
   There has been only one other edition of Bashful Burt. Bashful Puppy Burt was a very limited edition of 50.

  My Burt arrived in a brown shipping box with the other things I bought. Inside was this white shipping box.

And inside the white box was this black box with a lid that lifts off...

It says Sad Sally, but trust me, it's Burt.

..to reveal some mysterious tissue paper, covering...

Bashful Burt!

He was hiding 'bashfully' under that tissue paper.

The box insert lifts out. Burt is held in by these little twisties.They were incredibly tight and hard to untwist.

 But once they were removed Burt could be lifted out. His neck was protected from the twistie by tissue paper. His hair was covered with a white hair net.

Burt has sort of a pale peachy complexion. I love his quizzical eyebrows.His eyebrows aren't solid lines. They're made up of a lot of little strokes.

His boots were in plastic to protect them from the twistie.

And here's Burt, free of all restraints.He is made of resin,and has 15 points of articulation.

He has a cute puppy shirt and great boots.

I love these little boots. They really lace and unlace.

Is anybody else getting the Wicked Witch of the East from this picture? I'm almost expecting his toes and legs to curl up and roll back under a house.

His jeans come pre-dirtied. It seems to be done by hand,as various Burts have different patterns and amounts of soiling.

His shirt closes in back with snaps and is lined with the same peachy nylon fabric that the inner tights are made of.

His pants close with a snap too.

Burt wants you to remember that he also comes with a stretchy hat.

I'm not sure what to call these hats these days. I always called this kind of hat a toboggan or something. Now they seem to call them 'beanies'. I always think of a 'beanie' as this:

Not necessarily with the pig.

Burt wanted to show off the back of his hat.The hat stays on his head really well.

Under his pants Burt is wearing, not socks, but striped tights. I suppose it's so his socks stay up better under those pant legs, but he was a little embarrassed.

And under those he was wearing a pair of peachy coloured sheer tights, which alot of the Tonner dolls I've seen wear under their other, coloured tights. I suppose it's to protect the legs from staining, or maybe to make the other tights slide on easier.

Here's Burt's complete original outfit. It includes his puppy shirt,jeans,striped tights,sheer tights, stretchy hat,and black faux suede boots.

 
 



 Straight out of the box Burt had plastic on his arms,presumably to protect his arms from stains that might come from the shirt sleeves.



 The plastic was super tight, wrapped and taped. It was hard to get off. I was a little afraid I was going to pull his hands off, or his arm apart. I ended up cutting it off, and worrying I was going to scratch his arms with the scissors.

  Here's a look at Burt's body articulation. He has an upper torso joint and a waist joint. 

And he has a tiny belly button.

He's also jointed at the neck,shoulders,elbows, wrists,knees, and ankles. We'll look at more of his articulation in a minute.

  Burt's hair is very soft and silky. I was wondering if Burt's hair was rooted or wigged.I  checked, and discovered it was a wig. I gave it a little tug to remove it,and it came off, along with all the Velcro dots,including the ones that were supposed to stay stuck to Burt's head to hold the wig  on.

The inside of Burt's wig, with all Velcro attached.

The wig doesn't stay on very well without being attached. And by the way, Burt takes a size 5/6 wig. 
Here I would like to say that I did contact Tonner/Wilde Imagination and ask what kind of glue I could use to reattach Burt's wig Velcro, and to let them  know about the boot lace hole tearing through. Even though I only sent the email on Saturday, on Monday there was an email, from Michelle at T/WI customer service,waiting for me. Michelle was very nice and friendly. She recommended Tacky glue for the wig Velcro. (I nearly used Fabri-tac, until I remembered that I once used it on something plastic and it dissolved it! I was afraid of what it might do to Burt's resin head.) She also mentioned that I could 'moleskin' Burt's head to keep the wig attached. She's done a tutorial on their Facebook page showing how. I figure I'll just make a big mess of him if I try that! I'm going with the glue option.
 Seeing him here without his hair and boy clothes, you can imagine what a lovely girl he would make.

Burt has those beautiful big brown eyes.They actually have detail in them. They're not just solid brown.

The resin is very smooth.

  The main difference between Burt and Sad Sally is that she has 'real' eye lashes, and Burt is smiling slightly more.

Sad Sally

Like Sad Sally,Burt also has changeable eyes. His head is held together by some very strong magnets.

His eyes are held in with putty. The ribbon is on the ring that holds his stringing.

  Sad Sally takes 14mm eyes, so I assume Burt's are the same.
  While I was at it, and spending money, which  I don't do in this kind of quantity very often, I also bought one of Burt's extra outfits. It was one of two available. The other was Shy Stripes.

Shy Stripes

But I bought my favourite,Timid Togs. (In fact, I like it even better than his original outfit.)

He's not wearing the boots in this picture, because I hadn't  taken the time to put them on him yet.

Another white box inside the brown shipper contained Timid Togs.

And inside that was this plastic bagged box with the Sad Sally logo.

The box is pretty cool, because it's tuck flapped in a swirl pattern...

...which opens kind of like a flower.

Inside the box is lined with tissue paper. The insert comes out easily.

And the clothes are held onto the card with some stitches. It only required some tape peeling and stitch cutting to remove them.

The outfit consists of a sweater with a long neck,checked pants,striped short socks, a gray newsboy cap, and gray faux suede boots.

The socks, and the neck and top half of the sweater are made form the same fabric as the stretchy hat to his original outfit.

The gray boots are just like the black ones. They really lace up.

 I've been working on this review for a while. I have been pretty busy with some things around the house, so it has been a while since Burt got here.When I finally tried to put the boots on Burt, I managed to get them on without too much trouble.But when I tried to tie them, the top lace hole on one of them tore through. I didn't even pull hard. In the email I sent Tonner/Wilde Imagination I told them about the boot tearing. She asked which boot tore and said she would see if they had one to send me. It was nice of her to offer a replacement. It took me so long to get around to putting his boots on that I was just within the time allowed for returns and exchanges, but Michelle didn't ask me when I purchased Burt before making the offer to replace the boot. According to Michelle,
"We are very happy to help make things right, we do stand behind our collections and creations!"
    She was so super helpful and friendly. I got another email the next day telling me that a boot had been found and it would be sent out no later than the next day.

The sweater has a really long, or tall, neck. I never could get a cowl neck sweater to lay right on myself, and I still have the same level of sweater talent.

The sweater neck could do with being a little wider around, as it doesn't quite meet in the back, no matter what I do.(Of course, I have that lack of sweater neck talent, so it could just be me). The sweater and pants close with snaps.

Burt looks so cute in it.

My cap lining wants to turn out. I also can't get his socks high enough to keep those shiny sheer tights from showing.

Like all Tonner clothes, these are very well made and feel so nice. The boot lace hole tearing was very disappointing, and a bit surprising considering the quality of everything else.

His tiny 'pear' is actually a baby black walnut. I found two of them under the walnut trees in my front yard, but Burt dropped one as I was taking his picture,and I couldn't find it.

The hugeness of Burt's head makes him a bit hard to balance. He's top heavy. It's possible to get him to stand on his own, without support, but it's not easy if you want him to do any expressive poses.

 In most of these pictures Burt had a support prop. By the way, I made the little dog for Burt because he just looked like he needed one. I think it should have been more like Pete the Pup from Litle Rascals/Our Gang, but I had the white furry stuff already. The dog has a wired neck,body, tail, and limbs, so he's poseable. I wasn't completely satisfied with him though. I meant to make another dog more like Pete, but I've been so busy I haven't had time. So, I used this dog, but he isn't finished. That's why you don't see him from the front in any of these pictures: He has no mouth,eyes or nose!

"Come on Boy! Up!"

Burt's jointed arms don't work quite as well as I had hoped.One of his arms keeps bending whether I want it to or not. I straighten it out and it pops right back into a bent position. I tried using his arms to prop him in a sitting position...

...which he needs because his body doesn't bend forward in a way that allows him to sit upright with that big head unless his feet are touching the ground. Here he had to have a small rock wedged under his bottom to lean him forward a little, so he could stay upright. This is the price you pay for his big headed, big eye look.
  Burt's head tilts side to side well, but he can't look up. He can look down a little.

His hands don't bend at the wrists and hold the position, but they can be turned for some posing. Maybe if his stringing loosens up a bit he might be able to bend at the wrist better.

He does have cute little hands though.

 I decided to give Burt the old fashioned bundle on a stick because he looks so 'depression era'.

But he couldn't really hold it. The bundle was only stuffed with some small pieces of fleece, but it was heavier than his arms could hold. The arm kept unbending and letting it drop. His hand couldn't  bend around it to hold it either.

 It took some balancing.

 So he got tired and had to sit down.

He didn't need anything under his bottom to sit up in these pictures.

 

.
  So, what do I think of Burt? I like Burt, but he could be more poseable. Hopefully he will loosen up a little over time, (but not too much!) I love his little face and his clothes.His clothes are nice, except for the disappointing boot lace hole that tore through.But the company was more than happy to take care of the problem, and very quickly too.I was very impressed with their quick, friendly attitude and service.
   I love sad eyed dolls and boy dolls,which is why Burt appealed to me so ,but I would love to get some other wigs and see what Burt would look like as a girl. (Sad Sally would be an easier option, since they look so similar anyway, but she's more expensive!)
   Burt is made of better quality materials than the similarly made Ai dolls that I have.(Burt is resin, and the Ai dolls aren't.) Burt's head has two magnets,whereas the Ai doll's only have one.The magnets hold Burt's head together better than the Ai doll magnets hold theirs, and Burt's head fits together better. It looks like the eyes will be easier to change and get to stay in place than the Ai doll's too, but so far I'm not brave enough to check that out!
 

Ai Bee Balm and Leptospurmum.

 (Longtime readers may remember the trouble I had getting Ai doll Bee Balm's eyes to sit properly.) 

   I know I mentioned this review ages ago. I have been working on it for a while. In fact,I had to do it twice! I had it nearly finished and something happened and the whole thing disappeared! I had to go in my computer's recycle bin and find all the pictures, and then rewrite the whole thing. Between that and all the other stuff I've had  do lately,it has taken me ages. I'll be posting more often now that I have this taken care of.
    Here are some more pictures of the very photogenic Burt.