Welcome Opree June!

A gorgeous confection recently came to Blythe Manor via California. Opree June is a Friendly Freckles Blythe on a Disney fairy body and was painted by customizer Melly Kay with Valspar Java Brown Satin. That alone cracks me up - I think it is the same paint used on my deck!
But Opree (fka Abrianna) turned out much sweeter than a deck, and her she is with her matching pony in a Squeaky Monkey dress recently acquired from Lovebucket on BK.
Don't know if Opree will make it to Blythecon in Dallas; her hair is a little big for a cowgirl hat. I also have 18 (eep! I just counted. Didn't know that. That's a bit unmanageable for me.) girls and only nine cowgirls outfits with hats and boots. Some anyone with problematic hair will be ruled out asap.
I used to never take my Star Dancer Lilly anywhere, even though she was my first Blythe, because I was so worried about losing her hoop earrings. Finally, I decided I never planned to remove them, so a little Super Glue to the rescue. Lilly's a perfect cowgirl, so she'll definitely make the cut.
Can't wait to photograph Opree June more though; she's a fun one.

A new home for the Blythe girls; a new project for me

A work in progress......

Meet Delilah Dala!

It's amazing what can be achieved with a stray scalp and body! Meet Delilah Dala, a beautiful ghostie girl by Blythe Stole My Heart (a.k.a. Aunt Maggie, if we're allowed to say!) I got the white mohair scalp secondhand on Blythe Kingdom. It was originally done by Moofala. It is a thick and gorgeous reroot. The head and body came from nearby Blythe friend Jenn. This was an unfinished, scalpless girl with two good sets of chips.
Our 'aunt Maggie' offered to take the parts and make a surprise girl. Boy, did she ever! Delilah is spectacular, with gently glittered pink lids and lips. She also has a pair of zombie chips and some interesting reddish-brown sparkle chips that work very well. Maggie did the pull charms, and I added the pink feathers from a pair of earrings.
In these photos, Delilah is wearing a Madeleine dress. Her friend is a Barbie afghan, gifted from Meester X. I think the hound looks like the actor Fabio, hence the name Fabio Dala. I guess it is now a boy dog wearing pink.
Their last name is a tribute to the customizer, her time in Scandinavia, and her time now at one of my favorite Scandinavian-style stores: Dala being a Swedish term for a type of sheep, and a style of Swedish folk art painted horse and other animals. When she once explained 'Dala' to me, I realized I had had a small painted wooden 'Dala' rooster ever since childhood.
Delilah doesn't look too spooky in pink, but maybe I will try to 'goth-her-up' next time we get dressed!

Custom pull charms

Among my latest jewelry-making adventures are these glass or wood beaded pull charm dangles. Some to sell and some for me!

Like candy....or Easter eggs

As soon as the annual Paas Easter egg coloring kits came out this year (probably February since Easter was not until April 8), I scooped up one $1.49 box and stashed it with the plain white "Manna Energy Drive" dresses from This is Blythe.
The package said not only were special bonus color tablets included but that bolder colors could be achieved by adding white vinegar. I dyed the mint green dress early on, and then made the mistake of rinsing in cold water, ostensibly to set the color, but in reality washing most of it away instead. I realized this would not be a colorfast method, and the dye on my fingers reinforced that.
But this time I let the dress air-dry on white paper towels and will try pressing with a hot iron to set the colors. Now that I have a candy-colored rainbow of dresses - lavender, pink, light blue, mint, light green and light yellow - I hope to embroider sweet motifs (when my light box arrives) and to add sweet trims.
If the colors do not appear to be safe for Blythe, then the wearing may be limited to a few moments for a photo shoot - enough to capture a living doll pastel rainbow - and then, poof! Gone like unicorns...

Insanely Sweet Jewelry is....Insanely Sweet!

In February and March 2009 I blogged about a Blythe charm swap in the art group I managed at the time. I didn't host the swap, but I sort of got it going. My art interest was in a lull at the time, and I did not do a very good job in my charms. In fact, some of them melted in transit. It was awful. But the charms and finished product here were cute. Over time some of my charms fell off or fell apart. I probably wasn't going to wear the bracelet ever again.
Then, I happened across Insanely Sweet Jewelry on Etsy. Talk about 'eye candy' or actual candy or candy jewelry! And, when I saw a Blythe or two in her work, I knew I had to write to see if she would fix up my old bracelet into a new one, salvaging my charms, and filling it full of good stuff.
Natascha Demers from New England responded graciously, and promptly fixed me right up. I'll definitely be wearing my new, improved bracelet (shown above) to Blythecon!

Meet the Newest Girls: Brie, Calypso, Gabi, Bee & Louise

From the top: Brie is a little elf girl with pointy ears. She was started by Shayna (ladyingreen) of PA. I enhanced her eyelids and eyeshadow and added blush as well as a skinny scalp by Sleeping Elf. Calypso is my Mermaid girl by Cindy Sowers, shown here in a My Own Little World dress and with a fairytale boat by Debrina Pratt from Land of Enchantment. Gabi (in polka dots) is a sweet girl with Milky Way Blythe flowered eye chips. Bee, or Bedelia Miffy, is a Rainy Day Parade (RDP) custom who wants to be a ballerina. Louise is a stock Gentle River (GR) wearing a Taylor Couture cardigan with flower pin and a Mandylynn crocheted hat.

Look who is swimming my way!

Calypso by Cindy Sowers and Amy Taylor.

Halloween and other costumes

From the top down: Mallory, Polly, Bunny, Brigette, Lilly, Sofia, Cady, Cookie, Poppy, Daisy.

Cookie, Cakes and Halloween Eye Candy

That's Cookie, singular, (middle photo), of course! My "afro" girl got all faced-up by Aunt Maggie, and look how adorable she turned out! Cookie is an SBL that I bought in parts: faceplate, backplate, eye mech, body, wig -- all separate. She never did have a dome. Maggie gave her a new face, new eyes and made her hair permanent. She "Georgia Peach-ified" her as I like to say, after Maggie's own original afro girl, Georgia Peach.
Now if I could just get a decent picture. It seems all my pix are out of focus lately, and while it could definitely be operator error, I'd like to blame it on my cheap camera. Why? Because I'd rather buy a new, cool camera than admit to shaking hands and bad eyesight!
The hands and eyes come, er, go at the expense of another birthday. The girls (top) helped me celebrate. They look pretty sober, don't they? Don't know why. I gave them 'real' treats.
Mallory snagged onto the Halloween dress first. I finished embroidering it this summer and have been waiting for someone to put it on. Headband and treat bag by Pistachio Libby! Mallory's got the Halloween Medusa Hair goin' on!

Mademoiselle Blythe Features Moi!

The girls and I are so lucky to have been chosen by the talented and popular blogger Mademoiselle Blythe (her header shown) a.k.a. Fanny Zara. She recently featured some of my dollhouses for Blythe and others on her blog here or click the headline of this post. Her feature begins an interior designer series in which she will also be profiling some of my besties, Angela and Lindsay.
Even luckier still, I got to meet the lovely Fanny in person at Blythecon 2011 in Portland, after having followed her blog and her Flickr, and occasionally purchasing from her on Blythe Kingdom. And Fanny has exquisite fashion taste, let me add!

So, I decided to revisit some pictures of my first dollhouse, Blythe Manor I, which no longer exists. Gosh! I had forgotten about all the itty bitty pieces and parts in here. You can see Blythe Manor II, The Leesburg Hotel and my Petite Princess three-quarter scale dollhouse on Fanny's blog.

Meet Sofia Sylvia Sylvana Gina Maria Melacaccio!

A couple things happened at Blythecon. That's another way of saying a funny thing happened on the way to the forum....
I saw several beautiful, customized Prima Dolly Paris Blythes. And, as some of you know, I won two dark-haired girls with this same haircut, and came home to a third. At least two of them were a base of Punkaholic People, which is very similar to Paris, except different face mold and dark hair.
While still at Blythecon, I started imagining a Paris for myself. And I had a chance to meet the lovely, lovely Sylvia of S. Coladolls, formerly known as Sylviecoladolls. She was rooming with my dear friends, Maggie and Angela. I was rooming with glam Lindsay, and we all hung out.
I had seen her work on many of Maggie's dolls. Sylvia is humble, quiet, unassuming, and verrrry talented! So, I decided I would buy a base Paris doll and send her to Sylvia for a faceup. This happened quite literally. As Sylvia is moving very soon, we ended up just swapping faceplates and eye mechanisms, so she could finish more quickly and get on with packing up her studio.
Meanwhile, at Blythecon, I met another Gina of G*Baby on Flickr. I bought a beautiful set of pink eye chips for Yumeko from her and wished I would have bought more. So I contacted her and ordered four pairs: blue, green, lavender and brown.
Then, in another coincidence, the talented eye chip artist Amy, known as Zaloa27, El Duende or Melacaccia contacted me to buy one of my three brown bob girls, the Punkholic People, and we worked out a partial trade to include two sets of her chips, the pink and the grey now seen on Paris.
Patience not being a virtue of mine at all, I was thrilled when everything came within a day or two of each other in mail from all points west, and base doll from Singapore! I quickly put her together with a little help from Maggie, and voila! Exactly as I had envisioned.
Next up: A BIG Petite suprise in the mail!

Blythecon: Real Friends and Real Plastic Friends Meet

The girlz left for Blythecon like this, and had to make quite a bit more room on the way home! I was lucky enough to win not one, but two Blythe dolls plus a Petite Blythe and two outfits: Atelier Blythe and MinkiDynamite. If that weren't shocking enough, my tickets for the two dolls were drawn one right after the other! I was weirdly lucky!
The Portland Roller Girl Ruby Blythe was created by Lynne Rutherford from Texas, a.k.a. Happibug. She has an incredible face-up, chips, pull rings, outfit, hat and tattoo. On top of that, I won a NRFB Punkaholic People.Both of these girls have brunette bobs. Then I came home to Yumeko in the mail from Scotland, a custom by RuiRui/Neroli, and also a brunette bob. And Bunny Velvet with her wig is a, say it with me, brunette bob.
It is only by coincidence that my earliest Blythe friend, Linda J and her PE Ebony, Molli, have brunette bobs! Heck, I didn't even know what Linda looked like until Blythecon! As you can see above, she looks a lot like her MiniMe, Molly. Linda also has a darling real-life mini me now.
That's Molli's sister Zelda, a Star Dancer custom by Kyle, hanging out with my Star D Lilly. Molli and Zelda sent Lilly and me our first-ever Blythe gifts and Blythe swaps about four years ago-- back when I still had SO much to learn. I remember asking Linda to explain Re-ment to me! Seems so funny now.