I’m finally starting to feel a bit better and hopefully by sunday (Barbie fair!!!) I wil be fine. In meantime I helped Betsy to prepare a meal in the dollhouse for Momoko and Arianna, She was really excited about it. She even dressed as a chef! Can you believe it? As you know the kitchen is not ready so she took the lounge-room coffee table over to the kitchen to work better. The fridge is too high for her so she had to use a stool but all together she managed well and the girls were delighted over the great meal. Here a couple of pictures:

The accessories, like the kitchen furniture and her outfit, are all almost re-ment and, as usually, you can buy them by my husband.

I wanted something different from what came out, something with an autumn flair but at the moment I’m full of flu and not really well, so this is what I’ve got:

I had a stressful day and not such a good evening so I decided I needed quality times with my dolls trying to wind down. Here is my quick Halloween diorama:

as you can see here she’s all excited about her cauldron:

even if she has only pumpkins to cook

I really like traditional japanese dolls but for the moment I keep myself happy by buying, by time to time, a fashion doll dressed in a kimono or a kimono for a doll I already have. Said so I still love to look on the net at beautiful collections of traditional japanese dolls and related crafts.

If my sewing and crafts skills were up to the task I would try to make this beautiful Kimono cloth doll, the pattern is from the nunodolls site and the finished doll looks great, but as I said, not enough skills here

I also find very nice this kimono pattern for superdolfie dolls from the trimline site, the fabric are so charming and they fit the dolls beautifully, but again not my piece of cake.

What actually looks like something I could give a try at are “simple” Kimono paper dolls. I had a look at many tutorials but this is the one I like more, it is really clear! In the other ones I checked there was always at least a step I didn’t understand. This I think I can handle…well sort of. For the clothes of the doll I plan to print these stunning oriental patterns from the ming-ling site, have a look, it is really an interesting page and the owner generously shares with all his readers many patterns, not just oriental ones.

Who knows…perhaps in many years I will be good at it

Last but not least a paper-craft! As you all know I love paper-craft and today I finally bought the right tools for this crafts (scissors, cutters, rulers etc etc). Have a look and download this delightful Hina Matsuri paper diorama. Did you ever see something so cute?

That’s all for now. Hopefully in the future I will share with you all my kimono paper dolls and tons of other nice links I found. Have a nice evening, or a  nice morning, wherever you are

Last week my husband got a new order in for the shop, three of Re-ment tea-sets boxes arrived with it and one was/is mine mine mine!!! They are absolutely lovely and they caused an up-veal in the flat. All my dolls started jumping out of boxes and shelves claiming the sets for themselves! Of course each of them is a queen…but girls…the lounge-room became a mess.

The first one to break free of her box was indeed  a real princess and she grabbed quickly the first set:

Then, not happy with that she tried to seize a second one as well:

At that point all the other dolls started to rush towards the boxes and here below you can see who got what.

This is one of my favourite sets:

and a beautiful lady got it. She’s normally very quiet and shy but today she really made it clear it was her time:-)

Momoko claimed one of them for the dollhouse:

and even two of the Skippers and Pepper ventured out to admire the new purchases:

Here are the last two sets:

So, all together an exciting morning, with lot of beauties

Still surfing …like usually, still hunting for paper dolls. Have a look at these paper dolls from the “Girl Genius” comic characters, I love them. The costumes are just amazing and by way the comic is super-duper great!!!I’m hooked, I’m reading since 6 in the morning, it is really addictive (thanks to Ursula for showing it to me).

Winter is coming up, what about snuggling up in bed and having some quality reading(=dolls reading)?.

From one of my favourite places on the web, the archive.org site, you can download “The doll book” by Laura Starr (1908), “On Making Mending and dressing dolls” by Clara Hallard Fawcett (1949) or this beautiful book about French Costume dolls from 1909, this one is in french but with beautiful illustrations.

My favourite one though is “A doll from Japan” by Harvey Gaskell, because of the delightful prints in it, I really have a “thing” for japanese dolls”

Enjoy your reading time!

I subscribed to few feeds from papercraft blogs (I love this stuff!) and today I saw on PaperCraft Paradise a post regarding a cute Doctor Office diorama, if I understood correctly it is even 1/6 scale since they mentioned it could be used also for Gi Joe. The office set is avalaible here, and then on this page you can get the equipment. A full history  and origins of the diorama paperset can be read on Paper Bonanza blog.

I’m not sure when and if I will have a go at it but I saved all the pdf files, I hate when I bookmark something absolutely nice and months afterwards it is gone. I have a large harddisk and I can always get a bigger one LOL.

Yesterday we had a day fully planned as we were heading in the early afternoon to Bonn to visit an exhibition (nothing to do with dolls) and have a meal out with friends. Still we couldn’t completely miss the big flea-market here where we live (the weather was again great) and we went quickly there in the morning.
I found a black superstar in desperate need of being fixed: the neck is unfortunately broken, still the head is nice and so the body and she comes with her outfit and shoes. She was 2 euros so I took her anyway:

and I bought this cute set, it is perhaps a bit big for 1/6 scale but still so nice:

My great find though was this old kitchen from Schopper, perhaps it is not so vintage as it looks since the company produces vintage-looking items but the price tag is still in DM and not euros so it cannot be so new.

The company by the way provides, upon request, a CD with the catalogue of all their products from 1928 up to now so I requested it, hopefully I will be able to find my kitchen there and see when it was produced.

It was still in its package, everything wrapped and delightful. I could take it out since you can put it back in without ruining the box:

The accessories were still wrapped, it comes with pots and a set including bucket and broom:

Here are some pictures with Pepper and the Mattel Sweethearts for size comparison:

I really love vintage toys

If you are living in Paris or will be there in November don’t miss the exhibition “Frimousses de Créateurs”, hosted by the french museum of the Petit Palais between the 18th and 23 of November.