Every month’s last Friday (or just once a month, sometime on a Friday) is part of a feature on BlytheLife.com, Freebie Friday Five. Welcome everyone to the third instalment! I mention 5 things I love every month that’s free to do/read/see.

If you have any suggestions for next month’s Freebie Friday Five, please don’t hesitate to email me! Maybe you have a site you think that I should feature or a pattern that’s free and up on the web? Tell me!

1. Join a Flickr group or two! I like joining the groups for the specific dolls that I have. Find yours by searching the Flickr groups for the stock name of your dolls. For instance, if you had a Margaret Meets Ladybug (MML) doll, you’d join this group here!
2. I’ve just been loving reading blogs this month! Two Blythe-related blogs that I wanted to showcase this month both belong to two lovely girls from Australia. There’s Bella from The Adventures of Bella and Blythe and Emily from CraftyGirl*. Both girls are fantastically active bloggers, have quite the Blythe collections going and have such cute doll houses! I’m jealous, I don’t have a doll house (yet!).
3. Get some inspiration! While it’s great to see photos of dolls in fun new fashions, you can also look to real people photos to see fun new fashion trends that maybe you can recreate in Blythe-scale! One site that I love to go for current fashion trends to see if I want to make something similar for my own dolls is Polyvore.com
4. Take advantage of the good weather, if you still have it, and take photos outside! Natural lighting is the best when it comes to photography and I don’t know of anyone ever charging for use of sunshine. Get some photos of your dolls in public parks or gardens and other public accessible areas. Be adventurous!
5. Do a closet-clean out – for you! Have clothes with stains, rips, tears? If you can’t donate it, swap it or sell it, why not make something with it? Make something for your dolls (there’s lots of free patterns out there!) with your newly ‘found’ fabric. (Bonus: you make room in your closet for more things…?)

If you know of a site, group or activity that you think I should highlight in next month’s Freebie Friday Five, let me know! Comment below or email me.

I’m not the first one to think it: doll clothes have been getting more and more expensive.

On one hand, I definitely think that dolly seamstresses are entitled to being paid for their talent, their time and their work. If you’ve never tried it before, sewing doll clothes can be hard. Small seams, small hems, small everything! It’s difficult to come up with something that fits, plastic doesn’t have any give (at least not compared to humans). On the other hand, my dolls are demanding little bits of plastic and want ‘new’ clothes all the time. Or maybe that’s just an extension of my own personality (but let’s pretend that it’s not).

So what can you do? You could go and buy new doll clothes, but this is Blythe On A Budget, not Blythe On A Shopping Spree. What you can do is shop in your own doll closet.

• Rediscover clothing that you already own. Never really thought that orange top looked good on anyone? Try it on the newest addition to your family or try it when another pair of pants or a skirt or under a jacket.
• Have your dolls out and change their outfits! Give them a new look for the few days (or weeks, or months – if you’re bad like me and never change your doll’s outfit).
• Put together new clothing combinations. Striped tights with a polka dot skirt and a solid top? Sure! Horizontal striped dress with a plaid hat and dotted tights? Why not? After all, some dolls (and their humans) just lack fashion sense (just ask my own dolls!).
• Maybe you got some new hair accessories? Maybe it’d look good with that dress that you don’t remember why you bought it? Time for a doll to get a new outfit on!

And when you’ve got all your dolls in new outfits that you shopped out of your own doll closet, now it’s time for your dolls to do a photoshoot! There’s always nice, budget-friendly ways to enjoy your Blythes.

When Middie was first announced, a lot of people thought she was weird. For instance, why make another doll? Why didn’t she have a pullstring? There were talks about how overpriced she was (is) and how she doesn’t really do anything. There’s a handful of Middies currently and not as many crafters dedicating some time to make clothing that are Middie-sized.

I am not going to lie, when I first saw Middie I just thought she was weird. When I saw the price of Middie, I was definitely turned off. After all, that much money for a doll that doesn’t have a pullstring? At least Petites (Takara or LPS) are more conservatively priced (~$10-30) and they don’t do much either. But a Middie? To me, Middie was the gawky middle child. Not cute and bubbly like a Petite, and definitely doesn’t hold a candle to the bigger (original) size of Blythe.

But… Middie grew on me. Like fungus. Or a bacterial culture (I’m so mean). After seeing more and more (cute!!) photos of Middie, she’s starting to warm up to me. I mean, I’m definitely waiting for a less expensive, regular release (I don’t know if I can justify current retail prices for one!) but she’s definitely a cutie and I’m definitely considering one… one day.

How do you feel about Middie? Would you get one?

When I first started looking at photos of Blythe, the ones that really drew me in were the ones with the fantasy coloured hair. I totally thought I would end up with a rainbow family with red, orange, yellow, green, blue and somehow find a purple one. That’s what I had thought would be the case when I was dreaming about what my “dream” doll family would be.

Oddly enough, it’s two years in and I have only two fantasy coloured dolls (Simply Peppermint and Cappuccino Chat – I consider the silver to be ‘fantasy’ because she’s not old). All my other doll are brunette and otherwise dark-dark nearly black/are black. What happened? What happened to that rainbow of pretty doll hair that I was convinced that I would have? Luckily the third doll that arrived in my doll family was Simply Peppermint (Tertiary Jane) – the three dolls that followed after her were all very dark browns/black haired dolls.

Somehow my ‘ideal’ doll family changed, it went from rainbow to more natural colours. And completely without being intentional, the dolls started to have hair close to my hair shade rather than all the colours of the rainbow. This isn’t stopping me from getting dolls with more varying colours in hair. That’s why there’s a new ‘dream’ list, I really do need to make the doll family a little bit more well rounded (and to also include a few other mold types!). I don’t think I would give up any of the dolls that I currently have, but I would like to have more variation in terms of hair colour (which is why I’ve put a self-ban on any more brunettes or very dark browns/blacks from entering the family).

In a way, not having all fantasy coloured haired dolls is a good thing – no one in my house really notices when a new one arrives because they all look the same. If I started having blue-haired dolls, someone might notice that there’s yet another blue-headed doll in the house.

What kind of Blythes were you drawn to when you first discovered Blythe? What kind of Blythes do you have  now?

Treasures For Dollars is a mini-series that is completely focused on things that I actually find (and buy) from dollar stores and other similar stores. It will alternate with Blythe On A Budget articles for the next little while until the finale of the mini-series (at Part 10). I hope you enjoy the series!

Hello everyone and welcome to the second instalment of Treasures for Dollars! Just this past weekend I was in a small dollar store that had just opened up and was having a grand opening sale. While it has a lot of things that other dollar store have (cards, party supplies, inexpensive toys and goody bag favours), it also had quite the houseware selection as well as a craft section! But what I was looking for were these:

This card of small metal hair clips were $0.75 (regular price $1, but it was a sale!). So for $0.75 (+ tax), I got all of these little hair clippies which I thought was a pretty good deal. They’re cute, to-scale when put up against a Blythe’s head, and plus the paint on them is pretty decent – doesn’t scratch off easily at all. I think I may decorate them at a later date (maybe glue some bows or something onto them).

What’s a good inexpensive dolly-find you discovered recently?