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Treasures for Dollars: Item 4

Written on October 19, 2011 at 12:00 pm by Michelle
Filed under: Article with tags:

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!

Like most Blythe enthusiasts, I spend quite a bit of time looking at photos of Blythes or Blythe clothing or Blythe shoes. It’s just the way that the hobby works out, what with so many people on Flickr posting photos all the time. One type of photo that I’ve always really liked is photos of their dolls (especially Kenners!) in curlers.

I’ve looked for curlers everywhere but I wasn’t about to shell out the $5+ per package of foam hair curlers that the beauty/hair department wanted in a department store.

Besides the price, the rollers were quite large and there were 20+ in a package. I don’t know about your Blythe’s head, but mine’s not that big (ego notwithstanding). But I went to the dollar store a little while ago and found packages of small(er) foam rollers at $1 per package with 8 rollers per pack. While I wasn’t entirely sure if 8 would be enough, I opted to get two packages. They were nice and small (at least compared to the more pricier ones found elsewhere) and I was able to get a smaller amount (I don’t need 20+ rollers that are too big for a doll’s head!).

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For the size (and what I needed them for), they work really well! And since I only spent $2 on curlers in total, that’s definitely nothing to complain about.

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

Question of the Week: Cost of your first doll?

Written on October 17, 2011 at 12:00 pm by Michelle
Filed under: Question of the Week

Some people find Blythes in thrift stores for a few bucks. Others got their first Blythes back in 1972. And then there are some who pay retail (or above retail!) prices for Takara or Ashton-Drake Galleries Blythes. However you got your first doll, it all varies from person to person.

My first Blythe was Cappuccino Chat. At the time I didn’t really frequent the buy-sell-trade forums enough but I did know about eBay! I first called up a local (sort of) store that I knew carried Blythe and I wrote down which ones they had, and at what prices, and then I looked them up online. At the time $1 Canadian was < $1 American, and their Prima Dolly selection was much too overpriced. It was down to between Cappuccino Chat and Sunshine Holiday at the time. But the cost of Sunshine Holiday was (in Canadian) higher than what the doll was going for on eBay (in USD). But Cappuccino Chat? She was lower in CAD than what she was going for on eBay in USD (shipping not included yet). I figured with taxes, that’d be about the same as tacking on shipping – so when my family decided to drive out in that direction, I went straight to the store, told the sales associate what I wanted and soon I was handing over my credit card and getting my very first Blythe doll in my hands. She was $200 CAD + 12% tax. Cappuccino Chat can be found stock (and nude) for a little bit less now, but I love her all the same.

What did you pay for your first Blythe doll?

From Kenner Fever to Cured – Part 1

Written on October 14, 2011 at 12:00 pm by Michelle
Filed under: Musings

 From Kenner Fever to Cured is a three-part mini series of me detailing my journey from just being feverish with wants of a Kenner Blythe to actually getting my first Kenner, an absolute dream girl.

June 20th - BlytheCon!
My Eden (PuPe) with Amanda-Ruth‘s Maggie Mae (Kenner) at the cocktail party the night before BlytheCon 2011 (Portland). Maggie Mae’s pip was the first I’d ever heard. Photo by me/chelleshocks.

Just over a month ago I asked how you cured a dolly fever and for a very long time, I wasn’t quite sure of the method to do it either. When I first discovered Blythe, it was around the time that Velvet Minuet had been released and I wanted her badly. But I didn’t come to own her until I had five other Blythes. I wanted Love Mission (second Blythe) and Margaret Meets Ladybug (fourth Blythe) just a little bit more than I wanted Velvet Minuet (my sixth). But there was always another doll that I wanted more than possibly most of my Blythes combined: a Kenner.

I wanted a gorgeous 1972 Kenner Blythe. And not just any gorgeous 1972 Kenner Blythe, I wanted a redhead.

Don’t ask me why I wanted a redhead. And truth be told, I considered blonde or brunette more than once as they come up a lot more frequently than reds do. But it was the redheads that I fell in love with and when I finally got to hold a Kenner for the first time ever (thank you, darling people who attended BlytheCon 2011 in Portland for these opportunity!) and then I got to hear the pip (!) I was in love. And I knew then just how badly I wanted a Kenner. However, getting to see dolls in person also had the opposite effect on some other stock dolls – I realized which ones that I really didn’t want at all! So luckily I wasn’t immediately drawn to the idea of spending all my money on a Kozy Kape (after all, BlytheCon in Portland was also a Kozy Con!) or other pricey Blythes.

Just wanting a Kenner wasn’t enough though. I just had to have my dream girl at this point. So in June of 2011, I made the decision to set aside all of my overtime pay from my summer job towards a Kenner (I also set aside all of my tax-credit cheques from the government as well as my paid-out vacation pay when I left my job to go back to school for my dream Kenner). I can’t really budget for getting overtime pay, which made it the perfect source of extra money that I could put towards a Kenner Blythe.

I had been searching on eBay and on buy/sell/trade forums for the “perfect Kenner” for pretty much as long as I’d been in the Blythe hobby. I wasn’t looking for a minty mint Kenner, just one that really ‘spoke’ to me. And then a decent looking Kenner popped up on eBay one day with an absurdly high shipping charge (later revised to a more conservative amount after the seller realized where I was from) and the dolly was from overseas in the UK.

It’s hard to explain the differences between a modern Blythe and a Kenner unless you have the two of them side by side. They feel different. The plastic used in the 70’s to produce Blythe feels a lot different than the plastic used now to manufacture Takara Blythe. This is most obvious when you feel the original arms of a Kenner and compare it to a more modern version of Blythe. The pip that people describe that comes from a Kenner is not an exaggeration, they really do sound different. And there’s just something about the sweet little vintage faces that really shows off the difference.

A little messy ;) According to my eBay records, I’ve bid (unsuccessfully) on just over a dozen red-headed Kenners. Some auctions ended at just $10 more than my maximum bid. Others ended at several hundred dollars more than my maximum bid. But fourteen unsuccessful bidding attempts later, I bid on this pretty looking Kenner.

She had some faults (a crack, missing hair plugs), but overall looked like she was in great shape from the auction photos. I think one of the major turnoffs that people felt was that the shipping price was so high (£80) for international buyers. (I had messaged the seller to find out the real shipping costs from UK to Canada and let’s just say that it was significantly less!)

After I won the auction, it took a few days to go over shipping methods with the seller, and then after I paid on September 25th, I had to wait (impatiently?) for the tracking information. The seller told me how she was going to package the doll (wrapped up in bubble packing and then double-boxed). I asked her to wrap the doll first in a paper towel before putting her in bubble packing – of all the issues that could potentially happy, I did not want the plastic of the doll to react with the plastic of the bubble packing. I don’t know if it had happened before or not, but it was a very expensive purchase and I would have been very upset if she got damaged that way while shipping. But the seller did it, without question.

So after I got the tracking information, I first repeatedly refreshed the tracking information on the Royal Mail website and then it told me that it had left the UK for Canada. But the Canada Post website kept on telling me that the number was not in the system. I can’t forget to mention that it took forever for Canada Post to finally scan her in as having at least arrived in Canada…

Blythe On A Budget: Keeping Track of Expenses

Written on October 12, 2011 at 12:00 pm by Michelle
Filed under: Article with tags:

Blythe On A Budget: Keeping Track of Expenses
Image by sxc.hu user Dioptria.

It can be very, very easy to lose track of how much money you’ve spent on dolls and doll things. Maybe you won’t forgot how much that Kenner cost you, but how much did that Simply Lilac? Or that super cute dress with an unknown designer? How about all those boots? Were they a dollar? Maybe five? Budgeting isn’t all about knowing exactly how many dollars you can afford to spend on Blythe in a month, but also where you can cut back for the more important things in life to save for something or to go towards another expense. It is very difficult to do that without keeping track of how much you’ve spent.

Of course, everyone has their own methods of keeping track of money spent, so I’m just going to go through the way that I do it (and this applies to all sorts of money spending, not just Blythe and other dolly goods):

  1. I carry around a small notebook and a pen in my purse at all times. All expenses that I do when I’m not at my computer gets recorded down with the date, what on earth I bought and how much total it cost me (if that includes tax, then I include that in the total as well).
  2. All expenses get recorded on an Excel spreadsheet, I have different rows for food, school (tuition, textbooks, general supplies), clothing, dolls and doll stuff (stands, clothes, shoes, accessories). But these are just ‘general’ topics that they go into.
  3. In the next tab over in Excel, I have a list of each of my dolls and how much they’ve cost me (base cost of doll, shipping, cost of pullrings/charms, eyechips, etc.). This way I know how much the doll cost me originally but also how much I’ve put into her. (This is not because I anticipate selling them in the near future, just for my record keeping purposes).
  4. I also include different sections for other doll things and try to make a meaningful description so I know what I’m talking about regarding different clothes, specific pairs of shoes, etc.
  5. If I buy something in a ‘lot’ or a grab bag of doll clothes from the thrift store, these generally do not get a meaningful description but just an overall description like ‘thrifted doll clothes bag’ with the total price paid for the entire bag.

This system has worked really well for me so far in what I do. It helps if you start off keeping track of things from the very beginning – it can be overwhelming to try and remember how much you spent on specific dresses or clothing if you didn’t do it from the start (and, to be fair, most of my dolls’ clothing came in lots or thrifted bags so it’s really easy for me to keep track of things that didn’t come that way!).

What methods do you use to keep track of your dolly (or other) spending?

Question of the Week: Socks? Tights? Leggings?

Written on October 10, 2011 at 12:00 pm by Michelle
Filed under: Question of the Week

I’ll be the first to admit that my girls rarely wear shoes. This comes from the fact that I get a little lazy when dressing my dolls – if they’re wearing newly changed dress, that’s fantastic! Considering one of my dolls has been wearing the same dress for the last 6+ months…

107/365 - Need something to wear... But when my dolls do wear shoes, they will even occasionally wear socks or tights. And have I mentioned that I loathe the idea of dragging tights up doll legs? But there are a lot of resources out on the internet with tips and tricks for pulling leggings/socks/tights up your dolls legs. My favourite is the one about baby powder and putting some on your doll’s legs. Why? Because even if your hands end up smelling like a baby afterwards, it works and socks and tights slide up like a dream.

(Please ignore the fact that when you’re buying a bunch of stuff at the store and have a lone container of baby powder, people look at you funny. Oh, and that the last time that you went to the store to do so, the old man standing behind you, noticing the fact that you’re buying baby powder and a bunch of tiny hair clips, asks if you have a baby girl.)

The fantastic thing about having something lightly coloured on your doll’s legs is that it helps prevent (supposedly, there’s no scientific research done yet) stains from darkly coloured clothing.

Do your girls wearing socks/tights/leggings? (What kind of tips and tricks do you have for getting them on?)

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