Lately, I’ve been attempting to organize my dolly things. Clothes, shoes, the dolls themselves. “Attempting” is the key word in that sentence, in case you didn’t catch it. Organization is something that I can struggle with at times. It can be difficult because of the sheer amount of stuff that I own when it comes to my Blythes and all their necessities. I find myself overwhelmed at times, and then when I’m digging through the drawer I sometimes find things that I didn’t realize that I owned. How unfortunate is that? But at the same time, it lends to the feeling of getting something new without having something new arrive in the mail – which is a pretty awesome feeling!

I have two plastic drawer sets and each drawer holds something different – hats/hair accessories, dresses, shirts/tops, pants/skirts/bottoms, stock clothes and the miscellany (Re-ment, other miniatures, doll-sized purses/bags, curlers for the Kenners, etc.) . So while I’m mostly organized when it comes to what goes into what drawer, it’s the inside of the drawers that are messy. So I decided to get some plastic bags and organize. If I buy “designer” items, I tend to end up with a few from each designer- or I get sets (e.g. a dress set would consist of a dress and bloomers of some sort). So I started bagging like-items and it allows me to be more organized. I haven’t gotten around to labeling the bags yet, but that will come in time. Maybe. (Unlikely…)

Here were some of my bagged up dolly clothes – sorted by designer/maker and some are multiple sets in a bag, others are sets as they were meant to be (e.g. dress + underskirt + bloomers):

It’s hard to take photos of things in shiny plastic!

This is a relatively inexpensive project. I bought two boxes of zipped sandwich bags that were $1 for 50 bags. The only problem is finding the time to do all this sorting and organizing. I haven’t made a very large dent yet in my organization, but I like what I’ve done so far.

Since school started nearly a month ago for me (I started two weeks before Labour Day), I’ve been very busy with presentations, assignments, readings, projects and clinical. It doesn’t stop when I want it to and I find myself going for days and weeks on end without even touching my Blythes. This isn’t to say that I no longer like them, the truth couldn’t be farther from that, but rather I’ve had to change my priorities because my education is important to me and that needs to come first. At the same time, I love my dolls and I have missed even having them out with me. Most of them are on display on my desk, but the others are usually tucked away, so I made it a point to pull a few of them out the other day because I just needed some ‘dolly time’.

Not the best photo, but Halo is still adorable!

And it’s not even as if I do it intentionally with the thought of “I’m just going to ignore my Blythes for a few days” because that’s not it at all. Like or not, Real Life can be busy. And unfortunately things like hobbies fall to the wayside. But recent events (like getting dolly mail!) have rekindled my love for the big-eyed dolls that we all know and love. I was recently on “the hunt” for my first BL when I had a large unexpected expense come up, so now I’m needing to really pinch the pennies and just be happy with what I have – not to get caught up in the never-ending cycle of spending money on more and more dolls and doll things. At least for now, I should enjoy what I have. (And the new dolly clothes that recently arrived…)

Do you ever go through periods where you don’t play with your dolls very much? What makes you decide to spend more time with them?

I’d like to start this off by saying that I think eyelid art on Blythe dolls is awesome. Some people (coughcough) do some fantastic work – I don’t understand how people can paint and draw such detailed work on possibly the world’s smallest canvas. It doesn’t make sense to me because I’m pretty sure that if I tried that, I would go permanently cross-eyed from focusing so much. That and I can’t draw for beans, so not only would I be permanently cross-eyed, it’d also be a waste of time because it would not resemble what I want it to look like. Sad, but true.

The best way that I think that eyelid art is showcased on dolls is with sleepy eyes. I’m sure many of you know how sleepy eyes are done on a Blythe doll. For those unfamiliar, you replace the use of the spring on the eye mechanism with a secondary string. So you pull one string to change the eyes and then another string is used to open the eyes. This allows you to temporarily see the eyelids and have the doll “sleep”. (I’ve read online before that it’s not recommended that you leave your dolls “sleeping” for long periods of time because it can result in damage to the eye mechanism due to stress.)

While I love the idea of getting to see eye lids from time to time, only two of thirteen of my Blythes have sleepy eyes. This is mostly due to the fact that I am terribly lazy when it comes to my dolls. When I need to change to the next set of chips, it’s because there’s a specific set that I want to have facing for photos and I don’t like having the added step of pulling an extra string. Plus, I have a hard enough time as it is finding charms for the main pull string – now I need to find charms or something neat for another string? That’s just so much work! So, sadly, only two of my dolls have sleepy eyes. The rest just get dosed up with some caffeine so that they can stay up for all hours of the day!

How do you feel about sleepy eyes on your Blythes?

This is a guest post by Alice (nuwandalice). If you’re interested in contributing and writing for BlytheLife.com, click here for more information.

Sometimes, it seems like when it comes to conventions, the UK gets a bit neglected. We’re just little, and when there’s a mass gathering of people interested in something niche – generally, there are more of those people somewhere bigger – usually across the pond.

So, when Blythecon 2009 was announced, I know that I did a sad little sigh and hoped one day I’d make the 3000 miles to make a future event.

But – thanks to three magnificent ladies we got our own Blythecon in Oxford in 2010, and it’s been going strong ever since. 2011 was hosted in London, 2012 in Manchester – and 2013 is somewhere rather close to my heart, in Glasgow!

On October 5th, 2013, the fourth annual BCUK will be held in The Lighthouse, Glasgow, with all funds raised going towards Guide Dogs UK and Yorkhill Children’s Foundation. Tickets are still available!

There’s going to be an amazing list of vendors, which you can see in full here as well as a Bring & Buy to empty out your doll closet and makes a few pennies at the same time. There will be a photo competition in honour of the 2014 Commonwealth Games which are to be hosted in Glasgow next year, and a fashion competition where tartan will feature heavily. There will also be a really awesome raffle – all of the donations can be seen on our Facebook page.

Blythe excellence aside – Glasgow is one of my favourite cities! I highly recommend a visit – there are tonnes of things to do and see. The lovely Fiona (below!) will be doing a walking tour of Glasgow on the Friday, with an evening ceilidh planned at Sloane’s. We have an excellent after-party planned (with food!) at the Jury’s Inn, which is also running a discounted rate for Blythecon attendees. Glasgow has great transport links by bus, train and air.

Hope to see you there for lots of Blythe awesomeness!

You can find out more about BlytheCon UK this year on Facebook, Twitter and on Flickr!

Hair can weigh as much as a Blythe at times, but if you ask me not all of the Blythe owners out there are good at doing dolly hair. It helps if you have a lot of it, so that cute hair styles can be done! In today’s edition of Love, Sophie (starring yours truly), I wanted to go over the different hair styles – going with the ones that I love for myself. Sometimes Michelle has to help me with styling my hair, but usually I just do it myself. Maybe even your human can try these on you!

Pigtails

Super simple, you just divide all your hairs evenly into two bunches and keep them separated with some hair ties. Looks great with a cute outfit, like what Belarus is wearing!

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