There are some parts of my dolls shoes collection that comes from my childhood. Not very much of it fits my Blythes, of course, as Barbie has highly arched feet. One pair that did transfer from my childhood shoe collection to my current shoe collection was this pair of red cowboy (cowgirl?) boots.

While cowgirl boots exist nowadays with Barbie dolls, many of the currently produced boots do have ‘Barbie’ written down the sides in cursive. These boots, while not terribly detailed, do lack the brand of the doll they came from, which is nice in a way because I don’t want it to be obvious that they are Barbie boots.

They are super cute and if I had gone to BlytheCon in Dallas back in 2012, I definitely would have had one of my dolls wearing these. I think now they just go well with a simple outfit. The downside to these cute red boots is that I cannot, for the life of me, get them onto a doll while she’s wearing tights – at least not without the tights bunching and stretching out because they are so close fitting.

Tiny Shoe Love is a feature on BlytheLife.com to showcase and share doll shoes that grace Michelle’s picky dolls’ feet. We love tiny shoes in this house, and we hope you do too!

Collecting Blythe has led me down the path of collecting other dolls. People in this community have influenced me in a variety of ways, being able to see other types of dolls beyond Blythe (and Middie, and Petites) has led me to acquiring an assortment of dolls.

From the more commercially-available standpoint, I have some Monster High dolls (5 out of the box, 2 NRFB) and a My Little Pony Equestria Girl doll (still in box…). What I would love to eventually do is get the rest of the MLP girls to complete the ‘set’.

There’s my BJD, Joy, that would be an on topic BJD for a certain online forum, she is a Doll Leaves Ding Ding (16cm):

Then there’s Kanin, my Petworks Usaggie, and my Hujoo Nano Freya in light gray, whom is oddly still without a name:

Who do you have in your doll family that’s not a Blythe?

The standard Kenner Blythe eye chip colours were described as bouncy brown, groovy green, pretty purple and beautiful blue. We know the colours better as orange, green, pink, and blue. Many people end up swapping them out for something else, I am no stranger to that either as I’ve done that quite a few times for colours that I just don’t think ‘fit’ well with a particular doll.

My favourite of the four standard eye chip colours would have to be pink, surprisingly enough. I’ve actually switched out stock blues and greens for softer versions of them in Brainworm or Cool Cat varieties, I find that the blues and greens don’t necessarily look good in all of my dolls, but I actually quite like the pinks!

Some dolls are lucky as they came with special eye colours, which I find tend to be very pretty. Middies and Petites are interesting in that there is no ‘standard’ eye chip colour for them, as they just have that one set. They do, however, end up with some beautiful colours that I wouldn’t mind finding one day for the Neo Blythes in my doll family.

What is your favourite stock eyechip colour?

I see it in for sale listings all the time:

“I just got her and I didn’t bond” or “Not bonding, doll for sale”

The Blythe community, and other doll communities really, are interesting in the way that people become affectionate and attached to their dolls. They form a bond with a manufactured item that they happen to play with and clothe. As a child, I became easily attached to stuffed animals and I had a polar bear teddy that I carried around with me everywhere. As an adult, I can still become attached to a doll, but not to the point where I feel the need to carry one around in my bag all the time.

For some, bonding means that they feel some kind of connection with the doll. For others, not bonding is realizing when they see the doll that they just don’t love her – and why should anyone keep a doll that’s worth a hundred or hundreds of dollars when they just don’t like her enough? Blythe is quirky in that way, especially when the dolls are expensive. For me, I’ve resold exactly one Blythe since I started (a Fancy Pansy) and she was the only doll that I ever bought that didn’t come right out of the box as soon as she arrived. In fact, she sat in her box (still NRFB) for months before I decided that I couldn’t afford to just have her sitting there, in her box, in the shipping carton, not doing anything. I sold her to a lady who had been searching for a stock Fancy Pansy to replace the one that she sold. She had a bond with Fancy Pansy, I did not. And honestly, I’m kind of glad that Fancy Pansy didn’t stay – having her stick around might have changed the composition of what my Blythe family looks like now.

I formed a near instantaneous sense of affection towards one doll in particular: Primrose. First saw her in a photograph without any legs and I just knew that I had to have her. I bought her, got her some legs, and now she’s one of my all-time favourites and it would take a lot for me to even consider selling her.

I form attachments to my dolls, just not in the way that I used to with stuffed animals as a child. Then again, things are a lot different now. I still form connections though, and I have dolls that I would not sell unless I absolutely had to and even then I’d be hard pressed to do it because there are some dolls in my collection that I just know that I would never be able to find another like her.