Quite a few of the Takara-released Blythe dolls have had special stock eye chips- all beginning with Miss Anniversary, the first anniversary doll that also had all special eye colours. Since there, it has been special stock eye colours that appear on and off and there have been some beautiful stock eye chips. Some of them have been more creative than others (e.g. Ultimate Tour Momolita’s silver skulls or Ahcahcum Zukin’s green clovers) while others have just been really pretty.

Some of my favourite special colours that my dolls came with stock are Bennett’s browns (Margaret Meets Ladybug) and Mollie’s light blues (Simply Sparkly Spark). There’s just something a little extra special about a Blythe who comes with a pair of eye chips that isn’t the standard pink, blue, orange, or green. Even a slightly different shade of green or blue (or pink or orange…) is a welcome change.

What’s your favourite special stock eye chip colour?

Shopping Saturday is a feature on BlytheLife.com to help you either shop or promote your shop’s sales. If you want to have your sale included in Shopping Saturday, submissions must be made by 12pm Pacific on the Friday before and all coupon codes must be valid for the entire weekend that they are featured.

For more information, you can check out the Shopping Saturday page or send questions to michelle@blythelife.com.

•  AnneArchy has a 25% off coupon code for Blythe knitting patterns: smallbizsaturday

Welcome to the 2015 Blythe Holiday Shopping Guide! This is part 2 of a 3 part mini-series to help those who are trying to figure out what to buy for themselves, or what to buy for the Blythe-lover in their life. Last week was the $25 and less part of the shopping guide!

Now when I think Blythe, I don’t think that it cost pennies because it is a luxury hobby of sorts. So for the second part of the Holiday Shopping Guide, it will be the ?$100 gift options!

1. A full set of hand-painted eyechips for your special someone’s special dolly. Hand-painted chips generally seem to go for about $20-30/set and getting several sets would be quite the gift! There are a lot of options available to you, if you search for hand painted Blythe eye chips on Etsy or Artfire you should be able to come up with quite a bit! I

2. How about a Pure Neemo Flection body with a set of hands? A lot of people like swapping out their dolls’ stock bodies for something with a bit more range of motion – the Pure Neemo fits the bill for a lot of people. The body and hands will solidly set you back about $40-50 or so, especially once you factor in shipping as well. For the best size that matches well with the original Blythe body, a lot of people go with the XS option.

3. There’s also the Licca body for the body swapper in your life. If you buy a Licca doll (complete with outfit), it’ll run you about $20-25 (possibly with additional shipping charges tacked on top). It’s a little underwhelming to get a naked headless doll, so for a nicer presentation I would suggest perhaps getting the full doll (head, shoes, outfit). It looks a bit better, and then your loved one gets another pair of shoes and a dress with it – as well as a head for the stock Blythe body.

4. Does your favourite Blythe collector have a favourite clothing seamstress? A lot of lovely clothing items for Blythe can be found from $25-100 – the holidays are a great time to splurge and get them something that they might not otherwise get the chance to own. While it make seem expensive to pay that much money for a piece of doll clothing, remember that these are all made by hand and you’re not only buying a tiny dress but you are paying for the materials, the time, and the sewing expertise that the person has.

5. Lastly in the under $100 range is Re-ment, which can be cheaper than $100, but perhaps there’s a set that your special someone really wants or you want to buy them the full set so you can ensure that they get all the really neat sets in a collection. It is possible to find full Re-ment sets for under $100, a quick Google search nets me a lot of online retailers. Keep in mind of what kind of things your favourite doll collector seems to enjoy. If they loathe Hello Kitty, it’s probably not the best time to get them a Hello Kitty-themed Re-ment set, just saying. Re-ment can vary a lot in prices, but if you know the collector in your life likes kitchen items or food items or furniture, it can help you narrow down your search to the perfect set.

I was eyeing my KLIPPAN the other day (the pink Blythe-sized one from HUSET, not a real 1:1 scale couch) and was thinking how much better it would look if it was a different colour. Now, I know that there are slip covers available online like via Etsy but I’m still trying to curb the spending and keep my ‘fun’ spending on the lower side of things because it’s not a necessity. Trying to live a frugal life with a luxury hobby like Blythe is almost like a paradox in a way because it’s Blythe and not exactly a frugal or inexpensive hobby no matter how you look at it.

So I got the idea that I would knit a slip cover for the KLIPPAN. I’m sure you’re all thinking “But Michelle, sewing would be so much faster” and yes, it would be, but you don’t understand how poor of a sewer I am in terms of actually sewing in straight lines. I’m a lot better at knitting, and with the mishaps that may happen it may very well be faster for me to knit the slip cover than it would be for me to sew one. I really wanted to go for a much different colour than the original pink colour (I will not be painting it as I do like the stock pink colour), so I picked out a few colours that I was musing about.

I decided on the one in the middle (the brown), mostly because it’s something that seemed like it would be a good neutral choice – mostly because while I love the reddish purple and the green, I thought a nice neutral colour might be better for now. I have my supplies (yarn, needles, couch for sizing it up against) and I’m probably going to attempt to write a pattern for all of the pieces as I work on it (in case anyone else is as crazy as I am, and for when I decide to go with another colour!). I think it’ll be fun to try to work in different stitch patterns to get the different textures for some visual interest.

Hopefully this pans out. At the time of writing, I have not started actually knitting this. I’m not sure if it will turn out or if it will be a lesson in futility. Hopefully it works out and I don’t regret wasting the time on it (and if it does turn out funny, at least I know?).

When I was first new to Blythe, I thought that sleepy eyes were just so neat. I gathered up some courage and opened up my first and third Blythe dolls in order to give them sleepy eyes. The only reason that Blythe #2 didn’t get them because it was Belarus (a Love Mission) and she’s an EBL and I was/still am quite antsy about the thought of opening an EBL (or BL, or that matter). I will open up a Kenner if it’s necessary, but getting my hands on the inside of an EBL has me going nope! in a really emphatic way.

But they’re still useful. One of the reasons why I like sleepy eyes because it gives you a great variety of expressions from an already interestingly expressive face. However, I am just not a fan of having many strings – most of the time I just want to swap from on set of chips to the next and I’m not interested (or caring) to have my dolls ‘sleep’ between colours. This is funnily enough the primary reason why the majority of my Blythes do not have sleepy eyes. I have 6 RBLs, 2 FBLs, and 1 RBL+ and only 3 of them have sleepy eyes despite them all being fairly easy to open (all 3 dolls are RBLs, 1 is a full custom and came to me with sleepy eyes). I’m a creature of habit, but also lazy with the strings. Sad, but true!

Do your Blythes have sleepy eyes or you do you dislike sleepy eyes for whatever reason?