Hello, hello! It’s been a while since I really blogged about Emmalynn, the lovely 1972 Kenner Blythe that I got back in late 2011. She hasn’t gotten a whole lot of photo time because she spent quite a bit of time in pieces (I’m a bad doll owner, I know). To recap (for those who didn’t read the original posts), here is the laundry list of things that I did in my quest to restore my vintage beauty to her original glory:

• Removed her scalp and hard cap; loose hair plugs were secured (with thread) and scalp tears were reinforced
• Multiple baths for her (a spa wouldn’t be complete without getting rid of the musty smell of old plastic)
• Partline rethatched (!)
• Multiple hair treatments with fabric softener, hot water and foam rollers
• Opening of head to clean out some grime and her eyeballs
• Gluing her pelvic seam crack
• Reinserting her poor legs back in (finally!)
• Replacing her scalp onto her head

Click to read more of this entry.

Image from stock.xhng user przybysz.

Valentine’s Day is in a very short two weeks! Why not show your Blythes that you love them by helping them celebrate it? After all, you should show your appreciation for your dolls as well as other loved ones in your life. Some great things about Valentine’s is that there are a lot of inexpensive options out there and I checked out my local dollar store to see what was available:

• Fine sand paper ($1 per package) – perfect for reducing that shine
• Red, pink and white felt ($1/3 sheets) – nothing says “I love you” like a new coat
• Lace ribbon ($1/spool) – good for trims or even has a hair ribbon for your favourite doll
• Pink and white yarn ($1/ball) – it’s time to show you care with a new sweater for your plastic love
• White, water soluble glue ($1/bottle) – might not be Aleene’s, but it’ll still work for eye chips
• Hair elastics, hair barrettes ($1/package) – shiny little baubles for your favourite doll’s hair
• Boxed Valentine cards ($1/box) – show that you love, with something that says that you do

There are a lot of things that you can find at your local dollar store that can be used for your dolls, above are just some examples. As for me? I opted for buying a few sheets of felt for some craft projects, and picked up a sheet of baby pink felt for Blythe projects.

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 this month’s 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!

For the month of January, I picked out some of the sites that I kept going back to during the month. I hope you like them too!

1. Blythopia.com is a fantastic resource website. You can look up any of the NEO Blythes to see release dates, names, types of stock. There’s also information about the dress sets and shoe sets! It’s run by Jennatomic, who took over Blythopia and revamped the site.
2. There’s the Dolly Dress Challenge group over on Flickr. I love seeing photos of what people have made! There’s a few different challenges that have happened in the group. One was to make a clothing item per day, the new one is to make one item for each doll.
3. I’ve been wanting to make a doll house (or just several room boxes) for ages now, but I just don’t have the room. This doesn’t stop me from thinking about how I would like to decorate the rooms though! You can find fantastic free printable scrapbook paper on sites like ScrapbookScrapbook.com and MrPrintables.com, all you need is to supply the printer, paper and the ink.
4. More printable minis! I found TreeFeathers.com and their site has things like vintage Valentines, movie posters and some super-cute vintage travel posters. All printable pages have a little 1″ ruler at the bottom.
5. And another Flickr group that I want to draw attention to is Kenner 365, or also known as A Kenner A Day. I love looking at all the great photos of the vintage girls. There’s also weekly themes, which is fantastic if you’re stuck and unsure of how to take photos of your 1972 Blythes!

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.

What is the best way to find money in the budget for Blythe? Save money in other sections! This is me assuming that you can pay for everything else in life (rent, utilities, food and other necessities) and you don’t need to sock away the saved money into savings… Although if you put all the extra money that you don’t need to spend into a savings account, you could save it for a rainy day… or a Rainy Day Parade.

Blythe isn’t cheap. It’s really not. I wish it was a cheaper hobby, but it’s not. The dolls are money, the shoes, the glasses, the clothes, the fabric and yarn is all money. Money, money, money. So what can you do to save money to have more room in the budget for Blythe (or maybe savings?).  There’s couponing, for one. And shopping for things that you would have bought anyways while it’s on sale. There’s no need to go all Extreme Couponing (because, let’s face it, no one needs 50+ bottles of mustard in their personal grocery store in their basement), even a few savings here or there can all add up!

The important thing to remember about couponing when you want to save some money is that you’re not saving anything if you wouldn’t have purchased it anyways. Say you have a coupon and you could get a $1 jar of peanut butter – it’s still a wasted dollar if you and everyone that you know hates or is allergic to peanut butter. Take that into consideration when looking for coupons to supplement your weekly grocery trip.

And, as a note before you go of and start downloading coupons – please exercise caution when giving your address online (some sites will mail the coupons to you, while others are printables only).

For my Canadian readers, I know of a few couponing websites, blogs and forums:

• BargainMoose.ca – blog – sales or coupon codes for Canadian and American based shops
• Save.ca – coupons – free coupons that are mailed to your home
• SmartCanucks.ca – forum + coupons database – lots of great resources!
• RedFlagDeals.com – forum+ coupons database – lots of great resources, I tend to avoid the forums section because people are rude, but the content is still good.
• Websaver.ca - coupons – free coupons that are mailed to your home (minimum 3 ordered coupons at one time)

For my American readers, here’s a small selection of US couponing/deal-finding sites (there are a lot, so Google away if you want to find some more!):

• CouponCabin.com – offers of grocery coupons and coupons for clothing stores as well, many of them are printables.
• CouponMom.com – many grocery coupons and state-specific coupons, there’s even a section for restaurant coupons (for those who like to eat out).
• Coupons.com - customizable by your postal code, you can find printable a lot of printable coupons for groceries, house hold items and services in your area.
• RetailMeNot.com – it’s a fantastic website that I use from time to time (for cross-border online shopping), mostly showing coupon codes for a certain amount or percentage off, or coupon codes for free shipping (always important!).

For the Australian readers, I didn’t want to leave you out of the money-saving fun! I haven’t tried most of these (seeing as how I’m not located in Australia), but they seemed to be pretty straight-forward when it come to using them, so hopefully they’ll be of use to you.

• ShopADocket.com.au – the site offers coupons for restaurants, retail shops and services, all you need to do is type in your location or postal code to get coupons for your area.
• TopBargains.com.au – a little searching is involved, but there’s a whole section dedicated towards pizza coupons, yum! There’s also a freebies & samples section, which I think is totally awesome.

For people who aren’t from Canada, the USA or Australia… I ran into a bit of a roadblock when trying to find sites that didn’t seem scammish, sorry! If you have any additional websites that you would like to share with your fellow Blythe enthuiasts, please comment below with the URL of the site and what country/countries it caters towards.

Happy saving, everyone!

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!

The 10 part mini-series of Treasures For Dollars has finally come to an end. Is anyone else sad as well? (Maybe not me, because this could mean that I will stop trolling the aisles of the dollar stores looking for interesting things, at least for a little bit.) My last item is going to be a little bit more expensive than the other items and I didn’t even find it at a dollar store. No, I found it at a hardware store. It’s Loctite Super Glue (for all plastics). I first mentioned it back in November when I was working on fixing my Kenner. The glue failed for me several times before I gave it one last try just this past Monday (January 16th). I’ll save the details of what I did to finally make it work for my follow-up entry for when I reveal my reassembled Kenner (poor Emmalynn has been in pieces in a box since November!).

The two-part glue was $6.99CAD + 12% tax, making it the most expensive item featured in this mini-series. But it was totally worth it, because it (after many attempts!) eventually helped me fix my Kenner. And in the grand scheme of things, $6.99+tax is a lot less than buying a Kenner (besides if I were to find one at a thrift store).

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