Author: Louis Bou
First Published: April 2014
Publisher: Rockport Publishers
256 Pages

The Doll Scene: An International Collection of Crazy, Cool, Custom-Designed Dolls by Louis Bou is a great little book that I treated myself a little while ago after seeing photos of it over and over again on Instagram when it first came out. The Doll Scene features 25 artists who customize or fully create beautiful dolls. The aspect that really drew me to this book was the fact that there is a Blythe on the cover (a custom doll by Caramelaw), that was the lure to get me to look at the rest of the book. Click to read more of this entry.

For a very, very long time I was very bad at remembering to pack dolls for local Blythe meets. I would always bring a doll, but it was usually whoever had an outfit change the most recently because I wasn’t about to bring a doll who was wearing the exact same outfit to two meets in a row! I’m a bit better now though. When I’m entering details of a meet onto my phone, I also set myself a reminder the night before. This is immensely useful as it reminds me that I need to have a doll (or two) ready for the next morning or afternoon.

Primrose at a recent local doll meet.
Primrose is wearing Luxie Lou (top) and Blythe Couture (pants).

My processes is now as follows:

• Set a reminder on my phone for the night before a doll meet.
• I (now) pay attention to who was brought to a meet last and try to bring a different girl.
• Then I go forth and dig through the doll clothes and shoes to put together an outfit.
• Lastly, these newly dressed dolls get put into the doll carry bags that I use (the ones I have are by Sew Pixie) and then into my purse or a tote bag for ease of carrying.

Getting the dolls ready the night before means that I don’t have the moments of “Oh no!” half an hour before I have to leave when I realize that my dolls aren’t packed yet. The little act of setting a reminder on my phone means that I don’t have that small amount of stress before going to a doll meet and I am also to take the time to bring a different doll to the meets as well as making sure that they’re fully dressed (you don’t want to know how many meets I’ve attended without doll shoes).

How do you prepare for doll meets? Have any tips to share?

The great thing about cushions is that there is a huge range of ‘standard’ sizes’ for the 1:1 scale crowd (that being us!). For Blythe, I wanted to make some throw cushions for that great Ikea HUSET couch (modeled after the KLIPPAN). My real-life throw cushions on my real couch range from 12″x12″ to 16″x16″ which, in 1:6 scale, would be be 2″x2″ or 2.67″x2.67″.  The nice thing is that you can make these in a variety of sizes, or all the same size. Click to read more of this entry.

Shoes can complete an outfit. This is both true for humans and dolls. Unfortunately for me, I do not own 50+ pairs of shoes for myself. This is a very, very sad fact. Fortunately, doll shoes are amazing because they are small! And I can have many, many, many pairs of doll shoes in the same footprint as a pair of my-sized shoes would be. Foot print. Shoes. Get it? I crack myself up. *crickets*

I wanted to bring everyone’s attention to some simply fantastic boots that I own. These are the stock boots from Art Attack. Not exactly easy to seek out, but they’re pretty awesome. They are great in the fact that they are very easy to get on, because of the long zipper down the back.

Simplicity at its best. It also helps that black and white go so well with so many outfits.

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!

Part of what I need to do to finish school includes working a lot of hours in the hospital (practical experience = awesome!), but it also includes temporarily relocating for those practical hours. This means that I’m not with my many dolls and my entire dolly shoe and clothing collection (when I call it a collection, it just sounds better than my hoarder’s stash). So what and whom did I bring along with me? Let’s take a look!

I’m sure nobody will be surprised by my doll choices: Eden Mouse and Primrose.

Eden and Primrose are both wearing Kult of Kulta, vintage squishy
Barbie boots, and travel in Sew Pixie carry bags.
Click to read more of this entry.