Since photography’s such a huge part of the Blythe hobby, it’s always a good idea to know what your options are for uploading photos.

Flickr’s a very popular option – it’s free to use for up to 200 photos and after that, the older ones ‘disappear’ (if you ever go onto a paid account – which is $24.95/year – and all your old and disappeared photos will come back!) as there a lot of Blythe hobbyists on Flickr and there are a lot of Flickr groups that you can join and it makes it easy to search for photos of your favourite dolls (and all those Blythes that you don’t own yet).

But Flickr is not the be all and end all to image hosting websites. There are a lot of free image hosting options available and what you can consider are:

• ImageShack
• Photobucket
• TinyPic

Hope you have fun sharing photos! If you have any other suggestions for image hosting solutions, please let me know in the comments below and I’ll add them to the list!

For those active in the English-speaking Blythe communities, I’m sure you’re aware that Plastic Paradise was rebranded as Blythe Kingdom when it also made the new ownership switch. With all new things comes a newly revised set of rules. Of the forums available that I can safely say that I love the community-family feel that Plastic Paradise/Blythe Kingdom offers.

With the new ownership came the new look, along with the revised themed-names of the boards. I mean, can you get any cuter than the very punny title of “Going Baroque” section that is the buy-sell-trade section? Too. Freaking. Cute.

But… For all those who have not yet joined the fun forum that is Blythe Kingdom, you’ll need to be aware that there are rules for joining. There’s also limitations as to when you can get to see all the fun buy-sell-trade – you need a minimum amount of posts before getting to see those sections but it’s not an incredibly high number of posts that you need to have, so just take your time, get to know all the different sections and take your time for posting.

See you in the kingdom!

One of the big things about the Blythe hobby is taking photos of your dolls and I love taking photos of my own dolls. I’m always trying to think of new places to take photos of my Blythes, I’m not as comfortable with taking photos of them outside of my house – but I do on occasion. I’ve taken photos of my Blythes while at the dentist, in the park, at the aquarium, in my backyard and (for the most part) in my bedroom or other parts of my house. There’s a lot of great places that you can take photos of your dolls, but because this is a budget-friendly article, I should suggest places that it’s free for you to enter. Which, you know, takes places like “the aquarium” out of the running – because that costs money. However, if you’re planning on going to the aquarium anyways (or have a membership!), it’s totally fun take photos of Blythe at the aquarium.

• Local parks/gardens
• Your own backyard or places in or around your house
• The grocery store
• The parking lot
• The playground – if it’s at a school and you’re an adult, you will probably want to avoid the playground during school hours due to laws and such
• The bookstore
• Having an image up on your television set or laptop and then taking a photo of your doll in front of it

There’s some photographers out there who take photos of Blythe and it looks like that their doll is standing all by herself. What’s the trick to it? Is it that they have excellent Photoshopping skills? Is it that they have a magical Blythe who really can stand all by herself? Or perhaps they just happen to use some discrete stands and a whole lot of good photography angles in order to get that great photo to share. My bets are on the excellent Photoshopping skills and the discreet stands.

What you want to do with the stand is have them at an angle and propped up against the doll’s back or behind their head (think of a 45° angle between the ground and the stand if the doll’s completely perpendicular to the ground).

Some ideas for what you could use as a stand include:

• Forks
• Skewers
• Chopsticks
• Sticks
• Toothbrushes (I especially like using the bristled part to hold up against their necks)

Regardless of what you choose to use as a stand, the doll really comes to mind when you pose them in a way you would expect a human to pose – knees bent a little, perhaps the head turned to one side, arms down or out. What angle you take the photo at,  how much light is available – it all changes how a photo could turn out.

If you are, however, interested in doing a little bit of photo manipulation and don’t have a copy of Photoshop or find it too expensive (this is Blythe On A Budget, after all!) you can check out the free photo manipulation program, GIMP, for all your photo manipulation needs.

Happy photo taking!

I went to the dollar store recently and went around looking for the ten most interesting (and hopefully useful!) photo props that I could see that were listed at only $1 each and here’s what I came up with:

1. Paper drink umbrellas
2. Food-shaped erasers
3. Dolly chair (bright yellow plastic but probably easily painted over with the right type of paint)
4. Small stuffed animals (~3″ tall)
5. Fabric butterflies (supposed to be used as room decorations, I think)
6. Party streamers (2 packages for $1)
7. Plastic martini glasses (supposed to be for wedding favours)
8. Mini bells (supposed to be Christmas tree decorations)
9. Earrings (replace your doll’s earrings or use the charms as a holdable item?)
10. Mini playing cards keychain (don’t your girls want to engage a little poker game?)

While all dollar stores are different and they offer different products all the time and might not even have the same item in stock from one day to the next – it’s always fun to do some exploring and go through all the aisles and see what there is to see. Go into the store with just enough cash for one or two items to keep without your monthly dolly budget!