When I was little, I had one of those doll houses that came with everything needed inside. There was furniture like beds, a playpen, tables, chairs. There was a ‘working’ doorbell, a car, a garage door that went up and down. I loved that doll house and all the plastic people what lived in it and since discovering Blythe, I’ve had the urge to create a new doll house for my Blythes.

I haven’t made that dream a reality yet. It’s mostly for lack of space (as I still live at home with my parents while I’m still in school) and lack of funds (I have, in my head, the idea of a completely custom-built doll home, or just custom-built doll rooms that I can move from place to place for better lighting). But it doesn’t stop me from thinking about it!

I have dabbled in scrapbooking as one of the crafts that I’ve gathered plenty of supplies in. More importantly, I have acid-free glue, photo corners and pretty paper that I was definitely charged a lot more than it cost to make. But if you take another look at it, you can definitely see a lot of potential in things like that.

Scrapbook paper can be pretty expensive at times, but if you pay attention to sales (or already scrapbook, so you can sort of justify the purchase…), you can sometimes get pretty patterned paper for pennies. The nice thing about scrapbooking paper that the most commonly found sizes are 12″x12″ or larger – and your Blythe dolls aren’t taller than that (unless you’ve put them onto a different body, but that’s an entirely different issue). If you’re incredibly picky about matching up the designs, you will need to purchase more sheets of paper so you can align the designs. If you’re not incredibly picky about matching up the designs, it makes the whole idea of wallpapering your doll house with scrapbooking paper a lot less expensive (and less time consuming).

If you want, you can glue the pieces of paper in place. Or, if you’re kind of fickle regarding decorations, you can consider tape or even that blue sticky tac stuff that allows for easy removal (it’s also fantastic for putting posters up onto your walls without putting holes into them).

Costumes are fun and it’s so much easier to buy enough fabric to come up with a costume for a doll than it is for yourself. But what is your Blythe going to go as this year? I’ve come up with a list of ideas of costumes that should be relatively inexpensive and easy to do, since you do only have 11 more days to figure out costumes for your dolls!

1. Ghost – use tissue paper or a paper towel, drape accordingly and cut out holes for eyes.
2. Robot – use tin foil to make a dress/outfit, remember to include a tin foil hat.
3. Witch – use a plain black dress already owned, pair with a black construction paper witch’s hat.
4. Card Guard (from Alice In Wonderland) – use two playing cards, tape the edges together.
5. Alien – use green cellophane and wrap it around, be sure to use green pipe cleaner to fashion a headband with antennae.
6. Ancient Roman – use a scrap piece of white fabric to twist and drape into a toga, use a brown pipe cleaner to make a ring to fit on top of your doll’s head, tape/glue on small leaves (real, fake, paper leaves).
7. Black Cat – dress in all black, use a curved pipe cleaner wrapped around the waist as a tail, cut out black triangles from construction paper, attach to a headband.
8. Vampire – use little white triangle points a teeth, wear a black cape and carry around a Re-Ment goblet (with fake blood inside!)
9. Zombie – wear ripped and dirt-stained clothing, drool a little bit, have unkempt hair.
10. Another Stock Blythe – steal someone’s clothing, carry your Blythe around in the stock box of the clothing’s original owner.

Before BlytheLife.com, I had a small WordPress blog (hosted on one of my domains – not on the WordPress.com website) for my Blythe-related blogging. It was just for myself and my dolls, a little bit of showing off of various things I had made for my own dolls as well as milestones for my dolls and mentioning the arrival of new dolls. Since BlytheLife.com, that blog has fallen a little bit inactive – less blogging there and more blogging here. Regardless, dolly blogging is a great way to be more involved in the doll community without breaking the bank.

For those that are unfamiliar, a blog is an online journal. I’m hestiant to say ‘diary’ because that implies that it’s not public. While you don’t need to have your blog be public, it should be known that even if you have passwords protecting all your entries or even access to the blog itself – the internet isn’t a place to spill your deepest darkest secrets if you truly do not want anyone else in the world to know about it.

There are many different places that you can go online and set up a free blog. Some that I have used in the past (and currently) include:

• Blogger
• Livejournal
• WordPress

There are many other blogging platforms out there for you to try and to use. The ones listed above are free. Of course, with all free things, there are limitations to what you can do with them. Some blogging platforms have limitations as to the types of designs you can use, how many images you can upload, what kind of plugins you can use. You can lift all those limitations with subscriber fees (usually payments are yearly, but some places have monthly fees).

Blogging is a great way to keep a record of things for yourself. Like when you got a new doll, when you got new clothes for that new doll and when you got a new doll to be a sister to the previous new doll. Or you can set up little narrated photo stories between your dolls or even just blog about yourself and dolls and other fantastic stuff. Whatever you end up blogging about, it’s a great way to keep a record of what you do and when you did it.

Some questions for you:

• Do you have a blog (Blythe, dolls or something else)?
• If yes, what blogging platform do you use?
• If no, what’s stopping you from starting a blog?
• How often do you blog?
• And if you feel like sharing, what’s your blog URL?

I collect Blythe dolls, but I’m sure there’s other people who have a lot of Blythes and a lot of other old toys – including old Barbie dolls with matted hair, stuffed animals that stay on shelves and toy cars that still have wheels. There’s not a lot of organizations that accept used toys. Organizations take new toys – they want to be sure that the toys aren’t on recall lists or have lead parts or lead paint – all of these are perfectly acceptable concerns to have, especially as you’re trying to do something good with donated toys, not giving someone lead poisoning.

Things that you should check on your used toys are:

• All parts are included – if there are batteries needed, remove the old batteries and make sure none of the old batteries had leaked out into the toy.
• The toys are clean – you can wash and dry stuffed animals with the regular laundry. Non-electronic toys can generally be washed in water-and-bleach mixtures.

You should not donate toys that are missing important parts (i.e. eyes, ears, noses, limbs, etc.) and any toys that you donate should be something that looks gently used and not overly loved. If you can, make any repairs to make the toy like-new before donating it, no one really wants to receive a naked doll with hacked-off hair or permanent marker eyeliner (although, I’m sure there are some rescued Blythes that looked like that at one point!).

Be sure to read all of the guidelines towards donated used (or new) toys – some organizations do not accept toys that use batteries or toys that have any painted surfaces.

Do some good for your community and give back with good used toys for children. Links of some organizations/groups that take used toys include:

• BabyBuggy.org (New York City, USA)
• Operation Give (USA)
• Second Chance Toys (Illinois,  Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey)
• Stuffed Animals For Emergencies “SAFE” (Ontario, Canada; Dominican Republic; USA)

If you know of any other organizations that accept used toy donations, please include the link below in the comments and I’ll be sure to include it on the list.

One of the nicest things about Blythe besides their eye mechanism is the versatility to carry off many different looks. With a simple roll of their eyes, they can either look coy or annoyed. With their lids partway down, Blythe looks miffed or sleepy. But with their hair… Blythe has a lot of hair to cover that large head (and ego!) One thing that I really like is using hair accessories on my dolls, like little clips or ties. And the best place to find these would be at dollar stores.

You can find small clips and little hair ties for low prices and they usually come in an assortment of different types or colours or even various sizes.

At one of my local dollar stores, I was able to find packages of 15 small clips in 5 different colours for just $1 + tax. They had two different colour sets, so I just bought one of each so I could have some variety. I’ve also purchased small bags of plain hair elastics that were much too small for my hair, but perfect for tying up dolly hair at $1 + tax for a total of 200 pieces.

There are usually very few ‘gems’ to be found at a dollar store for Blythe, but I think the most useful ones are hair accessories, which can be double the price with half the number of items at most any other store!

What are some of your impressive dollar store finds for Blythe?