Written on August 13, 2015 at 12:00 pm by Michelle
Filed under: Musings with tags: blythecon, blythecon vancouver
The day started out very early for us – we got to the venue at around 7am to begin set up. BlytheCon Vancouver was hosted at the Sheraton Vancouver Wall Centre Hotel, located in downtown Vancouver, BC. It’s a fairly central location in an area with a lot of hotels, a beautiful pubic park right in front, and easily accessible via public transit – all major selling points to us when we were deciding on a venue!
Vendors started coming in at 8am to start getting set up at their tables, and we had a small line-up forming of attendees who were eager to start having fun! Such early birds hoping to get the proverbial worm (or HANON dress, as the case may be):

We had some photo displays set up for people to take photos, and some included props and stands or chairs so your own dollies could join in the fun! My favourite had to be the set up for the Vancouver 7 Kenner Blythe dolls. In the back is Lillian, Primrose, Heidi, and Chunk. In the front row and sitting is Dusty, Hayley, and Audrey. The fun thing about these dolls is that they were all originally owned by the same woman, and now they’re all owned by members of the Vancouver Blythe Bunch (what we call our local doll group).

Click to read more of this entry.
Written on August 12, 2015 at 12:00 pm by Michelle
Filed under: Musings with tags: blythecon, blythecon vancouver

Saturday, August 8th was the pre-meet and pre-BlytheCon Vancouver dinner – both kindly spearheaded and organized by Kimberly/Smitten Kitten. It was super fun, the pre-meet was at the Jack Poole Plaza at the Vancouver Convention Centre in downtown Vancouver, BC. It’s home to the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic cauldron, it overlooks the water and it’s just a delightful place in general. Click to read more of this entry.
Written on August 8, 2015 at 12:00 pm by Michelle
Filed under: Musings with tags: blythecon, blythecon vancouver
I can’t believe it’s finally here!
On August 9th, 2012, I created and shared this simple little image after talking to Juliet about the idea of hosting a BlytheCon in Vancouver…

And now it’s just grown into so much more.
Literally 3 years to the day, it’s finally coming true. It’s all grown up and ready to be shared with the world. I can’t begin to tell you all how overwhelmed with BlytheCon planning I’ve been, and it hasn’t been easy at all because there’s just so much time and energy that goes into an event of this size. We’ve had so much support from family and friends. There’s been ups and downs, but we’ve had a pretty solid team working to make this day the best it could possibly be.
I’m so excited that it’s finally here, and it’s a vision that has been realized. We’ve received words of encouragement from BlytheCon organizers the world over, and we’ve had so many donations that have just poured in, it’s been crazy. All for the love of Blythe. It is truly an event organized by the fans, for the fans, of Blythe.

(Luckily our graphics got a lot better after Chun of Puppy52Dolls got on board. Our convention would be a sore sight to behold without her magic and if we were all stuck with my Photoshop work.)
Written on August 5, 2015 at 12:00 pm by Michelle
Filed under: Musings with tags: blythecon, blythecon vancouver
Photograph by Chun/Puppy52Dolls.
If you’re coming to Vancouver, BC for BlytheCon Vancouver, here are some things that you might want to remember to bring along:
- Doll stands for your dolls. Because most everyone will have similar stands (e.g. the clover stands), I would recommend putting a label on the bottom with your name or user name. This handy tip is borrowed from Louisa of Blythe Couture who always remembers to bring stands and she has them labelled!
- Despite being in Canada, we do get a lot of sunshine – especially in the summer. I would recommend bringing a refillable water bottle, a hat, and sunscreen! Of course, mind the fluids/liquids restrictions for carry-on luggage. And if you are bringing bottled sunscreen and other toiletries – zipped top bags are your friends to prevent spillage and having clothes soaked through with sunscreen.
- Your transit trip plans! We do have a public transit system here, Translink. This covers our buses, Skytrain, and sea bus! There is no “official” mobile app, but Translink does have a mobile website that is pretty handy for planning your trips. Look up your transit trips ahead of time to save time. There are many locations throughout Metro Vancouver that have free WiFi networks.
- Bring a reusable shopping bag (or pick one up here for cheap!). A lot of grocery shops here charge extra for plastic bags (usually $0.05/bag). Help out the environment by bringing a reusable bag to carry out your purchases while you’re here!
- Chargers – for your phone, camera, laptop, and any other electronic devices that you plan on bringing along. Also, spare camera batteries and portable cell phone chargers/power banks are an excellent idea! If you are coming from outside of Canada, be sure to put your cell phones into airplane mode or purchase a travel plan so you don’t get dinged with horrible roaming charges for hopping onto a Canadian cell network.
- Copies of your flight information and contact details of whatever hotels you’re staying at. Always a good idea to have a hard copy on you in case something happens to your phone/tablet/laptop computer (e.g. water submersion, down a flight of stairs…) or you realized you had uploaded all that information to Google Docs and the moment you need it, there’s no free WiFi around and you didn’t buy a travel plan for your phone.
Save travels to everyone who’s venturing via car, bus, plane, boat, bike or feet to Vancouver for the weekend!
I will be at the pre-BlytheCon meet on Saturday, August 8th. I’ll be the awkward one holding Sophie, the Cappuccino Chat that rules the wardrobe here with an plastic fist. While Sophie won’t be attending BlytheCon Vancouver (she decided that needing to be at the venue at 7am for set-up was going to interrupt some far more important beauty sleep!), she will be hanging out the day before because that’s more her style. For Sunday, August 9th, I will be bringing some dolls you may expect and some that you may not… Any guesses on who?
Written on August 3, 2015 at 12:00 pm by Michelle
Filed under: Musings with tags: middie monday
The troubles with Middies is that I got really used to the Neo/Kenner Blythe size. Because all of my dolls are on either stock or Licca bodies, there isn’t that much of a need to have a secondary wardrobe for a different body shape. This may be different if I found myself needing to dress for a Pure Neemo body or a Mimi Bobeck body.
Unfortunately for Middie Blythes, they are naturally smaller than Blythe. Their bodies are a lot shorter and slimmer. Every single one of their features makes them just smaller than Neo Blythe in general – which they should be because they are a “little” sister – but it just makes for trouble with clothing them or keeping them in shoes because there is only so much one can do with trying to put Neo-sized tops as a Middie-sized dress, which isn’t to say that I don’t try to do that on a regular basis (because I totally do).

Now the real question is: do I want to carry around a Middie at BlytheCon? On one hand, I may be tempted to buy things for my Middie dolls and that wouldn’t be a very good thing due to my personal challenge of crafting my Middies’ wardrobe (why do I issue out these challenges to myself?!). On the other hand, if anyone is selling shoes that could possibly fit Middie, I will have a model right there to try them on. Or perhaps I could just ask people to slap my hands if they see me reaching for a Middie sized dress (or shirt, or pants, or skirt…)? I’m not entirely sure how well that will work for me though – it’s always tempting to buy things at any BlytheCon (in my experience of attending two). Luckily, I will be limiting myself based on the amount of cash I have on hand. I won’t be buying any dolls, but I will be able to buy a few little treasures here and there!
But if you were to choose a Middie to bring along – would you bring a Jackie Ramone or a Yellow Marshmallow?
Middie Monday is a feature that is published on the first Monday of each month! A guaranteed monthly post on Blythe’s little sister – Middie! If you have any suggestions for a future Middie Monday post, please send me an email or use my Suggestions form!
Kitty Brighton’s wearing: top/chelleshocks, capris/unknown.
Lydia Melbourne’s wearing: dress/chelleshocks.