I have taken a Blythe along on trips before. These trips have varied from taking a long bus ride, to being in a car and going on a ferry, to flights going across the Pacific Ocean. If you’re planning on taking your doll along for a trip, here are some of my tips for you:

• Carry your doll(s) on you, if possible. Given that luggage can be misplaced or miss getting put onto planes, I’d feel more comfortable carrying a doll in my purse or carry-on bag (this goes for all valuables and fragile items).
• Consider getting a travel case. There are many sellers out there that sell Blythe carry cases. I personally use Sew Pixie carry bags. Alternatively, you could purchase a plastic case or another type of pouch.
• For all types of Blythe – protect their face! Regardless if your doll is stock or custom, nothing makes your heart sink more than an obvious scratch in the blush or eyeshadow. I use white t-shirt material (from old shirts) to cover their face. Any soft fabric would do. I’ve heard of some people using plain white paper towels as well (none of that patterned stuff!).
• Carry spare clothes and shoes in a zipped bag. I use a separate pouch to carry their clothes and shoes, and that goes into my purse or carry-on bag as well. Keeping things tidy and having a place for their shoes and clothes to go into when they’re not in use makes keeping organized so much easier.
• Bring a hat. While you may not want to photograph your doll in a hat, hats can help tame bangs and keep hair more tidy while your Blythes are being schlepped around. I’ve made a few helmets that are great for this purpose! Alternatively, if you’ve kept any of the plastic bands that come on stock dolls, this is a great time to pull them out to keep that hair tidy.
• Bring shoes that won’t fall off. The last thing you want to do is attempt to retrace your steps while on vacation, or to go home while missing a favourite shoe. I tend to favour boots when I’m on trips because of the likelihood that they won’t fall off. A great tip is to get those clear tiny hair elastics to keep shoes on if they are likely to fall off. I use these when I’ve got Skipper flats on a doll, or any other shoe that I think is liable to fall off.

If you have any travel tips that you’d like to add, be sure to comment below!

Sophie’s wearing: dress/Puppy52Dolls, tights/Cool Cat, shoes/Monique Magnifique stock.

To give my Middies a bit more love, I’ve decided that the first Monday of every month from now on will be Middie Monday!  Middie Monday will be posts about Middies – either new releases, things I’ve done with or created for my Middies recently, and I may even feature some favourite Middie crafters/sellers! The sky’s the limit, as long as it’s Middie related.

For the first Middie Monday, I wanted to share some photos of Miss Lydia Melbourne. I love that Blythes have been made with two-toned hair, especially with hugely contrasting colours like white and hot pink. It’s brighter than the pink of Cameo’s hair (she has stock Ichigo Heaven hair), which is a nice treat.

“I just thought you should know that today is going to be a bad day.”
“Why?”

I think new colour combinations of hair would be fun and exciting! I’m all for natural coloured hairs as well, but I do love it when they come out with something new as well. While Lydia is not the first Blythe that I’ve had with fantasy coloured hairs, she is the latest and the most interesting because of the two colours. Aside from her hair, I’m still learning about Lydia’s personality. I think it doesn’t really help that my self-induced challenge is to hand craft my Middies’ wardrobe, poor things. But overall she’s very sweet, I think – I just haven’t spent enough time with either of my Middies to figure out who they are yet (Blythe people will understand this, I hope). My hope that as Middie Monday progresses, I’ll figure out their personalities a little bit more.

“They got my drink wrong. Again.”
“…”
“2% milk instead of skim. Pretty sure one less espresso shot.”
“You’re too young for coffee.”
“That’s what you think.”

If you have any suggestions for a future Middie Monday post, please send me an email or use my Suggestions form!

Hello, my wonderful and lovely readers! Today I am going to talk about one of my most favourite things in the world. And no, I won’t be talking about clothes even though I really love clothes! I’m going to be talking about shoes! Specifically, I will be talking about heels.

Now I know what you’re thinking. “Sophie,” you say, “aren’t you forgetting that Blythe’s feet don’t have that super high arch like Barbie does?” And you would be right – Blythe’s feet don’t have that super high arch that Barbie does. But it doesn’t mean that Blythe can’t wear heels, it just means that we can’t wear the same heels. And who would want to, anyways? All of Barbie’s shoes are pink, ugh. Plus that high arch is just telling you that you will have sore feet from standing all day long.

Look at the variety that we can choose from! For your consideration, from left to right, I have: vintage Francie heels, super low Skipper flats with the tiniest heel in the world, my stock heels, heels I stole from Belarus (Love Mission), and some platform heels (Fancy Pansy & Nostalgic Pop).

All super cute, all in a variety of colours – to go with a variety of outfits!

What are your favourite heels? Share below!

Sophie is a mostly stock Cappuccino Chat that came to live with me in June 2009. She loves shoes, new clothes, playing with her hair, fashion, magazines full of fluff and shopping. She aspires to be a model and would like to model for some of the ‘great’ dolly fashion houses one day.

Let me start this off with saying that I love Blythe and I have met some wonderful people through the Blythe community. But there is a however (and I guess there’s a but too) about that, because there is a problem with Blythe being a primarily online hobby and an online community. For those that live in an area and don’t know any other Blythe enthusiasts, it’s a solely online hobby. For my first three years, it was an online only hobby because I wasn’t aware of any local collectors until I went to Portland to meet people from around Vancouver. International travel does seems counter intuitive to meeting people who live a 30 minute drive from my house, but that’s the way it worked out.

The issue with an online community is that nearly all communication is done with text. Nearly all meaning in communication can be conveyed from body language and tone. When you have a primarily online community and all of your conversations are in text, you lose a lot of the meaning when you can’t hear what a person is saying, or see their facial expression, their body language, and hand movements. People who talk with their hands, you know what I mean.

It’s hard to convey sarcasm online, or jokes, without risking offending someone (or actually offending someone). It’s even harder to sometimes see how people could misconstrue what you mean when you know what you mean and way would anyone take it the ‘wrong’ way? It’s even harder when you get offended by something that someone else said and you don’t understand why nobody else is expressing that they feel slighted or wronged.

The internet, while wonderful, has made it both easier and harder to communicate with other people.

Now online video chats… That’s a whole other story. Tone! Facial expression! My waving hands! (I’m not the only hand talker who collects Blythe, am I?)

Cameo has been in this Plastic Fashion dress pretty
much since forever. But isn’t it great on her?

I would be the first of many to admit that I leave my dolls in the same outfit for days, weeks, and months on end. Poor things. But sometimes I just find the ‘right’ outfit for a doll and it just looks great on them and I just don’t want to change them! Plus, finding a new ‘right’ outfit can be time consuming. Luckily, Blythes tend to look great in everything, and I also have the tendency to buy (or craft!) clothing items in a manner that curated a wardrobe that, in general, goes well together.

New outfit time! Cameo is wearing a dress by Puppy52 in
BlytheCon Vancouver 2015 fabric, her kitty tights are by Endangered Sissy.

There are certain dolls in my collection that just don’t get a lot of “play” time. This isn’t because I don’t love them, I do, it’s because there’s just some aspect of them that makes general handling a challenge – this is mostly in reference to the thick, heavy, always-in-my-way hair that some of my dolls have. But sometimes I’ll take one of these troublemakers off my shelf and pop them in a new outfit… Mostly because I’ve realized that they’ve been in the same dress for at least half a year. Or more. I’m such a bad dolly owner sometimes.

How long is too long for an outfit?