Who Lives Here is a little feature on BlytheLife to shine the spotlight on the dolls that live with me! Here’s to you, and me, getting to know my dolls a little bit better.

In this installment, we have my fraternal dolly twins: Mollie and Moxie.

Moxie, a Simply Bubble Boom, has a birthday of December 3 2012 while Mollie, a Simply Sparkly Spark, has birthday of December 24 2012. But they are twins, even with different birthdays. Very fraternal, very separate twins. If I ever get Simply Thumpty Thump, they will suddenly become triplets. Or something (Thumpty Thump isn’t really on my radar right now, although she may be if I ever decide to complete my ‘rainbow’).

Moxie is my lovable film enthusiast. She wears bold prints, or shades of gray (not the fifty shades kind…). She adores film noir and anything with Humphrey Bogart (much like me! Casablanca, anyone?). Despite her vivid personality, I don’t photograph her nearly as much as I could (which does make me sad, I don’t need a lecture). She also enjoys science fiction, and would love one day go traveling with the the Doctor, or walk through a Stargate.

Mollie, which is short for Molybdenum (element #42), naturally enjoys chemistry, science, learning and technology. Essentially, she is the nerdy side of me in doll form. I jokingly wanted to name her “42”, even though is most definitely not my 42nd Blythe, because that is the answer for everything. But 42 also corresponds to the element molybdenum, which makes for a pretty awesome name. For regular day, her name is Mollie. When she causes a lab accident, I call her Molybdenum. Loudly.

What I love about bestowing personalities onto my dolls is that all of their personalities, generally speaking, reflect a little bit of me. Sometimes it’s a little bit ‘louder’ in my dolls, or a bigger part of them in comparison to other aspects of their personalities, but it’s fun. Through Moxie, I share my love for film noir and science fiction television shows, and through Mollie there’s my love for science – in her name and in her likes.

A big part of writing BlytheLife is that I get to learn about a whole lot of stuff. Including my adventures in sewing, knitting doll-sized cardigans, and taking photographs. Now, I took photos before Blythe, but I rarely used macro settings before dolls, nor did I have a model to take photos of. Here’s a super simple way of doing a photo backdrop that you can do with things you may have in your house. Alternatively, a trip to the dollar store will fix you right up!

You will need:

• Foam board – 2 pieces if you are not using a table
• The backdrop – you can use scrap booking paper, wrapping paper, anything! – Optional
• Glue stick or sticky tac/blue tac/temporary adhesive (if you’re using some kind of pretty paper) – Optional
• Clothespins
• Something to photograph

Directions:

Get your backdrop imagery onto your foam board, if you decide to use one. You can use scrap book paper or wrapping paper, whatever you’d like. This is optional.

Wait for it to dry. Go browse the internet for new dolly shoes.

Dried? Excellent! I opted to keep mine all white so there was no added drying time.

Clip your clothespins onto the bottom edges of the foam board, as pictured. I used additional clothespins to make it more stable.

Now you have an upright photo backdrop for all your photo taking needs. Go take some photos! And when you’re done, simply unclip the clothespins and store your photo backdrop flat somewhere for safe keeping.

The great thing about this set-up is that it is so easy to set up and to tear down. If you want, you can also position lights on either side to reduce the amount of shadowing. Here’s a photo I took of Prim with my DIY photo backdrop:

With so many choices of bodies available, it’s no wonder that people like to have the option of swapping out the stock Blythe body for something that is a little bit more different. From Licca to Pure Neemo to Obitsu, there are so many options out there. My personal favourite is actually the stock Blythe body (Excellence). All of my dolls, except for my custom doll, are on the original stock bodies (or a hybrid – two of my Kenners have Kenner tops and Takara bottoms). My custom darling, Halo, came to me on a Licca body and it just seems to ‘fit’ for her, because she has been altered from her original state.

One thing I do love about Licca bodies, over stock bodies, is that they’re a lot better for holding things.

What is your favourite Blythe body type?

Thank you to everyone who participated in the little Seattle/Vancouver BlytheCon giveaway! There were a lot of entries, but there can be only one winner! As promised, an updated prize photo:

Congratulations goes to… Click to read more of this entry.

Even though it is halfway through August, I am still determined to have as much summer fun as I possibly can. This includes dressing the part. There are no excuses for your dolls to be in sweaters when it is the summer and the temperature is above 30°C (that’s +86°F for my American fans!). No excuses at all. And I say that as a doll that’s been in the same outfit for the several months now. Months. Do you realize how hard it is to look like someone who knows what they’re talking about it when comes to fashion when I’m stuck in the same dress for months? Granted, it is from one of my favourite designers – which is the only good part.

My summer wardrobe (if someone would actually help me out with a wardrobe change…) consists of:

Fun and light-fabric dresses, shorts, sandals, other cute shoes, and a decent hat to keep the sun out of my eyes. If you have super long hair like Cappuccino Chats often have, such as myself, you may also want to invest a couple dollars in some hair ties! They’re super handy to have around.

Sophie’s Fashion Tip: if you get the small, thin, clear elastics, they can help keep on finicky shoes when you’re outdoors and they won’t be super-duper obvious in photos!

And for the beach, it’ll always be a cute swimsuit – to be accessorized with a matching towel (of course!), and a swimming cover-up!  Unfortunately, the weather here has been absolutely dismal for the last week or else I would model for you – it’s just too cold for swim suits! For those curious, the swimming coverup was made for Lalaloopsy Little dolls.

And yes, it is perfectly acceptable for fashionistas to have, and wear, hooded duck towels.

Until next time, stay fashionable!

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.