When I first ‘discovered’ Blythe, I fell in love with photos of custom dolls. I loved stock dolls too, but custom dolls had such attitudes and flair. And then I started collecting dolls and…  well, besides string changes, sleep eyes, chip changes and gaze lifting… They’ve all remained stock. Some have remained fully untouched while some have had most of their chips changed. I still love looking at photos of customs and I just adore looking at custom Blythes in person too! I fell in love with several dolls both in Portland last year and at local meets where I get to see the work of people who have beautiful portfolios that I’ve admired online in person. It’s really great to get to see the art work and all that detail and attention in person. While photos of custom Blythes can be so incredibly beautiful, nothing beats seeing the work in person. But my current love, according to my dolly family, is mostly stock dolls. None of them have even had their shine removed! I’ve grown accustomed to seeing my camera and face in their shiny, big foreheads.

How has your dolly tastes changed?

Back when I only had one Blythe, the only clothes she had was her stock outfit. She had nothing else (poor girl). When I first started branching out a little in the Blythe hobby, I was mostly concerned about just having clothes for her. Of course, they had to fit, but I was still mostly concerned with just the ‘having’ part of the hobby. At the beginning, I was very much about the ‘quantity’ of doll clothes rather than the quality, I’m mildly ashamed to admit. But it got my doll clothed, and then I had another Blythe a month after that, so I had two dolls to clothe.

I focused on clothing first, and then shoes. I think in the last two-plus years, I’ve gone in cycles. I get my dolls in cycles, I go and buy shoes and clothes in cycles. I go for a while without spending money on dolls or doll things at all, and then suddenly I’m waiting for half a dozen packages to arrive in the mail and I’m crossing my fingers that customs won’t ding me and ask me to cough up more cash for the goods.

I’ve gotten to the point (thankfully) where I’m no longer looking to add more dolls to my family (eleven is plenty for me, thank you!) and after having just received in the mail a lot of shoes in February, I’m finally at the point where I’m just focusing on their clothes. But with my New Years Resolution, I’ve been focusing a lot of making their clothes. I’ve also started to sell some of my creations as well, and that money goes towards buying either supplies for making more clothes or buying other doll-related things (because it’s already ear-marked as doll money). I think I’ve finally gotten to the point where I’m thinking about the quality of the clothes. I’m being more critical about what I buy, I’m being more thoughtful about if I really want the item or not and if I truly believe it’ll look good on my dolls. It’s be a long time coming for me to get here, and I’m really happy that I’ve finally arrived at this mindset. It really does help with curbing the spending.

What do you look for in your doll clothes?

This question came to mind the other day while I was browsing sundries listings over at Blythe Kingdom. There’s been quite a few threads with shoes for sale and I adore doll shoes so I decided to click through. I’m not really in the market for buying doll shoes though, so I wasn’t a serious shopper but it never hurts to look. Until my jaw dropped and it took me a while to pick it back up again.

I love doll shoes. They’re adorable, they’re tiny and can be incredibly detailed and they can really pull together an outfit. I admired the cutest pink boots ever on a doll at a recent Blythe meet and I wanted a pair so incredibly bad. Until I saw them in a listing for $40 for a pair of doll boots. Forty dollars for a pair of doll shoes. And that photo was right above another for $60.

Like all things, I think there’s a buyer for everything. While $40 seems quite expensive to me for a pair of plastic doll shoes, it’s chump change to someone else who regularly buys pricey designer doll wear. Who am I to judge? Well, I do a little – because I wanted a pair just like that except my wallet clamped up tight and refused to let me buy them. Which is probably for the better, I think I would be incredibly paranoid over losing a shoe if they cost $20 per shoe. As it is, I use tiny clear elastic hair bands to hold on cute (and, in comparison, inexpensive) shoes that I currently have. I can’t imagine how obsessive I’d get over checking my doll’s feet if they had $40 on them. As it is, my dolls just recently started regularly wearing socks! I’m not quite at the point of spending nearly $50 (after including shipping) on doll shoes. The shoes that I bought for me cost around $25!

But I do suppose, at the end of the day, this isn’t really a hobby for logic, considering the cost of the dolls themselves.

What is the most that you would spend on doll shoes?

I find that some stock pieces aren’t very useful. I mean, they can be super cute… but what do you use a police outfit for? (Love Mission, I’m eyeing you!) Or rather, how often can you use it? Even Cappuccino Chat’s lush coat and hat set is fantastic and well-made, but how often do your dolls need to be wearing an animal print set? I keep all of my dolls’ stock though, I feel like it really belongs to them and they’re just on loan to me. I like having the stock, sometimes it’s fun to have them dressed up in each others’ stock outfits. I do feel like the older dolls had much more ‘fun’ stock, even if the fabric feels plasticky and the quality in fabric has gone up, for some releases, it was still much more fun to get two full outfits in the box with the doll. Now it’s just one dress and shoes and maybe socks. What’s up with that??

My current favourite pieces of stock are Simply Peppermint’s black boots and black top, which I had paired up with a super cute gold sequined skirt for Sophie to wear. The sleeveless top is very versatile and black looks good with most things. Also, the boots are just darling and I love them. I wish I also had Simply Lilac’s boots as well, just so I could have the set. I love them that much.

I also love the little skates that came with Simply Sparkly Spark and Simply Bubble Boom. I really want to make my dolls skate (on actual ice), but I feel like that’s just a disaster waiting to happen. I’m clumsy when it comes to ice skating, so chances of me getting my dolls to skate well are probably non-existent.

Not surprisingly, I feel that my dolls wear much nicer clothes than I do sometimes. I mean, I don’t knit sweaters for me or crochet hats for me (maybe I should start…). And I actually go and commission clothes for my dolls. When was the last time I commissioned clothes for myself? (The answer is never, by the way.)

What is your favourite piece of stock that you own?

I don’t remember exactly how I first found Blythe, but I’m pretty sure that it was probably on Craftster.org (a great general forum!) and I was probably browsing for the umpteenth time and stumbled across the photos of Blythe. From there (and Google), I found This is Blythe. At the time, the newest release was Velvet Minuet and I thought her bunny hood-and-cape was super cute. Velvet Minuet was later my 6th Blythe (named Kindred). I thought Blythe was cute, with her over-exaggerated head size like in some comics. Velvet Minuet was released in 2004, I did not get my first Blythe until 2009 (Cappuccino Chat).

One of my friends in  my local Blythe group likes asking people what their first impressions of Blythe were. Hers was rather negative – she thought that Blythe wasn’t very cute at all! Of course, Blythe is patient and understand… and eventually charms her way into people’s hearts. My own boyfriend thought that Blythe was ‘weird’ (it’s mostly because of the changing-eyes thing). Now he finds them cute (or maybe he just says that for my benefit?). Regardless, Blythe is a charmer. She knows how to tug at heart strings and have full control over wallets. Despite being rejected by children in 1972, Blythe certainly knows how to command attention now. She’s making up for it!

Maybe you thought that Blythe was super cute, downright ugly or just meh… But you did have a first impression…

What was your first impression of  Blythe?