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?

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?

I bought my first Blythe in June of 2009. I had one doll, one outfit and very little else when it came to my doll. Since then, my Blythe family has grown to 6 with half of them being RBLs, 2 EBLs and a single SBL-mold Blythe. With more dolls came more clothes. With more clothes came more sewing, more crocheting and just more… stuff.

Starting out, I had a single box where I was holding their wardrobe. That single box soon ballooned out to a few other boxes, and some bags and then it became a few overflowing boxes and boxes that I had to stack on top of one another to prevent them from opening. In short, I felt like I just had a lot of stuff. (Please note, I realize that I don’t actually have a lot of stuff for my dolls compared to a lot of other people, it felt that way due to the over-stuffed containers that I had.)

I was on the search for a new way to organize and to store my dolls’ clothes and shoes and everything else that I had for them (bits of furniture, what little Re-Ment that I have, assorted little accessories). I went on Craigslist and Freecycle to see if anyone was selling (or even giving away!) something that would work for me.

Craigslist and Freecycle are awesome ways to find new-to-you things. Please exercise caution when meeting people to get your new-to-you things. Meet in well-lit, public places with moderate foot traffic. Bring a friend, if you feel more comfortable that way. Be safe and be careful!

That, for me, was a bust. No one had what I was looking for… And then I found a sale going on a home-improvement chain store, rolling drawers with three nice, big drawers for only $10 each (marked down from $50 – which I personally thought was grossly overpriced at the original price-point).

You can find storage solutions for you dolls pretty much in a lot of different places… I know some people like using hat boxes (they come in great patterns), others (like me) like to use plastic drawers, others use boxes, some just have giant bins on the floor over filled with all sorts of fun stuff. Whatever way you decide to organize all your doll things, you can definitely find a nice and inexpensive way to do it – you can also check out various stores like local (or chain) home improvement stores, as well as dollar stores (they do have cute plastic boxes!), stores geared towards kitchen or easy living (also, more storage solutions). Unless you’re really desperate for a new way to store your doll stuff now, you can always wait it out for awesome deals.

Back-to-school times tend to have a lot of great storage items (especially if you happen to live in a college town or just somewhere close to a school with dorms…), but you shouldn’t have a problem finding discounted/clearance storage organizers for a lot of the time throughout the year. If you do decide to go with storage options from some chain craft stores, be sure to sign up for their newsletters as you can often get 40 to 50 percent-off coupons (almost every week!).