Sale on Wigs at Audrey's Doll Gallery

Audrey's announced their year end sale yesterday. They are offering 50% off on a good selection of wigs. Monique wigs often need a little trim to perfect them but with prices at around $10 compared to $65 for hard cap wigs, you can't go wrong.
I ordered these three in 4/5 for my guys.  From top to bottom they are Jade, Red and JoJo. They come in several different colors.

 http://www.audreysdolls.com/index.cfm

Dolls With Updos by Angela in Canada

This week's theme on Prego is 'Dolls with Short Hair or an Updo.' So many gorgeous illustrations of this theme have been posted.

Angela in Canada's gals blew my mind. While I'm not a fan of all the Deva female sculpts, I can certainly appreciate the beauty of the face-ups, the unbelievable wigs and the gorgeous fashions. These dolls are perfection. Angela's portrait photography has captured these models in all their glory!

OOAK Elfas and wig (LE Atina's) by Devadolls.
Gown by Coco.

OOAK tan Elfas. Doll, gown, wig by Devadolls.

OOAK tan Elfas and wig by Devadolls. Gown by Coco. Eye ehancement by Jenise

OOAK Miao. Doll by Jenise. Wig by Devadolls. Suit by YumYum.

OOAK Pharatee. Doll, gown and wig by Devadolls.

OOAK tan Brazilian. Doll by Devadolls. Wig by Brodin. 
Love Letters Outfit by Ashton Drake for Gene Marshall

OOAK Tian Shi. Doll and wig by Devadolls. Outfit by Coco.

OOAK closed mouth Apsara. Doll, gown and wig by Devadolls.

OOAK tan Malaika. Doll, wig and gown by Devadolls.

OOAK tan Malaika.
Doll and gown by Devadolls. Wig by Ilaria (Numina Stratus').

OOAK Elfas. Doll and wig by Devadolls. Outfit (LE Nantha's)

LE 5 Tian Shi and wig (LE Secret Tian Shi's) by Devadolls. Gown by House of Troy.

Modsdoll Aurum and Kingdom Doll Brunel

I have been playing with two of my new 16" resin dolls. And that's a good thing because I vowed to play more. Less accumulating; more playing. Seriously, it's not hard to sit in front of a computer for hours pining over dolls I don't have when all the while, I have gorgeous dolls upstairs. That's a sickness.

Aurum is growing on me. I almost sold her. She is wearing a Ficon gown and Fashion Royalty earrings.

 

I love Brunel!
In these photos she is wearing a Sybarite sweater and Ficon jeans which are too large in the hips. The rhinestone belt (Facets) helps to pull them in. The poodle is needle felted from an artist whose name I don't remember. I've had him a long time.  Boots - eBay.

Phoenix Gene Photo Shoot

Today I photographed Gene in her own fashion but I used other wigs. The first two wigs are Sybarite sized hardcap wigs. The third wig is a hardcap Avantguard sized wig. The last wig is a Jamieshow wig that came with another Jamieshow doll.

Cheryl Wood made wigs 1 through 3. Gold chair is by Clea Bella made for Sandra's Nashville event. Director chair is an Ashton Drake for Gene Marshall prop. The cigarette holder is from the Jamieshow event in Canandaigua.

Cheryl Wood Wigs

My two newest wigs by Cheryl Wood are modeled below by Talc and Jamieshow Winter.

JAMIEshow St. Tropez Collection Launched by Angelic Dreamz

The brand new JAMIEshow St. Tropez Collection debuted at IFDC this weekend by George Gonzalez of Angelic Dreamz.  It consists of five female dolls including a new sculpt named Grace. The dolls are dressed in bathing suits and Grace is clad is a very sexy fashion. Also included in this collection are (amazing) rooted wig caps, summery outfits, sunglasses, shoes, bathing trunks for the boys and outrageous lounge furniture.

Future posts will cover much of these items in detail with photos.  Stay tuned!

Happy New Year ~ 2010

A brief diversion from the dolls:
If you love blogging, cooking and/or just great movies rent the DVD Julie & Julia. I loved it. Meryl Streep is perhaps the most talented actress ever. Another movie we saw this week was Up In The Air.  George Clooney is still very nice to look at so many years after ER. It's worth seeing and has absolutely nothing to do with dolls - although the hobby of collecting could definitely be related to this movie. If you haven't seen it yet, go see Avatar. Then tell me what manufacturer you think will come out with the first articulated Na'vi doll. Every topic leads back to the dolls.
Yesterday I set up a temporary diorama or stage set for the larger dolls. None of my dioramas is permanently installed. I like variety. My doll cabinets are just for the dolls. The furniture and props appear in my photographs. I acquired in the last month three major pieces - Gene's Swan Bed, Tyler's Armoire and a Gene Convention souvenir which is a lighted dressing table. Unfortunately the table arrived broken and I am in the process of repairing it. When it's done, it will look better than new.
I like the furniture for the 16" dolls better than the furniture for the 12" dolls mainly because it is more substantial and truer to scale. Every sofa Integrity made for the FR dolls is too low to the ground. They are lovely to look at but too small. The liquor cabinet is too short. The best pieces are the bed and the large trunk. But due to their size and limited usefulness, I sold those items.
The only dolly stuff I did today was restyle an RnD Angels "Jaclyn"  wig. It was too long and fairly impossible to comb through so I swished it for a while in a diluted fabric softener solution, combed it through, rinsed it out with warm water and repeated the procedure until I could comb through the hair. When it was dry, I combed it again and decided to cut off at least 1/2". When I can't comb through a wig after all that, the fiber is damaged and must be removed. It looks great now. No pictures yet.
The RnD Angel wigs fit the AvantGuard dolls. They are a touch large but go on very easily. Use a rubbery wig cap and they are perfect. Check out what Rudy has remaining at the website. Remember that they will need styling before use!

http://www.rnddolls.com/site/angel/angel-fashion.htm

 This is just a sampling of what may be available. The price is right and Rudy is a dream to deal with.

Integrity Toys' "Attention" Avantguard Doll

Chelsea's Collector Cottage exclusive Avantguard doll "Attention!" arrived yesterday. She looks exactly like the promotional pictures. The dress is cute.

Her facial screening is immaculate and I love the colors.

The shoes are cute.

The feather hat sheds on everything. (She reminds me of the Statue of Liberty in this picture.)

The wig is not made properly and the stockings had defects in them from where she was tied to the box.

I don't feel the WOW factor with this doll. Something is missing. I think this dress should have been an individually available fashion, not something for a $250. exclusive doll. It's not enough. The earrings are such a waste of time I didn't even bother. Every pair of earrings one inserts into an Avantguard head has to be snipped shorter and after I struggled to get the wig on (sort of) I wasn't about to knock it off to put two little studs into her ears.

___________________________

Every now and then I'll be playing with a doll or photographing one and I begin to wonder why I am collecting dolls. It happened today. It wasn't just about one doll, it was the cumulative effect of poor engineering and/or design of certain aspects of three of my new dolls. Why do I continue to spend hundreds of dollars on dolls whose stands don't support? In two cases, the stand didn't even fit between the doll's legs because the dress was slim-fitting. You can't tell me that this fact is not known by the designers. What do they do, shrug it off? While it's true that I don't use stands when I am photographing my dolls, I do use them to display my dolls.
Tonner's saddle stand and Integrity's Avantguard stand add a good amount of thickness to that area of the doll supported by the stand, namely the crotch and the butt. It used to be that one could hide the ugly plastic of a stand when the doll was wearing a gown or a skirt. Now that many of the styles have become short and tight that doesn't work anymore.

Robert Tonner may have been on the right track with the stand that inserted into the crotch area - at least for some dolls.

Vivette – not a beginner's doll!

Here is Raspberry Sorbet Vivette dressed in "Fashion Snapshot" and wearing one of her three wigs. It took me forever to get this doll ready to be photographed. First of all the wig comes with no 'dressing' at all. It's dry and fly-away and needs gel or some other product to tame and smooth it. Because of the deformed legs on this doll, she won't stand still for any last minute tweaking. Her head is strung tightly so it's a bit kicky. It was not a pleasant experience. She looks cute but I'm not in a big hurry to redress her.

Raspberry Sorbet Vivette with Wig-Set from D.A.E.

Several weeks ago D.A.E. Originals put all of their Vivette dolls and her fashions on sale. I didn't care for the first Vivette I had a few years ago but the prices were so tempting that I went ahead and ordered one basic doll and several outfits. I'm glad I did.
The face paint on this version has been softened. Each doll is individually painted by hand according to the D.A.E. website. The face and body blushing is done with an airbrush.
She comes with a basic pink bodysuit, flowered cap, earrings, a bracelet that I broke immediately while trying to put it on, a chain belt, very cute wedge shoes with "glitter embedded clear heels", sunglasses which I broke as well and three wigs. The wigs can be displayed on the adorable wig stand that comes packaged separately inside the shipper. Her head is flocked which keeps the wigs in place. She has applied lashes, too.
This is a strung vinyl doll. I am truly hoping that the creative team of Brian Schafer and David Escobedo resculpt Vivette's legs.

I believe that the body of Vivette has a distorted pair of legs. When I got my first Vivette, I actually wrote to the artists and asked them about it because I thought there was something wrong with her.



Link to D.A.E. Originals: http://www.daeoriginals.com