Stress Relief

With all the stress that accompanies buying and selling real estate I find that injecting some doll activity into my day really helps.
We made a nice little visit to the Tonner Store this afternoon. I don't even have to buy anything to feel good there. The Doll Doctor, Noreen, is always ready for a chat. I can check out whatever new dolls have shown up and gaze at dolls over and over again. Such delight.
Of course the only camera I had with me was my iPhone. Lizette is much prettier in person than the promo picture showed.

Ms. Beetlejuice did not disappoint. She's just as strange and wonderful in real life as she was in the promo.

I saw the Nu Mood dolls, the new wigs but none of the separates were there yet.  Next time I go over there, I promise to take a real camera. Famous last words.

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I'm a sucker for free shipping - as if the costs weren't built in to the dolls already. Barbie Collector.com just has to send me a free shipping notice and I'm all over it. I put in my order for the club Silkstone, Afternoon Suit Barbie, and the Walking Suit Barbie. I used my first $20. coupon. New York State took $11.20.  
Ugh. I don't want to go off into a rant about taxes but I feel like ranting anyway.

There is an adorable new tote bag on the site. I love the graphic which is different on each side. 

Speaking of tote bags, I was able to order a few Jason Wu for Target items recently, one of which was the cat tote. It's adorable. I also got the cat scarf and the cat t-shirt. I ordered a large which is way too big for me. I figured that it would be cut small since Jason's clothes look like they're for a teenage body. I was wrong. If someone out there has a brand new, unworn medium cat t-shirt they'd like to trade for a large, let me know.

The scarf is beautiful and quite large. I rarely wear scarves but I will find a use for this one.
I also purchased two handbags and the blue pointelle sweater. I love the sweater!!!

I can just see myself in this dress with the socks and loafers and the German Nanny hairdo.

Nu Mood Body Descriptions – Tyler, Dance, Curvaceous and Heroic!

Originally posted by Kevin Von Duuglas-Ittu, Tonner's Director of Social Media on the Tonner Blog. This excellent information contains great pictures of the different Tonner body types being used in the Nu Mood lines.

The Tyler Body – sometimes referred to as ‘The Fashion Body’
• Classic fashion body
• Medium bust
• Slim hips
• Detachable hands and feet
• Thirteen points of articulation
• 16” tall
• Our most popular body style, used in numerous figures over the years. Any clothing made for Tyler Wentworth® will fit this body style. Wears Tyler Wentworth high heel shoe styles.

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The Dance Body
• Classic dancer body
• Small bust
• Slim hips
• Detachable hands and feet
• Thirteen points of articulation
• 16” tall
• The Dance body is used on doll styles that require a small bust, such as ballet dancers or flappers. The dance body has been used for our New York City Ballet collection as well as our Memoirs of a Geisha collection. Doll can wear most Tyler Wentworth® style clothing. However, we suggest checking the bodice fit before purchasing as tops may be loose on this body. Wears Nu Mood™ Ballet slippers only (high heel feet that work with Tyler Wentworth shoes may be purchased separately).
* Please note that the hips on this body do not rotate.

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The Curvaceous Body
• Fuller, more rounded body
• Full bust
• Rounder hip
• Detachable hands and feet
• Thirteen points of articulation
• 16” tall
• Curvaceous body is a more womanly body than our classic Tyler body. Doll has a full bust and hip and is suitable for characters who call for an hour glass figure such as 2012 DeeAnna Denton. Nu Mood™ clothing as well as 2012 DeeAnna Denton clothing fit this body. Some Tyler Wentworth® clothing may work—however we suggest trying an outfit on the doll before purchasing if unsure of fit. Wears Tyler Wentworth high heel shoes.

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The Heroic body
• Fuller, more rounded body
• Full bust
• Rounder hip
• Toned, muscular arms
• Detachable hands (doll may or may not have detachable feet–check item description)
• Thirteen points of articulation
• 16” tall
• The Heroic body is used for our current comic inspired heroines or where a more muscular body is required. Any curvaceous body clothing will fit this body. Some Tyler Wentworth® clothing may work—however, we suggest trying an outfit on the doll before purchasing if unsure of fit. Wears Tyler Wentworth high heel shoes, unless otherwise stated.

New Madame Alexander Dolls - 2012

Most of my readers know by now that I adore Cissette, Madame Alexander's 10" doll.  There is something about her baby face and MA's attention to detail in their fashions that I love.

There are at least 15 new Cissette dolls and a few "male Cissettes" (how can there be a male Cissette?) I will show only a few in this post but you can click HERE to go to the MA 2012 collection of all new dolls.

Here is Cissette as the Pan Am Stewardess Ltd Edition 200 pcs
She retails for $139.95 and will not be available until July 2012. There is also a 16" Alex dressed as a Pan Am stewardess.

Queen Elizabeth Ltd Edition 175 pcs 10" Doll from the Fashion Collection. $179.95  This is a lot of fashion for a 10" doll to wear.

 Cruella De Vil 10" Doll from the Disney Collection $149.95  Expected August 2012

 Masai-Kenya Africa 10" Doll from the International Collection $129.95 April 2012.

Nikiya from La Bayadere Ltd Edition 250 pcs 10" Doll from the American Ballet Theater Collection. July 2012. $149.95.

 

Madame Alexander does not do 10" male dolls well. Their costumes are OK but their faces and features are laughable. These are the so-called male Cissetttes for 2012. 

From left to right: Prince Charming, Pope Alexander VI, Rhett Butler, Waldo 

The Madame Alexander website has hundreds of dolls in many sizes and categories. Plan to spend a long time browsing!  Click on the logo below to go to the 'collectible' area of the site.

 

And They're Off on the 4th Annual CDDC

This year's Couture Doll Design Challenge is underway. Entrants are classified as either beginner, intermediate or professional. Judges have been chosen from well known designers in the doll world. There will be prizes for each division and one for overall photography. Points are awarded each entrant and the contestant with the most points wins their category.

The first challenge was as follows:

This challenge is sure to have you running a few laps around the internet to research this up and coming trend. Fashion forecasters have predicted that this year's Spring designs will favour the sporty look but in a couture way. Your first challenge is to design an outfit that has a sporty flair but is definitely in the couture realm. What we are asking here is for couture, not ready to wear, so be careful here to keep your design in the couture realm. Beginners may use a pattern to "design" their outfit. Even when using a pattern, Beginners, the judges will expect you to put your own signature into it. On your marks, get set...GO!!!

 Here are the results of Challenge One "Be A Sport!"  Which are your favorites?

It appears that at least two people are in the wrong categories. One who is in intermediate should be in professional and one in professional should be in beginner. As far as photography, if I were judging, any doll on a stand or with messy hair would be eliminated immediately.
I was impressed by two entries out of all of them. Quite a few of the entries either didn't follow the challenge or just didn't create anything couture at all.

A Way to Deal with Yellowing Doll Bodies?

This was mentioned on Facebook recently as a possible way to get the yellow out of vinyl doll bodies. I haven't tried it but I plan to.  Click on the logo below or the title of the article to go to the original post.

The “Retr0bright” Project

How to deal with the “not-so-mellow yellow” of old computers and consoles

Anyone who has dug their old computer or console out of the cupboard or loft for some retro gaming will probably have noticed that it maybe hasn’t worn too well with the test of time. The plastics these machines were made of is called ABS and to make it flame retardant (just in case it catches fire after a marathon session) the plastics manufacturers added chemicals that caused the plastic turn yellow or, even worse, brown over a long period of time.

It was originally thought that the yellowing was permanent and that the only solution to this was to paint the plastic in its original colour and cover the problem up. However, a chance discovery was made in March 2008, by The CBM Museum at Wuppertal in Germany (http://www.forum64.de), that immersing parts in a solution of Hydrogen Peroxide for a few days could partially reverse the process. This was initially taken up by the Amiga community in Germany (http://www.a1k.org) and the idea eventually found its way to the English Amiga Board (http://eab.abime.net), where a madcap collection of chemists, plastics engineers and retro hackers managed to perfect this concept and put it on steroids, with help from other forums.

Dave Stevenson from Manchester, UK, aka 'Merlin', the chemist behind the project, explains. “I came across the use of peroxide in July 2008 when Kristian95 told us over at EAB about what people like AmigaGTI were doing with it over at a1k.org. I was intrigued by this, as I am a former industrial chemist. I am also a plant Safety Manager by trade and, purely by coincidence, around that time I read about a dust explosion that had occurred in the UK with a chemical called TAED, which is the booster in the ‘active oxygen’ laundry products.”

“This got me thinking, and after some really 'full-on', serious chemistry discussions with other EAB members, like Rkauer in Brazil, who is a plastics Engineer and my good friend Zetr0 from Kings Lynn, Norfolk, UK, who endured endless phone calls from me, we wrote some epic threads on English Amiga Board about the possible causes of the yellowing and eventually we arrived at the theory that it was the Bromine in the flame retardant that was the cause. We also knew that Ultra Violet light was another major factor. Having identified the culprit, the next stage was to try to develop and perfect a means of treating the plastic and reversing the yellowing quicker, without causing damage to the plastic. Being a former industrial chemist helped me tremendously, in understanding what was going on at the molecular level and to develop a treatment process to reverse the effect.”

“The problem was finally cracked in late July 2008 with a mixture of hydrogen peroxide, a small amount of an “Oxy” laundry booster as a catalyst and a UV lamp; we believed that this could do the job in hours instead of days. Proof of this concept was demonstrated on EAB by Tonyyeb from Hull, UK, Chiark from Leeds, UK and myself. The original test I did as proof of concept took two hours, as opposed to up to the five days it took for the original tests at CBM and a1k.org. We were on to something!!

 

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From Wired.Com

You don’t have to be a smoker to know the pain of yellowing hardware. Any beige box of a certain age starts to darken and stain like an Englishman’s teeth, turning beautiful retro hardware into the equivalent of a filthy, leering uncle, something to hide, not flaunt.

The reason? Retards. The ABS used for these old machines was rendered flame-retardant with chemical treatments. These chemicals are the ones which cause this unsightly yellowing and until now the only fix was an equally ugly coat of paint.

Retr0bright to the rescue! In a twisting story that started with German boffins and English Amiga nerds, it was eventually discovered that bromine was the yellowing agent, and UV light didn’t help either. The McGyver-esque answer is a mixture of hydrogen peroxide and a dash of commercial laundry booster "Oxy". Paint this on, stick the old computer out in the sun (or under a UV lamp) and several hours later you have a shiny white machine.

The folks at the Retr0bright project will sell you a gel, but if you actually own old hardware then its likely you’re a tinkerer already, in which case you can make your own. Full instructions are on the Retr0bright wiki, but the short recipe is this: Take a weak (10%) solution of hydrogen peroxide, add a dash of Oxy, apply and leave in the sun for an afternoon. That’s it.

 

Fashion Doll Production in Chinese Factories

I recently asked Emilia about the doll factories in China as she is hunting for a quality factory for her own doll fashion line. It is really fascinating to me as a collector to read this information. 

Terri:
I've been researching the topic for 3 years now and I've found factories of all sorts, most offering so poor quality there is even no point of mentioning them. Usually the companies that have their own designers and doll/clothing line don't offer their factory services to others and I've knowingly also kept away from them as copyright theft is so common in China. Usually you would send your prototype fashion, doll and patterns to a factory, they will make a sample that you pay for and then if you go to production the sample cost is reduced from your total. The problem is most factories are not willing to write any contracts (and written contracts mean very little anyway) in the sampling phase to say they won't just start making this fashion/doll in their own name. I have paid for samples from innumerable factories and found their quality appallingly ill-fitted. It's like they never even tried to make the it snuggly tailored and they either leave so much fabric in the seams the doll looks like a Michelin man; or they leave so little fabric the whole thing unravels to pieces when you put it on a doll. *sigh*

There are many factories that make resin BJDs, but again I haven't asked if they would have sculptors available as I am working on my own wax prototype. I have also contacted factories that mass produce vinyl dolls, but that is something that requires a huge initial investment as one single industrial mold costs around 40,000usd. That means small editions are pretty much impossible. What you would need to do is run enough dolls for several years to come and then give them to another factory to customize with face up, hair and so forth. Most factories also need the money (or at least half of it) in advance and you never know if you'll be getting a container full of dirty wine bottles instead of dolls (that really happened to a lamp company producing products in China and they never got they money back, so they washed the bottles and made new designer lamps from them).

Also, the production costs in China have nearly doubled every year since 2009. We always complain about our dolls getting more expensive (and me among you), but the fact is that now you cannot even produce a simple fashion with the retail price of a fully dressed FR doll in 2005. The profit margins are decreasing rapidly as China changes from a cheap production country to a highly educated consumer market. The textile industry has already moved to India and Thailand.

What comes to hiring sculptors for doll heads or bodies, I'd actually hire a real art sculptor. They have a better understanding of the human body, bones and muscle structure than most toy makers although many are working in the field. For realistic sculpts the best one I know is Yulli working for Hot Toys (responsible for unbelievably real dolls like the Godfather) or Rainman who is behind all Elfdoll sculpts (see Hazy and Yumi) as well as many realistic action figure sculpts. My hubby also sculpts great zombies and wrinkly old men if you are into that. LOL

I think this has been a long enough rant for now (and I didn't even do into detail). But do feel free to ask more if you like - maybe it should have it's own thread though so we don't hijack this one. 

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...I haven't been to the factories in person, just called and emailed with them (many factory representatives didn't even know internet exists so phone is the only option and time difference doesn't make it any easier). The main problem is finding anything, because China doesn't have phone books, Yellow Pages, or internet listings for factories and suppliers, so the only way of finding them is to know someone who knows someone who... Luckily my business partner is Chinese so she and her extended family and friends have some contacts in mainland China.  

Yes, I speak mandarin Chinese, but the dialects do make everything more complicated, especially Cantonese which really has several writing characters unknown to Mandarin, tons used in different meaning, all pronounced differently and even has different grammar and sentence structure. The reason they are even called dialects is the one-great-China policy as giving regions their own languages would soon bring forth ideas of independence, and if the Cantonese area which is the power house producing all the food in China were to become independent the country's economy would collapse.

What comes to internet the great firewall of China complicated things even further. Many sites such as wikipedia, flickr and free email servers are blocked either constantly or most of the time, and internet connections are so dodgy skype and other softwares seldom work. The things are better in Hong Kong, where I hope to move this Summer, but it does mean that I need to learn Cantonese. *sigh*

 By the way, if you wish to follow this thread on Dolly Daily, click here.