Author: Julie Manley

I’ve discovered this lovely French Farmhouse furniture from Mini Molly Dollhouse in South Australia.

Paula, of Mini Molly Dollhouse, makes this furniture and obligingly up-scaled it a bit to fit my Fashion Royalty dolls.  It comes with some adorable cook books as well, and the pots are available separately.  The model is IT Veronique (first version) on an FR2 body.  Appropriately, her hair is French mohair.

The sets are available on eBay at:
http://stores.ebay.com.au/minimollydollhouse?_trksid=p2047675.l2563

There is also a website at:
http://www.minimollydollhouse.com

A bit about mohair.  It’s very naturalistic, fine and soft, but a bit of a nightmare to use because you end up with fine hair everywhere, and the good stuff is expensive.  Also, at the very least it tends to be wavy or curly.  Synthetic mohair is easier to handle, but the colour range is quite limited.  I’m always a bit nervous about moths getting into it, but so far they haven’t (they have eaten some of my mohair eyelashes before now).  I imported Vero’s hair from France and from memory it was $45 USD For 1 ounce (and you need about an ounce for one head) a few years ago.

Here she is with her hair out:

I’ve been creating, redoing and refining some dress patterns for Integrity dolls, mainly Nu-face, Poppy and the FR2s.  Come to think of it, those are the only 12 inch IT dolls I make patterns for.  Rather than make it up entirely out of old sheeting or whatever, I make them up in cotton, or some other cheap fabric, because it isn’t as boring as sewing up sheeting (which I use to make the first pattern from by modelling it on a doll).

I’ll put them up for sale fairly soon I think.  This one is based on a Prada dress, well the neckline is at least.  I’ve made it up in new quilters cotton fabric, and it’s modelled by Poppy (my repaint).  I can’ quite recall which Poppy, but she has the Hungarian skin tone.  She’s now on a DG body.  I like the DG bods with some Poppy’s because they are a little taller and pretty much the same size everywhere else.

The dress has a matching hat and clutch bag.  I love hats, can’t resist making hats for frocks.

The cupboards is a 1/6 scale Chinese wedding cupboard with a little jug (I collect little ceramic things, like vases).

My repainted Vanessa (Metal Malven) on an FR2 body.  Jewelry is gold plated findings and turquoise beads.

The matching hat is vintage handwoven Thai silk, and the dress fabric is vintage cotton.  The trim came from Dona Dubbini in Italy.  I love it, and have used it on a couple of dresses.

Last, but not least, is Poppy, Irresistable in India.  Unfortunately for Dominique her Nu-face body matched this Poppy very well .  I was also experimenting with Indian silk brocade.  It’s not entirely successful and it was very difficult to handle (as in look at it and it frays/falls apart, and drops little gold threads all over my studio).  Silk does fray at the drop of a hat, but it is usually easy to handle – this stuff was a bitch but I love the colour.

I don’t the white balance is quite right, it should have been on auto.  Oh well…. next time.

Have finally decided to part with four OOAK dolls.  It’s a bit pathetic really, how hard it is to sell them off.  I don’t think of them once they are gone, but agonise over which ones to part with.  They are all going up on Mister Dollface. Details below:

I was looking for a sort of descriptive name for her, and decided on Margarita Blanca, because it sounded better than ‘Nice Day for a White Wedding’ running through my head, which of course would not be suitable for sweet little Poppy at all.

Next we have Luchia Z. ‘Strict Elegance’, although she looks more like she’s been clubbing all weekend.  She’s very gothic, and quite rare I think.  At least I haven’t seen any of her around much, and she was rather expensive to start with.  She inexplicably lost her clutch bag, and broke one of her shoes, but then that’s what happens during wild weekends. Still, she’s managed to get some rather swish black platforms from someone and another bag.

I just love vintage Thai silk, and it is perfect for that early 1960s cocktail dress.  It all ended up looking rather Spanish (or Balenciaga-ish but that’s a bit of a mouthful), so I’ve left her hair up in it’s original plait (rare for me).

Rufus Blue is a cute little Dynamite Girl, and she had to have some cute little sheep to wear with her blue hair.  She could do with some hair product, but I’m out (well, Ok, I don’t have any and my daughter wasn’t home).  I’m selling her because I rather prefer my models to be older than jail bait, but that’s just me being an old fart I guess.

Everything but the Girl
So, that’s the end of dolls for sale, now I also got some clothes for sale.  Some of them are my designs, usually the long gowns in silk.  Others I’ve made from commercial Barbie patterns.

Modeled by Vanessa, my repaint from the Metal series on an FR2 body.  This is my design and I’m chuffed to say I won an Industry Award for OOAK Design in 2014 for it, only in a different version.  That’s the good bit.  The bad bit is that the tulle has sparkly stuff on it and it tends to fall off – everywhere.  I will not be buying that tulle again.  However, I think most of the excess has already fallen off.  I also love hats and headdresses of all sorts.  You might have noticed that important people wear them a lot, like the Queen for example.  They also wear crowns a lot, and other stuff on their head, all of which screams ‘celebrity’ or ‘aristocratic’ or something like that – except for Americans, they don’t seem to go in for that sort of thing.  I’ll leave the cultural analysis just put up pics of the rest of the outfits.

Cloud Silk (I also love feathers as well as silk).

The Scent of Lavender

Magenta (my imagination failed me here for a name)

The Silk Lizard

Summer Rose (sadly, nothing chic came to mind, but it is a very chic early 1960s outfit)

Tartan Tantie (I rarely post dolls with their hands on their hips, but it seems to go with the title)

Westwood Ho

Yes, it’s a bad pun on westward.  The outfit is inspired by the devine Vivienne Westwood, who is not so easy to adapt to one-sixth scale.  I did see the dress this is modeled on several years ago at the NGA.  This is nothing like it, but it is tartan, and it is silk.

Hopefully they will all be up on Mister Dollface tonight.

Dune, the movie (dir: david Lynch, 1984), costumes by Bob Ringwood.  I was thinking about the narrator, the Emporer’s daughter.  She is wearing a 16th century gown, but in black and pink candy stripes.  This one is silk with purple and silver etc. stripes. Doll is Amalie (Integrity Toys).

It’s interesting how different fabric and treatment can make a 16th century gown look Sci-fi.

Amalie has such a sweet little face.  My repaint.

FOR SALE:  $300 USD plus postage with tracking. Payment by PayPal only.

After 22nd November a whole lot of dolls are coming home from their time at Canberra Museum and Gallery – and there’s not a whole of of room for them. Reluctantly, I’m going to have to start selling off dolls because there is always more coming in. I’ll most likely try selling through Mister Dollface, or possibly eBay, first and see what happens. Most of them will be $350 to $550 US dollars including postage with tracking and signature.

I haven’t quite decided which ones yet, but I know this Vanessa will be leaving. Some will be in IT clothes, some in OOAK clothes, some modern and some historical. When I get the hang of posting in Word Press I’ll put more up.

Below is ‘Adorned’ Vanessa Perrin from the 2014 IT Convention. She has lovely hair which reminded me of the late 19th century. Her dress is an 1870’s walking dress in silk and lace, jewellery is pink coral and gold plated findings.  After her is a CI girl called Minx, dressed in Downton Abbey style. The dress was pretty much made to go with the small pieces of vintage black lace I had. The dress is silk, the lace is very old and is an unknown quantity, so it is kept away from the body with the lavender blue silk (I’ve learn’t from experience NEVER to put black next to the doll bodies unless it’s modern polyester fabric). Both are my repaints, and both are FR2 bodies. (Edit, sorry, Minx is on a Mongram body.)

I don’t do a lot of 19th century clothes, I find them too fussy.

FOR SALE:  $500 USD plus postage with tracking. Payment by PayPal only.

FOR SALE:  $500 USD plus postage with tracking. Payment by PayPal only.