strawberry springtime

Got a yen to do another little setup with some miniatures. Recently I dressed Fidelia and Beatrix in some duds from the Strawberry Shortcake fashion sets I blogged about here (and which I scored from Five Below). I really, really love this plaid dress with the double ribbons at its drop waist! I'm not sure that it's a drop waist on the doll for which it is meant, but on Beatrix, it sure is.

(Other outfit roundup deets: Fidelia's skirt is from PrettyBomb and she's wearing Didee Eureka's stock Mary Janes. Beatrix's sneakers are from thehandflower.)

Another Strawberry Shortcake thing I got from Five Below recently is this Teeny Tinies! Strawberry's Bake Shop Set. It was $5, of course, and came with 20 pieces, some of which I like and some of which I don't. But that's a great price for a handful of miniatures I do like. I'm kinda miniatures-crazy right now so I actually got three sets of Teeny Tinies! miniatures... Anyway, I used several items from this specific set here!

Most from the Strawberry's Bake Shop Set -- the cart and everything on top of the cart -- but the doughnuts on the lower tray, the teacups, and the pink lemonade bottle are craft store miniatures.

I got out one of my Michael's not-doll-furniture benches from a couple of years ago, some 1:6-ish scale cushions I hand-sewed eons ago, and this little bunny! Because of course! Easter!

I was pretty tickled just setting all this up and taking photos. But I decided to take some footage with my phone, too, and edit together a small reel or short or whatever you want to call it. Here 'tis:

Notes on this little video:

• I don't know how to edit videos on my phone. I must admit my ignorance here. I have abandoned social media several times since 2016 (due to mental health/feeling unable to cope with the state of the world at large), don't use TikTok at all, etc. I'm not a short form content girlie. So I kind of missed the boat on editing together content for platforms that have made strong moves towards it. Like, I do not know what app people are using to make their videos?!!?! iMovie? Capcut? What is the proper workflow for that? I only know how to use Adobe Premiere on my desktop computer. So I used that to edit this, uploaded it to the cloud, and used the Reels app on my phone just to put a slight lighting filter over the finished product, to try and get the virulent colors to be more true to life.
• Yes, the background music is me playing my Omnichord!!! Because I am really interested in using it for stuff like this. I just placed it on my desk where my keyboard is and aimed a mic at its speaker! So, you can hear not only the output, but you can actually hear me pressing the buttons. It sounds to me like a music box with that kind of clicking. And I am just playing through the first verse of "In the Golden Afternoon" from Disney's Alice in Wonderland on it. I'm really tickled this worked alright.

I'm spending so much of my time on band stuff -- pretty much since I joined it, last summer, my time's really been sucked away by it -- but lately I'm feeling a lot of desire to try and pack my own individual hobbies back onto my plate. I want to do doll stuff, I want to sew more little cushions and pillows for my doll furniture, I want to sew some little clothes!

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filling a miniature shelf (+ Gavin and Miette)

There are Blythes in this post. Can you believe it!

So I got this cute arched miniature shelf thingie at Michael's. It seems like every spring they have some accidentally-doll-sized something. In the past it's been chairs/benches. I cannot for the life of me find this small decor item anywhere on the Michael's website, and it was the very last one on the shelf at my local store. But I think it was part of the "Next Chapter" collection they had this winter/spring; it was in that area and is a similar color to other bigger shelving in the collection.

I've really been living for the possibility that there might be something that's accidentally Blythe-sized at craft stores this spring, so I was so happy to score this. It was 60% off, too, which really took the price down, from ~$15 to $6.

For the past many years now I have been slowly but regularly adding to my collection of miniatures, a few pieces at a time. I got a couple of spring miniatures from this year along with the shelf, and when I got home, I got the urge to style the shelf with some of my springy/floral/gardening-related minis!

Some things for you to espy:

• Top shelf: tiny snails!!!
• Middle shelf: I painted that little light blue mushroom back in 2010!
• Bottom shelf: The little turtle acting as a bookend!

Placing each item one at a time into this little shelf brought me incredible amounts of joy and satisfaction!!

But I couldn't leave it at just the little shelf. I had to dress a doll and add her to the scene. Not just one! But two!! And I added even more miniatures into the scene.

One: On Gavin, I put these teeny-weeny purple flower hair clips! Two: I bought these miniature pastel macarons forever ago. I set them on Miette's lap! Three: I also had these miniature shopping bags from circa the same miniatures collection (from Michael's) and had never even opened the package. This one that says "la petite bookshop" matched the lavender/lilac vibe. Of course anything French is right up Miette's alley! Four: I really wished I had a miniature dog or cat to place in the loveseat next to Gavin! The closest I could get was digging out this dog-printed cushion from Didee Eureeka's stock (!!!) but it simply looks like a pillow to me, and not a companion. Still, what fun to actually use that random bit of stock.

Other stuff in the scene: Some wicker furniture I scored a long time ago on Etsy (not sure when but they were in Lamb's dressup video in 2015!) and some stuff I crocheted over the years (a tiny ripple throw and a rainbow-shaped rug or throw, whichever) and tiny cushions I sewed (helping to support the dolls).

It's been so long since I've indulged in playing with my miniatures and doll furniture and setting up a scene. I'm not as good at this kind of thing as many doll photographers are, so I always have to remind myself that it's fun to do it for the love of play and not perfection. It does bother me that the rug and shelf aren't perfectly aligned, but I just gotta let it go, man. I really, really benefitted from playing around with this today!

I imagine that Miette and Gavin got dolled up in their springy frocks, went shopping (perhaps to "la petite bookshop" and/or to a bakery), and came home to gossip. Gavin kicked her shoes off.

Finally, I really try to cite where I attained all my dolly duds for any interested parties, but I got almost all of what Gavin and Miette are wearing secondhand. I'll make my finest attempt anyway.

Gavin's dress: I think sleepforever (I was gifted the dress last year and I already don't remember!)
Gavin's hot pink Mary Janes: eBay circa 2015 is my best guess
Miette's dress: secondhand in 2012 (it's one of my FAVORITES!)
Miette's petticoat: MINIJIJO in 2017
Miette's white strappy shoes: thehandflower

I have made a couple of posts about putting miniatures in little shelves before! Here and here! There's one item that's been in all three posts.

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ditsy/down with the decoupage

Hi; happy March!

Today my mom and I worked on some prototypes for an Easter project we want to do with our knitting club ladies: decoupaged wooden eggs. They turned out so cute, in my opinion! We used various old leftover party paper napkins taken down to one ply, wooden eggs from the craft store painted white with some coats of gesso, and of course, Mod Podge.

This was really, really fun. Mine is the egg with pink flowers, all harvested from a floral napkin that had a ton of different variously colored flowers printed on it. My mom did the blue and white egg (she added in some beige napkin bits for an antique look). It looks so impressive for such a simple craft. I learned a technique to help with smoothing the wrinkles out of such delicate material as a single napkin ply, which was putting my whole hand in a plastic sandwich bag and gently rubbing the recently-Mod Podged flower with the smooth plastic of the sandwich bag covering my fingertip. It worked a treat for getting things to lie smoothly and evening out the application of said Mod Podge.

I haven't done decoupage in a billion years. Over fifteen, probably, or else I probably would have posted about it here, and I can find no such post. The last thing I decoupaged was a decorative box, I think. And I'm fairly sure I cut up some ancient Seventeen magazines for the images I slathered upon that box. So it's definitely been a grip.

Once I finished my prototype egg, I spent quite a while cutting out a lot of shapes from napkins, because I am not sure everyone who attends knitting club and might be interested in this craft is going to be able to handle scissors themselves. It seems prudent to have flakes of various decoupage-able things already on hand instead of having people cut their own.

The ditsy floral look is really appealing to me... always. But definitely right now. Here are my last two selfies, taken weeks apart.

Two different days, two different shirts, If You Can Believe It. I am currently into wearing my hair pinned back behind my ears. I got a haircut in February for the first time in a few years. While it is still long, my hair is no longer Pentecostal-length.

(Screencap from band video just 'cause. Still at it and it's still taking up half my time.)

Other notes:

• I've gotten to play my Omnichord a lot more than I expected to in band! High-key thrilling tbh.
• I was asking myself all morning: "Why do I hear 'decoupage' in a Strong Bad voice?" Turns out there is a sbemail. I had zero recollection of this particular sbemail, but one single tiny braincell must have packed this association away. (My brain has a fair few Strong Bad-oriented pathways. I should do a post about Homestar Runner-isms that I still use...)
• I've been rewatching Outlander since the final season just premiered. I want to be properly emotionally primed. I'm on season three right now, so season two is still fresh in my mind, and can I just say, what silliness is this "Faith survived" business? There is no way a newborn (if she did indeed survive) infant could remember a song. SILLINESS!!! They have got to explain this biz.

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