"I'd turn back if I were you."

Look at this girl! Yes, yes, I got a new Blythe! If you follow me on Flickr or social media, you already know! I actually received her in the mail on the 16th, but I sort of sat in private with her for the most part these past couple of weeks.

She's my first true brunette Blythe and my first RBL+. Actually, the first RBL I've gotten in general since Lamb! I somehow got accustomed to seeing FBL faces peering up at me from boxes, so when I opened her, I was suddenly nervous!

I filmed a deboxing video if you'd like to watch it.


Spoiler alert: one of her socks won't even go on her foot.

However, that bizarre random issue aside, now that I've hung out with her for a while, changed her out of her stock, and settled on a name (which took a while), I'm chuffed to have her.

Her name is Wisp, because so far, my Didee Eureka experience has come with a ton of rainbows: she's Wizard of Oz inspired which automatically comes with rainbow associations; a double rainbow appeared over my house -- which I have never seen outside of that one YouTube video; and then everything on the internet seemed to be overtaken by rainbows due to gay marriage being declared legal everywhere in the U.S.! (Hooray!!! It cannot be overstated how crucial equality is!) I felt like the universe was showing me rainbows all over the place.

However, I didn't want to just name her "Rainbow," not just because I sort of was leaning towards something with a W (like Winnie or Wendla) but because I once read a book about a girl absorbed into a hippie cult where they renamed her that. Also, I associate that as a name with Rainbow Brite. I love me some Rainbow Brite. I can still sing the theme song and also the opening number from Star Stealer. But Rainbow Brite's original name was Wisp, and when that clicked, I was like, "Okay! I hear you, universe!"

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video: Get Plummery Ready With Me

Hello, loved ones. Today I am posting a video! Someone said I should call this series "Dolly Dressup," and so I shall.


I'm trying out a different style of thumbnail!

Dressup vids are my favorite to make. Just getting to dress my dolls is fun for me, and I like to edit them the most. I've said this before, but it bears repeating: I don't particularly love the filming part of the process, but I like the editing a lot. It might just be because I have a lot of prior editing experience and can get into that "flow" state when I'm focused on it.

This is the first video I've made using my new microphone to record the voice over. I had just been using an old webcam Scotch-taped to the end of a ruler and stuck in my pencil cup. Really, though! Like, whatever works, you know? But I knew a real mic with a pop filter would be beneficial to me if I intended to make videos with lots of voice overs. (Which I like more than being on camera, personally.) I've listened to past videos with VOs and I think I can tell a difference. It's probably worth fiddling with settings on some day when I am feeling patient and willing to listen to my own voice more.

In other news, people have begun to send me pictures of dresses they kindly bought from my decluttering series and IT IS SO EXCITING! I like feeling connected to people in this hobby. Someone sent me pics of their Licca doll in an outfit, and they had styled the piece they bought from me ingeniously. (Brava, Marco!)

Well, I am fighting off the savage self-sabotaging attacks of my inner critic, so off I go to fortify with positive self-talk and cleaning.

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Night & Day

Recently I was alerted by a YouTube viewer to the fact that there was a Takara Shoe Cruise Night Set on eBay -- I had expressed regret in not buying one when they were still new in 2010. Back then I purchased the Day Set, which is, as you might imagine, lighter.

I dug the red Mary Janes and brown strappy sandal-boot-things (what are these, even?) in the night set but couldn't see myself using the black boots with purple trim or the blue bowed boots. But that was then, and this is now! Petaline wears plums constantly and is almost always wearing the riding boots, so the Night Set's boots are now totally in her wheelhouse.

I definitely paid twice as much for the Night Set as I did the Day Set. Oof! I feel a little gouged, and wasn't expecting to make a splurgey purchase, but I also feel so certain that I will use at least three out of the four pairs of shoes constantly, since that is definitely the case for the Day set. It's been tremendously useful and I'm pleased to have some variations of some of my favorite shoe molds!

I'm sort of behind on posting, like with my decluttering videos (they're kind of outdated since I've already sent out almost everything I decided to part with!), but I've been so busy and utterly exhausted! I sort of want to post them here just for posterity, though. I have two other videos -- one that just needs editing and one that needs to be filmed -- on the horizon, as well, and neither have to do with decluttering, so that's exciting. For me. And only me.

More soon.

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hiveminded

I'd like to pretend I just thought of dressing up a bunch of my girls like bees while I was decluttering my dresses, but that would be a lie. I have wanted to do it for, like, a year. I have a bunch of yellow dresses and enough stripes to go around. It was getting some free socks from CoolCat (the gray and white striped ones Mallow is rocking) that finally pushed me to make antennae out of gold sparkly pom-poms and black pipe cleaners. It was fun!

It's absolutely summer now, though. It's so humid where I live!! So gross and unpleasant. Getting outside, even as early as possible (it was about 8:30am when I took these pictures), was like slogging through a swamp.

Worth it! I do look like an insane person, though, with half my dolls dressed as bees (Soleil and Lamb not pictured... I can only haul so many dolls) and the other half naked.

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More decluttering. More, I say!

What? It's June? Oh, whoops.

I've been continuing to declutter! I'm onto dresses right now, but in case you missed them, here are two from May!




Just now I was scrolling through my exported second dress declutter video (there's a projected 4 in total; 3 done, 1 still being edited) so I could create a YouTube thumbnail for it and begin uploading it.

I don't really like the sound of my own voice -- who does? -- or hearing my weird speech tics, so I didn't rewatch it fully... it was just a small miracle I happened to catch a bit where I sneezed and had neglected to edit it out. I'm just a human girl, okay! I sneeze!

Unfortunately I knew I needed to go in and edit it out, as it is unappealing as heck, and re-export the entire video... also unappealing as heck. When I opened up Premiere I found that I had sliced the footage around the sneeze, but for whatever reason, just forgotten to actually lift out that slice. So at least the edit was easy and quick.

The re-exporting, on the other hand, is gonna take eight hours. I should still be able to upload the vidja today, but I had wanted to get it done already!

Not only am I decluttering my Blythe clothes, but I'm trying to also declutter my own clothes, books, DVDs, and other stuff I find I don't have adequate room for. I actually do this somewhat regularly. I don't really even have room for the stuff I do have. My entire life is crammed into one single bedroom. I don't keep any of my stuff anywhere else -- i.e., I don't keep my toiletries in the bathroom or my food in the kitchen. I live with others and it isn't kosher to leave one's stuff lying about in the way of others; we all try and keep it to our respective rooms.

And people aren't always respectful of others' things. So if I leave my stuff elsewhere, I have to accept that the things might be have been mistaken for communal and be gone the next time I go to use them. If I leave my Nintendo out in the living room, I may come home to find others playing it, which is always fine with me; however, I don't want my tomato soup to be eaten. I have experienced too many times the bummer of my new jar of grape jam being almost totally gone by the time I actually want to make a PB&J, or the frustrated feeling of knowing I have muffin mix but it being mysteriously missing. I also don't put junk like my DVDs out in the common area. All this stuff really stacks up in my room, since my bedroom is also my office where I literally do work for a living, and to a certain extent, my kitchen! It's the place where I watch TV, craft, shoot videos. But it also has to be the place where I keep all my clothes, all my hair stuff, everything like that, besides all my photography equipment, guitars, dolls, hobby stuff.

I currently am trying to fit a large item (which I shall post about soon) into my room, and thus, the need for decluttering is greater than ever!

I have to be strict! I have to be bold! I have to... be willing to let go of some craft supplies, I suspect. For me, the hard part is not letting go of stuff! It's the "What do I do with it, though?" question. Books and DVDs I can take to the used bookstore or donate to Goodwill. Who wants... half-used craft supplies...?

A major inspiration to keep me going on my quest is watching decluttering/room cleaning/organization videos on YouTube. It's very satisfying to watch people clean their rooms.

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