spooky shelf

Ryan @bostonblythe and Amber @amberblythelife are hosting a 13 Nights of Blytheoween Photo Challenge on Instagram starting October 19!! I'm looking forward to seeing photos from participants so much. Unforch I lack spooky or witchy doll clothes, sooomehow! So I'm still ruminating on how I can fulfil a photo prompt featuring a doll. But in the meantime, it really put me in the mood to set up a witchy shelf with some of my miniatures!

The doll shelves I do have are very modern-looking and plastic or metal, and I wanted something more natural. So I got this miniature shelf kit from Michael's with the intention to give it a super dirty, distressed, disgusting paint job! I had so much fun doing this that even as I sat there at our dining room table daubing on paint recklessly, I said out loud, "Oh, I'm having so much fun!" I did a basic brown coat, then began to layer up a few successively darker washes in the corners of each shelf.

I was thinking, "Okay, this shelf exists in a witch's basement and over the years it has held bottles and baskets of various grotesque spell ingredients and such!" I really pushed for it to even sort of look like it might be growing some black mold, haha.

I really see why YouTubers like to weather and distress stuff. It's easy and the payoff is really satisfying!

Here's a couple more pictures of my paint job in normal daylight. As you can see, I also left out one of the shelves so there would be a large compartment to display some of the slightly bigger miniatures I have.

Also, as you can see thanks to this pic of Zasha next to the shelf, the scale is a little small and odd. It's 1:10, whereas most miniatures are 1:12 or 1:6. That's okay! But I do think the scale is odd next to a Blythe!

Now some notes about what's on these witchy shelves!

tippy-top of the shelf: a couple of hefty cork bottles; a little wicker basket that I also distressed up with some dark dry-brushing which contains a couple of corked potion bottles; a star-shaped potion with star-shaped glitter inside; a little wooden crate full of plant books; a crystal with a star charm wrapped around it; a teeny-tiny tarot card (The Tower, shudder); key-shaped charms on a jump ring that make a little ring of keys to goodness only knows what!

The hefty glass bottles are miniatures from the Dollar Tree! They are actually Halloween miniatures! The labels say things like "wool of bat." I foolishly covered them too well in these pics. The scale is a little large but that's totally okay.

big compartment of shelf: a couple of corked bottles (one with a skull on it, one that says "witch's brew"); a cactus sitting on a couple of plant books; a mortar and pestle; a crystal ball (that's opaque plastic instead of crystal -- I'd prefer a glass or clear plastic one); a tall hourglass that's a charm from the jewelry section of the craft store; a gold moon charm; a fortune-telling board with its planchette; two more teeny-tiny tarot cards (The Star and the Ten of Swords).

third shelf: a wooden bowl (for lack of a cauldron, really); two witchy books (a book of spells and one called "Night Creatures"); a clay mushroom I made eons ago; a couple of handmade books; a spade and trowel from a gardening set. I think a witchy girl's gotta dig up mushrooms and herbs sometimes!

fourth shelf: lots of "potion" bottles (they're from gardening-themed miniature sets, mostly, so the front label often says "seeds" or "lilacs" or whatever; I just turned them around); a couple of kitchen canisters for depth; another clay mushroom I made; a little pair of scissors. So useful.

on the floor: a trick-or-treat jack o'lantern that I also distressed with a dark wash of paint; two more of those chonky jars from the Dollar Tree tucked discreetly under the shelf; a charm of some butterflies in a frame (again from the jewelry section); another distressed wicker basket with some virtually hidden things in it (root beer bottles, lettuce, a charm shaped like a saw; a tiny garden gnome mini because why not; a small glass mushroom bead.

I think it's all quite practical, speaking of a witch who gathers from nature and does a lot of divination work!

I really enjoyed this entire project! Distressing the shelf and some of my miniatures was really fun and not just using miniatures, but charms from jewelry-making sets and beads and things I made so long ago. I also had fun tinting these pictures with one of those sunset lamps -- I used the purple setting.

Miniatures I think would really add a lot to my witchy collection: a cauldron; a crystal ball that resembles crystal; some small candles; something that resembles dried herbs!

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family portrait 2024

Yooo! Class picture!

I've actually gotten a few requests for an updated family portrait in the last couple of years, but even with five less dolls than I have now, I have been like, "I have no idea how to accomplish such a thing..."

I used to take my dolls out into the backyard and pose them on a bench we had, but we don't have the bench anymore, and ~20 dolls makes a quick hike to the backyard not terribly feasible anyway. It took long enough with seven dolls, and now I have just one shy of twenty. You might not think it's a lot of work to wrangle them, but just moving them across my bedroom to line them up here took sooo long.

(I know that people have far larger Blythe collections and manage to photograph all their dolls at once, but I don't know how these people do it!! Lots of time?)

For this, I turned some plastic storage boxes upside down in order to create a riser, like this is choir class, and draped the boxes in fabric so they wouldn't be too distracting. The dolls aren't in any particular order per se, except that the back row is RBLs, the middle row is FBLs, and the front row is RBLs again. Also, Aury is in front because of course she is!! The newer dolls are in front just by virtue of having been farther away from the desk, and so the last to be placed on it.

There was nothing on god's green earth I could do to keep the dolls' hair from sticking to each other and falling in their faces. I tried to fix Gavin's hair so many times, but it just wouldn't cooperate! So, what you see is what you get, in terms of all that doll hair.

Speaking, you might notice that Drew has her original scalp back on, even though the fading on it is so atrocious.

As a bonus, I have a couple of other group pics to share:

The redheads! The gingers, really, as Fidelia is certainly a redhead too. I have been seriously wanting a little pic of all my gingers together since I got Citron!

Also:

The blondes! Are you seeing these ringlets on Holland??

I thought of breaking down the family into groups by hair color and doing a whole series of portraits, but the rubric breaks down by the time it reaches dolls like Gavin and Miette. I didn't want to have a group I was mentally thinking of as "the leftovers." I know they are just inanimate objects and cannot care, but I still would have felt bad! So I stopped here.

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Zasha dressup vid!

It's been about three years since my last dolly dressup video, but here is one for my girl Zasha! Filmed almost a year to the day after her unboxing video! That feels special to me! :"]

I have been really Blythe-y this last twelve months. Perhaps I shall never be as Blythey as I was my first year or two of collecting, when I was utterly swept away in the magic of everything. But in 2023 I did a lot of sewing for my dolls and, of course, expanded my family significantly. So it is about time I did another dressup video.

I intend that every doll I own have a dressup video, whether solo or paired with another doll, so I will eventually be doing videos for Winny, Vesper, Citron, and Miette as well. The caveat there is that I feel each of them have this very particular style, and so I want to try and attain some items that really feel like them. I have already dressed Citron a couple of times in outfits that don't suit her at all, and thus, I am particularly determined to expand my wardrobe with things that will suit her -- and the other New Girls. I still don't have enough stuff for Winny.

A couple of blog housekeeping notes:

Lately I've been fixing things up around Cure Touch. Most notably, I re-did the entirety of my Blythe Family page. Somehow it got flagged as having inappropriate content. I have zero clue what content was inappropriate?? But I just scrapped the whole thing and rewrote it. Some girls have new pictures and some don't! But they all have little nameplates I wrote out in Paint Tool SAI for them!

I also changed my About Me page very slightly, mostly by changing out old photos. I haven't had pink hair in way too long to keep pink-haired portraits there! I'd like to change it even more sometime, but who knows.

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some fall lists

Happy October! Which is almost over already. I've kinda missed it.

As usual when I neglect Cure Touch it's because I'm having A Time. A highlight reel:

• week-long power outage
• dad in the hospital
• sister having a scary medical ordeal
• weird dating/breakup experience
• COVID-19... after three careful years, I finally caught it 😥

Big sigh. I know this is just life. But I feel like I've not had much time to recover between each of these things. I felt really tired before catching COVID, so COVID's just exhausted me.

Really, it was rough. Not just because it knocked me on my ass, but because my bestie and I came down with it while we were having a much-coveted visit. Being sick as dogs together basically became the bulk of our visit. She stayed for a week and a half, and only two of those days were we functional. COVID hit us both so hard we couldn't stay upright. Even just eating took us both out. We slept a ton. It was really surreal, but also unfortunate and disappointing, since we only get to see each other every few years.

(That's my bestie's Daunting Drusilla with Vesper, Citron, Zasha, and Winny!!!! We got in a skosh of dolly time before taking to our beds like Victorian invalids.)

But, this blog is meant to be more of a place to blog about happy things and accomplishments and fun hyperfixations. I feel like listing some positive stuff too.

• I've made a new friend in the last few months. A rarity for me 🥰
• caught some Pumpkaboos in Pokémon Go (Pumpkaboo being my favorite, and I had only ever caught one before! I loveeee watching her on the AR camera!)
• made beef stew, so incredibly comforting while sickness dragged on
• finished up a big project I've been working on since December
• watched The Cat Returns and really enjoyed it
• went on a little 20-minute walk in the rain yesterday morning, and saw colorful foliage and Halloween decorations all over the neighborhood. The temperature was ideal, refreshing and cool, and the rain was mild. It did me sooo much good after three weeks of feeling dreadful!
• close to finishing a ripple throw

And my visit with my bestie wasn't a complete disaster, despite everything.

• As mentioned, she got a Blythe!!! Of her own accord! I can't believe it! We dressed our dolls together and it was so much fun. I also sent bestie home with a care package of socks, tights, and little crop tops I made! I loved doing this!!!
• we attended a concert together and made Swiftian friendship bracelets for it! Successfully traded 'em, even! And the concert was great
• we watched Over the Garden Wall together 🐸 (barely managed it, but we technically did it)
•  if I had to be that freaking sick with someone, she'd be my #1 choice. we both felt godawful but true comfort is being able to be in a bad state with someone without it being super awkward or damaging your friendship at all. New friendship level unlocked...?

I'm really behind on everything and that'll just have to be okay for a bit yet.

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adventures in hand-sewing, part 1 - miniskirts

I've got a bit of a backlog of sewing-related posts to share. All I've got are terrible phone pics that I took when I was sending my friends pics in the moment, so like... pardon me! But if I didn't have phone pics I probably wouldn't post about this at all, when I do really want to catalogue it for my own personal satisfaction. I'll take 'em!

As you may know, I've been getting into hand-sewing for Blythe this last year or so. I made a little cosplay for Lamb (it's not 100% finished, even a year after starting); I sewed a circle skirt; I have made (and sold) innumerable socks; I conquered tights!

I have been doing my best to gain experience and confidence in something that, for me, easily confuses and overwhelms. My ability to fathom construction remains somewhat low. But my cherished dream, friends, is to be able to make a Blythe dress!

I want this so badly my spit tastes like pennies.

It would be so, so much fun to make simple little dresses, because I think having a simple dress and accessorizing it is so much fun when dressing Blythes. I am not yet super close to this achievement, but it's what I'm working towards, if slowly.

In the meantime I have been trying to up my skills with smaller things, such as miniskirts. (The pattern I've been using is this old one from moshi moshi.)

The ironing board and iron I got for my birthday last year were indispensable in this process! The excitement I felt in pressing down seams! Let me tell you!!! Game-changer. My little ironing board has legs that fold in, so I can store it away easily. But my iron is of standard size, and a little clunkier to store away. But I feel it's been of great help to me!

Using mostly fabric I've had on hand for years now, after making a lot of miniature suitcases, I've managed about a dozen skirts. I want to make a bespoke skirt for each Blythe I have, so that's sixteen skirts total. Just four shy!

The blog post on the old moshi moshi blog recommends sturdier fabric for these skirts, like corduroy, and I have to agree. The thinner cottons don't make for a super structured skirt. But also I feel like these could do with some lining? I just don't know how to do such a thing! It's something I need to learn and don't understand at all, despite the many many costube sewing videos I've watched.

I have been making them closable with smol velcro, which is a bit of a pain to hand-sew, even though I got the thinnest sort I could find via Etsy.

I knoooow I need to learn my machine, but honestly on top of being intimidated by it, I could really use one-on-one help from someone who knows what they're doing and can answer questions as I have them, and tell me whether I'm doing things correctly or not. I'm not sure that'll happen anytime soon!

Here's Zasha looking secretarial in a navy blue skirt, blue PrettyBomb blouse, Very Vicky's stock Mary Janes, and glasses from idek!

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Zasha's coat

Been looking forward so much to putting this sweet little coat from SamodelkaTeddyArt on Zasha -- I bought it just for her! Love the dark brown fur collar and the pattern of the fabric, and how it's quilted!

Here's the picture from SamodelkaTeddyArt's Etsy, which is very cute! The fabric is more beige than it appears in the above pic of Zasha, which is influenced a lot by the green backdrop.

Oh, happiness. Styling this coat could go any number of ways and it has my imagination alight with different combos to complement the colors of the coat. It's a statement piece for sure, and when it's snapped shut, it doesn't much matter what's on underneath. But here's the fit besides the coat:

• an olive green velvet ear warmer (crocheted by me!)
• Phoebe Maybe's stock blouse (an MVP -- Most Valued Piece -- in my dolly wardrobe)
• a suede skirt with cutouts (by the wonderful Anne)
• dark green ribbed tights (sewed by me!)
• brown boots (from the Takara I Love Shoes white set) 

Z still badly needs a hair treatment. Those ends are lookin' bushy. I am waiting on something in the mail, and then I'll be having a little spa day for a few girls!

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new girl :)

So I recently welcomed a new Blythe into my family! I have been wanting another for about a year, but Zyanya Remembers was not the girl I had in the back of my mind! But she caught my attention, and I really liked how she looked out of her stock. (To me, that's more important than stock!)

Welcome, Zasha! This is a very Russian-sounding name for a Mexican girl, but I like it.

Here's her unboxing video, if you like that kind of thing. I do. I make these for myself, so I can relive these special memories whenever I want to.

I've since combed out her hair (I found several knots in it and had to cut them out!) and changed her clothes. Discovered in the process that her arms are very stained.

I must admit this is disappointing! I know she has been in a box in black clothing for almost two years. They put this little white bralette/crop top situation on her, I imagine to help protect her from her own dress? But they ought to have wrapped her arms in plastic, in my opinion. I know I've seen girls with wrapped limbs in my day. Vinter Arden came with thin netted tights to put on beneath her navy blue stock tights to help with staining. Some similar netted shirt could have been created for Zyanya.

If I'm honest, while this clearly sucks, I'm also too tired out by... you know, everything that is Real Life... to be heartbroken by this. It's of course very annoying Blythes are so expensive and yet come with knotted hair and stained bodies. (And we'll still buy 'em!) But Zasha's wanted and welcome here, bruised or no. It can be one of her quirks. In time the stains might fade, or they might be a permanent feature.

And to end on a positive note, LOOK AT HER ORANGE EYE in that pic. I love orange chips, and these are arresting on her! Should I change out her pink and blue chips? I think I might...

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