Best Friends Club Ink Doll Riding A Horse Guns Blazing!

Hi Doll Friends!

I love it when my daughter plays with the dolls and leaves things set up when she is done... As you may recall, I recently got a BFC Ink Doll at a Garage Sale for $2. Well, I went ahead and re-wigged her and my daughter liked how she came out... So she decided to dress her up for a horse ride! She went with guns blazing too! Haha! So, I had to take a photo of it for you. 

Have a great weekend!!

XXOO

Heather

BFC Ink Clothes for Sasha Doll Zoey

Hi there Doll Friends!

Recently the kids and I went to the Flea Market and stopped into our favorite vendor, a lady who sells random toys. She often has Littlest Pet Shop toys in either bags or by the eaches to make my daughter happy and often has Lego Mini Figures for my son. She also often has random doll clothes that she generally charges about 50cents a peice for! So I always ask her about doll clothes. Her son brought out this set. She said it was a $1. SOLD. I wasn't even sure who it would fit, if any, of my dolls but it was such a cute outfit, I figured it would fit someone! Helps to have a bit of a diverse doll collection. Teehee.

As I was glancing through my dolls and glancing at the outfit, I immediately noticed how perfect it would be in size for Zoey, my Sasha doll. In case you haven't read the story of her homecoming, you can find it here. She will probably always be one of my most amazing 'finds' and I will never ever get rid of her! Love her to bits. 

The amazing part is the shoes fit like they were made for her!! So cute! I had to know more about this outfit?! It fit so well, I thought "Whoever it was made for, I am certain they made more!" and so I did some research, starting with the stamped letters in the shoe. The internet is an amazing place because in no time at all, I had found this:

It was a set made for the BFC Ink Dolls. They are hard to find clothes for and so I am pretty sure unless I find another random set at a thrift store, garage sale or flea market, this will be my only set. Bummer! I wanted to get Zoey more shoes!

Look how well they fit!

This little bit of information is what helped me find it. Did I mention the internet is awesome?

Here is a photo of a BFC Ink doll wearing the shoes. I actually own this doll and own that little swimsuit. In storage. *sigh* 

Isn't she lovely in it!? Such a fun find!

Till Next Time,
XXOO

Meet J.J.! A Custom 18" Doll Boy!

Greetings and Salutations Doll Friends!

I've had so many projects interesting me lately that I've been doing very little posting here on the blog. I keep posting the photos I take as I go along and save them as drafts and keep going along with the projects. I am now a member of several doll related groups on Facebook and every day I am inspired by the creativity of my fellow doll craft enthusiasts. Too inspired! There are so many great ideas!

So one thing I've wanted to do for a while now is to convert a female doll into a boy doll. You may wonder why I don't just purchase a boy doll outright but honestly, they are pretty rare in the 18" doll market, or any doll market really. I suppose it's because dolls are mostly played with by little girls (or their mothers! Teehee!) and little girls like to 'pretend' themselves, not little boys. So they are rare and, therefore, very expensive. So, my solution was going to be to find a female doll with a face I felt could work as a boy.

Low and behold, I was looking up Tolly-Tot Dolls on eBay for pure research purposes and I come across this doll.

I'd never seen this doll mold before from TollyTot's and I have looked at them for quite some time being as they are generally one of my favorite 18" doll brands. I am sad they no longer make them because I think they could give American Girl Doll and all the other big brands a run for their money. I digress. So this poor doll was at a very low price... Mainly, I suspect, because she looked kind of, well, dirty. I am not afraid of a little dirt though and she came with several outfits along with her which were probably worth what they were asking for the whole lot! Not to mention that I felt her face was going to make a perfect boy doll face! So I plunked down my Paypal money and had her start her postal journey to the Doll House. 

I may have underestimated exactly how dirty she was though. You might have to look closely at the photos but it's almost as if someone painted a room with a roller and spattered tiny bits of paint. All over her limbs, every one of them. I was pretty disgruntled because she was listed as 'Excellent condition' and she was far from it!

Never one to back down from a challenge, especially when restoring and reinventing a doll is involved, I set to work with my Norwex Magic Eraser. Norwex doesn't have harsh chemicals like the ones you get from the grocery store do. No I don't sell Norwex, I just love their stuff. I have one of their cloths specifically for to clean my dolls. It is amazing, what it alone with water can get off the dolls! Sorry for the mini-commercial, but when I find a product I like, I endorse it all over the place. 

See what i mean? FILTHY!!  

There was even a spot on the body of the doll. *grumbling* 

It took the entire Norwex Magic Eraser (it was brand new when I started cleaning doll!) but she came completely clean!

So as not to confuse the poor doll... At this point and going forward and I am going to start using the proper pronoun. Here he is, all cleaned up and ready for a hair cut. 

**IF YOU ARE A CHILD: NEVER CUT A DOLLS HAIR WITHOUT PERMISSION FROM A PARENT!!** 

I knew I wanted his hair cut, it was going to be my first option for changing his hair look anyway... Figured if the cut didn't go, I would just cut it all off and put a boy wig on him. I'd found one on eBay for a good price that I'd bought and had set aside for the hopeful eventuality of finding a doll to convert. However, I know nothing about cutting hair, human, doll or otherwise. I knew I'd do a terrible job! Well... Lucky for me, I have amazing girlfriends!! One of them just happens to be a stylist who loves me enough to take a stab at cutting a boy cut into a plugged doll head of hair. 

Here she is, doing an amazing job! I am so grateful that she helped me out! 

So... After she was all done, he was perfect!!

The girls were so excited to get a brother!!

Here they are, all having dinner together! I have decided to call him Joshua John. After my favorite guy in all the world and my favorite book of the Bible! He can go by J.J. for short. I think he looks like a J.J.

Well that's it for this post! You'll be seeing a lot more of J.J. in the future!! It was so much fun creating a boy that I know I'll make another one as soon as I can find another likely candidate! I already have a spare boy doll wig... 

See you next time!

XXOO

New Dresses for the BFC Ink and Disney Princess Dolls!

Greetings and Salutations Doll Friends!!

I was recently reading a great doll blog that I've found recently. It's all about finding and making doll items on the cheap. It's called Dolls on a Dime! Just the name is right up my alley! Recently she had this post about finding second hand porcelain dolls and taking the dresses off of them for the thinner variety 18" dolls. In her posting she mentions Disney Princess and Me dolls but the idea works well for BFC Ink dolls I discovered. 

See? Aren't they beautiful??!!

Here are the 'donor' dolls. I plan to re-donate them to Goodwill, where I bought them for $3.99 each. 

I was surprised at the big difference in size of the 'donor' dolls and how well they worked anyway.

This smaller doll was purchased for same thing but it didn't work out so well... More on that later. Let's just say it wasn't made very well, the dress and wouldn't have made a good play dress in any case. Luckily she was only $1.99 and so it wasn't too big a loss.

The dress donor dolls were very pretty but I have always disliked porcelain dolls. I think a doll is made to be, first of all, a plaything. So, a very fragile doll doesn't make any sense to me. So... I didn't feel to badly about taking the dresses because apparently I am not alone in my sentiment about them because they are at Goodwill all the time. 

This one had a mark on her neck...? Seymour Mann doll. Don't know much about porcelain dolls but her dress was made very well!

There was only one problem with one of the dresses. The sleeves were too tight to get over the hands of my dolls.

So I simply opened up the seam with a seam ripper and 'hemmed' the edges so it wouldn't fray and it's perfect. 

Belle looks like this dress was made for her!!

Even if it is a little long.

The BFC Ink Dolls fit the dresses really well too!

Here they are wearing them in the Library of the doll house.

And playing chess!

That's it for now friends! See you next time! 

BFC Ink Dolls and the Story of Taming Wild Doll Hair! Two Methods!

Greetings and Salutations Doll Friends!!

I've been writing this blog again now, in earnest, for a few months now. I've taken scores of photos and written about all manner of doll related items. One sad omission in all my postings has been any photos or mentions of what I consider one of the prettiest 18" doll varieties there are. BFC Ink Dolls are no longer being produced which is a shame because their original price point was attainable by most girls. Not to mention, they were adorable with beautiful faces and mostly or fully (depending on which doll you got) articulating joints, they can be posed in literally hundreds of positions which makes them terrific for looking very lifelike in doll scenes. So... Why haven't I had them in the blog lately?

Well... Take a look at this:

Crazy hair! This hair is, from what I understand, the reason these dolls stopped being made. It's a real mess! It's not just my doll, which, as you may have guessed, was gleaned from a 2nd hand source. You can read all about her homecoming here. From what I understand, the dolls all had really bad hair from just about the moment they were taken out of the box. 

See what I mean? Just a nightmare! We've always just pulled their hair back into 'messy buns' and gone about playing with them and admiring their beautiful faces because doll hair restoration wasn't something I knew how to do. 

Until recently!! I've begun to learn a thing or two about fixing doll hair. Mind you, I am not any sort of expert, more of a novice dipping my toes into the pool of doll repair because there are some mind blowing doll restoration people out there! People take off doll heads, change eyes and bodies and all manner of things... However, I have learned about a method that is very useful and also have become more brave when thinking about doll hair because, worse comes to worse, there are always doll wigs! If I mess up the hair now, all is not lost! 

Doll wigs, I am finding, at least quality ones, don't come cheap. Learn that lesson from me!! Don't go 'cheap' and buy vintage or 'old stock' wigs for your projects. Just pay the few extra dollars and get a top-notch wig because, just like in dolls you buy with wigs on, good hair can make all the difference!! However, that being said, they aren't cheap and so I wanted to try and salvage the real hair on these dolls if I could. 

Look at that mess! What a fright!!

Method #1: Cut the hair. Now... If you are not a grown person who purchases their own dolls with their own money, please make sure and ask permission of a grown up, preferably the one who bought you the doll before you cut doll hair. Doll hair does not grow back!! That all being said, in my mind, with these dolls, I had nothing to lose because it couldn't possibly look any worse!

So my plan was to just cut off all her hair and re-wig her. Seriously, that was my plan for this blog, the two methods of hair salvage were going to be a re-wig and a hot-dip. Wanted to show the two options... So I sort of recklessly started cutting off the horribly damaged portions of her hair. I thought I'd go ahead and just cut off the really bad parts and see 'what was left'. I was so sure I was going to re-wig that I didn't even photo the cutting process at all. See all that hair in the bottom of the trash can? That is only photo I thought to take. Oops!

Because low and behold, when I stopped snipping, a kind of cute little bob had been cut into her hair? 

Hmm. Who'd have thought? So, I snipped a bit here and there to make it even and... Well, she might keep her hair! I am hoping that, given that the hair quality was the problem from the beginning, her shorter hair-do doesn't eventually end up a frazzled mess just like it was but I also figure if that happens I can always go with PlanA and just re-wig her as I'd planned to do. 

Which brings me to method number two: Hot Dipping. I didn't really do a play by play when photographing because I already wrote a blog about it when I tried this method with Belle. I just did the same procedure with this doll. Combed her out and hot dipped her and this is after that comb out. 

Still kind of a frizzy mess but much improved. I suspect a re-wig will be happening for this doll because I am itching to do a re-wig on this sort of doll because I think if they had amazing hair they would be one of my favorite dolls, ever!

As it was, I just braided her hair the best I could. She looks loads better anyway. 

All done, well, for now! Thanks for dropping by again Doll Friends!! See you soon with another story about BFC Ink Dolls because now that I have these two beauties cleaned up, you'll be seeing a lot more of them! 

See how they can be posed so neat!

With a Tolly Tot and an American Girl for comparison!

Happy with new cut!

See the back?

Side view.

Bye!

PS my daughter wanted me to try on the wig I have that I bought and didn't work for a different doll.

She looks kind of cute! Almost Hawaiian maybe?

What do you think?

It's a lot of hair! I think I will keep her short bob and just put this wig on when I want this style cos it fits over her regular hair. Kind of fun I can have her both ways!

TTFN!