Ertl 14" Girlhood Journeys 14" Doll: A Photo Review

Greetings and Salutations Doll Friends!

I have been ever so remiss in writing of late! Big happenings my real house have virtually stopped all happenings in the Doll House to make a long story short. In fact, the Doll House and all the dolls are packed away in boxes and are headed to storage. *gasp* I know! Not my favorite aspect of our current life situation but necessary. We are moving to a new part of the world soon and in order for that to happen, we have to sell our house. Unfortunately our realtor doesn't seem to think prospective buyers would appreciate the broad expanse of doll related items and dolls... Really?! What's the matter with people nowadays? *sigh* However, since we are bound to end up paying him rather large sums of money for his knowledge, I have attempted to yield to it. Trust, me, it's painful. 

One solace is to know I have roughly ten drafts here waiting to be finished... A plethora of photos awaiting the stories to flesh them out. This is the first of those postings. I went a little doll mad (more doll mad?) in July. I tend to overdo on extravagance during that month because it's a big celebration month in my life... Teehee. I an generally not one to indulge in the somewhat mainstream girlie indulgences like getting nails done or going to shopping mall to pay too much for clothes. Nope, this girl, when she gets fun money, she runs to eBay (or better yet, thrift shops) to look for a new dolly. Or rather, usually a vintage dolly. 

So, without further ado, I present one of said dolly. Or rather two, because I tend to buy in twos (or threes, or until I own entire collection once I have found one.... Oh, wait, did I say that out loud? I digress, again. See why I never get anything written!

Meet Shannon! She is an Ertyl Girlhood Journeys 14" Doll. I am not sure when they were produced but I think it was in the 1990's. Perhaps you know and can leave information in the comments. I ran across them when I was researching 14" dolls on eBay. I think I've mentioned how dangerous that sort of research can be. Teehee. You can get them for a song though, usually for under $20 including shipping and you can pay that much for a take out pizza nowadays! Dolls last much longer than pizza!

They say that a picture is worth a thousand words. Well I agree and am going go let the photos tell a lot of the story about this doll. Mostly because I am a bit short on time and want to get this posted. I am not sure if it will post, date wise, as the day I wrote draft or the day I post it but I am writing this on August 22nd and it will be the first post I've posted since early July. Egads! Did I mention we are moving...? Moving is so much work and I also have a job and kids and a husband and and and... So doll time has taken a hit! I'll get much better again after we get moved! 

Isn't she pretty?!

Her clothes are so well made! If you have HeartForHearts dolls who need clothes, the purchase price of one of these on eBay would be worth it for the dress because they can share clothes! 

Despite being vintage, she had never been removed from her clothes. They were sewn on.

She has a soft body but is stuffed with pellet like stuffings like a bean bag. Kind of different but it makes it easy for her to sit well.

Her back.

She sits well and with her legs forward which is always nice. (Many dolls nearly have to do the splits to sit down!) 

Here is her tag.

Compared to a HeartsForHearts doll, Lilly.

Trying each other's clothes. They work well but their feet are not same at all. Shannon's feet are much smaller than Lilly's.

An original add I found an image of on Google. As you can see, there were four dolls in the line. I imagine I'll pick up the other two at some point or another.... Just too cute not to have all of them. In fact, I have Kai on my wish list at this very moment... I am trying to be good though. My dear husband is very sweet but he just had to move quite a few boxes of dolls into storage and... Well... He has his limits. Not to mention we are trying to budget because we are moving. Digressed again... Sorry. Back to the dolls!

I also found Juliet on eBay. She was missing her shoes but was otherwise in perfect condition considering her age.

Here is mark on back of her neck.

And some clothes swapping ensued as soon as all the review photos were taking... Girls will be girls, dolls or not! 

Lilly wearing Juliets dress. 

Juliet wearing my vintage Effanbee dolls dress.

Here is said Effanbee doll (She is a Jan Hagara 15" doll who came named Laurel but has since been named Heather) in Shannon's dress. By way, I generally always rename my dolls... So Shannon is now Susannah and Juliet is now Patricia. I'd explain why but it wouldn't make much sense to you. Suffice to say I like to name my dolls after people but you don't know these people. Teehee.

That's it for now doll friends! Until next time! 

XXOO

Effanbee Dolls: My New Infatuation

Greeting Doll Friends!

As I've mentioned before, I had a little doll collection in my adult life, prior to children. It consisted of a few dolls I owned in my childhood, such as My Friend Mandy by Fisher Price or Kimberly by Tomy, and some I bought here and there in my early 20s because I loved them when I saw them, like my Heidi Ott dolls. Well, three of those dolls were 11" Effanbee dolls. Here is a (bad, predigital) photo of the ones I had then.

This is a photo from a scrapbook page of mine where I am discussing my hobbies. It shows my collection of "My Friend" dolls and the three Effanbee dolls I owned at the time. This was before I did much doll shopping on eBay but as I recall, I got these three on an auction on eBay. I loved them at the time even though I knew their costumes were incomplete. They had such pretty faces! As I've reported before though, when I had my kids when I turned 30, I lost my mind and got rid of all my dolls (other than the ones I was going to "save for my kids to play with"). The Effanbee dolls went then...

So recently I was thrifting and glanced up at top shelf and who did I see staring back at me? The same Effanbee doll from before! Ok, not the same one... Not even the same model... But the same pretty face mold. This one had dark hair and was still in her original box! So I plunked down my $3.99 and brought her home.

Isn't she pretty? She arrived named Holly but I already have a doll named Holly and so my dear daughter renamed her Hope.

She is 11" tall and has sleepy eyes. She'd never been removed from her box and I was thrilled to get her! I realize as I write this that I didn't unbox her step by step to show you how she was packaged but it was pretty standard.

The costume is interesting in that the collar, cuffs and sash are all separate pieces from the dress itself. All top notch costume, very well made. I love her. 

So... Not long after that, again, thrifting, I made a very interesting discovery. I was lucky enough to get to Goodwill just as they were bringing the new stock carts out from the back. All the really good stuff at Thrift Stores usually never makes it off these rolling carts out, people take the best right out of it and put it in their own carts! I am no exception. When I saw a load of dolls, all in plastic bags and tagged like they'd been in an estate sale, I grabbed every single one up into cart. I knew I wouldn't buy them all but it gave me a chance to look them over well and make decisions. All of them were Effanbee dolls and it was literally the first time I realized that Effanbee made dolls with faces other than the pretty one above. Uh oh. That would likely be dangerous knowledge... But I'll get to that later. I decided to buy four of the seven they had there. I left a Mae West, a Charlie Chaplain and a Winston Churchhill doll there because I've never been into dolls of adults. That left me with these.

As you can see, Hope is standing in middle of the four I bought. I got them in bagged sets for $3.99 a bag!!! So they were only $2 each!! I love thrift stores! Aren't they fabulous?!? To the left there is Flossie and Freddie, twin 11" dolls and to the right you see 13" Lotus Blossom and Little Tiger. They are all vinyl, with poseable arms and legs and are made very well, as is their costuming.

I was having way too much fun checking them out and didn't take as good a pictures as I might should've but here is some of me checking out Lotus Blossom's costume. It's so lovely! Every detail is made so well!

Here is the mark on the back of her body. She was made in 1982 and her doll artist was Jan Stafford. 

Here is Little Tiger in costume (minus shoes, one was broken) with his little kite.

Here is Lotus Blossom with Elizabeth (18" Just Pretend doll) and Simone (14" Heart for Hearts doll) all redressed with Simone wearing her outfit, which fit like a dream! More on them all later, just had to come show you how my latest obsession, Effanbee dolls, got started! I will come back and show much better details of the dolls later! I kept Freddie and Flossie's original names because they just seemed to "fit" but wanted something different for Lotus Blossom and Little Tiger because those are a mouthful! I decided it'd be cute to keep their names if I could come up with them in an alternate language and so decided to try Chinese first. It was perfect! So Little Blossom became Ha'n and Little Tiger became Hu'! Perfect!

Well, that's it for this time Doll Friends! See you next time!!

Madame Alexander 18" Doll Mary and Thrift Store Finds!

Greetings Doll Friends! 

Another long lost draft! I have the best of intentions when I post them! This is gonna be a bit of a "a picture tells a 1000 words" kind of post... Here goes!

I got the two dolls here thrifting. I think I paid about $3 each. I also got the working lamp and books that day. The red head has since been given away to a friend of my daughters because she wasn't a favorite of either of us and her friend only had *gasp* one 18" doll! So, we had to give her one. 

Here is Mary all cleaned up and ready for bed!

Here she is in a dress I upcycled.

Here she is with Rose (TollyTot) and Taylor (Famosa Nancy).

Here is some more loot I got around same time.

The bear I bought just for his coat. I gave him back to Goodwill. 

I LOVE this tall "bookcase"! It was a CD case but I gutted the groved slots and my book collection nearly fits in there! Or it did. It's grown since I bought it. A lot. Haha!

I couldn't get the old dry glue off but with books in, you can't really tell. 

Isn't it fab!

Then I found Belle. She was too pretty to leave at Goodwill.

I had to bring her home and clean her up!

Gorgeous!

Got this chair too! Can't recall what I paid. Knowing me tho, it wasn't more than $5.

It's perfect for doing doll hair! Here is Sasha (TollyTot) trying it out.

Then I found this kitchen! It was $2. I had to give it away as we are moving but it was so cool! Perfect size for 18" dolls! And it's portable! So cool. I already have a kitchen though and so it had to go. 

Awesome, eh?

Oh! And Dell! I got Dell, a HeartforHearts doll, for $1 at a church garage sale!! She was in bottom of box of old dolls. I am stoked! I renamed her Katniss after the Hunger Games Katniss because 1)she looks like her and 2) "Dell's" story is from the same area Katniss was from. 

Here she is right after I found her, in car on way home!

Isn't she beautiful?!

That's it for now doll friends!

Till next time!

XXOO