Not long after winning the delightful giveaway (see previous post), I adopted my first girl, Rosabela Liliane. She's a Manuheali'i Paradise Girl, and arrived in her original box with her original stock. I'm her second owner. Rosabela has the most beautiful, thick, silky hair. That, with her non-stock eyes (especially the side grey), meant love at first sight.
Here is Rosabela (stepping out in the garden):
I also fell in love with the shine on her face (more shiny than I'd expected) and with that, I realised that I preferred the stock shine to the matted customs. For the moment that has stalled my thoughts of customising a Blythe doll myself, although I'm dreaming of owning a girl with an alpaca reroot (blonde) one day.
Here's Rosabela wearing one of her lovely sweaters (she needs it with this unseasonal summer we're having so far here in the UK). I also love the pale brown front eye colour:
What I'm also enjoying is how much the girls' (yes there are more than one now - Rosabela needed company) personalities do emerge - not to mention the different dress styles. They're all very individual.
What these (and other) photographs have shown me is how skilled many of the Flickr Blythe owners are - it's very difficult to manage the light bouncing off the shiny face-plates. This has spurred me on to improve my photography skills - not to mention sewing, knitting and crochet skills. More of that next time x.
Whilst I'd encountered the word Blythe here and there in blogland, I'd never had cause to associate it with anything in particular and, to be honest, my eyes just skimmed over the word whilst reading what I was really interested in, namely anything to do with quilts.
Then, one day whilst browing a quilting blog, there was a photograph of a doll on a quilt. I looked at this doll - and she looked right back at me - a very sassy stare!! (and she was wearing a very beautiful dress).
I was intrigued - and then I found Blythe on Flickr! We won't mention how many hours have been spent looking at beautiful Blythes on Flickr. My interest was especially piqued - not only because of the beautiful clothes (which touched a long-forgotten chord of wanting to be a fashion designer - I side-lined into psychology - how did that happen?!!), but I also noticed how beautifully the dolls were lit and staged in the photographs and how attractively some of the dolls are customised. What a showcase of talent. I was hooked, and thought I'd like to do all of this.
Initially I thought I'd like to customise dolls - I spent hours looking at eyechips and alpaca wefts and watching "how to" videos. I was researching anything and everything to do with Blythe dolls. I even entered a giveaway on BlytheLife.com and unbelievably for me, I won it! All this before I'd even found my first girl, so I took it as a very good sign.
I won 3 adorable little sweaters from Quenne Doll dolly knits on Etsy (a huge thank you to Quenne). Here they are:
Aren't they just too sweet? All I needed now was a girl to wear the sweaters....
