This  movie looks amazing! I just watched 5 minutes of it and I’m totally taken in. Unfortunately it is quite late and I need to sleep. I think this movie deserves all my attention (and yours!) so I plan to watch it during the weekend. It is “The Mascot” by Ladislas Starewicz, it has been done in 1933!!!

As you can see the idea of animating dolls is not so new and I’m looking forward to watch all of it in two days.

Well…actually it is my dolls new Miele Kitchen, I cannot afford one for me I felt a bit  guilty at the thought of how much I paid for it but after I saw what my sister-in-law got for her birthday I feel totally fine

Here some quick pictures, the light is not the best since I was too lazy to set all the lamps up and grabbed only two of them:

It is 1/12 scale. What can I say? I really love dolls furniture!

If you enjoyed the small peek at the designer dolls for Unicef, have a look at the beautiful Matrioskas dressed once more by famous designers to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Vogue Russia, here is the full gallery. They are a bit “slimmer” than the traditional Matrioskas and absolutely beautiful pieces  of modern design. My Favourite one are the Armani (surprise surprise) and Versace dolls and yours?

Unfortunately they have an estimated price (they will be auctioned for charity) of 5000 dollars and at the moment I have no time to rummage through my bags for the small change So…I found instead for myself  this nice paper-craft project from the Canon site, you can actually build 5 paper matrioskas and, like the real ones, they fit one inside each other!

Have a nice weekend!

I’m a great fan of the Harry Potter saga and even if I prefer the books I still appreciated the movies very much. So yesterday I got totally entranced looking at the Harry Potter characters collection by Tonner. I remember few years ago Mattel produced some dolls in1/6 scale of the three main characters but Tonner went far beyond that. Not only they made available ALL the protagonists of the movies but also they produced some astonishing accessories.

Have a look for example at the animals, like Fawkes:

crookshanks:

and of course Hedwig:

But you really need to check them out yourself. There’s even a doll of Snape!

Many thanks to Tonner director of sales and marketing for allowing me to use on the blog the beautiful pictures above taken from the company site.

I cannot believe I didn’t find this site till now. It is just amazing, the owner has put on line paper-craft models and games that used to be published in the old Donald Duck ad Mickey Mouse comics.

There are also lots of cute dioramas that would work nicely with small dolls (most probably Shelly size), my favourite ones are the TV studio, Duckburg and the Duckburg Christmas market, but I’m quite tempted also by the games and I think on Sunday my PC will be busy with downloads

I’m always surprised and delighted at the amount of stuff you find for free on the net. Some people are really exceptionally talented and generous.

I’m really looking forward to having a bit of free time(WHEN? WHEN?) to have in-depth look to some of the courses below, in meantime I will share the links with you.

Here for example is the first part of a wonderful tutorial in 4 lessons to learn millinery in miniature. At the bottom of the page you will find the link to go the next lesson and so on. The main site, Cynthia Howe Miniatures, is just wonderful and you will need plenty of time to go through it. But, if you prefer a real college class, go for the sample course offered by the Crafty College, always about making hats for our dollies of course! This one you can even save as pdf to keep it safe on your hard-disk and look through it whenever you have time.

Another fascinating course for dolls customizers is “The History of Fashion and Dress” offered by the Costumer’s Manifesto site (found via Jane Austen’s world blog). Plenty of informations available in 15 self-paced lessons.

If instead you want to do a doll itself, here is a mini course in 2 lessons (complete with pattern) to make a cloth doll. She actually looks cute! I think it could be a nice project for next time Ursula and I have a dolls day together

But if you are lazy like me, just sit back an read. Here is the link to fantastic archive of Dollcieux, a free online magazine for BDJs dolls, by the way…almost each issue features great tutorials about dolls photography. If this is not enough, and you still crave for “dollies reading” check out the old issues of High Maintenance, again lot of amazing tutorials in many issues and you can download the pdf versions of the magazine.

That’s all for today and remember…weekend is almost here!!!

I realized today I still didn’t show the little cute dolls I bought last week in Cologne. I never bought before Shelly/Kelly Mattel dolls unless planning to resell. I actually thought I didn’t like them but I’ve definitely fallen in love with these 2 sets as soon as I saw them and I’m afraid they will not be the last ones

The first set is Shelly and Tommy as Batman and Catwoman:

I love the costumes and the girl luscious black hair.

This is the second set, a nice couple of pilgrims for the american Thanksgiving holiday :

Again I love the costumes and it would be so nice to have them in a small diorama, I bet there’s plenty of stuff in 1/12 scale out there fitting the two cuties.

And  if you stayed with me till now here a couple of nice links. If you want to make your own pilgrims looks at these nice paper-crafts found via Paperkraft.net but originally published on the Macula site, an impressive site with an awesome paper-craft section. If instead you like to crochet, here is a nice teddy bear you can make and on the same page you find the patterns for the fitting pilgrim outfits, a male and female version of it.

That’s all for tonight, have a nice week

Today, while taking the lift to the office, I found on the floor what to me looks clearly like a mini apple, a 16″ dolls apple or a very big 12″ dolls apple.

My colleagues splitted apart, the german ones said it is a cherry, most of the foreigners agreed it is an apple, cultural differences? Not sure but…what do you think?

This is what in Italy we call “il pomo della discordia”, it literally means “the apple of the contention” but I believe the equivalent english expression is “the bone of contention” But may I say something? Of course you can, dear, it is your blog after all. IT IS AN APPLE.

Surfing around recently I saw lots of these cute amigurumi dolls (basically we are talking about crochet) and I would like to make some small ones as toys for my dolls, or even for me

I looked around for good tutorials and the one really clear for me was this

and the second part of it:

I dug up in bed and gave it a try, here is what I did:

I was quite surprised since it came up quite decently to be the first one in my life and last time I crocheted I was seven years old It is just a basic round shape, nothing else.

Now I would like to try something more complex ot at least follow a real pattern but my problem was I have no idea how you read patterns, I found this great teddy bear pattern through Hooks and Needles, I mean: even I can read this pattern!!! On this last site you can find other amigurumi tutorials as well, I will have  a look

In these last two days I really had fun with my dollhouse Here is Arianna waking up. She remarked once more that she really needs some pictures on the wall!

the nightgown and morning-robe were part of a clothes lot I found at one of the last flea markets we visited. I think they are from the ‘80 but they look new.