Adventures with Amelia Thimble

What? Another doll? Yes, that's right! I've got her quite a while already. I think I bought her back in June, when she was on sale at the Wilde Imagination Website.
Amelia Thimble is quite a tiny doll, which stands just 4 inches tall. She's made of resin and has changeable inset eyes and is a wigged doll. She's also balljointed, so she is very poseable.
I bought the 'On Pins & Needles' doll.

 With help of my english friend Ralph, I also bought her the 'Sprinkled with Love' baking set

A cute little pair of trousers I made for her, which go so well with the baking set

I took her with me on holidays to Deal, as she is just the right size to put in a handbag.

As you can see, she really had lots of fun in Deal, and she also came with us on a daytrip to London!
There was just only a tiny little problem, she had the 'kicky leg syndrom' so it was always a challenge to get her to stand on her own and pose.
Finally I found an online tutorial about restringing Amelia, so I scraped all my courage together, and had a go at it.

There she is, all in one piece again!

Here is the link to the tutorial: restringing Amelia Thimble tutorial
During the fall holidays I had been making a couple of lace nighties for her:

And just this week, I felt inspired to make her a new outfit:

Amber and her shoes

When I had just started collecting Ellowyne, I kind of went wilde when looking for shoes for her.
There are so many gorgeous shoes on evilbay, and really not that expensive, especially if you order 3 pairs from China or HongKong, you may get a very good discount on shipping, which really makes it so easy to buy just another pair.....
Of course, back then I only had 3 or 4 dolls, and already something like 9 pairs of shoes.
So I started thinking and wondering if there would be shoe-racks available, so I could display all the lovely shoesies. I coulnd't find any online, but, I have a lovely Pippa friend, who is amazing at making doll shoes for Pippa and Dawn dolls, and she also made shoe-racks for them. That's where I decided I could just as well contact her, and ask if she would feel up to the challenge.
Fortunately for Ellowyne and me, she did want to give it a go, and asked me what kind of style I would like.
I told her something baroque would be fun, if she would be able to do something like that.
I measured all my shoes and gave her the sizes, and she started to think and work on it.
Here is the final result:

Isn't it just gorgeous!!!!!

 

 

 Here is the link to her website: http://www.pippashoes.com/

Just around the time when I got this lovely shoe-rack, I also received one of my dreamdolls; Amber Dark & Stormy Night. She wasn't wearing her original outfit, but another Wilde Imagination outfit for Ellowyne, called Easy Does It.
Unfortunately the zipper of one of her boots is broken, so I emailed to the company, and hope they will have a replacement boot for me. My poor Essential Ellowyne 4 brunette broke the strap of her sandal, boohoo!

broken boot and sandals from Essential Ellowyne 4

Well, Amber decided she would not like to wait until new shoes might arrive from the USA, so she went on a shoehunt.

trying to decide on a replacement.........

 I so love this girl! I haven't been able to find her original outfit yet, but I ordered a pattern which has a similar feel to it : Onyx El. I so hope it will arrive soon. I can't wait to get started!

Ellowyne and the roaring '20s

Wilde Imagination sold 2 Great Depression dolls this year, Great Depression Lizette & Great Depression Ellwoyne.
I'm not sure if this was the start of some talented people designing patterns for this era, or that it all started with Downtown Abbey.
They've also got a lovely Mist, Green Tea and Me Ellowyne, which is a similar style.
Anyhow, I got a pattern from Phillippa for a '20s dress and going through my boxes of fabric I got really inspired. Here is the link to the pattern in her etsy shop: 1920's style dress pattern by Phillippa
In her pattern she states that the 20's look is all about the accesories. Like cloche hat, beaded headband or tiara, layering necklaces in coloured beads, pearl or rhinestones......
Well, that got me started, so the first thing I made was a 2 layered necklace and a simple bracelet.

When I had that finished I started sewing the dress, and finished it by adding sequins and pearls to it.
I even made a headband with pearls.
All in all I quite like the result.

Here is Feeling Drained, shwoing the result of my efforts. Posing in front of the Taj Mahal.

 

I love how well her colouring and the red wig work with this outfit.

finishing a project and some more new gals

Just about a week ago I finally finished sewing the first outfit I had started sewing for Ellowyne.
Yes, I know I already finished quite a few outfits for her, but this one was a real challenge.
Probably because it was the first one I started sewing for her, but mainly because of my choice of fabrics, which were quite hard to work with, especially the fabric of the overdress.
So I had been sewing the shirt, the bloomers and the overdress, and after that I kind of lost my courage, and didn't seem to be able to get myself to sew the apron and craft the hat.
But, I had Ell sitting dressed in her unfinished outfit in my livingroom, which was bugging me so much that I finally decided to get that outfit finished.

Here you can see her sitting in the background whilst I was working on the reproduction of red, white & very blue

 So I on saturday I cutted out all the patternpieces and fraychecked them, and on sunday evening I sewed the apron and crafted the hat.
Although it isn't flawless I'm really quite pleased with the result, and I did learn a lot of things along the way.

Serious Intention wearing my version of 'like Clockwork'

the moment I saw the pattern I thought th ehat was one of the cutest thing I could imagine , I love how the purple colour of the blouse goes with Ell's eyes

On thursday I had a new arrival; one of the first Essential Ellowyne's, the redhead came to join my collection.
On friday we were going on holidays for the weekend, but just before leaving home, the postie came with a super large box! In it was something I had really been dreaming of getting it for months; the Wilde Rose Vanity for Ellowyne. How lucky can a girl get?
On our weekend away, I had to take something with me, to fiddle around with, and as Amelia is quite tiny, she was the lucky one that came with us on holiday.
I had some lace with me, and ribbons and some poppers....
So I created this cute little nightie for her, and a similar one with yellow accents:

The little filly pony is not Amelia's, but DD11 allowed me to borrow it for the picture

When we arrived back home again on sunday evening I found out the postie had been here with yet another parcel, and would come back again today. DH was really not impressed I had to pay another customsbill.....
(well, I can't say I like that either......)
This morning I decided to take pictures of my lovely redhead and the vanity.

So pretty! The jewellery is the prize I won in the 'it's only make believe' contest, donated by Carol

It was a nice challenge to try to only get the reflection of EE red in the mirror

She's really even lovelier in person

The other 2006 girls I've got captured in the mirror too!

Another doll I really like pretty much is the new Feeling Drained 3, but I already have FD and FD2, although only the red wig for FD and the black wig for FD2. I compared FD2 and FD3 with the online pictures and decided that if I would get the blonde wig of FD3, that would be good enough for me.
Guess what happened when the wig arrived? The girls started a cat fight over it. EE5 red, FD2 and FD all tried it on.
Guess who's the winner:

Feeling Drained wearing the FD3 blonde wig

Although we had the most severe storm today since 1990, the postie arrived early in the afternoon, getting me a lovely box of mini's from a NZ supermarket (well, it came from a friend in NZ) and of course the parcel I had been eagerly awaiting since the Wilde Imagination sale a couple of weeks ago.
How much fun can it be to open up a dolly parcel!

first peek

DD11 really wanted to help deboxing her and getting her hairnet off

Look who came up to my frontdoor!

Woefully Romantic

such a pretty girl!

 Because of the storm I was a bit worried about taking pictures outside, but a bit later in the afternoon it seemed to be safe enough, so I had some fun taking pictures of my latest new addition.....

Garden Patience

Last friday she arrived; my Garden Patience!
Of course I was all excited and very curious to see for myself how her eye mechanism works.
First surprise was when I opened up her box and saw her eyes looking straight. Somehow I had expected her to glance sideways when I would open her box.

Well, as you may imagine she didn't stay in her box for long.
I took some quick piccies on friday to upload on my other blog Duties & Daydreams, which is about my daily life.
On saturday morning it wasn't raining, so I took Patience outside to have a couple of garden pictures with her. In my cabinet she had already been making 'friends' with Sybil, as far as possible, and she wanted to come along for the photosession.

I think Patience with her eyes looking sideways with her eyes in different directions is the most funny thing I've seen.

 

Here she is looking more or less straight

Sitting on a chair I found with Sybil at her lap

I had almost decided to part with this furniture, but it's just the right size for Patience, so it will stay

When Patience had arrived on friday I thought about this old furniture I had lying somewhere in a box. I had already been considdering to either put it up for auction or give it to a charity shop, but it's exactly the right size for Patience, so I'm quite happy I hadn't parted with it.