Dolly Play Day

Today I've had a dolly play day. At least in the afternoon..., and a little bit in the evening too.
It all started when I got a bunch of dolls with the broken neck syndrom. This was before this years Daisy convention, and as the convention dolls really needed to be ready in time, I had just put them aside for some day when I would have time.

I recalled I had read something about repairing them when you don't have all the pieces, so I went over to the Yahoo Daisy Mania Group, where Ingie had posted a tutorial on how to do a neck-repair. 
So I last week I bought some Magic Sculp and Flesh coloured spray paint, and thought I was ready for the job. I started the afternoon with a trip to a DIY-shop to buy some sanding paper with 1500 grit, to find out they didn't have it. After a call with a car parts shop I knew where to get it.
But I didn't want to go driving around town all afternoon, so decided to buy the sanding paper when I would have to get the kids from school anyways.
I knew the dolls needed a thorough clean, as they had been glued by someone who wasn't really that well at it, the glue was even in their hair.
So first they had a bath in warm water with silk fabric detergent.(I always use this as a mild way to clean my dolls). I managed to get their heads off, and take out the neck-knobs, and get the glue off the neck-knobs.
their necks, heads and hair were not so easily cleaned. 

As I had had some good results earlier with Perk (Twin Pines of Maine) cleaning out a rubber band from dolly hair, I decided to drop the dolls in a jar with perk solution.
After a while the bodies were so far, that I could scrape off the last little bits of glue, and dry them.

 

 

 Time to glue the neck-knobs back in. While I left them to set, I picked up another doll from the cleaning area, who needed a partial restring, but before I could start on her, the postman came and brought me some lovely dolly stuff.
 








So I inspected my parcels, restrung a Dashing Daisy, and gave a couple of poorly Sindy's some stain treatment.

 

 







I checked back on the heads of the dolls, and decided to leave them in the Perk solution for the rest of the afternoon.
And then it was already time to collect the kids from school, go to the car parts shop, go on a coat hunt with my middle one and take the youngest to her swimming lessons.
When I came back home I picked up the heads and managed to remove the glue from their hair, and most of it from their heads too.

 








After the kids went to bed, I finally managed to get back to the dolls, and took out the magic sculp and some water, and a little modelling tool, to make a nice edge for the neck.

Hopefully tomorrow I'll be able to sand and paint them.......















       

The making of the Daisy Convention doll 2013

As soon as we knew the date for the convention, we had to start thinking about a convention doll as well.
Some voting was done, and finally the decision was Daisy wearing an evening dress. 
Well, that got my brain cracking, as I'm absolutely not that much of seamstress.
Luckily enough I know a couple of people who are brilliant at sewing, so I decided to ask Ingie if she felt up to sewing some special dress for the convention doll. She agreed and we decided on a dress made from ruby red raw silk, inspired on one of the later optimum dresses. 

We thought it would look nice to add a black lace shawl to it. 

Only few days later she had the outfits all ready to send! She's such a star!

Meanwhile I had found out that I had quite a couple of the same facetype doll that were all in need of a reroot. Chatting away on facebook I was wondering if it would be possible to use them for convo dolls.

Immediately Elaine jumped in and offered to help with the rerooting and she agreed to do 5 dolls in total.
after a little discussion she came up with the lovely colour Deep Cherry, which was what we used for the dolls.

Of course I knew I would never be able to reroot 10 more dolls in such a short time space, so I phoned Helene, who also kindly agreed to reroot 5 dolls. A little chat with Ingie and she promissed she would be able to do her own doll, so that left only 4 dolls for me to reroot.

Of course a convo doll wearing a ball gown, wouldn't be complete withouth jewellery and some fun accesory, so I contacted Vicky, who had also designed the jewellery for last years convention doll.
She came up with the idea to use gemstones for the necklaces. We finally decided on a black gemstone Ritz inspired choker. She also made up a lovely bracelet to go with it.

As fun accesory I was inspired by last years Pippa convention doll, who had a fan.
Of course I couldn't do the same fan, as Daisy is 3 inch taller than Pippa, but some research on the internet and I found a way to create fans for Daisy.

Now only a couple more things needed to be sorted; footwear and a box.

A quick email to Jonny, who's very talented in drawing and he agreed to do the box design again this year.

The last thing to figure was footwear. The dresses had already arrived and looking at them we decided black sandals would be the best combination, only problem was how to get enough black sandals in a short time.
searches on auction sites didn't help much, and inventarisation with other members of the convention doll team made it clear original black sandals were not possible.
So the only way to go was figuring how to paint other sandals withouth the paint peeling off.
I used some plastic primer and after that enamel paint. While I was working on the first one I saw my little box with ruby red beads and decided on the spot to ad beads to the straps of the sandals.

Of course the dolls needed a little haircut after rerooting, and some styling:

When everything came together and Jonny had a good idea what it all would look like, he designed the box.

I went to the printer with it, and my husband cut out and assembled the boxes. 

In the hotelroom Helene did the major part on dressing the dolls and putting them into their boxes.

Here's the final result:

Daisy Convo 2013 Prize Table, Goodie Bag and more....

As stated in my previous post I've really had a brilliant time at the Daisy convo in Wimbledon.
I thought it would be nice to post some pictures of everything I got at the convo:

First of all the lovely T-shirt that I won from Ralph, by winning the quiz!:

Next the lovely Optimum outfit I managed to grab off the prize table (kindly donated by Jo):

And my other prize table wins;

a coaster (from Jo), a fridge magnet, Daisy note book (by Ralph) and 4 bags of reroot hair, donated by Melanie from retro dolls UK .

And then there was the goodie bag:

The calendar and Swiss Miss bar donated by Ralph, the coaster by Jo and the mug be Helene and me (it's printed on 2 sides, so will show it in another picture as well.

The paper doll and her outfits, by Jonny (inspired by his illustrations for the convo doll from this year and last year).

The postcard and the keyhanger by Ralph (pictures by my husband and me), fridgemagnet by Yvette, picture of rare outfits by Michelle, birthday cake and rice paper cake toppers by Claire, scatter cushion and perfume bottle by Louise, beautiful pendant by Vicky.

I had my OOAK outfit swap with Ralph, and got this lovely tulip inspired outfit from him:

And then there was of course the convo doll:

Mary Quant's Daisy dolls 40th anniversary Convention

Sunday 24th of March 2013 was the big day!
The day we celebrated Daisy's 40th birthday with a Daisy Convention in Wimbledon.

There was an exhibition of 40 years of Daisy, in which we tried to get together as many boxed dolls as possible, all in the outfits in which they were sold.

 

Jo´s Havoc collection

Our special guest was Joan Corlass, the illustrator of all the Daisy booklets. A very lovely and lively lady, who took her very special collection of Daisy doll items with her.


At 9 am we were ready to enter the room and to start getting everything ready.

Ralph introducing Joan Corlass

Around 11 am Joan arrived and told us all about her work on the Daisy doll booklets, the trade posters, how hard she had worked on the illustrations for the commemorative Brittania Daisy for the Queens silver jubilee, and many, many more things.........

Sweet Kate

Garden party

Just Dolly

The dolls in her collection still have the stains from touching them whilst she was at work(which I think make the dolls extra special!).

prototype baker boy?

the skirt Daisy is wearing in the stickerbooks

She was so happy to show off her collection and to let us take pictures of all of it.

Brighton Belle prototype

prototype hopscotch

knickers for paper dolls

 







 

black magic

on special request

All too soon it was time for her to go and we had a short lunch break.
 

group poto with Joan

Louise´s dolls

my dollies

a moment for chat

Helene´s lovely ladies

 

Ralphs own printed fabric

Jo´s fluff

Yvette´s sailor Daisy

2 Space Daisy´s (Yvette & Jo) and Mohican Daisy (me)

Yvette´s Finland Daisy

After that we started the prize table draw, on which I managed to get hold of a lovely MOC Optimum 

the prize table

fashion. 




 





Then it was time for the quiz, from our brilliant quizmaster Ralph. It wasn't all that easy (there's still one question I'm trying to find out about, lol!), but even though I hadn't been studying, I managed to win the quize. As a prize I got this lovely t-shirt with Daisy wearing Spot On, one of my very favourite outfits from my fashion diary!

Jo demonstrated how to restring a Dashing Daisy.













After that it was time for some more prize table draws and the presentation of the OOAK party frocks.

OOAK party frocks

 Finally we handed over the convo dolls and the goodie bags.

The official Convo doll group photo

 All too soon it was time to say goodbye!
We did have a lovely dinner at the pub next door to the hotel with some of the other attendees.