Melody Valerie Mint Vivacity

We finally get around to doing some individual posts on the dresses of the Melody Valerie Couture Spring 2010 Line. Woohoo! Now you already saw a lot of pics in the video we posted earlier, but these dresses are so neat that we wanted to give each a spotlight post.

The Mint Vivacity dress "features ‘applied’ stripes, made by stitching silk and grosgrain ribbons onto a solid green chambray base." And of course the Melody Valerie signature bow can be seen on each shoulder of the dress.

My first thought when I saw this dress was: "Those stripes must have taken so much work to sew on!"

We love the color scheme of this dress, two tones of green with the white- perfect for spring attire. And it would look great with a nice white bolero or sweater for cooler weather. Lira really enjoyed modeling this dress. She especially liked how the bodice was designed with all the ribbons going over the top of it and disappearing. So neat, pretty, and precise in the detailing.

Thank you MVC for this beautiful dress!

Close-up Shots of Three Dolls for Giveaway

Camera battery is working again!

Here are three pictures- close-up shots of the faces of the three dolls to choose from for the giveaway. One lucky winner gets to pick one of these beautiful dolls! Yippee!

Don't have a clue what I am talking about??
Click here to learn more about our Spring 2010 Giveaway!

Spring 2010 Doll Giveaway! Enter Here!

Ah-ha! We finally get around to the next giveaway! Huzzah!

We have a custom-order modern dress from Etsy seller Dollcloset in the works now to giveaway with one of three dolls.

Yes you read that correctly--- Our lucky winner will be able to choose from three dolls! Woohoo!

Here are your choices....
Sonali, Just Like You #21, or Kirsten Larson!

We will reveal the handmade item we will include with the doll once we receive it. :)

So now here are the important details: You must be 18 years old or older to enter this giveaway. If you are younger than that please have someone 18 years old or older, like a parent or guardian, enter herself/himself.

To enter, please write your full name and your email address as a comment to this post. It will not be published and only Penny will be able to see it. Winners will be drawn out of a hat, i.e. randomly picked. If you win, she will email that address to notify you and ask for your doll choice (from the three pictured in this post), and your shipping address.

The last day to enter the giveaway will be
Monday May 31st, 2010 and the winner will be announced
on Tuesday, June 1st, 2010.

Any questions??? Please feel free to ask. :)

The winner's doll of choice will be shipped to them brand-new, in-box with their original outfit and book. We wanted to put more pictures of the three dolls in this post, but the camera battery died during our photo shoot. :(

We will post more up-close shots of the dolls once the battery is charged, probably on Wednesday. :)

FYI:

1) There will only be one winner for this giveaway -- she/he gets to choose one of the above dolls to receive. The two left-over dolls will reappear in the next Summer 2010 giveaway. :)

2) We will ship to other countries (including the USA, of course). So if you live in Australia, England, Canada, and so on--- and you win--- we will ship the doll to you for free. No cost to you.

Skirt from L'Atelier de Sitara

So if you follow Sitara's blog then you know she made a skirt based off of one I showed here on The Doll Wardrobe when I was talking about Hot Topic clothing we'd love to see in dolly size. Click here to see Sitara's post.

We told Sitara that we'd totally buy one of them for ourselves, so she offered to make one for us. Yippee! And on top of that good news, she decided to open her own Etsy shop to sell some of her designs. Click here to visit the shop! There she is currently offering a gray version of the brown skirts she made previously, for herself and us.

When we received the skirt Susan spoke up right away and said that she wanted to model it. In order to show its versatility we paired it with a variety of tops: a long-sleeve ivory top from AG, a black jacket we purchased from Ruby Red Galleria (for a nice Gothic Japanese street-wear look), the green Liberty Jane military jacket, and a dark oatmeal poncho from Ebay seller Me And My Princess Boutique. The leg warmers you see in the pics came with this poncho. The "Coach"-esque purse is actually a human-scale lipstick case. We found it in a shop with several others which we grabbed and will eventually show you here on the blog as dolly purses. Heehee.

This photo shoot was a fun challenge to see what looked best with the skirt from our collection, without going overboard with 30,000 pictures. Though we do still have a lot of pics to share with you today. :)

So please enjoy the pics below!

And here is a shot of the gray version of this skirt which is
now being offered in Sitara's shop--- Ooooo, pretty!

Thank you for the great skirt Sitara!
We are so excited and happy to be your first customer!

Melody Valerie Spring Line 2010 Video

Okay, so what have we really been up to for the last three weeks? Wasting time on the Internet? Yes, mostly. But it was all for this silly idea that Penny got stuck in her head.

When she ordered the dresses from the Melody Valerie Spring Line this year she thought about how great it would be to make a slideshow of them with music for the blog. This was easier said than done, especially since we have never actually used the iMovie on our main computer.... uh, yeah. That was Problem Numero Uno...amongst many others...

Flash forward three weeks and we think we finally finished something worth presenting to y'all. Not Oscar-worthy material to say the least. But we hope this video is slightly entertaining and serves its primary purpose--- as a teaser to upcoming posts on the individual dresses of the MVC Spring Line 2010.

So without further ado, here are Kaya, Lira, Sundari and Katie spending their spring "shopping in Paris" for our latest photo-shoot......

Song credit: Rosemary Clooney's "April in Paris," FYI

Which dress would you like us to post about first???
Stripes Ahoy? Mint Vivacity? Tropical Sunshine?
Or Sweet Darling???

(If this isn't Epic Fail [i.e. our readers can't actually watch it due to technical difficulties or something we screwed up]- we will try to do something similar for the Liberty Jane Spring Line for 2010....)

p.s. Yes we created a Youtube Account to pull this off, but we won't actually be using it for comments, etc. So please comment on the blog as usual. We are only using Youtube as a hosting service as of this point. Thanks!

Update on Rebecca, Now Molly Hayes!

You remember when we posted about one of the three Rebeccas we gave away last year? Click here to check out the post.

Well, now we have another update from one of the other Rebeccas! Yay!

Christine received the non-wonky-eyed Rebecca, her accessories, and the white dress we got from Etsy seller MyOwnLittleWorldToo. She was super-excited to receive her prizes, but wasn't sure she would keep Rebecca as "Rebecca." Here is her story....

"I did end up fiddling with her character a bit, though I thought her book was adorable. She's now Molly Hayes, from the comic book Runaways. I've been wanting a doll based off of her for ages, and even tried it with a former Mia, but it didn't work out. I was thrilled to see how well Rebecca works for her, and it happened by chance! I put her hat on her, trying to figure out who she was, and the hat made me think of Molly, who wears ridonculous hats. So, then, I tried another hat on her, inspired by the hat worn by Jayne in Firefly, and it struck me how perfect she was! I did brush out her curls a bit, but I love her hair color, and the facemold is perfect.

Just some background on the character: Molly is a mutant, with superstrength! She's part of a superhero group that calls themselves the Runaways, who found out their parents were evil, and took it upon themselves to stop them. Best of all, Molly time travels a bit, including a brief stay in the early 1900's so Rebecca's meet outfit and the wonderful dress from MyOwnLittleWorldToo are still perfect for her!"

Here are some pics that Christine took recently of Molly!

And here is Molly with the genetically engineered dinosaur
known as Old Lace, another character from Runaways.

And FYI, Molly's shirt is Our Generation (the Target store doll line), the pants are generic and the jacket is from AG's Kickin' Back outfit.

Want to learn more about Runaways? Click HERE to read the Wikipedia article on this comic series from Marvel, and HERE to learn more about Molly Hayes.

Thank you so much for sharing this update and your pictures with us Christine! They are great!

Vintique Designs Regency Gown

What have we been up to since Saturday? Mostly spending too much time dressing and undressing ourselves in dolly clothes, but not actually taking enough pics for the blog. Blah. Once we get the outfit, hair, and accessories right we are sometimes too tired to then take the pictures! It takes a lot of effort to go through all of our stuff looking for the right shoes, etc. But we did manage to pull together this nice outfit today, mostly courtesy of Ebay seller Vintiquedesigns. :)

As you can see in the photos below, Elinor Dashwood is modeling a satiny Regency gown for y'all. It is a very nice peach and ivory dress that features a variety of inventive uses for lace: sleeves made of lace, lace over peach fabric at the hemline, lace accents on the waistline and center of the sleeves, and then a lace scarf to tuck underneath the neckline. I am certain there is a technical term for that neckline scarf thingy, but I can't seem to remember the word right now.... uhhhhhhhh..... fichu! Nope I didn't sneeze, that's what it is called- a fichu. ;)

When we saw this Ebay auction we knew right away it would look great on Elinor with her peachy lips and cheeks. To complete the satiny Regency look we added in a satchel purse from Etsy seller Terristouch. You can buy one of three different kinds (or all three)- by visiting this listing here. The choices are: peach and white, blue and white, and black with gold accents. They are pretty cool little drawstring bags and they work well for many different time periods.

Also, don't forget that Ebay seller Vintiquedesigns is also Etsy seller Vintiquedesigns56. Check out their Etsy shop by clicking here - where you can find some newly listed 1970s dresses, as well as other AG-sized doll clothing. :)

Enjoy our pics below!

Melody Valerie Round-Up!

Well, as most of you probably already know, the Melody Valerie Couture Spring 2010 line sold out almost over night. Many fellow bloggers were actually amongst those who purchased them, which is great! It is amazing how successful MVC has become even in the last 12 months, and we are happy we get to see so many of their dresses online at other blogs. :)

In today's post we attempt to do a "MVC Round-Up" of all the blogs out there that have one or more of the new Spring dresses. You have probably already seen these posts, but just in case you haven't I thought it would be cool to put them all in one place as a tribute to all of MVC's hard work this season.

If I am missing your blog or photo album with your spring 2010 MVC dress(es), please speak up in the comments! We'd love to hear your story too!

http://americangirlcouturereview.blogspot.com/2010/04/melody-valerie-couture-stripes-ahoy.html

http://chiffonlacedolls.blogspot.com/2010/04/melody-valerie-sweet-darling.html

http://karmasays.blogspot.com/2010/04/couture.html


And as a final thought tonight, if you want to see the work being done on our next custom project with MVC go here!

Drommer0's Alice in Wonderland

Well, this should really be called "Stella in Wonderland" -- as Stella is our resident Tim Burton fanatic and she asked that she be the one to model this Alice in Wonderland dress from Ebay seller Drommer0.

This light blue dress is based on the one Alice wears to the main party in the new Tim Burton movie. Of course when she ended up shrinking herself the dress loses its place as her main costume, but it reappears towards the end of the film. We recommend the movie to everyone, especially in 3-D.

In our pics Stella is holding the only white rabbit we have in our house- a figurine from Red Rose Tea. Heehee. We looked high and low for a stuffed toy white rabbit, but we don't actually have one here. Which is amazing since our house is full of useless stuff like that. ;) But we thought the figurine was a cute thing to be holding. Stella loves everything about her new dress-- the satiny brocade fabric, the buttons on the bodice, the bow that cinches the waistline and ties in the back, etc. She said it is quite the fun dress to model.

Not to be counter-productive for Drommer0, but there are more handmade Alice dresses available on the market than just her examples (she did sell more than one on Ebay). Etsy seller enchanteddesigner also sells a similar Alice dress, as well as other "Disney-esque" costumes which are pretty fantastic. Clicky the link to see the Enchanted Designer version.

Here are our pictures of Stella in Wonderland, courtesy of Drommer0. Enjoy!

Next Giveaway Soon, But Not Yet

We haven't decided when to do the next giveaway yet, just so anyone who is wondering knows the 411. Getting our hands on a MVC or LJC couture outfit for the giveaway isn't really going to happen as we are lucky enough just to get one of each outfit for ourselves, never mind two of something. As you know, there is a high demand for those dolly wearables!

So we are going to think about a new type of handmade outfit to giveaway and then move forward with the process. But first we have to get a little free time to work on it all.

Any suggestions from you readers as to what type of outfit you'd like given away with the next doll? Please feel free to speak up in the comments!

MIA

Sorry we were MIA! We had to go to Dallas/Fort Worth for awhile- for work and play, but mostly for work. We didn't even have time to go to the AG in Dallas. :'(

But we came back with some garden and flower pictures to share with you all! It is very nice in Texas- green and springy. Not like here in Badger's Wood where mostly everything still looks dead. Blegh.

Hope you enjoy the overly plentiful pics!

Here is our huge slideshow of les fleurs... 40 pics...

(Don't feel obligated to watch the whole thing---

only if you are craving images of spring, heehee.)