Spring 2010 Doll Giveaway Handmade Item!

Hopefully by now, you all know that our Spring 2010 Doll Giveaway is currently happening. If you don't know what I am talking about- Click Here! and be sure to enter your name by May 31st, 2010. The lucky winner will be named on June 1st, 2010.

So what is this post about? Well, for (almost) every doll that we give away we also include a handmade item from one of the many talented seamstresses that we talk about on this blog. This time, we decided to commission a unique item for the giveaway. Next time we will probably do some Liberty Jane separates for the Summer 2010 Doll Giveaway.... but for now, we are still working on Spring.....

We found this picture of a dress created by "Another Space" for Ball-Jointed dolls, or BJDs as they are sometimes known, at the Dollmore.net online store.


BJDs usually have some amazingly awesome clothing options available for them all across the Internet. Why? Well they are collected all over the world by women, men, and children--- creating a rather large, diverse market for many types of BJDs and many types of BJD clothing. Hence, BJDs and their clothing can be manufactured by many different high-end companies all over the world-- unlike AG dolls which are trademarked and can only be made by AG. And in turn--- high-end, mass-manufactured clothing for AGs can then only really be made by AG.

So the heart of this issue is: Many people would/could buy a $75.00 outfit for their $400.00 Limited Edition BJD.... but how many people would/could buy a $75.00 doll outfit for their $100.00 AG doll? Probably not as many, and so doll clothing companies (besides AG) don't tend to create a diversity of high-end, AG-sized clothing to rival that of the BJD world. But yet, the Liberty Jane Spring Line sells for that much and more consistently. The answer to all of this (in our opinion) is this: Foster more of an AG adult collector community and one will be able to sell a lot more high-end, expensive clothing for AG dolls. Hmmm... deep thoughts...now my brain hurts....

As much as we'd love to collect BJDs as well as AGs, we can only really afford one dolly obsession at a time. Heehee. So when we found this really cute Another Space BJD dress, we thought: "Hey, why don't we ask someone to make it as an AG dress?" It is our homage to Another Space, à la AG.

So who do we ask to make it??? Etsy seller Doll Closet immediately sprang to mind, so we asked her if she was willing to dive into this unique project. And she was! So she made us two dresses, one to keep and one to giveaway. Our giveaway dress is being modeled today by our Sundari, so you can see what it would look like on Sonali (one of the giveaway choices). And our own dress is being modeled by Marvelous Me, Nora Demington. I get to show you a unique look courtesy of Doll Closet, Liberty Jane, and Etsy seller Pirate Camp....but we will get to that later....

First, here is Sundari in the purple, black and white dress for the giveaway.....

The following pics are of Marvelous Me in my dress and accessories. The hat is a custom-made creation from Etsy seller Pirate Camp, specifically crafted to go with this dress! The "belt" is the black raffia tie from a Liberty Jane package (heehee). The striped leggings are from Etsy seller Doll Closet, currently available in her shop. And the boots are from Liberty Jane. Looking at these pics, I just realized the dress might look pretty cool with a black tee or tank top under it too... hmmm, something fun to think about for future photo shoots..... Anyway, here I am looking awesome!

And our final pics for today: Sundari and I looking contemplative in our fantastic duds! :)

Hope you like this custom-made dress as our Spring 2010 giveaway item! And big "Thank Yous" go out to Doll Closet and Pirate Camp for working with us on these projects!!!!

Post on Poll Counts

Okay, so this isn't a very exciting post, but we wanted to list the vote numbers so everyone would know our plans for any future Doll Giveaway. And we wanted to report on which time period our little Rebecca will be living in. :)

For our "Which Doll Should We Give Away Next?" polls, here is the final tally's top numbers:

Rebecca - 59 votes
Sonali - 44 votes
Ivy - 39 votes
Ruthie - 33 votes
#21 - 33 votes
Josefina - 24 votes
#29 - 21 votes

With the upcoming new JLY release on September 3rd, your "wants" may change for doll giveaways, but we'll stick to Rebecca as our next giveaway at some point. ;)

As far as our own Rebecca, 45 of you wanted her to live in the modern time period with me, Nora- so your wish is granted! She will now be Rebecca Isaacke- a school chum of us Demington sisters!

She has been renamed Rebecca Isaacke (instead of Rebecca Rubin) as a tribute to the first documented Jewish woman in the Virginia colony, and hence one of the first Jewish women to live in what would eventually be the United States of America.

In the future our Rebecca will be modeling some modern clothing here at The Doll Wardrobe- probably some nice Back-to-School autumn outfits - in recognition of her new identity. :)

Thank you for voting in the polls everyone!

October #25's Wonderful New Home and Friends!

...Three posts in one day! Yikes! I guess I am trying to get as much into the blog as possible before school starts up again. ;)

After being sealed in her cardboard box and being hauled around by UPS personnel, the August Doll Giveaway October #25 is now enjoying her new home with Jane M. and has been officially named Toby! How cute is that name? So cute!

As you can see, in this post we have many lovely pictures, taken by Jane, of Toby with her new dolly friends. And we even get to see a couple of the girls wearing the Etsy seller suzymstudio outfit we included with the dolly prize.

Jane has captured some beautiful outdoor shots, which is awesome because Penny here is too paranoid to let us go outside for photo shoots in our handmade clothing. "There's dirt and bugs and grass that could make stains!" Yeah, she's kind of uptight about that kind of stuff. Heehee.

Thank you so much for sharing these pictures with us Jane!
They are super-duper-wonderful!

Announcing the Winner of the July 2009 Doll Giveaway!

Hi there everyone!

Penny pulled a name out of the bucket at midnight July 31st- today- and now it's time to announce a winner! Out of over 150 names......

Jane M. has won the October #25 and two outfits!

Congratulations Jane! We hope you love your new #25!


And for the rest of our readers, please don't despair that you didn't win the October #25. We will be having more giveaways very soon. Maybe even a handmade outfit giveaway for August!

In addition, Penny will probably be doing another doll giveaway because this was quite fun. (And honestly, our house in Badger's Wood is getting overcrowded with all these dollies here; so it would be fun to buy another doll just to giveaway to a lucky reader again.)

So keep checking back to The Doll Wardrobe for more giveaway fun and more reviews of handmade doll clothing!

Thanks for entering the July 2009 giveaway everyone!

Doll Giveaway Bonus Handmade Outfit!

Here it is: the outfit we will be giving away with our October #25 at the end of July!

If you haven't already placed your name into the drawing for the doll and 2 outfits, please go to our post here to read more! A winner will be chosen on July 31st, 2009.

In addition to the #25, with the younger-looking face mold, and her Just Like You Meet outfit, we will be including the outfit you see below in the photos. It was purchased from Etsy seller suzymstudio. Click here to visit her shop and see some of the neat things she has for sale!

The winner will receive the black halter top, patterned skirt, black belt, market bag, and headband. All in all, it is a pretty snazzy modern outfit that is quite versatile. You can certainly mix and match the pieces of the outfit with other parts of a modern wardrobe. Plus, it looks quite smashing on the October #25!

On Wednesday I will post about our new handcrafted friend that was created by Penny and Derek just for us! His name is Ludwig Waldemar Horst the Sock Monkey. As you can probably guess, he is a sock monkey! No, he is not a handmade doll outfit like we usually show you, but we thought it would be fun to share him on our blog! See you soon!

Another Thought on the Doll Giveaway

Just had another question that I should address....

If you are worried that we didn't get your comment for the Doll Giveaway and your name is not entered, please leave another comment on that post with your email address so we can assure you that we got your name.

You don't have to leave your email address in a comment unless you are worried that we don't have your name.

Sorry we can't publish the blog comments to reassure everyone that we are getting their name. We just didn't want everyone worried that their full, real name was sitting out there in the comments for everyone to read.

Where do I find Jack Skellington Chucks?

The title of this post was a question I got today from someone entering our doll giveaway. I forgot to tell y'all where I got Stella's new shoes. Duh.

Adventures in AG, our guest reviewer, told us where to find them, so we will pass along the info to you! If you are looking for dolly-sized Chucks- the best place to find the Jack Skellington type is at the Ebay store of releaserain. Go here to find some for yourself!

You can also find a lot of American Girl-sized clothing, socks, shoes, and wigs at the main 18" doll section of the releaserain shop here.

Releaserain ships from Hong Kong. So don't worry too much about a package being slow. They ship by airmail, which is fast, but not lightning fast. Also, we have never had any problems with our orders from them. We highly recommend the store!

And finally, if you haven't already entered for the doll giveaway, please go here and read about it to see if you are interested.

Doll Giveaway Update and Melody Valerie Custom Dress

Hello again readers!

Just wanted to keep you up-to-date on any comments and questions that I should probably address here about the July 2009 Doll Giveaway!

1) Thank you to Terri of Etsy shop terristouch for announcing this July Doll Giveaway on the American Girl Playthings Board. It's good to know more people are reading the blog and might be lured into buying handmade!

2) The new "younger" or more "innocent" face mold began to appear in the late summer/ early fall of 2008. Why it is being used, we don't know. How often? We don't know that either. But we do know that it has appeared on more than one #25. Sorry we don't know more. It is kind of a mystery to us, but people on the boards may know a lot more than we do. :)

Lastly, I wanted to address the hard work of the Melody Valerie Couture Studio. Please see their latest post here for proof that they can work dolly miracles. Penny found a picture of a lovely 1950s party dress and asked the MVC Studio if it was possibly reproducible in doll scale- and not in certain colors. (Because Penny is really quite picky sometimes.) And waaaalaaaa! Faster than you can say Red Roses Ran Rampant Recently - the dress was made and ready to be shipped!

They do really work miracles at Melody Valerie Couture Studio and we highly recommend that you look at their spring/summer line of dresses at their Etsy shop here. Before you know it, these dresses will be sold out and the new fall/winter line will be released! So act now!

p.p.s. About the Doll Giveaway

To answer some more questions and comments...

1) Penny will ship the doll anywhere in the world. So feel free to enter even if you are in Canada, or Britain or....or France...or Australia or....ok, I can't think of anymore countries right now...brain is on summer vacation....

2) Even if Penny knows you already have a #25 doll, you will still be entered in the drawing if you send us your full name via the comments in our original Doll Giveaway Post. Don't worry about that! Everyone's name will go into the bucket and it will be completely random. :)

3) The name will be chosen from the bucket on July 31st! And announced the same day!

p.s. About the Doll Giveaway

Hello again!

To answer a reader's question: we need both your first and last names because if we get more than one of the first names we won't be able to clarify who is who during the names-in-the-bucket process. So it's just to help us during the name-choosing process.

For example if we get Sarah, Sarah, and Sarah entering...we don't really know which Sarah is which. Hope this helps to clarify! And don't worry- none of your comments will actually be posted on the blog. So no one will know what your full name is besides Penny. :)

Keep those questions coming!

The Amazing Doll Giveaway of July 2009!

No, you didn't misread the post title- we are in fact giving a doll away at the end of this month! To one of you Doll Wardrobe readers!

Whaaaa?

Ok, so "Adventures in AG," our guest reviewer, had come up with the idea to give away a handmade outfit occasionally to our readers. But now she is moving across the country and her idea was put on hold. However, we have this doll here that we'd like to give away to one of you, with her Just Like You outfit (shown in the pictures below), the "Fun with Your Doll" book, and a brand-new handmade outfit. So we are sort of borrowing our guest reviewer's idea for a little while and putting our own spin on it.

Whoooo?

What doll are we giving away? A #25 Penny purchased on October 11, 2008 to play the role of Stella Grant. (See the first picture below.) Honestly, when Penny opened up the AG dolly box it was one of the most disappointing dolly box openings of her life. Stella just didn't look like the Stella Penny had in her head. But she couldn't decide whether to return the doll or not. Who would be Stella if she returned the doll? So she used the #25 for modeling some clothing, but most of the time "Stella" was sleeping in her room/box (like a typical teenager).

Months later, while browsing the American Girl Playthings board Penny discovered that some dolls were being made with a slightly different classic face mold! And guess what- our October #25 has this new face mold! That is why she didn't look "right" to Penny.

After Penny learned this, she had to decide whether or not to try and get a new #25 without the different mold. So she broke down and ordered a second #25. Yes, she is crazy. CRAZY. But this new #25 has the "right" face mold! Penny couldn't have been happier! (Plus, her eyes were even and the same size! Yippeee!)

This brings us to the October #25. Yes, we have had her here for several months but she isn't really "Stella" and it would be slightly silly to have two #25s in the same house. There are already too many dolls here and a huge line to the dolly loo. ;)

So are you looking for a #25 with the "new/different" classic face mold? If so, you can get one for free from us! You don't even have to pay shipping! Just leave a comment to this post with your first and last name. There will be a names-in-a-bucket drawing on July 31st and one winner will be chosen!

Feel free to ask us questions in the comments as well. No one else besides Penny and I should be able to see them, if I switched the settings properly. (I'm not really a blogging wiz...) So ask anything! But be sure to leave us your name if you want to win the doll!

Here is a guide to the pictures below!
First four photos: The October #25 which we are giving away to one lucky reader!
Last two photos: The new #25 on the left being compared to the October #25. Our new Stella is wearing striped socks and her new Jack Skellington the Pumpkin King chucks. New Stella looks taller because she is wearing sneakers, not because October #25 is really short. ;)

Can't tell the difference? Neither can I, but Penny insists they are different and keeps showing me the AG Playthings thread to prove it. Heehee.

So please enter our drawing if you want the October #25 and feel free to ask us questions! Sometime in the next few weeks we will do another post showing off the handmade outfit that will come with the doll. So stay tuned folks!