Barbie

Lydia's Dolls got a makeover

Tuesday, April 18, 2017


What do you think of the blog's new look? 

I quite like it personally! 
    
So here is the new blog, I've added a few new pages at the top of it if you want to check them out :)



 I also have moved, I'm in my new house which is awesome! 


Well keep smiling! I hope you like the new blog as much as I do!
Happy Doll Loving
Lydia

Clara's dress: Mattel
Chandler's romper: Me

Barbie

Just a quick hello!

Thursday, February 23, 2017

Hey guys just popping in and saying a quick hello! Lol i failed at my goal of trying to post on Sundays.. My life has just been CRAY-ZEE! Whelp I have a few posts planned because so much has happened lately! Toy fair news, American Girl new releases and more! Ahh just can't keep up! And I still need to catch up on Star Wars Rebels because I'm so behind! Well that's one of my problems anyway lol! Here's another photo dump and see you soon :)

Lol these photos were taken way back like September I wanna say... It's fun to see how my photos have changed ;) I think so anyway >.<






I just envy those people who can pull of workout gear casually.. *coughs* *cough* Apollo *cough*
Happy Doll Loving!
-Lydia

Barbie

Christmas, New Years & Spreading the love

Friday, December 30, 2016

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! I had such a wonderful christmas. My younger sister who went into surgery was able to come out the day before christmas so that was amazing. On christmas day we just stayed at home because my sister can't go anywhere in her condition. But it was really nice just hanging with my family and relaxing!

One of the best things about the christmas season is the spirit that everyone gets into. I decided to spread the christmas love and let my younger sisters take some doll photos whilst I was taking these christmas themed pics:)

The girls really enjoyed setting up little scenes and raiding the christmas tree for decorations use. And yes we were all in our pajamas with bad bed hair >.< 


My sister is in a cast on both legs but we improvised by placing dolls n it like a bench :)
The concentration was very real..
 I gave one the iPad and my other sister used my phone. 

My dolls were covered in tinsel, placed in the tree, surrounded by ornaments and it was great fun to share my hobby with my sisters and spread the love this christmas in a simple way.

I hope that you had a fantastic christmas with your family and friends! Have a great New Year! 
Here's to an amazing year in 2017! *raises glass*


Happy Doll Loving
Lydia 
PEACE OUT 2016!

Barbie

My doll Halloween costumes 2016!

Saturday, November 05, 2016

Hello! Well last weekend/Monday was Halloween! I've never celebrated Halloween before and I have never been a fan of all the scary ghosts and zombie stuff and my family don't celebrate that stuff either so we just dressed as princesses and when to a party with some friends. It was such a fun way to celebrate, except that my sister ate all my lollies so I made her go buy me a packet of them the next day. Anyway I sadly didn't dress up my 18inch dolls but managed to rangle 2 of my barbies into some costumes.

 First up is Oregon's costume. She was a black cat, I was going for the kinda 'wanting to dress up but didn't want to go all out and wear a tail and paws' So I made a little 'attempt of sexy' black dress and some cat ears made out of shared pipe-cleaners. I would say that I will do a tutorial but I really just winged making them. There is probably a tutorial on youtube somewhere :D

The ball of wool is just some yarn glued together, now I can't decide if I needed to make it bigger or smaller because the scale doesn't quite seem right? I can't figure it out



She has this ninja cat pose going on! Honestly I don't know what she's doing! 


Next is Chandler's costume. I love her in gold oh my gosh!! 


And I want to clarify, I don't take ballet so these poses are probably incorrect but they look cool right?!

I need to learn to make tights coz this skirt was getting a little bit short! Not gonna lie, I purposely took these pics from a higher angle or we were gonna have some problems >.<


So graceful!


And those are my 2 doll costumes I worked on for 2016! I personally did what Oregon did but I was a minion, so I had a denim skirt overall and a yellow t-shirt and I was set! Now that halloween is over we have a straight run until christmas, well you Americans have thanksgiving but lets just think about CHRISTMAS!!!
I hope you enjoyed seeing these costumes, which was your favourite?
Happy Doll Loving!
Lydia 

Barbie

TUTORIAL: Getting your barbies to stand on their own

Sunday, October 23, 2016

Hello my lovelies! Wow this weekend has just flown past me, I had a flu all weekend and my younger sister has been in hospital (but she's ok now) at least it's labour weekend and I have Monday off from school! YAS! So I decided to show you how I got Chandler to appear standing on her own :) 


This was my first time taking photos on a beach and it was really hard to deal with the blazing sun, lucky I found patches of cloud. But they were very over saturated so I had to fiddle around in the editing, but i LOVE how they came out. 
I was going for the tourist poster vibe with the lady walking along the waterfront but her sandals in her hands, I could have gone down to the water but I really couldn't be bothered walking that far! haha
But how did I get her to stand like that? Magic? Well let me tell you some things.
For me doll and toy photography is all about the illusion, making the doll seem to come alive! Making her hair be in that perfect place (though my dolls always have flyways, I'm working on that) etc..
So in the past I have used a wire that I wrap around the dolls waist and then blue-tack it to the ground but I don't recommend that because when editing it out of the pic it got a bit distorted.. Anyways i have recently gone and tried using Kebab sticks and i've had some great results ;)

So here are some unedited pics showing how I got the doll to stand up, now if you have photoshop you can usually photoshop the stick out (thats what I do when I'm getting frustrated and can't get the angle quite right) But if you don't have that kind of software DON'T PANIC! As I said earlier, it's all about the illusion, 
The sun was a bit of a pain. But I put the kebab stick up dress and rested it in the small of her back, that's where I find you can get the most stability. 
1. When using the sticks you want to think about it being another leg, look and see which way the doll is falling and position the stick to where the doll is off balance (Or if one of the legs it up or not touching the ground, then make the stick become the 'missing' leg)  
2. Now if you took the photo from this angle and didn't have photoshop then everyone is gonna see the stick and it ruins the illuison, but fret not! Notice what happens when I scuttle 90 degrees to the left (A quarter circle).


WOAH! Where'd the stick go?! How is she standing?! And that my children is how to wow an audience :)
Her front leg is actually hiding the stick so there is no need for a crazy editing system like photoshop!
  Cool huh?!

Now if you look closely at how she's holding the shoes you may notice what I used to get them to stay in her hands... BLUE TACK! My actual savior!  But I will talk about that in another tutorial


I hope you enjoyed this tutorial and found it helpful! It will work for any smaller doll that the kebab stick can bear the weight of. Now if you take photos of larger dolls (like AG dolls or the larger monster high dolls) the same rules apply, but don't use a kebab stick. I use a metal skewer. But if you like I will make another post with some tips I have found when exploring my larger doll photography.


Now please, I am no expert, I am just a crazy girl with a camera and some dolls but I have picked up a few useful tricks along the way and wanna to share my (minimal) knowledge with you guys. So please comment down below if you have any questions about this post or future tutorials. I will make a more in depth post in the future when i have experimented a bit more :) 
Happy Doll Loving!
Lydia 

Barbie

Wrapped in dreams...

Monday, September 26, 2016

agh sorry bout the quality you can click on the pic to make it bigger :-*
Hi guys sorry for missing my Sunday post yesterday, my illness has gotten worse the last few weeks and I'm kinda snowballing. So I had some photos I took a while ago and wanted to share because I started to experiment with indoor photography.


Now I thought it would be fun to wrap her up in ribbons and as I was doing this I was thinking about dreams and passions. I think specifically my sister's dream of being a ballerina (hence why June is in a tutu) and being wrapped in a dream.. Yeah kinda random but that was what I was going for! Haha 
And the idea of not just thinking about dreams but actually pursuing them, mm that's just been some brain food I've been chewing lately!


I haven't taken many photos this week but I have been building some miniatures and working on a project for my dad which is really fun and I'm planning on building an room/diorama thingy so that I can set up rooms and practice more 11" indoor photography like that! I'll try document that and tell ya how it goes!
Hope you all have a fabulous week!
Happy Doll Loving
Lydia




Barbie

An ornament inspired project (Part 3) Oregon & The Bunny

Sunday, September 04, 2016



Alrighty guys this is Part 3 of An Ornament Inspired Project! If you haven't read Part 1 & 2 click on the numbers and go check them out! 

Bad quality progress pics for this post too, but not a too bad one of Oregon is start us of eh?
smile for the camera honey!

The Doll
Fun Fact; I actually purchased Oregon on my first and only trip to a Target store when I visited the US last year! So she's pretty cool :) But I chose her for this look because I wanted a bit of diversity in my models for this project and also she looked REALLY nice in the pink! Like really nice :D


The Fabrics
I didn't have trouble choosing the fabrics for this dress, my sister had some scraps of the hot pink left over from when she made pillows last year and I bought this cute floral one a while ago and found it in the bottom of my fabric box. They both just sing together so they were a match!

The Muse


As you can see this little bunny was so dirty! Like gross! But I actually didn't clean her before making the dress, no idea why i guess I couldn't be bothered honestly, and I didn't realize that there was actually purple flowers in her flower basket! I didn't incorporate and purple into the dress and now you know why ;-*

I cleaned her the same way I did the fox, just warm water a bit of hand soap and a clean toothbrush and VIOLA! All shiny!
The Design
Some of the things I wanted to take from the ornament and add into the dress:
1. FLOWERS! Loving the flowery feel I was getting from this bunny!
2. The colours I was gonna use were pink and white.
3. The vibes I was getting/ thoughts that were going through my head
~relaxed
~ picnic
~ barefoot
~flowery
~ spring
~graceful

I cannot draw for the life of my I know.

Now it may seem weird that I used words like picnic, flower, graceful but I think that's just the way  my brain works! I'm just giving you guys a peek inside my head with these posts ^.^ But I used these words when I was sewing and setting up the photoshoot and it really helped me bring in character and such.. Yeah..

The Hair
As you can see from the design, I had multiple ideas for what to do with her hair, I was going to try make a flower crown coz guys I love flowers crowns like I want so many flower crowns for my dolls its not funny, I need to learn to make them! So I think that will be a project for another week!

But if you read the making of Apollo's outfit you would of known I had a bit of trouble with the headscarves but the universe must have wanted Oregon to have a headscarf because first try, I tied a piece around her head and it looked fabulous!
(Well it was late so I couldn't be bothered making it look legit but I liked how it turned out!)

Also I always have Oregon's hair in a big bun, that's just her signature hairdo and it works! So I am very happy with the way her hair came out!

 Accessories
And also right from the start I knew that she wasn't going to be wearing shoes with this outfit because I was going for the relaxed, sitting on the lawn look, I don't know she just wasn't going to wear shoes ok!
Now i wish I had a doll picnic basket because I wanted to set up a little picnic photoshoot
 but i did my best :) 
She kept the brackets that she had when I bought her just to jazz up her outfit but I was going pretty minimal on the jewelry.



It took me 3 photo attempts to finally get nice photos of Oregon in this dress! I went out on 3 separate occasions and they all looked really off, or the editing just didn't look right. I used some of them in these posts but you know when some photos don't just click with you? That was happening with me.
But I needed to get this post up so I though it I just merge them all together we should be good! Lydia's logic :)
And that brings us to the end of Part 3 of An Ornament Inspired Project, I had such fun making these dresses and they were a challenge too. Which one was your favourite?

Or Oregon's?
Check out Apollo's post here



























I thought this would be the end of an ornament inspired project but my dad handed me 2 new ornaments a few days ago! I'll show you in other a future post I can't get the photo over! Maybe I'll try make a outfit for an American Girl doll next time

Haha but don't worry it will be a few weeks before a get those posts up!  I have other posts planned! This will probably be a continuous thing I'll try group all these posts together under a Label. I need to sort that situation out! Ok enough rambling! Goodnight my lovelies!
Happy doll loving
Love Lydia


Barbie

An ornament inspired project (Part 2) Apollo & The Fox

Saturday, August 27, 2016



Righty ho! This is part 2 of my little series that I'm doing called An Ornament Inspired Project. If this is your first time reading this, go read PART 1 to find out whats going on and then come back to this post. But today we are gonna be discussing how I created Apollo's look.

(Again with the iPod pics, I'm sorry next time I do one of these projects i'll make an effort to take half decent work in progress pics)


The Doll
So Apollo was actually a thrift store find, and when I was creating this dress I just looked up at my doll shelf and she just screamed "I'M THE PREFECT ONE FOR THIS LOOK" and thats basically how I chose who I was gonna use as the model for this dress.


So for both of these dresses I was going for the retro vibe, 1950's (hopefully the right era) So I had the dress pattern now I needed to look at my muse and find out how I was gonna do this. 

He was so dirty oh my gosh! A bit of warm water and scrubbing with a toothbrush cleaned him up nicely.
The Muse 

The main thing that I wanted to incorporate into my dress design was:
1. the outfit needed to be pale blue outlined by dark blue to match his sailor costume.
2. I wanted to add a little bit of red in there, to represent his life floatation device, oh my gosh I can't remember the name of that thing..

The Design
So now I had kinda planned it out, I attempted to sketch up a deign
 
So the colours I wanted to work with,
Red, Navy blue, Sky Blue. white

Now I didn't want it to look exactly like the ornament so I decided that the dark blue/ outlining fabric will be floral. To add a bit of femininity to the outfit. 
(Hahaha can you see how I've spelt the word femininity on the design! Go Lydia! You can spell! )

The Hair
So I brainstormed a few ideas for how I wanted her hair to look like. I wanted to add the splash of red as a hair accessory and I tried the headscarf look but it looked really off..

google images
google images
google images



I played around with different headscarves but none of them were tooting my horn. So I eventually tied a small bit around her neck as a neckerchief and it was just perfect!
But with a little bit of toothbrushing her hair went into this nice curl and some sunny's ontop really helped the look!


Fabrics

For choosing fabrics, I had a light blue in mind. And I knew I was going to use that for the main dress so I looked through my fabric box and found a floral fabric that I liked that look off for the contrasting/bordering material.
I actually used left overs from what I used to make Cas's sundress in this post.



Now for choosing the red fabric. I only wanted a small thing made out of red. Keeping with the retro theme, I made a simple neck scarf.  Because as you know headscarf didn't work out for me.

I decided on the solid red this time because the spots were rather large for what I was wanted to sew, maybe another time spotty.


Accessories 
Now came my favorite bit, adding accessories! 
I found a red barbie purse and it was perfect! 
The pair of sunglasses really just make the look so me personally :)
And I left the earrings that she was originally with because they are super pretty! 


Well that brings us to the end of the making of Apollo's fox inspired outfit! I actually had so much fun making this! And I have a really like 4th of July BBQ feel from this outfit! Did you guys get those vibes? i did. Whelp hopefully I'll have Oregon's up in the next week! :D
Please if you have any question or suggestions leave them down below! :-*
Happy doll loving!
-Lydia

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