#7 - another bratz!
11/19/2024
you can never have just one!! now my meygan has a girlfriend - welcome to style it! jade. i got her from mercari because i had credit. i spent a lot of time scrolling through all the bratz on mercari (there are a lot) looking for the right one. i wanted a style that was very different from meygan - i didn't want them to blend together next to each other, and also i'm just a sucker for 'opposites attract.' well i don't know that they're opposites, but i like the juxtaposition of jade's tough chola look with meygan's moody glam. (i guess i just mostly didn't want two bratz whose colour scheme was brown-heavy, lol.)
anyway, i got jade for pretty cheap. she only has this outfit - not the jeans, takeout shirt, sandals, or bag. i'm fine with that, this is the styling i would have displayed her in anyway and the takeout shirt is a bit racially on the nose. the bag would have been nice, but i chose this particular listing because the headband was cuter than the bag lmao. if you full-size the images you can see she's got a few tiny marks on her face, a small lip chip, and various limb dents/gouges; she's very much a 21 year old doll. her hair is lovely though, after a very quick wash it's super soft even without conditioning. the elastics on her braids are disintegrating every time i look at them though. the only one where that's a problem is, i think the bigger braid was pinned like a headband? (that's how it wants to be on mine) but the elastic + any stitching came apart when i opened her. i have the braid just tucked under her fabric headband and it should be fine; the braid won't just dangle down with the rest though, it wants to go up.
#6 - goodwill sighting
10/27/2024
we went to goodwill while out doing errands on the off-chance that they would have a white turtleneck that i need for my halloween costume. they didn't, of course - but now that i got one at walmart, i'm sure the next time i'm at goodwill they'll have a million white turtlenecks, lol. i examined all of the bags full of dolls in the toy section and there weren't any interesting dolls; all modern cheap barbies and tons of elsas. (there was one bag that was a frozone in the middle of a bunch of naked princesses. good for him!) up at the front behind the counter, though, there was an interesting doll! looking her up, i see these called "japanese pose dolls," "bradley dolls," and "big eyed dolls," and they're from around the 1960s in japan. they're really cute, and i totally see how we got from these pose dolls to blythe to pullip. if this one has a specific name, i couldn't find it online, but i haven't been able to find a database/etc for them online; everything that comes up seems to be people selling them online. this girl looks like she needs a lot of cleaning which i'm not sure how to do, since it looks like the face/body are fabric, so i didn't buy her. if she's still there next time i go, maybe... if she'd fit somewhere on my bookshelf with those legs!
#5 - doll-related makeup
10/19/2024
another bratz-related package has arrived - the other main thing i collect is makeup. (and i will never make an archive of my collection because it would take so, so long... i use it all though! mostly!) this was the inspiration for looking at bratz on ebay. this is the yasmine lip liner + lipstick from colourpop's bratz collection that just came out! i chose yasmine because i remember always liking yasmine when i was a kid looking at bratz, and because her shades in the lip kit is the most "bratz" to me; the cool mauvey-berry with extreme frost/metallic (plus a dark brown liner). i'm really loving frost finishes right now so i'm glad colourpop finally came out with some, and what a great collection for it lol.
#4 - new doll!
10/16/2024
my package from ebay came today! the first bratz i've owned in probably at least 15 years, an original release xpress it meygan. very fall/october appropriate i think. she's got all her clothes/accessories aside from the belt and she was even a really good price. her beret doesn't have elastic like the picture implies though, so i just sort of balanced it on her head for a picture, lol. the seller fully entombed her in multiple layers of bubblewrap, ziploc bags, and packing tape and wrote FRAGILE all over the mailer. i was like... well bratz aren't really that breakable are they? she got a good bath though and some hair trimming.
#3 - setup complete!
10/14/2024
i finished setting up this whole site! all the dolls i currently have are all archived, with at least an icon picture, date of acquiring + release, and a blurb. in the case of my bjds, i also put more information about the sculpt/body/colour/wig/etc just because it's what you do. next order of business is to add in larger pictures of each doll as they actually look in my collection. but that's for another day. now i only have to update as more dolls come in!
#2 - update to previous
10/13/2024
okay, well, the person who bought mitzi messaged me back - she just sold her this week! crazy coincidence, bad timing. she didn't seem interested in the certificate really but i guess you wouldn't be if you didn't have the doll anymore. oh well, i'll keep it as a memento of a doll that i was jealous of E for having when we were young, lol. (and it was #300 of 600! a great number!)
also, weird thing i realized after writing the previous entry: there is a missing pullip from E's collection! the bin i dug through had a photo card for sacralita, who was notably not one of the dolls i received. i remember E having her though, and the photo card even has her 'new name' written on it in pen like E's other favourites do. how weird if that's the one doll she kept for herself - sacralita alone makes kind of a statement, i think, lol. i wonder where she is now??
#1 - old doll haul + interesting find
10/12/2024
four years ago, i received a huge bag full of miscellaneous Doll Stuff from my childhood friend E's mom. E and i had always played with dolls together as kids - barbies, polly pockets, playmobil, betty spaghetti, american girls, you name it. (she had pretty much the full range of every cool toy you could have as a kid; i lived vicariously through her, which is saying something since i also had a lot of cool toys!) our main game with any doll involved torture. collectible barbies were made to play 'survivor' on clotheslines in the basement, pollies were imprisoned in decorative halloween candle holders from joann's (known to our families as Polly Boilers), betty spaghettis were... well the normal way to play with them was kind of grim already wasn't it? this wasn't putting barbies on the grill - it was more psychological.
anyway, when i got into pullips ~2006, so did E. and as with all dolls, she ended up with more & fancier pullips than me. (for the record, we never tortured the pullips. idk why.) apparently E hasn't been into dolls for a long time, but given their price her mom had held onto them. finally, she ended up passing them along to me! well, first she dropped them off with my dad and then he surprised me with them at christmas time with my in-laws. i took the big bag into their guest room to see what dolls there were, already excited because i remembered what E had had... my eyes practically flew out of my head. right at the top of the pile, with complete stock + box, was another alice. another alice! she's like, really rare wtf! i didn't know E even had her!! and now i have her!! i freaked out, lmao. i think i staggered back into my in-laws' living room with her like, "she's rare... she's barely on ebay..." and my dad and spouse expressed polite interest.
the main point i wanted to talk about - there were a bunch of dolls in that haul, and i only kept alice for myself. the rest i ended up selling on mercari in 2021, along with some of my own original collection. (after my dad died it was hard to be as interested, so it was better for them to go to good homes.) one of those dolls was mitzi, who had a limited release of 600 units, and who found a new home for a reasonable price. well, today when i revisited the remaining 2020 Doll Haul Stuff i had packed away, i found mitzi's certificate of authenticity! i'm actually surprised i hadn't found it in the initial dig-through, or when i was gathering pieces up to sell. i messaged the buyer on mercari and asked if she wanted me to mail it to her, which is probably a little creepy after three years! i'll update if i hear back - i hope so! there were also a few of the custom postcards that came with orders from the valley of the dolls (my favourite doll retailer, long since shuttered) as well as all of the photocards from E's dolls. really - i'm shocked i hadn't pulled those out way back when, i would have sent them with the sold dolls. i wasn't in the best place mentally i guess. so it goes.
just for my own record keeping, these were the dolls that i received from E (not counting alice) and sold:
- mitzi
- little red riding hood
- holly golightly
- nahh-ato
- cornice
- raphia
- greggia