New Hats In Store

Dear Jill,

What a palava with Quinns eye mech! I can see now where it was put together wrong. I'm glad you got her sorted out, and that she can now look down! It adds so much character to them, doesn't it!

This weekend I have listed 3 new hats for the EssHippo Blythe Etsy shop!

Autumnal Colours Mesh Slouchy Hat

I used some more of Wilkinsons lovely variegated yarn to make this hat - it's such nice stuff and the size of the hat make the colours repeat nicely :)

I Heart UK Pixie Hat

Inspired by all the London Olympics drama happening over here at the moment! I am tempted to keep this one...

Rainbow Mesh Slouchy Hat
A brighter ROYGBIV hat! It was lots of fun to make, picking and changing the colours

All hats are now available in the EssHippo Blythe Etsy Shop now!

Sarah -x-

Bent Bones

Dear Sarah,

Coraline and I are quite excited to see the Vampire5! She wants to know if your vamp will have fangs as wittle as hers.

I promised her no, so hopefully your girl will have nice full fangs. :E

I finally got my hands on some MSC and what a wonder it has made! I have pictures to upload of the new de-shined girls, but I want to share what happened with Quinn's innards first. When I was putting her back together, I noticed her white arch looked a bit funny.

Say what?

Then her eyes didn't close. I posted the picture on Flickr and people said it looked like I had put the eye mechanisms back together wrong. After feeling incredibly stupid, I took more pictures and posted them, because I've never removed the actual eye pieces themselves from the lid part.

Thank goodness for Flickr! Another Sarah, sglahe, the wonder woman behind Kaleidoscope Kustoms Kuties and Rag Bag Designs sent three reference photos for help:

Okay so this is what the rectangle at the top of the clip should look like. It just moves forward and clips on like this.

The clip should be this direction with the shorter parts of the rectangle on the sides...

This is the direction that your clip is and that is why it's extended out like that. You just need to rotate it around so the rectangular part is clipped the other way. The shorter sides of the rectangle go on the sides of the clip...not the top and bottom.

Turns out poor Quinn has a broken bone that can basically never be fixed unless I get a replacement white arch. I can still move her eyes, I just have to do it with my thumbs. So it's not a big deal; she just doesn't have a pullstring.

And she can look down and judge from above!

Sarah said I can share these pictures with our readers so hopefully it will come in handy!

Also, Quinn is sporting new hair.

No matter the hairs, always Quinn. ♥

She's now a bobbed brunette! I took the Simply Chocolate scalp from Hester/Zooey/Brooke and chopped it up. I adore it on Quinn. Now she's a three part hybrid...I guess not even a hybrid, she's like a puzzle girl. And she has a soft spot in my heart for it; she's become one of my favorites.

Currently, Quinn is made up of:

1. Simply Lilac face and back plate
2. Stella Savannah eye mechanism
3. Simply Chocolate scalp and dome
4. Licca Chan body

My little girl of many parts! 

Get those vampire pictures up ASAP! I'm so excited to see her!

♥ Jillie

P.S. Next: review of Margo Unique Girl, and why I'm glad I waited

Operation:Vampire Five

Dear Jill,

For a long time now I have wanted a vampire girl, and since seeing Coraline I know I DEFINITELY want one! She is so cute!!

My problem is I am too scared to buy a Blythe and customise it! Plus I don't have the money to spare if I get it wrong. But I also wanted to try something different from a Blybe/CCE, so I decided to customise a Jecci Five!

This is the girl I got from Ebay...


I chose her for her dress! Isn't it cute?! I want my vampire to have black hair, but again wanted to try something different from yarn. So I opted for mohair wefts, which I bought from Coolcat.

They all arrived in really good time, so I started straight away. My first big problem was trying to get the scalp off the dome - the scalp has flanges like a Blythe scalp and it was glued in...


After much forcing and prying, I got it free with minimal damage...


I removed all the hair, which was really well rooted...


...and prepared the mohair weft. This is what it looks like out of the pack...


I have never used either wefts nor mohair before, so this was a totally new experience for me. I figured it would be best to start at the outside edge of the scalp, and sew it in quite tight with extra strength cotton and a thick needle...


I got about half the scalp done in the first sitting, but had to stop when my thumb just couldn't take it any more! So I left it, and returned the next day.

I got it finished in the second sitting, and all in all it only took about 3 hours to complete the whole thing!


I would definitely use wefts again! It was so easy! At the moment it just looks like a big mass of black fluff...


Lol! I will style it when I put her all together again. I aim to pull it into little bunches!

I then moved on to the face up, which I will tell you about a little later on :)

Sarah
-x-