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

Barbie

An ornament inspired project! (Part 1- INTRO)

Saturday, August 20, 2016




Hi guys! So this past week I have been working on a project and I am really proud of it actually so this is the first part, its just an intro. This will span over maybe 3 posts?.. Yeah so lets get started!
You may be wondering what I'm on about and basically I attempted to create 2 dresses/looks inspired by a ornament.
I am not a seamstress,
or an artist
and this was the first time doing anything like this. 
I'm trying to teach myself to be more creative.. Yeah still working on that.

Here's the 2 dresses!

So this began when my my dad went away for a week on business and bought me back 2 small ornaments from a thrift store! I was thrilled and thought they would be perfect for my project. 

I'll talk about each individual one in their assigned posts but in this post I want to talk about the actual sewing of the dresses because let me tell you. 
It was a slightly humbling experience.

So I haven't had miles of sewing experience but what I have had, has kinda gone pretty well, I've picked up the pattern/instructions easily or whatever and I'm proud of the results. It'll only take me 1 draft try and then the next few I'll be happy with.
Well that was NOT THE CASE for me this past week. I wasn't being cocky with myself but I think in the back of my mind I was like; "This will be easy!" 
It wasn't.

I bought a cheap pattern of etsy for an 60's retro dress, and blouse and trousers for barbie doll. It was really good but I found it really difficult with the scale (my prev. sewing experience is with AG (18') dolls). And it was asking me to hem a collar that was like a millimeter long and I was like,  Hella NOOOO!! I'm not that good yet! (slight exaggeration but you know what i mean) 

(BEWARE OF SOME EXTREMELY BAD QUALITY PICS COMING UP, YOU CAN THANK MY ANCIENT IPOD TOUCH)

So every night for a week I would sit at my sewing machine and sew a dress. And they would look horrible.


I tried different types of fabrics and patterns.


 Slow improvements...


And finally by the end of the week I had figured out that if I iron the heck out of the fabric and make an (attempt of an)  bodice lining it gives it a nicer finish :) Well for me anyway!

It also goes to show persistence and practice people!!

So it took me 10 tries to get to a place where I happy kinda happy with the product. The dresses I've made are not perfect, there are stray threads, bulky gathers all that jazz but I am so proud of my self that I don't even care!

Here's a dress thats not part of this project but I'll take pics of it sometime!
And I'm very proud of myself because even though I didn't get it the 1st or 2nd or 3rd or 4th or 8th time I did not shed a single tear of frustration! 



So many dresses!!! 

So I had found a light at the end of my hall and decided to now attempt to sew the actual dresses I had planned to sew all along!

This was a humbling week but I have achieved alot! I'm like sky high right now!! 

In the last post I showed you 2 pics, hinting this project. Does it make a little bit more sense now? Which dress would you like to see first?  I will show you the design and a little bit of the thought process that went into them!


Apollo in a Sailor Fox inspired look?




Or Oregon in this pink flowery dress?

Happy doll loving!
-Lydia 

AG

Caroline looking fierce and feminine and just absolutely slaying

Tuesday, August 16, 2016

Howdy! Hope you are all doing well! Lol the title of this post is literal what I think every time I see these photos! Mwa ha ha  Caroline is life oh my gosh!
I teased a photo from this shoot in my last tutorial on how to do the hairstyle that caroline is wearing and now I present you with the whole shoot! 

No if you follow me on insta you would have seen a few pics already so don't spoil it for the others! Lol I'm joking, anyway, she is dressed very different than I've ever done before. 
I have never drawn or added anything to my dolls before so this was a big step for me placing rhinestones on her! 







It was so funny! I had so many thoughts going through my head when I was dressing her for this shoot:
~ I'll just give her a minimal necklace, that will be nice,
~ Ooo that will make a cool bracelet!
~ Hey I found those rhinestones I bought ages ago!
~ Omg what if I put one on her temple it would be like so chick.
~ Oh ok she now has rhinestones all up her arms. Oh and now on her face.
~ I'm kinda going for a tribal princess theme, I do hope I'm not being culturally rude by doing this.
~ Is this ok?! Will they come of?! Oh whew they do!
~ She looks like that character from Game Of Thrones that Emilia Clarke plays. Wait how do I know that I don't even watch that show?! 
google images
~ Damn she looks preeety! Oh caroline stop it! 


Her necklaces and bracelet is actually just my (stolen) sister's necklaces wrapped around so that the pendants are hidden, clever eh?! 












That last one is probs my favourite! But I am so in love with these photos so sorry that a lot of them look the same but I just wanted to dump them all on ya! I'm am planning of having much fewer photos in my shoot but have the dolls in different poses or whatever.. It'll be harder work but I want to achieve that with my doll photography!!  (Hope that makes sense..)
(Also excuse that velcro sticking 
at the front of her dress, so profesh!) 
~

 I am working on something which has been so fun and cannot wait to share it with you!!! Should I share a pic....
mmm... 
ok I will but I'll make them small so its kinda hard to see..

Have any ideas what I could be up to?


Happy doll loving!
-Lydia 

AG

Hair Tutorial: 'Simple Beautiful Updo' for 18" dolls

Thursday, August 11, 2016




Ok guys so I have been kinda procrastinating writing this post all week and I don't know why! I am so pumped to share it with you so I'm finally bashing it out for you late at night while my parents think I'm asleep (lol rebellious) 

So if you'd like to learn that beautiful simple hairstyle pictured above for your 18 inch doll like American Girl or Our Generation etc.. (Im using AG's Caroline for this tutorial) just follow the pic-torial below! 
I'm not even joking, this undo is so easy you can do it with your eyes closed!!


1. You are going to need a curly haired doll, preferably longer hair :)

2. Must have bobby pins!

3/4. (these are optional) Decorative hair clips/accessories. In this tutorial I used my sparkly butterfly hair clips but in a previous post I used a flower crown with this hairstyle and it looked just as nice, you choose. But you can always go solo if you want 😘

5.  Start by taking a small section from the front of your doll's face, not all the way to her ear but maybe a centimetere of hair.  

6. Split that piece into 2 strands and twist them around each other, you can chose to do a rope twist or just a twist them together.

7. Now using a bobby pin, pin that twisted piece of hair to the other side of her head. Not super tight but as high as you want it to sit. (just keep in mind there will be 3 more sitting beneath it).

8.  Again this is optional, but you can pull on the twist to make it puffier and bigger for a more messy look or you can leave the twists how you had them.

9. Choose another section from the opposite side of the head from which you started, and repeat steps 5-8. Try lay the twisted strands over the bobby pins of the previous twist to hide them as much as possible.

10. Now you have 2 twisted bits of hair pinned one on top of the other, you are going to repeat this again until you have a total of 4 twisted strands.

11/12. This is what I call the 'first variation' of this hairstyle. You can leave the hair like this, it gets it out of your dolls face and then its quite pretty and romantic at the back. Add some clips for decoration but if you want to make it into an updo keep reading.

13. Divide the remaining hair (roughly) into 3 sections.

14. Take one section and wrap it around your finger so it bundles up and then pin in underneath the twists we made earlier.

15. Do the same with the second piece, and do you notice how mine are very messy and very hard to see which is which? That's what I'm going for with this hairstyle, no harsh strands of hair. Everything is really soft and messy. You can't really see where it starts or finishes, that sort of thing. 

16. Now do the last section of hair and pin any little hairs that wont stay where they belong, add some clips for sparkle points, and you are done!!

WOOHOOOO!!! 🎉
So this tutorial was really just the foundation of what you can do with this hairstyle, experiment with different braids instead of twists at the beginning and it can really change the vibe of the 'do. 
For example Kendall is my edgier girl, so I tried fishtail braids instead of twists and made them big and puffy and got a very different hairstyle than the original. 
I also added in a sneaky little rope twist when I was pinning the rest of the hair up just for fun 😎

(But I still followed the steps of taking sections from the front of her face, and then crossing them over one another and then bundling and pinning hair underneath.)

Just go crazy with this one, it's super easy and flexible. That's why I said 'optional' a lot in that tutorial! So I hope it was easy to understand and please if you try this out tag me on instagram @lydialdolls (even tho at the moment my phone has broken so I can't post and I'm dying so bad😣) or just comment down below linking me to the pics! 
Remember, you guys are awesome and have a fabulous night or day! 
P.S I will explain things more in the comments if you need, I hope I explained it well enough!
-Lydia 

cool or cute?
Here's a sneak-peak at an upcoming photoshoot with Caroline with her new hair 💁🏼Man I love that photo!! Ok I'll go now.. bye!


AG

Sundresses, Sundresss & a Romper

Wednesday, August 03, 2016

Hey guys! I've been on sewing craze, all about making my own doll clothes! So I bought the 'Surfrider Sundress & Romper pattern' from Pixie Faire and started sewing, and have sewed multiple of this pattern and realized after I did like 2 different shoots just to combine the 2 because they were all were the same outfit anyway! 
So beware! This is a picture marathon but I believe you can do it!

Look on and enjoy la Sundress on miss Casaleah Grace!



Ooo that's out of focus... but I like it 😏












If you follow me in Instagram you may have known that I took these pics in my pajamas. Yes, thats what you get when you combine fun morning sun and Lydia's laziness!😝💁🏼
But, woohoo you made it halfway!! 🎉Yeah! I'm so proud! 👊🏼 Now gotta go the last stretch! Ok breath and begin. 
                     
Isabelle and Cecile in Sundress and Romper respectively 



trying to get your dolls to look in the same direction is actually so much harder than it looks. Like I'm not even joking. 😒

Again with the direction looking.. 😕

Like come on guys?!?! Co-ordination? 😂



Just finish off with Isabelle coz she's cute 😚

Ok not that many the last time, I posted quite a few on my instagram (@lydialdolls) 
 If you made it this far good on you! 😛

Now I won't make you choose you're favorite picture because that would be cruel but just tell me, which dress did you like the best? 
And which style the best? 
~ The tights and school shoes? 
~ The crystal headband? 
~ Or boots and bow? 
I'd love to hear your thoughts below! 

I have to say Isabelle was just slaying me in that crystal headband! 😍Like I picked that out from a dollar store not really thinking much of it, but mate!! Its awesome!! 🙌🏼
Until next time!
Lydia 

(In order of appearence)
Doll: Casaleah (AG Grace 2015 goty)
dress by: me
shoes, tight & necklace: American Girl 

Doll: Cecile:(AG Retired Historical)
Romper: me
Hair bow: Dollar Store

Doll: Isabelle ( AG Isabelle 2014 goty)
dress: me
Headband: Dollar Store

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