My Computer Hutch

 So I have been in a creative mood lately. One of the things I realized I needed to do was to get my office area organized. It occupies a wall in my living room and there was never any space for anything. My computer desk always had piles of papers on it and it only had one drawer, so it was hard to achieve any sort of organization. I decided I wanted to get a hutch for the desk. I priced them out and they are pretty expensive and I really couldn't find one that fit my desk. So I decided I wanted to try and build something. I wanted it to be sturdy and something that would not fall apart. I came up with the idea of building it with wooden crates. I needed something I could configure to fit on the desk, that would have places to store all the little office supplier and that would go with my decor. So I measured everything. Many, many times. I came up with the idea that I could use wooden crates as the material. I picked 2 sizes of crates. Here are the original crates I picked:

I got six of these -- 3 for each side of the hutch:

And 2 of these for the bridge of the hutch:

So are you ready for the end result????

I am very happy with how it turned out! It took a lot of measuring, laying things out and planning; a few bruised knuckles and trips to the hardware store, but I did it and it is sturdy, fits the desk perfectly and accomplishes what I set out to do. And it is done! I got to check an item off of my project list!

Now to get to work on that doll room!

The Big My Scene Doll Makeover!

 At the urging of a friend on Instagram (Dollboy92) I decided to dig out my daughters' old My Scene dolls. I am sure many of you remember them. They were brought into the Mattel line up to compete with the Bratz dolls in 2002 and were discontinued in 2014. I will be honest, and I don't want to irritate any Bratz fans, but I did steer my daughters away from Bratz in favor of the the My Scene dolls. So going through my doll stash, I discovered that we had 21 of the My Scene gal dolls in a box. We do have some of the boys as well, but their bodies were commandeered for use on some of our old Ken dolls, so they are not a part of the resurrection post.

I will tell you that these dolls were favorites of both of my daughters, and they were very well "played" with! Their hair was quite a tangled mess, so it has been quite a challenge to get these girls looking good! I did their makeovers in "waves", but for purposes of this blog, I will share photos of all 21 dolls in this post. Note that, as is normal for me, all dolls have been rebodied to articulated bodies. 

So here is wave 1

From L to R: Nolee on a Natalya WWE Superstar body, Madison with a toothy smile is on a Blue Top MTM yoga body (2nd release), Madison with a closed mouth in on a MTM yoga body Wave 2 Hispanic with hair in a bun, and Barbie is on a Katniss Hunger Games 2 body.


Here are a few close ups of the girls:

The 2nd wave of makeovers:

Top L - Madison w lighter skintone and rebodied on the MTM Dancer! Her hair was originally quite curly, but was in quite a mess. I managed to comb in out, washed and conditioned the hair and straightened it using a flat iron and then trimmed it to this shorter bob. Top R - Delancey on MTM Curvy Yoga, Bottom L - Madison with lighter skintone rebodied on MTM Baseball Barbie and finally, My Scene Special Edition Lindsay Lohan on MTM BMR "Green Beret".

Some additional photos:

Wave 3 of the makeovers:

This group consists of 4 Nolee dolls. It was quite challenging as I had to really dig to find replacement bodies for each of these girls. I hope you will think that I made the right choices! So here we go, Left to right: Nolee on a Purple Top MTM body, Nolee on a BMR green hat MTM body, Nolee on a pale 11 jointed playline body and Nolee on a Dollmore 1:6 scale ball-jointed body. This last one was the most difficult. I was running low on Pale skin tone bodies when I remember I had purchased the Dollmore bodies. Still need to find her some shoes, but I like how she looks on this body. Her hair was in such bad condition, that I thought I might have to reroot her, but after cutting it to shoulder length and giving her a boil wash, I was able to come up with the bob style for her. I like it for now at least! What do you think?

Their closeups!

Wave 4:

This time around, we have 4 Chelsea dolls. From L to R, Chelsea on a play line Barbie with 11 points of articulation, Chelsea on a BMR Tall Barbie - wave 1, Chelsea on Pink Top MTM yoga body and Chelsea on a Dollmore 1:6 scale body with natural skintone.

Their closeups!

After some consideration I decided to swap the Dollmore Body for a Liv body. What do you think?

The 5th and final wave!

This group has 5 dolls in it to finish the 21 dolls I have for makeovers! This time around, there are 4 Barbie/Kennedy dolls and one Madison. From L to R Back Row, Barbie/Kennedy on a play line Barbie with 11 points of articulation, Barbie/Kennedy on a WWE body, Barbie/Kennedy on a MTM Baseball player body and Barbie/Kennedy on a MTM BMR wave 1 green beret body. Front row seated is a Madison on a MTM Wave 1 second release Blue Top Yoga Theresa body. These have all been a challenge to find the right body for, to get there hair manageable and to get them dressed in cute outfits. Knowing that my daughters played and played with these dolls, you can probably only imagine what some of the hair was like especially for those dolls that had curls. I hope you have enjoyed them!

Their closeups!

That is the show for today! I hope you enjoyed it.

Back Again!

Thanks to posts from Monster Crafts and Jayes Doll Space, I have been inspired to begin blogging again. I can't believe it has been a little over a year since I have posted. While I haven't been actively blogging, I have been actively adding to my doll collection. Plus I have done quite a few reroots to create new characters. And the doll stories have been writing themselves in my head, but I now need to get the down on paper, get the sets built and take the photos to tell the stories. 

As far as life goes, I have been maintaining my weight loss, but I am now trying to lose some more. Because of the weight loss and healthier eating, my health has improved a great deal and I am so happy about that. My eldest daughter graduated from college last May (2019) and has moved back home. This has necessitated moving things around in the house to accommodate the return of her furniture and other items from her apartment! My youngest is still at home and going to a local community college. She was planning on transferring to Michigan State University this fall, but the COVID-19 virus is delaying that plan for her at least one semester. I have also recently been "dating". I met him online and most of our dates and communication have been via text and phone conversations, however, after  a little over a month of communicating this way, we did decide to meet in person and have now been on a couple of dates. Who knows, I may have more to tell on that at a later date!

Since no post would be complete without some dolly pictures, I will share some of my recent reroots with you!

This is a MTM Dancer reroot project. She originally lost her Curvy body to another doll, but I put on a regular MTM Body.  The doll on the right is a spare head that I rerooted in Midnight Blue and put on an Integrity toys body.

Here they are again looking at the hair from a rear view

The girls are joined here by another MTM dancer who head was rebodied to a WWE body and she was given a hair cut.

 

I also rerooted a BMR 1959 doll (Kira mold) I gave her a pipecleaner wave and bangs

The rear view of her hair

The next doll I decided to reroot was the Purple Top MTM doll. You can see her in three styles here

The first doll is on her original body with her hair boil washed and straighted with a flat iron. The middle doll is using Saran hair and she is rebodied to a Curvy MTM pale body. The last girl has a yard reroot and is on the new standard jointed body.

The process of doing a yarn reroot was very interesting for me and actually a bit more involved that a reroot done with dolly hair. Therefore, I am going to share some of the steps. 

The first step is to root the head all over in yarn. because the yarn is so thick, you don't add it to every hole and it is done using a single strand of yarn for each hole using a darning style long needle and pulling it all the way through the head and knotting it at the end.

It ended up looking like this. My hands hurt after completing it.

I then began the process of brushing the yarn with a fine toothed pet brush, and straightening it with a flat iron and trimming it as I went along. The brushing out of the yarn thins out the yarn significantly.

In the end, this is how she looked. I actually think she turned out beautifully, but this process was actually much harder that using dolly hair to reroot! The nice part is you can end up with a wide variety of hair colors and the end result is easy to manipulate.

Well, that is it for now! I hope to begin posting on a regular basis!