Merry Christmas!

Here is wishing all of you a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from us at Hanaly Corners!

We hope you have had a wonderful Christmas with your family and friends!  Look forward to seeing you all in 2018!

Hanaly Corners Update!

After finishing my body modifications to make an articulated Curvy Barbie, I decided to give the upgraded body to my mini me in Hanaly Corners. And, since my daughters are growing up (ages 17 and 21 now) I decided to upgrade their mini me's as well to reflect who they are now better. Plus, it gives me more interesting stories to tell about them. Here we all are!

L to R: Hannah (age 17), Phyllis (???), Alyssa (age 21). Hannah is on a Pure Neemo L body, Phyllis has the modified Curvy Barbie Body and Alyssa is on a Pure Neemo M body. 

We will also be getting a house in Hanaly Corners. I am just getting started on it. I have the High School Musical house that I will be working on to be our home! 

The upstairs will have 2 bedrooms and a bathroom between them.I will most likely extend out the floors to give this house more floorspace.

The first floor will have a kitchen, dining area and living room. I am excited to begin working on it! Our dog, Carly and cats Mittens and Jasmine approve of the new digs!

I will share progress on this home as I go. I hope you guys will like what I end up doing!

I hope everyone is having a Happy Mother's day today! My girls fixed me breakfast this morning and are taking me out to dinner tonight!

Happy Mother's Day. Hope everybody has a wonderful day!

Indigo Obsession - A Grail Doll Purchased!

"Indigo Obsession Barbie" by designer Byron Lars has long been on my grail list. However, it was beginning to seem that I would not be able to get her at a price I was willing to pay, and I had kind of given up on getting her. Released in 2000, here is her stock photo below:

While browsing through photos on Flickr, I ran across a series of photos of the various Byron Lars dolls that Mattel had produced. Among these, I saw a beautiful photo of my coveted Indigo Obsession, which once again made me go on the hunt for her. Low and behold, I was able to find not one, but two of these beauties within my price point, and as a matter of fact, she was only a few dollars more than her original price on Barbie Collector! I decided that I probably would not see her at this price again anytime in the near future, so I made the plunge and purchased her.

She arrive, NRFB a few days ago.

Still in her box, she is every bit as stunning as I imagined she would be!

I am not one to leave my dolls in the box, though. She was very quickly released!

When Mattel released the darker skintone AA doll "Barbie Girls of Music Playset" I quickly ordered more than one of them from Amazon as I knew this would be a skintone that I would definitely need for body swapping!

While she is not a MTM body (which would have been nice, Mattel!), she does have approximately the same articulation of some of the earlier Fashionista releases. Her joints are nice and sturdy and it doesn't bother me that she doesn't have the jointed ankles. 

I thought that this skintone was a very good match for my Indigo Obsession, so I promptly rebodied her!

I am so very happy with this new lady! She will cetainly be turning some head in Hanaly Corners!

Last Dolls of 2015 and Blog Giveaway # 1 Announcement

I hope you all remember that I promised to do a blog giveaway soon after the start of the new year. So here I am announcing my first blog giveaway! I am hoping I can make this an annual event. I decided to follow the example of Brini of Brini's Doll Domain and have a series of items to give away. There will be 4 different giveaways. This is the first. I also decided to have the last dolls of 2015 introduce themselves and announce each giveaway. 

"Hi all, we are some of the new residents of Hanaly Corners that were added late in 2015. From left to right, we are Carly Lager, Millie Robertson and Shula Washington. Some of you may recognize us as the 2015 Barbie Look dolls introduced by Mattel in the last quarter of 2015. We do not know what our roles are yet in Hanaly Corners or even if we have other family members here, but we have been enlisted to announce Blog Giveaway #1."

Millie: "These adorable accessory packs are for the first Giveaway."
Carly: "Are you sure we have to give these away? They are so cute, especially those black gladiator sandles!"
Shula: "Those are for flat footed dolls, not for our type of feet!"

Millie: "Here is a closer look at the items for this Giveaway."

Shula:  "Here are the rules for the Giveaway:

• You need to be a follower of this blog to enter.
• You can only enter one time for each Giveaway.
• You will have one week to enter.
• You will need to leave a comment stating you would like to participate.
• Winner will be selected at random. Once you have won a Giveaway, you will not be eligible for the subsequent Giveaways in this series.
• The winner will be announced via blog and will be asked for personal email to communicate through.
• You will have one week to respond.
• Your item will be shipped out upon receipt of your shipping information and the postage will be covered by Phyllis.

Good Luck!

The Quest for Perfect Articulation

I know that many of us are on a quest for the best articulation for our dolls. I mean, how many of us get a "stiff" doll and wait for the right skin tone on an articulated doll to really be able to play with that doll? How many of us watch for sales and stock up on articulated bodies just to have on hand for body swaps? How many tutorials have you seen out there sharing techniques on how to improve the articulation on a body with limited range or how to modify a head to make it work on a different type of neck knob (or visa versa) only with the goal in mind of giving that doll articulation? Why do we do it? For me, it makes telling a story with my dolls more plausible. It makes taking pictures of them more enticing. It makes playing with them so much more fun!

When I first started collecting dolls, I only did it for looking at them. I put them in a glass case for the pure pleasure of admiring them. With my vintage dolls, they still hold there place of honor in that glass case. I seldom would rebody one of them as there is something about preserving that aesthetic that won't let me modify them. 

One thing that finding the doll community on the internet with all of the wonderfully posed pictures and creative story telling and simply sharing a mutual joy of doll play and collecting is that my eyes were opened up to the possibility of telling my own stories and expressing my own creativity through my dolls. I found other adults like me who were not afraid of sharing their love for dolls. I feel as though I have made some truly wonderful friends through this connection. And although I haven't personally met any of you, I still feel that I know more about you and you know more about me than a lot of people I have met face to face! I do hope to meet some of you in person some day! Who knows, maybe at a doll convention or something similar.

Ok, I digress! The point of this post was to share what I believe is sheer articulation perfection! Without further ado, meet the latest additions to my little doll town (Hanaly Corners):

Meet Stephanie (Left) and Mayumi (Right). Just having a little girl talk and wondering about the possibilities of life in Hanaly Corners!

These ladies are both the new Phicen figures with the stainless steel skeleton. So far, these ladies have demonstrated the ultimate in articulation. The movement is like silk -- no clicking or "breaking" sounds, just free movement into a multitude of positions. And the feel of their skin is so realistic! Their bodies have realistic shading and they are anatomically correct! I had to be careful when posing them not to show off some of that correctness! They do not fit into most Barbie clothes, but they are seen here wearing dresses from my Mixis ladies. I do not know yet what their roles will be in Hanaly Corners. Will they be married and/or have children? Will they be single and play the field or will they have boyfriends? Their future remains to be seen! In the meantime, I did a photo shoot with them demonstrating some of the posing possibilities that they have!

Shoes are a bit of challenge for them. Mayumi is wearing a pair of high heeled pumps from IT Color Infusion

Stephanie is wearing a pair of red high heels for Cy Girl I found on eBay.

I hope you found this post interesting. I am going to try to post more often and work more on my town. I do have a lot of work to do and stories to tell!

Thanks for stopping by. I welcome your comments!

A New Year, A New Dryer!

2014 ended with a bang! Well, actually a fire. On New Year's Eve, my oldest daughter was home while my youngest and I were out getting last minute things for our family gathering which was to take place at our house on January 2nd. She had to work on New Year's Day in the morning, so she was washing her uniform. She put it in the dryer (of course) and shortly after it started, she heard a clunking noise. She ran down to the laundry room only to discover that the dryer had caught on fire! She called me frantically (we had just arrived at the store). She told me that flames were coming out of the back! I told her to call the fire department and get the heck out of the house! I then jumping back in my car and we raced home! She was worried that she would lose her uniform for work, so she had pulled out the dryer, and took her clothes out. Since she turned it off, the flame also stopped. She did call the fire department, and of course, they told her the same thing I did - - - get out of the house. By the time we arrived home, she was totally freaked out and crying. The fireman arrived shortly after I did. The flame was out, but they could see that the fire was not caused by lint, but by the bearing in the motor. They assured her that she absolutely did the right thing and that her quick thinking saved our home. The firemen removed the dryer from the house in case it was still smoldering. Since it was a holiday, we did contact the insurance company, but they did not come out until the Tuesday January 6 only to tell use that because of my daughter's quick thinking, there wasn't enough damage to cover my deductible. So all we had to do was get a new dryer! It arrived yesterday. Because of New Year's sales, we were able to get a nicer one than the old one. Here it is:

I love it! It is a new Whirlpool Duet steam dryer. Because we were without a dryer for the last week and a half, we were unable to do laundry, so I have been doing laundry yesterday and today. It is so much nicer than my old unit that I now wish we could have also gotten the companion washer. Oh well, maybe later! 

We had a great holiday with my family. It was nice to see everyone, but I was also glad when everything settled down. With all of the excitement, I did not get much of a chance for any doll related stuff, but I did get some other new dolls after Christmas which I will share in my next post.

I am just happy that the fire was minor, no one was hurt and the firemen were really cute! 

We did have a lovely Christmas. My daughters got me a serger for Christmas. I was pleasantly surprised. I hope to work on some new doll clothes very soon. I am looking forward to working on doll related things this year and have started working on rooms for my new story involving my Society Hound Barbie who is now Penelope Elizabeth Winthrop Carter. Her husband disappeared 2 years ago. She had 3 adult children, one brother and one sister. Their family owns a major hi tech company which employs a lot of the people in Hanaly Corners. I am working on sets for the first installment of their story. I hope you will all enjoy it!

I am looking forward to 2015 and all the new dolly related things I have planned. Here is hoping that 2015 brings all of you good health and happiness and more dollies of course!