Back in the Black

After a drought of about five years, it appears that the discount stores in the African American neighborhoods I frequent around Atlanta are stocking an impressive supply of black and Hispanic dolls for the Christmas season.  The quality of the clothes and the dolls is still below pre-Recession standards but some of the designs are interesting and it is refreshing to have a wider variety of ethnic faces to choose from.

    The black “stylin heads” that appeared in Dollar Tree and Deals over the summer were the harbinger of this sea change.

I bought a dozen to use as wig stands.  Debbie Garrett of Black Doll Collecting sent me two more so one of them upgraded to a Liv body and became the star of the “Yogalicious” show. 

It was good to see her on a full body in Roses even if the body is hollow plastic with rigid legs. 

The black and white checked dress in the foreground was available in Dollar Tree as part of a series of doll fashions last year. 

I never got around to shooting it but Ms. Leo has featured it on her I Luv Dolls blog.  The green dress behind it was also part of that series but it is an absolute rag.  I cut it into a neat rectangle but my dolls wouldn’t even use it as a gym towel!

    I believe this Eloise doll has the same face mold as my Bea Garrett only in this incarnation she has a deep-toned complexion. 

I haven’t yet found a dark-skinned body upgrade for her but I think it is important for dark and lovely little girls to see a glamorous lady with skin as beautiful as theirs.  

***
    In 2006 when I moved to Atlanta’s West End, I was so thrilled to find a whole court of African American princess dolls in the discount stores that I bought about two dozen of them. 

In those days their bodies had bendable vinyl legs but I still swapped them onto higher quality Kari Michelle bodies.  This year I am happy to see Roses offering the court of princesses in Hispanic versions.

Even though I already have all the dresses and these bodies are made of hollow plastic with rigid legs, I bought one pair just for the face mold.

    Better than the adult court of Hispanic princesses, however, is the court of Kelly-sized princesses. 

Back in the 1990s I bought a Hispanic Kelly named Marissa.  I haven’t kept up with other ethnic Kelly offerings since then but getting five Hispanic children (some of whom will become boys) was a real boon for the casting department here at Ayamedia Studios. 

There are two different packs of Little Princess dolls available At Roses.  I chose this one for the Princess Jasmine and Ariel outfits, which I figured would make good Halloween costumes.  

    Keeping with the Princess theme, this $10 Dream Princess from Roses comes with ten dresses. 

She has a sweet face and the ball gown is halfway decent but most of the other dresses are so garish and cheap that I’d have to be doing a Cecil B. DeMille crowd scene before I would inflict them on any doll.

     The last doll I found at Dollar General was this Formal Fashion Lil’ Princess. 

 

Although she cost only $1, the dress is decent quality and her face is enchanting.

***
    Normally I am enchanted with fairies of any kind but I really hate to see un-natural blue eyes on black dolls thus I have passed on these ladies so far. 

I might go back to Roses for the dresses, though. 

I can probably darken the eyes with a Sharpie…

Fortunately Roses is also stocking these Fairy Angel sisters. 

The fairy costumes fit some of my other dolls and the Kelly-sized baby sisters are adorable.

Meanwhile Dollar General is offering Lovely Patsy fairies in African American, and Hispanic versions. 

I’ve been stockpiling fairy outfits in case I want to shoot a story about a dance recital or a school production of “Midsummer Night’s Dream.” 

Before the Recession I probably would have bought three of each color so I would have enough for the full corps de ballet. 

This time I contented myself with just two and the quality of the costumes is rather poor so I won’t be back for the pink and red outfits.

In addition to the fairies, it was encouraging to see this ballerina at Roses. 

The molded on bodice irks me, but that smiling face may win me over since I haven’t seen one like it before.

    I’m not sure that the economic outlook is much brighter this year so I don’t know what has prompted Roses/ Maxway, Dollar General, and Dollar Tree to stock more black and Hispanic dolls for the Christmas season.  They definitely deserve to see their profits move further into the black for their decision to serve the needs of patrons in the communities where they are located so I’ll be featuring more discount dolls and fashions in the next several posts.

À Bientôt

Franken-Winx

     This week I took the plunge and bought a Winx doll hoping to find another source of articulated bodies now that Spin Master is phasing out the Liv dolls.  The basic Winx are quite affordable at $12 but don’t waste your money on any of them unless you love the outfit.  They are not articulated.  Fortunately, for $20, the Believix Collection of fairy Winx offers six characters with articulated knees, elbows and wrists.  I’m a sucker for fairy dolls so I chose Bloom, mainly because I thought I would get the most use out of her shoes. 

Les Soeurs Garoul are always on the lookout for new fashions they can appropriate so Clawdeen Wolf immediately snatched them up. 

Monster High dolls’ feet are a little longer than Winx dolls' feet, but Clawdeen was able to make these open-toe pumps work for her.  They will also work for your Star Dolls if anyone is actually still using the rigid bodies those girls came with.

    The face-screen has the wide-eyed anime look that has been the norm for most play line dolls in recent years. 

Bloom has a sweet expression, but her flame red hair is made of a cheap, frizzy fiber so she had no chance of retaining her claim to that articulated body in my doll world. 

    First I tried replacing her head with a Disney fairy.  Vidia was the best match for Bloom’s ivory complexion.  (Note I have two Vidias so I experimented with giving this one brown eyes). 

I love the Disney fairies.  Their figures are very graceful and womanly despite their short stature in 1:6 scale.  Unfortunately their legs don’t bend.  I thought it might be fun to upgrade some of them to articulated bodies that have detachable, hinged wings. 

You can even buy additional wings that coordinate with other outfits.  It wasn’t difficult to ease Bloom’s head off the neck prong but her neck is so thin, Vidia’s head rests loosely on it. 

The weight of her hair pulls her chin up, limiting the number of expressions she can convey by tilting her head. 

Still, the fact that the Winx body is slim enough to fit some of the Disney fairy outfits is a big plus.

    The Winx dolls have longer torsos than the Disney fairies, but their hips are leaner. 

They can wear the Disney fairy dolls’ skirts even though their legs stretch for miles below the hemlines.

While some of the Disney fairy tops are too short for Winx, Vidia was able to adjust the shoulder straps on this dress to make it fit.  She accessorized with a pair of Star Doll shoes.

    As for Bloom’s outfit, the Disney fairies were able to squeeze their curvaceous hips into the skirt, but the top met the skirt at the waistband instead of exposing the midriff. 

The same was true of the fit when Eloisa tried it on her Bratz body. 

All in all the Bratz, Disney fairies, and Winx dolls should be able to trade a fair number of outfits so if you purchase a Winx doll, you can probably find some changes of clothes for her in your existing wardrobe.

    Despite the charm of the Disney fairies, I wasn’t willing to integrate a doll with an over-sized head into my regular 1:6 scale community so next I swapped a Star Doll head onto the Winx body. 

This was the only Star Doll face I really liked.  Unfortunately I hadn’t found a good complexion match for her Goth pallor until I tried her on Bloom’s body.  Once again the head sits loosely on the neck, but I find the Winx doll’s wraithlike figure matches the Star Doll’s character.  

    Although the torso cannot pivot, the articulation of the Winx body allows enough range of motion for the character to make a plausible anorexic ballerina.  She can do the splits. 

She can stretch in second position. 

She has an impressive arabesque

 and very elegant port de bras.  

    Winx bodies will work well as teenagers in your 1:6 scale families.  Their legs are longer than standard Barbie dolls but they are high waisted with short torsos so the top of their over-sized heads is still below the standard male figures you might cast as their fathers or boyfriends. 

    The purchase of a Winx doll includes membership in the Winx club that offers games, quizzes, and videos. 

I didn’t explore any of the content on-line but I definitely got my money’s worth.


À Bientôt

Le Rouge et Le Noir

As a side benefit of making the threaded hairstyle wig featured last week, I developed a new technique for attaching locks to the wig cap which enabled me to create this Bantu knots style.

Grace had been languishing in a corner for months so she jumped at the chance to model it.

I've been using Grace as a fit model for new lingerie designs.  She just hadn't gotten any camera time.  This bra and panty set started as a variation on the hip hugger briefs I made last year:

The rear view is more daring than the original pattern:

***
While I was on the red and black theme, I remembered another lady who has been languishing for over a year:

Although I have purchased many doll-related items on eBay, I had never sold anything there so one of my 2011 New Year's Resolutions was to sell an item on eBay.  I chose a doll that I wasn't attached to -- Winter Splendor Avon Barbie. 

I always felt that the blue eyeshadow was a trick intended to make her eyes look blue and downplay the fact that she is a woman of color.  Indeed some of the sellers appeared not to be aware that she is a black doll or they were trying to help her pass for white.

In  Black Dolls:  A Comprehensive Guide to Celebrating, Collecting, and Experiencing the Passion (2008), Debbie Behan Garrett values the doll at $60 but some sellers wanted as much as $120 for her despite the fact that there were pages and pages of listings for this Avon lady.  After watching the ones that sold for a few weeks, I calculated that the actual market price was about $10.  The gown was worth that much to me so I stripped the doll and gave the gown to an Integrity Toys lady who carries it with more flair:

The Goth wig topped it off perfectly:

I still haven't sold anything on eBay.  I always seem to find a way to recycle cast offs within my own collection instead.

À Bientôt

The 2012 Atlanta Quilt Festival

Recently a group of the doll artists whom I profiled here in May 2011 formed the Dazzling Dames Doll Club.  They were kind enough to invite me to join even though my interest is more in making doll videos than in making art dolls. 

one of Mattie's People by Mattie Eley

Most of these soft sculpture artists developed their fiber arts skills through years of quilt making.  Thus they regularly show their work at the Atlanta Quilt Festival, one of the many cultural events that enrich the city during the National Black Arts Festival. 

detail from "The Women" by Nina Moore

Cookie Patterson's beautiful bride doll is on permanent display at the South Fulton Arts Center where the quilt show was exhibited. 

Mattie's People were throwing fierce attitude as usual. 

Meanwhile Cassandra Harrison crafted a touching scene of a grandfather who has fallen asleep while reading to four adorable grand-kids.

The quilts were breathtakingly beautiful.  R.E.S.P.E.C.T. by Aisha Lumumba was one of my favorites. 

"R.E.S.P.E.C.T." by Aisha Lumumba

It is easy to see why Ambassador Andrew Young and President & Mrs. Barack Obama have purchased Lumumba's quilts for their collections!

O.V. Brantley not only advances the art of quilting through her own masterful work, she has also established the Clara Ford Foundation "to promote, preserve and celebrate the art of African American quilting and quilting in general" in honor of her grandmother. 

"Give Yourself Flowers Today" by O.V. Brantley

The Clara Ford Foundation presented a selection of red and white quilts that were greatly appreciated by the Delta Sigma Theta sorrors whose colors are red and white.

"A Bouquet in Red and White" by O.V. Brantley

On Sunday August 29th, the day the exhibit opened, I joined Cookie Patterson of the Dazzling Dames in the demonstration room at the South Fulton Arts Center.  Cookie was demonstrating how to make doll pins.  She had asked me to bring some videos so I set up a simple backdrop and demonstrated how to shoot doll videos with an iPod Touch.  "The Love Story" was the collaboration of four siblings:

Whether in two dimensional quilts, three dimensional dolls, or in time-based multimedia, it was refreshing and inspiring to see such positive representations of African American experience.

À Bientôt

Fit for a Queen

Rachel Bolaji is just coming from the hair salon.

Her neighbor admires the new style and calls her over for a chat.

 

"It must have taken forever!" she exclaims, admiring Rachel's threaded coils.

 

"Yes, Glen had two naps and the hairdresser pulled my hair so hard I'm getting a headache," Rachel admits.

"Still I think it will be worth it."

"She said it would help my hair grow," Rachel adds, turning to show the other profile.

When Debbie Garrett featured Taofik Okoya's Queens of Africa dolls on Black Doll Collecting last month, I fell in love with the threaded hairstyle one of the dolls wears.  Okoya says the doll's hairstyle was very popular in Nigeria in the 1970s and indeed, back in the 70s I had a classmate from Nigeria who would periodically show up at school with her hair threaded. 

It took a couple of tries and some tedious hours wrapping the hair with thread to make the wig but I think the end result is fit for a queen!

À Bientôt