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Tuesday, April 10, 2012

I Don’t Have To Go On “Hoarders: Email Edition”

It took forever to get through all 2000 emails but I did it! I got through them all! I responded to the lovely people who emailed me, and now I just have two emails in my inbox that I need to deal with either tonight or tomorrow. I feel so much better now that that is done. I feel so guilty when I don’t respond right away to people, but oddly enough I found out that I’m not the only one. A lot of people on Facebook today mentioned how they had 60,000 or more emails dating back to 2004 that they just can’t face going through. So I don’t feel so bad. Winking smile  I just don’t use my email much so I slack off on checking it. I’ll try to at least check it once a week instead of once a quarter.  LOL!  Thanks for being patient with me on returning emails to you. Tomorrow’s challenge?  Comments!!!  I’ve decided to only respond to emails from this year.  I’ll check them all, but I don’t want people getting response to posts I made forever and a day ago. But I do thank you for all the old comments to me and I know I will enjoy reading them. I love getting comments and I’m sorry I haven’t stayed up on them. I will start work on them tonight and finish them tomorrow. I so need more organization in my life or at least a schedule so I can stay up on top of these things. Keep your fingers crossed that I will pencil in making a schedule some time this week.

And I’m off peeps. I am tired from hunching over a computer all day. I’m going to go lay down, stretch out my spine, and catch up on some blogs for a while. I will talk to you lovely people tomorrow.  Smile

Wondering how many comments she has to go through,
Michelle

Hunger Game Katniss Barbie, And A Mini Rant

So while I was offline my  mom sent me a message. She asked later on after she sent it if I’d gotten it.  I said not yet.  She told me there was a beautiful doll I had to see and I believe she mentioned that I would just have to have her.  I thought “Ok, I’m always up for looking at a new doll I simply must have,” so I went to look at the message.

When I checked the message it said I needed to go to Barbie Collector at look at the Katniss doll.  Uh-oh.  Do not get me wrong, I am interested in reading The Hunger Games and even watching the movie, but I am just not into the dolls as likenesses any more. They seldom get it right or its just missing to much detail for me to be satisfied.  But still I gave it chance and looked at Katniss, and yep, I didn’t fall in love.

My mom wants her because she just sees her as a pretty doll and has no idea what series she is from. I am “just not that into her”. Yes she’s pretty and she has the character feel, but there is just something about her face that screams Barbie instead of Katniss.  I know, she IS a Barbie, but I just feel when you make a likeness of someone it should resemble them more and Barbie less.  And we know Mattel has it in them to create good likenesses of people or at least get pretty damn close.  Nope, this just seems like someone taking a doll and dressing her up like Katniss for Halloween or a photostory or diorama. In other words, if you have the skill and/or money, its easy to replicate, so it doesn’t interest me.

So what gives? Why the sudden dislike of old Babs? I used to LOVE Barbie as a child, and when I got back into the hobby Barbie was all I had. But now she really only interests me for clothing and it has got to be spectacular for me to even give it a second glance. And I won’t say its Mattel because their Monster High line is awesome, I’m just not really into it because it’s a serious collecting hobby with trying to get all the new characters and either rebuy old ones for clothing and hands or try to get them secondhand at often inflated prices.

And speaking of inflation, the scalpers, ugh, don’t get me started on how they just put a dark cloud over the whole hobby. Make a few bucks, sure, but to double the price of the item is just wrong and harsh. I don’t care if a scalper is having a hard time, there are others out there having hard times too that saved up their money to buy themselves or their kids the dolls only to find shelves cleaned of them by scalpers and forced to look to scalpers to get the doll. This is where Mattel burns me, they make certain dolls so hard to get knowing that their customers get burned by scalpers. Hey dummies, that’s money that could be going into your pocket if you just make the characters more available. If they aren’t rare then scalpers will lose money more than make money off of them so people will buy from the store. I know, the stores buy from Mattel so Mattel has their money, but if the store isn’t doing good in sales because people stop shopping there due to no dolls being on the shelves well then they should just free that space up for another company.  In the end, not so good for Mattel.  This is just my wild thinking, mind you, and I know there’s a wee bit more to it all, but you get what I mean. But with anything you will have scalpers, and they will be there as long as we have people in the community willing to buy at their prices. Stop buying at their prices people!  Then they won’t have a good leg to stand on and you will have a better chance of buying the doll at retail price.  But that’s just my two copper cents, do with them what you will.

But back to my dislike of Barbie, its been coming for a while now. I don’t know, there is just nothing there to impress me any more. The clothing is meh for me, the characters are usually recycled every few years (i.e. teacher, vet, doctor, babysitter, etc.), and there is just nothing special about Barbie any more. Even her houses, furniture, and cars are boring because they all tend to be Barbie Pink. We get it Babs, you like pink.  Can Mattel really want to stereotype her as the cute bubbly blonde who likes pink, hanging out with her friends and her boyfriend Ken, loves riding her horse her dad no doubt bought her, can’t go a day without shopping, and wants world peace?  Its like Mattel will take two steps forward with Barbie one year then for the next decade take her back to the dark ages. Women are empowered now and little girls want to play characters that make them think of their moms. Its just slightly hard to do that in a bright pink bubble skirt and heels.  No, I am not running a “Down With Barbie” campaign, and yes if I have kids one day and they want a Barbie I will get them one, I just wish there was more to her and I wish her quality was picked up so that she would shine again.  I also wish that when Mattel has a good thing they wouldn’t let a few people who don’t even buy their doll scare them into pulling it from the shelves and stores.  But hey, maybe Mattel is working on something new to surprise us all. I’d honestly love to see something great from them. I know I have some ideas I’d love to see, but I’ll keep them to myself…that’s when companies tend to come out with things I have wanted hehehe.  Winking smile  And now that I’ve talked your ear off let me get off my soapbox. 

And on that note I am off. I had another bad stomach day and I just want to curl into a ball, tell myself to breathe, and just wait it out. This is why I’m not more productive. Its hard to do much of anything when your core is tight and makes breathing a workout. Must get back on my diet change tomorrow no ands, ifs, or buts.  Ok, talk to you guys later. Be good until then. Bye for now.

Cannot understand nor accept or respect the concept that grapes made her sick,
Michelle

Sunday, April 8, 2012

A Happy Easter Wish And A Toni Ellison Gift

I hope all of you had or are having a wonderful Easter. I had a nice quiet one. I watched two movies while exercising, got some yummy candy…which does not help with the wanting to lose weight lol, and I got a new “friend” that I will be sharing with you later on.  Bunny  Other than that I haven’t done much since last night. Last night I got as sick as a dog. Horrible. And I so did not feel like sitting up through the stomach pain so I called it a night early and went and relaxed in bed for a few before nodding off. So I am trying to be productive tonight as long as my back and head work with me. Long story on that one, just go with me on it. Smile  But that was my wish, I hope you all had, are having, will have a lovely Easter holiday.  Now for the gift. Smile 

So, if you have not learned already I’m going to educate you. YouTube is your friend…right after Google of course. Winking smile  But seriously, YouTube is a vast collection of tutorials for just about anything you could want to learn about, many of them doll related.  In searching YouTube last year I came across a channel of a young woman who made food canes from polymer clay. She has since come a long way from making canes to making everything from clay cakes and burgers to making potions from the Harry Potter franchise. She puts up tutorials on how she makes these items on her YouTube channel. Now while these tutorials are mostly for making jewelry out of, you can easily just omit the jewelry finding part of the tutorial and have the items to use in your doll photostories and dioramas. And the extra cool part? These tutorials can be used for dolls of any size, it all depends on you, your supplies, and your patience.

So where to find Toni and her tutorials? I and well she have got you covered.  Winking smile  So first of all you can find her on YouTube where she has several easy to follow video tutorials. She’s currently working through a Harry Potter series by making potions. Her tutorials don’t tell all of what she uses, but never fear, she puts those details on her blog. Her posts are quick and simple and just basically fill in the blanks that her videos may leave. If you have a Tumblr, you can follow her there too. It basically updates you on when she updates YouTube and you can ask her questions there as well. Not into blogs? No worries, she also has a FaceBook, Twitter, and Google+ accounts. Whew, all covered?  Here’s hoping so because that’s all I could find, if you want more than that you are on your own. LOL! So if you have ever wanted to try making some of your own clay items you have a great start with Toni’s videos. So go forward and make some yummy treats for your mini peeps.  Smile

And on that note I am off. I hope you all had a great weekend and I hope you have a wonderful week. Talk to you all soon.  Be good until then. Bye for now. Smile

Giving her chocolate bunny the evil eye DevilBunny,
Michelle

Saturday, April 7, 2012

My Froggy Stuff

So if you’ve been busy crafting for or playing with your dolls, you may have missed out on the crafty sensation called My Froggy Stuff.  I first learned about My Froggy Stuff through YouTube. The channel is run by a mom who loves to create awesome doll crafts for her children.  My Froggy Stuff is centered more around doll crafts and the doll story she does with her children called “The Darbie Show”.  She also has a blog you can follow that has additional tutorials. If you have Facebook or Twitter, she’s got you covered there too. But perhaps you don’t have a crafty bone in your body, which really wouldn’t matter because she has simple steps in all her tutorials that she walks you through the whole way, but just in case you don’t do the craft thing she has you covered also.  She will on occasion pop up some of her creations in her Etsy shop, no crafting needed.  Winking smile  Also, if you are a Pinterest fan, like myself, you can also add My Froggy Stuff on there as well. I’m always looking for new stuff to pin from others on the net and My Froggy Stuff has some neat crafts she finds on the net and pins. Most of these are non-doll related, but if you are a crafty person in general you may want to check it out.

I often read how people wish they had known of My Froggy Stuff when they were a kid, and I’m one of those people as well. I’m often wondering how she came up with her creations by just looking at some beads, and coffee stirrer, and come fabric. For those of you “old” enough to get this, she’s like the MacGyver of doll crafts. LOL! For those of you who aren’t old enough to know what I am talking about, let me Google that for you. Smile You’re welcome. Winking smile

My Froggy Stuff is just evidence of how the internet can be used to share thoughts and ideas and helping educate people on things they may not have known about.  I’ve gained so much knowledge from her videos about things I can try for my own photostories and I can’t wait to see what she comes up with next.  If you haven’t checked out My Froggy Stuff yet, you have been missing out. Go now and enjoy it, you can thank me later.  Winking smile

In other news, I am finally catching up on things so I can finally get back to blogging more. Checking emails today so you should hear from me this weekend if you sent me one. Also I need to finally go through my comments. I checked on one the other day and it was spam and now I am curious how much lovely spam I have. Yay for spammy spam!  Woot!  Oh and now my computer is acting normal. Odd right? It still gets warmish where it didn’t before and vibrates too, but not as bad as the other day. I don’t know what they did, I still feel they put it back together wrong, but its not dying on me so I will just go with the flow for now.  And on that note I’m off.  Talk to you lovely folks soon.  Be good until then.  Bye for now.  Smile

Suddenly feeling the urge to make colors pencils and notebooks for her dolls thanks to My Froggy Stuff,

Michelle

Thursday, April 5, 2012

I shall deal with the dill weed for now…

Only because now I can’t get my computer to act like it did before. I don’t know what they did there, but they have changed my computer some how. It gets hot now where before it was always cold to the touch. Its not Hades hot like it was before, but it does it a balmy hot. I’m worried about the heat ruining my dvds since it does heat up that side of my computer now. I have since found the fan and I will retract what I said before, they put that back together right, but there is something wrong. My computer is vibrating and getting hot. Something is not right. There are two other computers in the house just like mine so I will try them out and see how they do before I settle on calling foul. I just wanted to do it before tomorrow because tomorrow will be a week and I don’t know if they have a time limit on when you can return stuff to be fix or heck if they even have that. I’ll look into it today, and maybe think of investing in a cooling pad. Its already starting to get warm and its only been on for maybe half and hour and this part never got warm even when my fan stopped working. They did something wrong to my computer and I’m not sure if I should take it back and complain for just get a cooling pad.  I’ll check the other computers first I guess.  *sigh* But on a cute note, is that not the cutest dill weed container you’ve seen today. I’m sure there are much cuter ones out there, but let’s focus on today shall we? Winking smile  Thanks for putting up with my ranting as I figure this out. Its frustrating but life is too short to let it keep me down for too long. So as a thank you for putting up with my non-doll rant I shall leave you with these interesting doll links.

So while I do prefer my doll world to be 1/6th I can’t ignore the beauty of ball joint dolls.  They are just so pretty and I would love to own several of them. As I’ve always said, I’m a doll collector and I like dolls of all kinds. So I’ve been looking at ball joint doll sites, forums, and videos lately.  Through my doll and craft Tumblr blog I found my way to some interesting blogs, namely bjd confession sites.  On these blogs people can secretly, or not so secretly, leave thoughts they have on bjds and the community. I find this to be refreshing but also insulting at the same time. People freely post their thoughts on dolls, doll molds, face ups, and the type of people in the community (i.e. people who buy cheaper dolls like Bobobie compared to people who buy Soom dolls).  So if you don’t have a thick skin these confessions may rub you the wrong way. I just take them with a grain of salt and realize everyone has their own opinion and while I may not agree with it I’ll fight for their right to have it. So with that said, here are the three confession sites I’ve found.


(source)

First up is BJD Confessions/Resin Confessions. Now from what I’ve gathered, this blog went through three ownerships. For those of you aren’t on Tumblr, if you close your blog your blog name goes back “into the pot” for others to use. The first owner of the blog closed it because of negative feedback they were getting about the blog, so someone else took the name. I believe this next person gave it up because things got busy for them and they couldn’t update the blog like they wanted to and so someone else took it. Then the recent owner took it and changed the name of the blog to Resin Confessions while keeping the original blog name. Why? You’ll find out in a moment.


(source)

BJD Confessions 2 has no real relation to BJD Confessions/Resin Confessions, except for the fact that a previous owner of BJD Confessions, I believe it was the second owner, used to own BJD Confessions.  There was a debate on why the two blogs couldn’t merge together, it seems the owners aren’t really fond of each other.  I kind of wonder if the blog name is really meant as BJD Confessions 2 or meant subtly as BJD Confessions “Too”. Either way, both blogs are interesting to read and see the thoughts of fellow doll collectors. Warning, some of the pictures on the blogs have doll nudity and strong language.


(source)

Then last, but far from least, is BJD Text Confessions. Now the story on this site is kind of foggy for me. I believe they came to be after the earlier formations of BJD Confessions or perhaps before any bjd confession blog at all. All I know is that it was around before BJD Confessions 2. Its just a to the point confession site of people just telling it how it is, how they wish it was, or how it used to be. Pretty interesting read. Some confessions get lengthy replies and really get into the topic being discussed. I tend to like those because it really gets the discussion going and let’s us see how people really feel. For example, this post got this response:

Re: confession 224

That right there is the kind of thing that really bugs me about the whole recast debate. Citation please? Numbers? Proof? Broad sweeping statements like this are what make the whole thing so damn ridiculous.

Personally speaking (and I AM adamantly anti-recast) I’m perfectly willing to pay the asking price for well made doll clothes, be that from someone on Etsy, DoA or a doll company and I sure as hell don’t haggle because I value the time and skill that’s been put into something and I know that’s what I’m paying for. Providing the product lives up to that asking price. For example I wouldn’t pay $40 for a basic tshirt just because it’s handmade or $100 for a dress that’s so simple even I could knock one together with my very limited sewing skills. When we’re dealing with handmade items you can’t only charge based on time, someone could take 5 hours to make that tshirt but that doesn’t mean it’s worth $40, it means they need to learn how to make it more efficiently to make sure they’re earning a decent profit margin or hourly wage on it because items like that have a perceived value and when there’s similar things (that are just as legit) available for half the price then it’s not exactly competitive to over-price them just because you take five times longer than someone else to produce an equivalent product.

Recasts aren’t /equivalent/ products though, because BJDs are priced, like products generally are, to cover time, overheads (rent, wages, etc) and what ever profit margin they’d deemed to put on it to make it worth the time and energy to produce (for all we know that profit margin could be tiny or it could be huge, but we don’t know without numbers from the companies but I can’t exactly see them giving them). Recasts are someone’s way of cheaply making a quick buck, they don’t have to put the time and resources into developing and designing the dolls, that work’s done for them and they make a profit off someone else’s work but that’s beside the point.

The point is, not everyone behaves the same way, not everyone values things the same way so tarring everyone who dislikes recasts with the same brush is not only ridiculously unfair and uninformed but it goes to show how quick people are to point fingers in an attempt to discredit the people who disagree with them. It only makes your own arguments and justifications for your own actions look weaker when you rely on smearing the people you’re debating against, and that applies to both sides.

I just really love how people can talk it out without worrying about backlash or being frozen out of the community. Once again, beware of strong language in these confessions.

And that is all I have for you today ladies and gents. I’m off now to see if I can figure out this heated situation with my laptop and hopefully manage to return to you all again really soon. Be good until then. Talk to you later. Bye for now. Smile

ETA: Even before signing off I have found out that I won’t be returning the computer to get fixed. Remember that “act of a high power” I mentioned before, well yeah it didn’t work in my favor. So now I will be shopping for a cooling pad. *sigh* Oh well, tis life I suppose. If anything this means a cool thing, later on this year I’ll be in the market for a new computer. My attempt at a Rainbow at the end of a Storm cloud mentality.  Smile  Ok now I will seriously talk to you all later. Be good until then. Bye for now. Smile

Noticing her lap getting rather warm,
Michelle

I give up for now guys…

I’ve been trying to get back into blogging but if its not one thing its another. As you may know my computer has been unusable because it overheated and needed a cleaning. I finally got it back a couple of days ago and was trying to sort things out on it so that it would work faster and blah blah. Well I kept noticing something weird about it. It gets hot on the completely other side of the keyboard now and there’s a constant humming. For days I thought it was just me, but no, I’ve used this thing enough to know that Best Buy Geek Squad has messed up my computer!!!  They put it back together wrong!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I am beyond pissed because its going to take an act of some higher power for me to get it fixed back around and those dillweeds better NOT expect payment for it!!!  I’m livid, if you can’t tell.  I haven’t been able to use my computer much because its slow and sluggish, probably from all the heat that is barely escaping because all the vents are ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE COMPUTER and so the air is not getting out and my computer is just staying hot. Sorry, just frustrated by this on top of other things. And to make it more frustrating it’s Script Frenzy this month and I haven’t worked on it yet because I am reading through what I wrote last year to see where I left off.  Loving the story I wrote last year, btw. But now I may have to put it off for a few more days while the dillweeds that insist they know what they are doing fix my computer, AGAIN. Sad smile Once again, sorry, just frustrated and this is just the tug that broke the doll’s neck. Ha, did you see what I did there…oh nevermind.

So basically, if I owe you an email, its coming, but probably not until hopefully this weekend but don’t count on it until next week. My email is muy backed up again and I was all set for a big cleanout when I finally got my computer back since my sister’s is kind of slow to do it and I thought my computer I’d whiz right through it. Yeah, not so much. So yeah, if you sent me something you will get a response next week at the latest. Sorry, but it is what it is. Sad smileI’ll see what I can do from my sister’s computer, but honestly its only really good for watching things and not much else. So yeah, odds are I’ll be silent for a while, but I’ll be back as soon as those jokers get things fixed. Ugh! Dillweeds.

And so on that note, I’m off. I hope all of you have a wonderful Easter if you celebrate. If not, I hope you have an awesome weekend. I will talk to you lovely people later. Be good until then. Bye for now.

Wishing she knew how to fix her own computer,
A rather pissed off Michelle