If you have any suggestions for next month’s Freebie Friday Five, please don’t hesitate to email me! Maybe you have a site you think that I should feature or a pattern that’s free and up on the web? Tell me!

For the month of February, I wanted to highlight some creative and fun sites. I hope you enjoy them as much as I have!

1.  Because I love Kenners (and lets just talk about Kenners some more), I’ve been reading up on how-to’s and tips on fixing up Kenners again over at This is Blythe. You do need an account to read the posts! Current favourite thread is about cleaning and repair tips. Accounts on This is Blythe are free.
2. On Flickr, there’s many groups that I love, but lately I’ve been looking at Blytheopedia because I’m a little unfamiliar about some of the newer releases (haven’t really been paying attention!) so I’ve gone back to see all the stock promotional photos and illustrations that I’ve missed.
3. For those that craft, there is a Blythe group on Ravelry (account is needed!). It’s called Knitting for Blythe, but they also discuss customization, sewing, crocheting and (of course) dolly goodness in general! Accounts on Ravelry are free.
4. It’s winter around here (and everywhere else in the northern hemisphere) and the sun goes away fairly early still. I found a tutorial on how to take better photos in low light without using flash, so I thought I’d share it for fellow amateur photographers!
5. I’ve been looking at printable miniatures again. My favourites lately have been little cereal boxes and you can find more on this page.

If you know of a site, group or activity that you think I should highlight in next month’s Freebie Friday Five, let me know! Comment below or email me.

I mean, I love Kenners, I really do. Most of my collection are the modern Takaras, of course, but Kenners are awesome. So I went to the meet with my one Kenner (Emmalynn – she’s second from the right in the back row) and left with three Kenners. Not even joking.

I will be posting the progress of the restoration of the two as I go along, they currently have no names (but plenty of nicknames, ahem), but these are my new additions:

It was definitely not a “Blythe On A Budget” kind of week…

One of my friends in  my local Blythe group likes asking people what their first impressions of Blythe were. Hers was rather negative – she thought that Blythe wasn’t very cute at all! Of course, Blythe is patient and understand… and eventually charms her way into people’s hearts. My own boyfriend thought that Blythe was ‘weird’ (it’s mostly because of the changing-eyes thing). Now he finds them cute (or maybe he just says that for my benefit?). Regardless, Blythe is a charmer. She knows how to tug at heart strings and have full control over wallets. Despite being rejected by children in 1972, Blythe certainly knows how to command attention now. She’s making up for it!

Maybe you thought that Blythe was super cute, downright ugly or just meh… But you did have a first impression…

What was your first impression of  Blythe?

As of right now, I have 9. 9 shiny, happy, sometimes annoyed looking faces. I say ‘annoyed’ because I can name about 5 right now who haven’t had a wardrobe change since the previous year. And while it doesn’t seem like it’s been so long since the new year, we are in the second half of February now. So yes, I have accusatory faces looking at me with their orange and pink chips (I clearly need to learn to change them to side-facing before putting them back on their stands). As I’m on the verge of adopting a couple more lovelies into the doll family, I think I’m reaching my “limit” soon. I always told myself “Just 10!”. One of each mold, at least. But as I started getting closer and closer to 10, I started giving myself loopholes. Like “It’s okay to go over 10 as long as it’s Kenners”. Because, really, vintage doll goodness? I can’t pass that up!

Besides spending a less on doll ‘stuff’ this year, I think I’ll be spending more time with each doll. Give them each some individual pampering time throughout the year. I was looking at my Flickr sets the other day and noticed how little photos some of my dolls have while some that had been around for less time had a couple times more photos in total. I need to remedy that and just take more photos in general. I used to take more, back when I was doing 365. I opted not to do it this year, but I’ve begun to think that I may change that.

Some people have fifty-plus and don’t feel overwhelmed at all, lucky butts that they are. Some have a couple hundred. I really do wish I had the money and space for that many. But, unfortunately, I don’t. I’m incredibly happy with the doll family that I do have (and will have, after a few additions). I think that we’re all lucky to have Blythe in our lives. After all, without here we might not be doll collectors, and there certainly wouldn’t be this blog! I’m really grateful for Blythe for having brought me such great fun and lots of new friends and it’s a fantastic thing to have such a joyful hobby.

Have you ever felt ‘overwhelmed’ with the number of Blythes (or other dolls) that you have? What did you do to deal with it?

What about Blythe makes you happy?

If you leave either your blog, Flickr photostream or Twitter link down below with your answer to the above question, I will link to it. All answers will be compiled together and published at a future date.

Eden Mouse (Punkaholic People) is decidedly a “little girl”. I think it has a lot to do with her hair, it reminds me so much of what my hair unfortunately looked like as a child – straight bangs and what amounted to a bowl cut. Thank goodness my hair no longer looks like that, just have to say… But Eden looks like a child and she only wears pink and enjoys pink things. It took some time to figure her out, but she let me know loud and clear that she would only be wearing pink after I put a crocheted pink mouse helmet onto her silly little head.

Sometimes it just takes one thing to help decide a doll’s age. For one of my dolls, it was her hair.

I don’t really have actual numerical ages, just a ‘range’ that they fall into. For my dolls, there’s the little girls, the teenagers and the ones in their early 20s. Yes, even my Kenner (who would literally be 40 years old this year) is in her early 20s.

How old are your dolls?

For more information, you can check out the Shopping Saturday page or send questions to michelle@blythelife.com.

• Rosiee Gelutie has 50% off coupon code on your entire order until Tuesday February 14, 2012: FUNTREAT

Hello, hello! It’s been a while since I really blogged about Emmalynn, the lovely 1972 Kenner Blythe that I got back in late 2011. She hasn’t gotten a whole lot of photo time because she spent quite a bit of time in pieces (I’m a bad doll owner, I know). To recap (for those who didn’t read the original posts), here is the laundry list of things that I did in my quest to restore my vintage beauty to her original glory:

• Removed her scalp and hard cap; loose hair plugs were secured (with thread) and scalp tears were reinforced
• Multiple baths for her (a spa wouldn’t be complete without getting rid of the musty smell of old plastic)
• Partline rethatched (!)
• Multiple hair treatments with fabric softener, hot water and foam rollers
• Opening of head to clean out some grime and her eyeballs
• Gluing her pelvic seam crack
• Reinserting her poor legs back in (finally!)
• Replacing her scalp onto her head

The last three points were my latest in fixing up my lovely girl. I actually managed to do it with the Loctite Superglue for All Plastics that I featured earlier this year as one of the Treasures for Dollars articles (item #10). With some tips from Kate/moofers, I managed to fix her!

As always, my disclaimer: I am not a “professional” when it comes to restoring toys, so if you’re not comfortable with fixing your own Kenner, you should really seek out someone who knows what they’re doing. So I am not responsible if you try this out on your own butt-cracked-doll and you damage her even more.

The thing to remember is that not all pelvic cracks are the same. Some aren’t straight, some have many cracks. This method worked for me (and Emmalynn had a straight crack across the molding seam of the pelvis piece – probably the easiest crack to occur because it’s across a structurally weak point in the plastic). The materials that I used were super thick rubber bands, a desk lamp clamp, an emery board, the Loctite Superglue for All Plastics, a towel and the broken pelvis piece.

1. You need to sand the edges that you want to meet again. I used an emery board because it was handy and thin. You can use sandpaper if you want and have it available.
2. Get the applicator tip into the crack. I needed the crack a little wider than it was without the legs in, so I popped the legs in and ran the applicator around the seam edges.
3. Follow the directions on the packaging – you need to leave the applicator alone for 60 seconds.
4. Have the clamp ready. I used a desk lamp clamp on my boyfriend’s suggestion (he’s super handy to have around) and placed the pelvis piece into the clamp and had it cushioned by the thick rubber bands.
5. Apply the glue and quickly clamp it so that the edges are meeting. Wait until the glue has cured (I waited a few hours).
6. Sand down whatever glue got squished out (again, emery board or sand paper until smooth!).
7. Lay a towel out onto the table. Heat up the plastic of the pelvis with hot water (I ran it under hot tap water). Do this for a while.
8. Press the leg ‘joint’ plastic into the hole (make sure it’s the correct leg on the correct side!).
9. Run pelvis under hot water again after successfully getting one leg in and pop the other one in. I used the towel to keep the counter dry while I was shoving the legs back into the pelvis
10. Rejoice! Your Kenner has legs again!

Unfortunately, I didn’t get any photos of the actual process, mostly because I was all “OMG, one leg in, quick, need to get the other one in!!” and was working in such a rush. If you need more explanation over any of the steps, let me know.

One of the issues that I ran into when I was reassembling Emmalynn was the fact that after I had put the hard cap back into the scalp, it was unable to clip back onto the head. I think part of the reason is why it was so easy to come off to begin with (I did not have to manipulate it at all, the hard cap came off with the scalp). After careful deliberation with myself, I decided to put the scalp back on without her hard cap.

The only use of the hard cap is to keep the scalp on her head. Well, Emmalynn is a forever girl and if I ever do decide to sell her, I can sell her with her hard cap just not attached. I asked the opinion of Yuki/killertomato and she recommended putting the scalp back on by gluing it down. The pros to this idea is that there would be no or less of a scalp gap and, with the use of water soluble glue, it was reversible if I ever needed to open her up again. The cons is that I’d be leaving the hard cap out. On the other hand, anyone who reroots a Kenner scalp with mohair or some other thick fiber knows that they can’t fit the hard cap in properly. Also giving a Kenner another Blythe scalp or a Cool Cat scalp requires gluing down as well (there’s no “lip” for the hard cap to stay in. So gluing it was! Also, the thing with using (water soluble!) glue is that if I decide to later put the hard cap back in (or at least try again), it shouldn’t be that difficult to remove the scalp and without the use of the hard cap, I wouldn’t be stretching the scalp again when removing it.

There’s a lot to be said about vintage Blythes. The plastic feels different, their bodies just feel lighter. They smell different, the hair feels different. And those pretty vintage eyes looking at you? That’s pretty wonderful too. I’m pleased to introduce all of you to the newly restored, but always classy, Emmalynn.

Emmalynn and I would like to thank everyone so much for words of encouragement, tips or just comments during this restoration process. I lucked out with her because she didn’t have a lot of severe issues – but everything was a learning curve and I learned a lot while working on her.

And the winner is…

Congratulations TheBrassCupcake! Please send me an email at michelle@blythelife.com with your mailing address and I’ll get the cardigan sent out to you this week.

But that was back in 2009 when I had three dolls and I just thought it was so awesome that all my dolls had different hair colours from one another and they were all totally different. Because that’s what I thought would matter most to me – variety. But now that I’m looking at my dolls… I wouldn’t mind another stock Margaret Meets Ladybug (MML has gorgeous special stock chips and a cute pull!). And I recently (in December 2011) got Simply Bubble Boom (Moxie) and Simply Sparkly Spark (Mollie) and I’ve been calling the pair of them my “fraternal twins”. This is mostly because SBB and SSS (along with STT, who I’m not getting) were part of a ‘trio’ and they belong together.

Looking at photos of twins (or triplets) is pretty fun. I like trying to figure out who is who in the photos. Sometimes there is an obvious difference (shorter hair or some other distinctive change), but having twins is so very awesome to see in photos. I’d love to have twin Mondrians one day, but I may have to settle for (one day!) getting just the one.

Do you have twins/triplets/more? Would you want them? And if yes, which dolls?