Holly & Poppy’s Christmas Preparations

Why wait until boxing day, when you can have an un-boxing day sooner?  🙂

I have long hoped to one day own the wonderful duo of the O’Hair sisters – Holly and Poppy, the daughters of Rapunzel, coming form the Ever After High. Not only has my dream true, I was even allowed to open the dolls before Christmas, allowing me to play with pose them for festive photos in time for the holidays!

Now I would like to share with you how I imagine the Holly and Poppy preparing for Christmas. There isn’t much to say, so feel free to sit back and watch their story unfold through pictures  🙂

(The dolls are dressed as they were packaged, with minor exceptions. Poppy – the short haired one – isn’t wearing the scarf that she came with, because it limited her arm movement. She also isn’t wearing her ring in some shots because I initially forgot about it  🙂 Holly needed to have her hair temporarily braided, because it was somewhat messy at the ends out from the box. That’s all. Enjoy!)

I’d like to wish you a Merry Christmas, lots of dolls and toys under your trees and in your stockings, a peaceful time spent among your loved ones and a little bit of sparkly snow outside your windows  🙂

A Little Yellow Coat

With the arrival of autumn, I developed a taste for warm colours. Combined with the desire to sew something that would complement Cerise Hood’s beauty, a whole set of tiny autumn clothes was brought into being. That, of course, was a few weeks ago, but it has taken this long for my colds to subside and for the weather to stop being wet, muddy, grey and altogether uncooperative.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The coat is based on a fantastic pattern by BFashions – apparently a fellow Polish doll sewist and collector! The blog is in Polish, but the pattern itself is annotated in English and the instructions are well illustrated, so I’m confident that anyone can follow it. It’s easily good enough to be sold on Etsy or so, but the author is kind enough to be sharing it for free – that’s really something to be grateful for  🙂

I have strayed slightly from the original. I used felt and instead of properly hemming anything, I only added a purely decorative stitch at the edges – I find that felt doesn’t really fray.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The dress was also sewn especially for Cerise and intended to go with the coat. If you were to hold it in your hand you would know that it has some shortcomings, but I am satisfied with this creation. I believe that it fits Cerise in colour and style – it accentuates her charm by being girly yet simple and earthy. I really wanted something like this for her.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Given the season, I gave Cerise a scarf. This one – just like the real ones, coincidentally – is nothing but a square of hemmed fabric.The only difference being that this one wasn’t as shamelessly overpriced for what it is.

 

 

 

 

 

I had a lot of fun making the bag. It’s based on a free tutorial from http://www.howtoinstructions.org/how-to-make-bag-for-doll-step-by-step-diy-tutorial-instructions/ I had to shrink the pattern to make it the perfect size for EAH. I think I used 70% or 80% of the original size, but unfortunately I don’t really remember. I also skipped the lining. The bag opens and closes  🙂

 

 

 

 

Finally, the bench is also my creation (but again, not my idea when it comes to the crafting procedure). When you’re taking photos of dolls, almost everything is out of scale, even the blades of grass. It helps to have a prop – like this bench – to reinforce the illusion that the doll is in a world of her own size.

If you’d like a doll bench of your own, grab some popsicle sticks and follow this great tutorial on YouTube. However, my bench is double the width of that in the video – if you’d like yours to be wider as well, you’ll need to glue together two sticks (trimmed on one side to remove the rounded end) for each plank.

 

 

 

Going to the park in December I wasn’t expecting dried leaves and grass, but I guess I shouldn’t be thinking about this too hard and just be glad that nature let me catch up on autumn themed photos. Hopefully there will yet be time for winter sessions too.

 

 

Finally, my favourite photo from the set:

 

See you in winter themed posts  🙂