Dolly Market Forum

I've never seen this Draculaura before! Her eression is so unique and...well...eressive! She's an absolute beauty. And the photography itself is divine.

Thank you so much, guys!

I love CE Draculaura to bits. I was really sad when they abandoned that line and renewed it as what equals to regular 'deluxe' releases from the early days of the brand... I would so love to see other characters in this exquisite form...


Day 110



WARNING!!!
Excessive whining, complaining, self-pity and generally being a self-absorbed crybaby ahead!!!
Absolutely do not feel obliged to read it or to comfort me!!! I just need to get this off my chest.

I'm tired. Whenever I take photos of my Pullips, something falls off and I have to glue it back. My MHs are yellowing or discoloring, my I<3F Abbey had a bubble in her neck joint, it cracked and i couldn't glue it back together because of the bubble, she also had one in her wrist peg... I still have the head, so I can get her a new body, the problem is... How long will it last?

I don't want to buy dolls as ex-pensive as Pullips only to have to glue their outfits back together every single time I touch them. I don't feel like buying new MHs since they're probably going to fall apart much sooner that I e(x)pected - seriously, they're not even 10 years old! Ironically enough, my oldest dolls are in the best shape, it's the newer ones that have problems.

And don't get me started on the 'gluehead' issue!

And the list of dolls that are deteriorating just keeps growing, which saddens me, because I love my dolls and I want to keep them forever, dang it!

I don't feel like leaving the hobby, but I do feel as though the hobby was leaving me...

Various dramas constantly popping up in various doll comunities kinda sorta add to it... Usually I have no trouble ignoring that stuff and not getting mixed in it, but right now it kind of makes me feel like it's not even worth to try and meet new people in the same hobby because I'm just going to run into some stupid drama anyways. Screw it.
Thank all the gods ever for this forum! At least here we can talk without setting the whole damn thing on fire.

Oooof. I'm gonna make myself a big swimming pool cup of hot cocoa and pet my kitty.

I'm sorry you're feeling the tiredness of the hobby and the doll deterioration issues. I really don't have the best advice to offer here, I tend to google to try to find ways for repair and the amount of dolls I've had to wave goodbye to because of gluehead issue...

I'm grateful we have you here, you're a lovely person to chat with and you know a ton of cool stuff. For what it may be worth? The dolls in your fun snap today seem to be sharing your "done" feeling when it comes to drama.

/sends many e-hugs

Thank you!!! That's so very sweet of you!!!

Don't worry, I'm not going to leave - the hobby or the forum - I'm just sad that my dolls seem to be slowly leaving me. I actually feel better now, venting + cocoa + kitty helped a lot.

Thanks again!

(04-21-2019, 04:22 AM)neon_jellyfish Wrote: [ -> ]Thank all the gods ever for this forum! At least here we can talk without setting the whole damn thing on fire.

I'm not on enough forums to see drama, I guess.
How frustrating to have dolls you love and want to keep 'nice' deteriorating  I'm not surprised to see you say it's the newer ones.  Quality control in so many things has gone down the toilet... that saying "they don't make 'em like they used to" is too often true.  The Barbies (actually Barbie knockoffs or random Barbie-ish dolls) I had when I was a kid are all still fine.  You never saw parts of them melting.  A little surprised you have that much trouble with the Pullips, but we all know Groove has some QC issues...  
Can you kind of shave off or pare down the MH bubbles...?  I don't know what it looks like, just a thought.
Hope you find some more enjoyable dolly moments.
Sunsette's been known to say that just about anything can be cured with chocolate.  And cat therapy... WELL.

Misery loves company, is that the saying? For what little it's worth, I can commiserate with almost every point of your misery.

I did the hot cocoa therapy thing a couple of nights ago. Prolly woulda done it again tonight, but I'm too tired and lazy to bother making hot cocoa, so I went with a cup of milk and polished off the last of a package of chocolate fudge cookies.

I wonder if people from earlier generations felt like the hobby was leaving them when porcelain and bisque dolls fell out of favor, or when the faces of their composition dolls began to crack and flake, or when the cloth bodies of their dolls began to disintegrate and the sawdust stuffing fell out? The beautiful frilly white dresses on the antique baby dolls discolor over time, the faux leather shoes harden and crack, and hardly anybody seems to care much about those old dolls from the first half of the 1900s anymore, unless it is a near mint example from a high-end European manufacturer. Perhaps seeing our treasures crumble to dust before our very eyes is inherent in this hobby. That's a rather sad thought. I may need to make a mug of cocoa despite my weariness.

Is that a Dal in your photo today? Is she dressed as a knight? And is that hairstyle still referred to as a "Prince Valiant," or is that reference so old that nobody uses it anymore?

Ghost Mermaid - not something that you would have thught of combining, but it works so well. She's just waiting for something to pass her by so she can pounce.

That Draculaura is the Best Draculaura. She's so elegant and gothic and you can just see her gliding through the corridors of a gothic mansion scaring the servants

Sometimes we just need to moan and complain and get things off our chests. I know I (generally) feel much better when I whine to Elfy about various work-dramas that happen in my day.

I'm sorry to hear that there are issues with teh quality (or lack thereof) of the MH dolls. I had issue with staining on one of myEAH Duchess dolls, that I have no idea where she got it from. I never did fix her up - she was a shelf-sitter here, and elfy bought me a replacement. She still sitting on the pile of boxes in the kitchen.

That’s a very chilled out Lala there.

(04-21-2019, 10:49 AM)Alliecat Wrote: [ -> ]

(04-21-2019, 04:22 AM)neon_jellyfish Wrote: [ -> ]Thank all the gods ever for this forum! At least here we can talk without setting the whole damn thing on fire.

I'm not on enough forums to see drama, I guess.
How frustrating to have dolls you love and want to keep 'nice' deteriorating  I'm not surprised to see you say it's the newer ones.  Quality control in so many things has gone down the toilet... that saying "they don't make 'em like they used to" is too often true.  The Barbies (actually Barbie knockoffs or random Barbie-ish dolls) I had when I was a kid are all still fine.  You never saw parts of them melting.  A little surprised you have that much trouble with the Pullips, but we all know Groove has some QC issues...  
Can you kind of shave off or pare down the MH bubbles...?  I don't know what it looks like, just a thought.
Hope you find some more enjoyable dolly moments.
Sunsette's been known to say that just about anything can be cured with chocolate.  And cat therapy... WELL.

Oh, most of dramas are on social media today, I'm on three doll forums including Dolly Market, and none of them have any drama. Granted, the other two are not very active (more liike almost dead), but Monster High Arena never had drama, and I'm pretty sure that Dollieh Sanctuary also didn't see much of it (I registered recently, so I don't know).

The problem with bubbles in Abbey was thet they were inside of the plastic, so it weakened the pegs from inside, and they broke where the plastic was thinnest because of the bubbles. But thanks!

Ah, yes, chocolate and cats are cure for many ailments!

(04-21-2019, 03:32 PM)davidd Wrote: [ -> ]Misery loves company, is that the saying? For what little it's worth, I can commiserate with almost every point of your misery.

I did the hot cocoa therapy thing a couple of nights ago. Prolly woulda done it again tonight, but I'm too tired and lazy to bother making hot cocoa, so I went with a cup of milk and polished off the last of a package of chocolate fudge cookies.

I wonder if people from earlier generations felt like the hobby was leaving them when porcelain and bisque dolls fell out of favor, or when the faces of their composition dolls began to crack and flake, or when the cloth bodies of their dolls began to disintegrate and the sawdust stuffing fell out? The beautiful frilly white dresses on the antique baby dolls discolor over time, the faux leather shoes harden and crack, and hardly anybody seems to care much about those old dolls from the first half of the 1900s anymore, unless it is a near mint example from a high-end European manufacturer. Perhaps seeing our treasures crumble to dust before our very eyes is inherent in this hobby. That's a rather sad thought. I may need to make a mug of cocoa despite my weariness.

Is that a Dal in your photo today? Is she dressed as a knight? And is that hairstyle still referred to as a "Prince Valiant," or is that reference so old that nobody uses it anymore?

Thanks! That's an interesting thought - the transience of dolls' lives. Then again, while each one doll might last only for a while, model of human form is something that has been with us from the very beginning of our history - whenever people discovered a new material, the first thing they made of it was a human figure (and then weapons). So in a way, this hobby is both ephemeral and eternal. I feel like I'm going to reach enlightenment any second now!   

She's Byul Rhiannon. And Prince Valiant will forever be Prince Valium in my head...

(04-21-2019, 04:36 PM)Lejays17 Wrote: [ -> ]Ghost Mermaid - not something that you would have thught of combining, but it works so well.  She's just waiting for something to pass her by so she can pounce.

That Draculaura is the Best Draculaura.  She's so elegant and gothic and you can just see her gliding through the corridors of a gothic mansion scaring the servants

(04-21-2019, 04:43 PM)Lejays17 Wrote: [ -> ]Sometimes we just need to moan and complain and get things off our chests.  I know I (generally) feel much better when I whine to Elfy about various work-dramas that happen in my day.

I'm sorry to hear that there are issues with teh quality (or lack thereof) of the MH dolls.  I had issue with staining on one of myEAH Duchess dolls, that I have no idea where she got it from.  I never did fix her up - she was a shelf-sitter here, and elfy bought me a replacement.  She still sitting on the pile of boxes in the kitchen.

Sirena does look like mermaids from the old tales, back when they were sinister harbingers of peril and mayhem, and their beauty was just one of their weapons... I like the old scary fairy tales. And I guess that's why I love Sirena. I like GSR dolls, but Sirena remains MH's best take on mermaid in my book.

CE Lala truly is The Best. I've said this a thousand times already, but I really wish they made more dolls in this style. Imagine 19th century Frankie or gothic (as in medieval era) Rochelle...

Yeah, venting to people who can relate definitely made me feel better!

(04-21-2019, 04:47 PM)Elfy Wrote: [ -> ]That’s a very chilled out Lala there.

That would be Picture Day Spectra. I love Spectra because of her elegant, calm face. Well, that and the fact that she's a ghost.

Day 111

I'm ill again, and I have a migrain again (seriously, 2019 has been such a migraine infested trainwreck, it's almost hilarious at this point), so I'm going to use a back-up photo. I posted this one on instagram a while ago.

I do hope the migraines go away after this and stay away for a long time... like maybe forever.

If it brings us photos like this, though... well, I certainly would not wish any ill upon you, ever, but this is a wonderful photo.

Is Cheshire winking... or is her own migraine giving her a bit of a twitchy eyelid?  

(Oh, wait... I guess that's actually her "signature ekspression" from the product promo photos. It's probably an insane rather than a migraine twitch, then.)

(04-22-2019, 06:41 AM)neon_jellyfish Wrote: [ -> ]model of human form is something that has been with us from the very beginning of our history - whenever people discovered a new material, the first thing they made of it was a human figure (and then weapons). So in a way, this hobby is both ephemeral and eternal. I feel like I'm going to reach enlightenment any second now!

What a cool thought (the 'ephemeral and eternal', not the weapons part, which is also a sad truth about our species...). I've been toying with the idea of trying to interest a photo magazine in a doll-photography article. This would be a great idea to include.
Pretty girls in today's photo...
I hope you feel better soon.

Cheshire Cat always looks so sassy and the wink could have been made just for her.

I am sorry you've been bothered by migraines so much! If I knew a good way to get rid of them, I would offer it to you.

I like the ex.pression on Cheshire there, it's like she's letting us know she's about to drag Alice into a whole heap of trouble, but, hey! They're going to have a lot of fun while they're at it.

Thank you everyone! I feel stupid about constantly complaining, but I guess I need excuses for my lazy photos...


Day 112

Earth Day! I couldn't go outside, but I still have somewhat earth-day-ish photo. The lindens around our rabbit hutch have a peculiar habit of growing leaves overnight. Yesterday, there were only tiny buds on their branches, and today - this.



I took this about an hour ago, so the light wasn't quite there. So I smeared filter on it!