Mystery of the Pharoh's Tomb (or: I didn't make the rules).

 

This blog has zero readers so if anyone's here, they probably already know about this, but a quick summary anyway.

There are four book covers out there for Magic Attic Club books that were never released. According to someone who said they personally talked with Sheryl Sinikyn, the manuscripts were never written and the covers were made without the go-ahead from the authors. That conversation is not publicly available. 

I also don't know where the covers came from, how they ended up on the internet, where the descriptions of each book came from. I'm going to admit that I haven't done very much research. but my idle google has left me with questions.

Those books are A Tale of Two Alisons, Heather's Fashion World, Jane in a Land of Enchantment, and The Mystery of the Pharoh's Tomb.

When Ellie invites Jane, Alison's new math partner, to her open house and then up the attic, Heather, Alison, Rose, Megan, and Keisha don't know what to think. With the knowledge that Ellie sent Jane to the attic, the girls take a chance and invite her on their newest adventure through the mirror -- a search for a lost Pharaoh's tomb. When a golden amulet is stolen, the girls fear the curse of the tomb is upon them. Can Jane help figure out if the curse is real or just a hoax?

Obviously, Jane isn't a character that was ever released, but Pharoh's Tomb was going to be her introductory book. It's a group adventure. 

Considering that the last group adventure we got was Jewel of the Sea Cruise, which ranked somewhere between meaningless and just awful, I feel like it's time to start some wild guessing about the book we never got, as well as some sewing and designing.

Here we have an AI-upscale of the cover, which looks a little bit uncanny but is at least easier to view than a 400 pixel image. 

The first thing that caught me is that all 6 of the kids are wearing casual clothing. They're not in sort of traditional adventure gear.

The second thing that I noticed was that the image looks unfinished. I'm sure that, with books that tie into a fashion doll line, the images can't actually be finished until the outfits are finished. We've got rough colors blocking in Megan, Rose's skirt, and Alison's shirt. Jane(?)'s skirt looks like it started to get a print on it, but that was scrapped. I can't tell that for sure, because it might just be a shadow? I'm assuming that whoever was responsible for this illustration isn't about to find a blog in 2024 and give more insight. 

Moving on to some guessing:

I'm suspecting that this book was intended to be the new starter book, introducing new starter outfits. If they were going to be just a one-off adventure, Whispering Pines style, there's a lot of really creative ways that could have done. Putting the kids in everyday outfits makes me think that these would be new Starter outfits for the dolls.

Also, because of the formula of "dress up, mirror, adventure", we know that the kids had to be wearing something else and decided to change in the Attic. I refuse to believe that the attic mirror would let them go on an adventure in their everyday clothing. And since I appear to be one of maybe 6 people in 2024 who cares about the lore of a doll line that is older than many of my friends, I kind of get to decide that. Sorry, I didn't make the rules. Since they're all in relatively summery clothing, I'm assuming the book had to be originally set in winter. The only way I can imagine that these clothes were appealing enough to select for an adventure is if they are very unsuitable for the weather outside. "I don't care what the adventure is, as long as there's no snow," is a kind of reasonable line.

That's about the only insight I've got here, so it's time to move onto "things I decided I have to do if I'm making these clothes."

Part 1) Jane vs Chloe. Here's the problem: Jane actually got a pitched book, but Chloe actually exists as a doll. If you're making clothes for a doll, who do you include in the adventure?

Things we know about Jane:

• Alison's math partner
• Got invited to the attic by Ellie
• I'm seeing some people online say that she met Ellie at an open house? There's not a source for that but there's not a source for pretty much any of this. 

Because of the fact that the Magic Attic Club webpage gave Chloe a bio, there's a few things we know about Chloe: 

• Likes poetry
• Plays guitar and writes music
• Is from California
• Surfs, swims, and skateboards
• Has a twin brother, Connor, who shares a lot of her interests
• Interested in fashion and dressing up
• Teaches young girls to kayak and raft. Is a camp counselor and a lifeguard.

Okay so that last bullet point annoys me. Alison has the stories about going rafting and being a counselor, and Keisha gets the stories about being a lifeguard. IDK it kind of bugs me that Chloe gets to do the things in normal life that the other girls have mirror adventures to do. IDK why that feels weird to me, but it's sticking weirdly.

So quick summary for people who arean't aware, most large collaborative projects like this will have what's called a Bible or a Series Bible. This is one book or other resource that's agreed to have the correct information. Other writers, designers, and builders can then all be referencing the same source material. If two people are writing books for two different characters at the same time, they don't need to talk to each other, as long as everything that they reference is going off the same bible. Information like, "Alison likes blue, is being tutored for dyslexia, plays soccer, has three brothers," can be referenced by any author, designer, person writing a catalog blurb, and it's known to be correct.

The Magic Attic Club bible was written by Sheri Sinykin. However, by the time that Knickerbocker bought the company (and released Chloe), she was not happy with the company and said she wasn't being paid royalties on all the books she wrote. (Again, I don't have a primary source for this, but I don't have reason to believe it's particularly wrong).

What I think this sums up to is that whoever included Chloe into the series bible did it without Sheri Sinykin's input. And there's not really anything wrong with that. It's very common in big franchise projects like this for personnel to be changed and replaced. It's just that there's a lot of evidence that Chloe wasn't incorporated into the project in the same manner as the other kids.

Backstory time, when I was a kid, I has Alison, and my sister had Heather. I was later gifted Chloe (I believe because the paperwork said she was Alison's friend) and we never really liked her. Eventually, her leg fell off and we threw her away. So I both don't like her back story and feel like I can't do wrong by her because I owe fair treatment of her to my past self.

Anyway, I need to get back to the story. We've spent too long on side topics. Quick summary:

Things we know about Jane: She was actually in the books
Things we know about Chloe: Actiually like 3x as much as we know about Jane.

And here's the big thing: Chole has a brother, who is her age, and who is named Connor. And is probably blond. I have a boy doll who is her age and is blonde. So we have Connor now.

There's someone editing the Magic Attic Wiki who is insistent that Chloe is not Jane. However, since  Jane is blonde and Chloe is also blonde, there's at least a little bit of evidence that they had the doll partially finished, and then changed the accessorization to make her tough and cool and kool and tuff. Also the doll is high quality and the accessories and clothes she came with are a bit cheap, so I chose to believe that Chloe is a pivot to rebrand a partially-complete Jane. Since there is next to no information about either of them, anything that could be Jane OR Chloe is now acceptable headcanon. Sorry if some people disagree with that. I didn't make the rules. 

So let's check out where we're going here: 

 Crop of an AI upscale here, so please forgive the faces and hands. Let's look at what we've got here:

• Rose has teal t-shirt looking something and a long skirt. Probably below knee.
• Alison definitely has gray pants/shorts and then appears to have some kind of sleeveless or cap sleeve shirt with some kind of text of graphic on it.
• Megan has a cardigan? Some kind of long sleeve top, bottoms are not seen.
• Blonde girl holding the flashlight has a wrap skirt of some kind? there's a purple tie that could be connected to the skirt, to the skirt, or as a belt. Shirt is tucked in. 
• Keisha is in GREEN???
• Bucket Hat Kid is in some kind of plaid without a defined seam at the underbust or waist. She appears to not have sleeves, either. 

Let's get into some designs, then.

Keisha: Okay, so for starters. Every group of kids who want to travel through space, time, and dimensions needs to know the number one rule: All travelers must maintain color coordination, or else coordinate all costumes across the group, when on a group event. 

Didn't make the rules on that one.

Anyway, we have Keisha back in her proper color, purple. We can't see too much of the look on the book cover, just that it's got polka dots and a high neck. I figure a little bit of lace can keep it fun and quirky, as well as keeping a summery feel.

I'm assuming that the Pharaoh's Tomb they're going to go explore is in the desert, though you can't assume anything when it comes to the magic mirror. There's unicorns and talking flowers and snow queen worlds out there. 

 

Megan gets like a long cardigan and leggings. Maybe some Uggs. I don't get why she's got the long sleeves and everyone else has short sleeves, so she's getting a very light cardigan and a brown cami. Let's get those kids paying the female layering tax as a young age. 

The cardigan has a pocket for her glasses. 

 Rose's v-neck t-shirt has white on it in the reference images, but I think that looks more like it being unfinished rather than it being canonically white. I might slap some white trim/piping in the v-neck when I make this. We don't know. No one knows what I'm doing until I'm done, especially not me.

I'm going to go through the MAC lore (it's only, what, 7 years? 1994-2001 was the books) and see if there's anything that looks like that logo-ish section. I'd love to have a shirt with some secret Magic Attic Club reference on it.

If I'm lazy I can just use her shorts from the Alison on the Trail set.

Who's up for some creative liberties? This is the tucked in shirt with the wrap skirt and purple belt, the only costume you can see really clearly on the cover.

And we're putting it on Heather. 

There's a couple of justifiable reasons for that, like that it's pink and Heather's color is pink. There's also some non-justifiable reasons for that like that my older sister had Heather as a doll, and my older sister has never liked free size waists (babydoll cuts) or bucket hats, but loved and still loves a good tucked in shirt look. So Heather gets the look that my older sister would like, because in this case i DID get to make that rule, and so I made the decision.

Chloe does have one really huge problem. As previously mentioned, all travelers through time, space, or parallel realities must be assigned an identifying color and they must wear that color on all group events. I can't even begin to explain how much of that rule I didn't make. 

Chloe's starter outfit is pink. Heather is pink. The Magic Attic Club wiki says that Jane's color was intended to be orange, but I think that's just based off the picture on her book cover. I also think that book cover is of unfinished art.

However, the downside to being number 6 in the group is that a lot of the other colors have already been taken. I'm not about to make Chloe wear orange with her fair complexion, so she's getting red. That's it. 

We'll find her a nice red plaid with some lovely purple or fuchsia stripes in it. We'll ease her out of the pink and into the red nice and slowly, to avoid as much trauma as possible. But we simply cannot have two mirror travelers wearing the same color. 

I'd let it slide if I could, but this is yet another case where the rules are out of my hands.

But I think these would be fun new meet outfits or starter outfits that I could keep the dolls in when I have them in storage. I'll have some fun collecting new accessories for them as well.

As for the lore, I'm not really emotionally sure how comfortable I am with 10-11 year olds going into a literal tomb where dead bodies are to just have a fun look around. I think this is probably the kind of thing I'd imagine doing when I was a kid before learning about how therre's no more mummies because victorians are them all. Maybe we could have some fun where the kids solve the mystery by convincing all the tourists that the place is cursed and that the pharaoh should be left to its afterlife in peace. Maybe that's the only way I can come to terms with this concept.
My local fashion club is doing a graveyard meet and I had to opt out because I think graveyard meets are in absolutely awful taste.
Maybe they're in a tomb and think they're cursed and then at the end they find it's a movie set. I think I like that too. Like, what are all the kids doing on the set of Indiana Jones 6? 

We'll do the clothes first and then get into the rest.

So anyway, my new rule is that I'm not allowed to buy another doll unless I 1) have made this whole collection or 2) it's in really bad shape, under $35, and I think I can save it from going in the trash,

Eye bleach follow up

 I found an easier way.

Cw for some eye scream here. 

How to remove Magic Attic Club eyes and replace them. 

The Magic Attic Club dolls have fixed eyes. They eyes themselves are separate pieces of plastic, pushed into the vinyl from the front. 

Doll eyes are pretty easily available. From my experience here, Alison, Heather, Keisha, and original sculpt of Megan use 16mm eyes. Rose and Chloe use 18mm. I assume that the later sculpt of Megan uses 16mm eyes, but I haven't checked.

So, to change the eyes, we just have to get access to them. If your doll's hair is rooted, you're going to need to shave and wig them.

On 24-year-old dolls, I found that the wig can be pushed off with pretty much no effort. 

The vinyl was really hard to cut with a razor knife, so I had to heat and then stab. 

There is a little ridge on the backs if their heads, which I assume is where an original access hole was during construction. I found that it was easiest to go in the area around that, instead of trying to go in the seam or inside the little circle. 

I used a flathead screwdriver to follow my knife, to keep the space open and let me make better curves. 

Heat, knife, follow with the screwdriver, repeat. 

Inside you can see the elastic and the head cup, as well as the backs of the eye sockets. It's not a ton of room to work with, but it was plenty to get done what I needed. 

There's enough room to get in there with a knife and cut a hole in the back of the socket. It doesn't need to be pretty. It just needs to be big enough that the eye can push through it when. It's heated up. 

The eyes aren't glued in, so you can heat them up and push hard from the front, and it'll pop out. 

As you can see, Rose's eyes are quite a bit bigger than Alison's. You can see that both eyes are only yellow where they were exposed, and the rest of the sclera is still white. This means that I can just put Rose's eyes in rotated 90 degrees, and keep the original eyes while losing the liver failure aesthetic. 

Once the eyes are out of the way, you can clean out the rest of the eye hole. I found that the best way was to clear the vinyl on the back of eye socket all the way, but to leave it just a bit smaller than the back. This will hold the eye a bit on its own when you put it back in. It also helps make sure it stays in the right orientation. 

Once I stuck the eye back in (left), you can't even see the yellow area. 

I don't have pictures of the rest, but the answer is hot glue. Get the eyes aligned, hot glue to hold them in. Glue the dome back on. Glue the wig back on. 

I'm confident that hot glue won't hold the eyes in if someone is really determined to pop them out from the front, but I'm guessing that the number of people in 2024 who are interested in un-yellowing a doll's eyes but is too young to understand that you can't try to push the eyes out is probably a little low. 

Got a new doll

Necro-ing this blog for a reason. I always knew that, when the time was right, there'd be a cheap Keisha doll on ebay and I'd also have the money. 

So, finally got this. This poor doll has been through some stuff.

The first notable thing is that her arms are falling off. I placed an order for a specific MAC restringing kit. I once tried to restring my Alison, and I could barely get her back together. This kit was $6, and hopefully it will make the process easier this time. I actually got two kits. If this isn't hard, I'll use the second kit on my Alison, and if it is hard, I have a backup in case I mess up.

When I was looking up articles on how to take care of AG Addy's hair, since I'm not familiar with this texture, I found some articles saying that it's more common to find Black dolls secondhand in really bad states, when compared to white dolls from the same target demographic. I don't have any information to say that happened here, but I hope it didn't.

Her torso and legs are shiny, which the ebay seller said, "shiny from ???" in the listing. It's definitely because there was some kind of writing or sticky something on her, and whoever removed it used a really strong solvent that started dissolving the vinyl. I don't really mind this. It'd be better if she didn't have it, but if she didn't have it, she probably would have been $50 more. 

As I've kind of rambled about previously, I'm not here to be a "everything must be new!" kind of collector. The adult American Girl collectors community is just kind of alarming, and I don't want to be that. I just want to have some dolls to tell stories with and make clothes for.

For those of you who don't know, I have a lolita fashion blog about doing it on a budget. Lolita fashion is a subfashion from Japan where many things are in the $300+ for a dress kind of setup. I'm not in the fashion to impress anyone with my wallet. I'm in the fashion to wear goofy dresses and have some fun. I don't remember why I brought up the blog even though I only brought up the blog three sentences ago. Okay. 

And her hair has definitely been cut. I was initially concerned that a ton of it has been pulled out, but I can only see her wig cap in a few spots, so I think this has scissors taken to it. It's only a few inches shorter than what it looks like stock hair was.

Also, my concerns that I wouldn't be able to take care of and style her hair were just completely unnecessary. I was able to brush it and pull it into a ponytail just like my other doll's hair. I didn't get a good before picture of her hair. My camera on my phone seems to think it's still 2008 and shoot some crazy blurry shit.

Anyway, if AG Addy's hair is anything like this, I think all the waspy adult collectors of American Girl dolls are full of crap when they say that her hair is so difficult and unmanageable and untameable and all that other crap. Which, you know, one of the things about dolls is that they represent people. If you're talking about alien dolls with slinkys for hair, that don't in any way represent people, saying that they're inferior to other dolls because of their hair is probably fine. But when adult women say that a certain doll is inferior to the other ones because the hair requires slightly different styling techniques or something, and that doll's hair represents people's hair in real life,   yikes. 

But y'all already know that. That's much more a reminder for myself than anyone else. I don't really need to say it, but I am, because no one reads this blog. It's more like a diary that I happen to leave open on my coffee table than it is a real blog. The only reader of this blog is going to be me in five years. If you found this blog, please leave a comment. I don't think anyone even uses blogger in 2023, but here I am.

So, anyhow, I got her into some pajamas. She'd been in the ballet tutu for who knows how long, so it's time to not be in the ballet tutu.

So, project registration, fixing Keisha:

1) restring so her arm's aren't coming off.
2) clothes
3) that's about it off the top of my head.

As a closing, I'd like to share with y'all the thing I wrote in my phone yesterday at work:

They think it will be a medieval thing going to the future, but it's extras on a movie set and someone stole an important prop.

They're two bands now and it's a competition.

Someone's a fashion designer
Candy striper
superhero or sidekick
pirates

Ellennellie wtfhername is goes through the mirror to get new clothes for her kids. she's basically a time lord. the parents trust her because one of them went on an adventure in the mirror when they were a kid.

The last thing that I want to say is that I think the "rare" books that only have cover art: 

Heather's Fashion World, The Mystery of the Pharaoh's Tomb, Jane in a Land of Enchantment, and A Tale of Two Alisons were probably all never actually written. Someone on the blogodome says that they have a confirmation from the author that Heather's Fashion World never existed, but I can't find that online. That said, it's really not uncommon in big collection stuff like this for things to be sort of created "out of order". Since the team writing the books and the team making the clothes are different teams, it's entirely likely that someone (or the main team) gets together and comes up with the concepts for the stories, and maybe some rough outlines. Then, the doll team would come up with the collection design. From there, the concepts of the books and the designs of the doll collections would be sent to several people, including whoever is in charge of the cover art. There's a lot of concept art involved in making things like this, and making the cover art would probably be part of the main design process. Interior illustrations can also be made off an outline, well before the actual book is written.
Meanwhile, the writing team is probably several different people, none of whom have any say in the doll design process. They write the story, and go back to it after the doll line is nailed down, and then they add the costume descriptions to the story.

The other reason why I think these books never existed is that the art for Pharaoh's Tomb isn't actually even completed. Alison, Rose, and Megan's clothes are just flat colors. Heather's Fashion World also is just a sort of placeholder texture without shading. It's very likely that the covers were started before the doll lines had been completely solidified. They knew Alison was in shorts and a tank, and Megan was in long sleeves (and obviously they're all color-coded, so you know what colors to use), but there's not a clear answer for what everyone's OG 2001 starter outfits were going to be, so there's no point in rendering the fine details.

In fact, this is probablysomewhat similar to how the books were. They knew what was going to happen, but didn't have any fine details down. 

inb4 "that doesn't look half finished to me", I'm pretty sure they weren't going to release Megan with a bio-luminescent cardigan.

I'd love to see where these images were originally posted, and how they made their way onto the internet. If anyone knows, please comment it. I see the titles and covers all over the place, but I never see the source. 

That's all for right now, everyone. 

EDIT: Okay, it's been about 5-6 hours since I wrote this, and I found something that changes everything:

This is a scan of the 1997 MAC catalogue, provided by Dollightful Dolls.

Text: Fun, Friends, Imagination, and Adventure...
The Magic Attic Club began several years ago as a mother watched her daughter and friends play with their dolls, creating wonderful stories for them. She recognized how this innocent play helped young girls develop and grow, releasing their imaginations to discover much about themselves and others. 

As the Magic Attic Club has grown, we have received many kind letters from young girls and their mothers, fathers, grandmothers, aunts, relatives and friends. The positive response from our customers reinforces our objective to encourage creative play with the dolls and strive for high quality in every product we develop.

I have had the pleasure of watching my own three nieces, Julia (7), Nell (7), and Jane (4), their frineds and many other children experience the Magic Attic Club. The dolls and costumes create hours of play with fun accessories and furniture, and the books take them on wonderful, imaginative adventures. The lessons in values and self-discovery are an added benefit inherent in the Magic Attic Club concept.

The Magic Attic Club is about fun, friendship, imagination, and adventure: five friends who find a trunk full of costumes and a magic mirror through which they go on incredible adventures. Every girl will delight in how their own imagination goes to work, or as we say at the Magic Attic Club: "The real magic is in you." Stay tuned--the magic has just begun!
Christine E Taylor
Division Director.

Did you all catch that? DID YOU ALL CATCH THAT? Okay, so--

*tears down wallpaper, revealing a brick wall covered in photographs with red string connecting the pictures into a convoluted web*

--JANE. Where do we know that name from? That's right, from Jane two paragraphs ago! Also from Jane, nine pararaphs ago! So, if Jane was Jane when she was four in 1997, that means that--

*tacks new piece of red string onto the board, seemingly at random*

--when Jane was new in 1999, Jane was six years old!

This leads me to believe that Jane was potentially a working name or a placeholder. We know from our existing images that Jane is an apparently white girl with hair lighter than Alisons. Is the Pharaoh's Tomb picture, we see her wearing white and pink. WHO ELSE--

*slaps new image onto the board, without pins or tape. It flutters to the ground before anyone can see what it is of*

--DO WE KNOW who is also pale blonde and wearing pink and white!?

*Slaps the board like a car salesman slapping the hood of a car. Several pieces of red string fall off*

That's right! We have hard evidence that Chloe was always intended to be Jane, and Jane was intended to be Chloe, because Jane was obviously a placeholder name, and it was chosen because the Division Director watched her niecea play with the dolls, and the youngest one was Jane, just like how Jane was going to be the newest, and therefor youngest in terms of time in the club, member of the Magic Attic Club. 

Chloe is Jane and Jane is Chloe. Remember that whole spaghetti thing I described about how big franchise things like this came out? It's entirely possible, and I'm going to say likely, that at some point either they changed Jane's name to Chloe to make her a neat coolkid to appeal to the cool kids, or they had never intended for Jane to be anything other than a placeholder name. 

I still don't have a source for the four book covers I posted up there, but since they're not necessarily finished-looking, we don't actually know if they were ever intended for public eyes. The actual typesetting of the titles might be a thing a fan did. 

Also, this section of a poster showing Chloe is proof that she can travel through time and space.

 

Anyway, let's make it clear that the last doll released in the series is now officially named Chloe Jane. As you can see from these high-res images, Chloe and Jane are 100% identical.

The MAC living room:

I'll do real intro posts for these girls sometime, but at the moment I've got some shots of them in their little room.
.
I'm lucky enough to be getting my own crafting room (at the cost of extra rent$ but Current Me says, "whatever.") and the temptation to not make half of it into a dollhouse has been fought.

I've done a terrible job of 1) making them all everyday outfits, and 2) changing everyone out of their party outfits.
So Rose and Megan are still in their Christmas outfits, and Riley, Heather, and Alison are in their whatever clothes.
I'm sort of torn between loving and hating that I accidentally made a Magic Attic OC. I've been considering rebranding her as Jane, but my entire knowledge of Jane comes from one cover of a book that they apparently never actually put out copies of and written by an author who is un-googleable:

I also sort of felt that Chloe was supposed to be Jane, so I might merge the two if I ever get Chloe (she's at the bottom of my WTB list, though)

Anyway, that cover and that blurb from the catalogue can definitely influence how Riley's personality is going, but for now she's Riley.
When I was a kid and had just unwrapped Alison, I wanted to name her after my friend from preschool because they both looked sort of the same. She ended up going back to Alison, but that friend's last name was Riley, so we're going to stick that name on Riley and call it good.
(It's been so fucking long since I've written here that I don't remember if I ever explained it, but Riley was one of the 2002 model Alison's with rooted hair. That hair was a disaster so I shaved it and gave her a wig. I don't actually like this wig too much for her, so she has another in the mail to see how that works out. Right now she looks like Alison Minus Bangs and that's not what I'm going for. It also doesn't help that it's a 10-11 wig and she's an 11" head, which is apparently too big for a 10-11 wig. It's not glued down and sometimes it just moves places, so forgive that in the pictures.

So here's half the living room. Due to their legs splaying when they're sitting, these dolls aren't always the best for displaying while they're sitting, but I think it's cuter that way. Here Heather is trying to braid Rose's hair, but Alison keeps sticking her bare foot on the back of Rose's neck to see if she'll notice that it's not Heather's hand.
Not basing this off stuff I did as a kid or anything.
Megan's got her hand pretty close to Alison's foot and is probably ready to grab it if Ali starts trying to cause too much trouble. Megan's sort of the mediator of the group.

Outfit wise, Rose and Megan are still in their party dresses, but everyone else is back in more normal clothes.
The main problem about buying dolls without buying extra outfits is that everyone has to share Alison's collection of casual clothes and whatever outfits they were wearing when I got them (which wasn't much). Alison also pretty much always has to wear a hat due to her bald spots in the back.

And over in the corner, wearing Megan's jacket and some hand-knit tights is Helena. Due to her being 50cm/19+5/8", she can share the 18" furniture pretty well, and alternates between living with the xtra tall Monster High dolls and the MAC girls.

And in the other corner, we have Helena, Ann Estelle, and Riley with her guitar. Ann Estelle is a doll sculpted by Robert Tonner, who did all the Magic Attic dolls (except maybe my Megan's face? It's hard to find info about things that happened when I was in 6th grade and didn't care).
Now that I look at this image, the thing striking me the most is that I've been looking for that bottle of window cleaner all damn day.

18": Five's a Party!!

So many dolls!!

So, this is what my Ebay Disease got me. One one or two or three, but four new Magic Attic dolls. Old (kanekalon hair) Heather and Rose, and new (wigged Saran hair) Alison and Megan. Megan has the new face sculpt, which I'd suspected from the two pictures the ebayer posted, and I'm very excited about that!

For those of you who don't have the history of the Magic Attic Club memorized, here's a quic, review, as it relates to these dolls:

• Back in the late '90's, the Magic Attic Club was one of American Girl's main rivals. Their dolls are full vinyl, and much slimmer than the soft-body American Girl. 
• The Magic Attic girls--Alison, Heather, Keisha, Megan, and Rose (Chloe doesn't count, sorry Chloe) were modern-day girls who could transport themselves to adventures by putting on outfits their elderly neighbor had, and looking in the mirror in her attic. The adventures range from modern day (Keisha's cheerleading adventure, Alison's hiking, Heather's dressage adventure...), to historical (usually relating to their real-world selves: Heather's persecution as a Jewish girl in Spain under the rule of Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand, Rose living as a Cheyenne on the prairie), to fantasy (Keisha saving a city on a snowy planet by finding a crystal of power). Each story had an outfit and a series of accessories, and a story book.
• Once American Girl's "American Girl of Today" line started, they ended up being more fierce competition to MAC. Before, American Girl only had historical dolls, but now they were competing in the modern day too. 
• Once Knickerbocker, who owned Magic Attic, started hurting for money, cuts in quality had to be made. They stopped making stories and started just making outfits for the dolls. 
• Another big cut, and one that matters with the dolls that I own, is they made a change to the hair. They went from wigged kanekalon (wigged meaning they have a tiny wig glued to their head, kanekalon being the best fiber for dolls that get their hair played with and what a lot of human wigs are made of) to rooted Saran (rooted meaning tiny holes are drilled in the head and the hair is put in, think Monster High, and Saran being a thinner fiber that sticks to itself--same fiber as Monster High's, who aren't expected to have their hair played with for hours on end and for several years) to wigged Saran after they got noticed for the rooted Saran being crap.
  That's a seriously effed up sentence there but I"m tired and not going to fix it. One of my followers is a teacher. Sorry, Amanda!
• The Magic Attic Club got handed around from company to company. One of those companies thought they could save it and released a new doll (Chloe), gave Megan a new face, gave everyone new starter outfits, and a couple more things. At some point, they were given belly buttons.
• It didn't work.
• Around 2003, there were no more catalogues to sell, and in 2007 their doll hospital closed. When the doll hospital closes, your doll line is officially dead. 

So, it's getting late and now I want to be alone, so let me finish this up quickly and add to it later.

Heather and Rose are the old dolls, with Kanekalon hair. It took me about 11 minutes to brush out both of theirs hair. Kanekalon is great for restyling.

Side note: I somehow still have the original brush that I got with Alison. It's my favorite brush for doll hair. It's got rigid teeth aligned in parallel rows, with the vertical rows spaced out closer than the horizontal rows. It gives me roughly what a wide tooth comb and a narrower comb, depending on how I hold it.

Megan has a lot of hair.

Saran is a bitch and I braided it right after I combed it out.

The city I'm in has marginalized its Black community so much that I couldn't find braid spray even though I went to three stores, but children's detangler spray worked wonders. That stuff's basically propylene glycol in a spray bottle. Saran loves to stick to itself, and so this volume of hair wants to become a giant knot so badly.

Alison #2 also has a comical level of hair:

Remember, my Alison has really thin hair, and originally came with a lot more than you see here. Not as much as Ali#2, though!

Heather and Rose both have the higher quality hair. It looks way better under flash than the Saran. Heather had some weird ends. Some of the ends were three inches longer than the rest of the hair. I trimmed it off.

Here's a picture of Rose next to my Alison, just showing how thin my Alison's hair is. I don't mind, though. It means she was loved. Is loved.

So, speed summary of plans for everyone, and then I'm going to pass out.

• Heather: even out the ends a little more
• Rose: She's just fine how she is
• Megan: Add some layers into her hair to thin out the horzontal width, cut another layer into her bangs to fix the stair step problem she has right now. I'm going to rewig her eventually because I effing hate saran hair. There's a reason why Monster High dolls come with oodles of product in their hair.
• Other Alison: Ebay. If no one buys her, rewig and make a new character to play with my group

Meanwhile Helena is feeling left out. I keep reposing Gooliope and Maddie, but I haven't done more work on painting Gooliope just yet. I'll get back to it when it calls to me.

It's kind of freeing to accept that I'm not in this to "preserve the value" of them or anything. They're dolls for play. I'm going to play with them. Obviously, as an adult, I'm not going to mess them up like I did with Alison, but I am going to do what I want to to make them the characters I see in my head.

I have tomorrow off from work and you can bet your booty I'm going to play barber with Megan. I'm going to do it after I take a lot of photos, of course. Got to document everything and make a real product registration page for each of them.

G'night

Fabric Softener Foils and the new Wardrobe

So here's Ali's cute bath robe, which was a craft fair find, and in her hand's the tint brush I used.
Like most of her non-MAC clothes, the bathrobe's built for an American Girl size, which is a fair bit bigger than the slim body of the Magic Attic girls. I usually pin it in place like you see here, but I'm going to sew a snap there in the future.

I really with I knew who made this. I remember it was at the Lincoln Craft Fair in Lincoln CA and about ten years ago, but don't know anything else about it. It's got matching slipper slides, which I'm going to put some clear strap on so Alison can wear them without them falling off.

Tint brush hadn't been used on human hair before. It's brand new. If it was one of my old used ones, it would have made her hair pink from the residual dye.

Foils go on fast when your hair's as thin as hers. It was about three per layer, and the final product is 16 foils for a whole head.

As we went up, I found a spot where her hair had been pulled out or broken off.

Almost done, and looking pretty, Ali.
The foil I'm using is standard kitchen foil, and they're keeping her robe neat and tidy and keeping the softener from drying out. It's several hours later, now, and it's still moist in there.

And, since I don't want the foils to make a stress point that can rip her hair out (which is a much bigger concern with bleach and human hair, but it doesn't hurt to worry), here she is with her pretty and oversized towel turban.

The downside of this method is that I don't get to soak the top of her head. If this does good things for her lengths, I'll try painting the softener on her scalp and see if that helps too. For now, time to wait and see.

The major upside is that I don't have to leave a doll soaking in water (which doesn't feel like a good idea), that the foils keep everything neat, and that I can use pure fabric softener without adding water.

I know that I did at one point soak Alison in a lot of water, because tiny me definitely took a bath with her more than once. Unlike some of the really nice dolls that my grandma gave me, I don't feel bad about the fact that it definitely caused damage (I think that's how she lost her left index finger). These dolls were built for being played with, and knowing that she fulfilled her purpose and made little (and present!) me happy writing stories and playing and dressing her up and brushing her hair until it wore out doesn't make me sad at all. Every time I see a MAC girl on ebay that says "never been played with," I just want to buy her and play with her a little bit. Every doll built for play deserves that. Wearing a few pretty outfits with different hair styles and sitting with other dolls and enjoying fake tea.
I know they're not alive and they can't feel that, but I think caring about something inanimate gives it a little echo of a soul, and honoring that echo isn't a bad thing.
Toy Story and all that shit.

Speaking of pretty outfits, though, Toys R Us put the Journey Girl's Wooden Armoire on clearance today, and I bought one. I'm going to buy a second tomorrow and stack it on top, because I don't have enough space in this one for even half of Alison's clothes. As for now, I just put all of the made-for-Ali MAC clothes that I have in it. The coat hangers that the wardrobe comes with aren't my favorite, so I got some from the Springfield Girls, because I get 20% off and there are two 60% off one item coupons at Joann, and they carry them. Sadly, the original purple Magic Attic hangers that I have don't fit in the wardrobe. All in all, I'm really impressed with the quality of the wardrobe for the price.
Assembly was required, and it took me an hour and a half to set it up, including a lunch break and finding a #1 phillips screwdriver.

Looking at the Journey Girls, they're MUCH prettier than the American Girls (in my opinion). If I'm going to start collecting more dolls, I'll get them. I think Alison's made me biased, but I really like the look of non-closing eyes better than the recessed sleep eyes most dolls this size have. It's weird when they're lying down in bed, though. Alison has a towel I put over her face when I'm pretending she's asleep, just for that reason.

Anyway, that's enough for tonight. Tomorrow will be an update about how the Fabric Softerner Foils go. Maybe it'll catch on and overcome the popularity of the Downy Dunk. Who knows.

Finally working on Helena

I'm not dead!

So, Helena has a wig, finally. Sort of.

It's 100% athletic tape and yarn, but that's not the point.

I'm not sure I've introduced Helena before, but she's a Bobobie Lotus BJD, light tan, stock faceup. They're about $130, so they're as cheap as you get. 

Polly, 2010-2015: Really want a BJD to sew clothes for.
Polly, 2016: Have a BJD and never sew clothes for her.

I think my main problem with Helena is that she's just not very poseable. Her hinge elbows and knees just don't move as much as I want them to.
This, obviously, is because I bought the cheapest possible BJD that I could find.
I love her face, and I keep considering buying a 5stardoll body (about $200) and putting her head on it.
Of course, this is what I'm going to do with the massive amount of money that I just have hanging around.
Haha.

I actually bought a wig for her a couple days ago, because she really needs one.

<stock image>

I'm getting the feeling that she has blue hair. I got her to sew lolita dresses for, and I'm sure I will soon, but for now, blue hair.

Anyway, the girl needed some hair, and I needed a project that'd take a couple hours and that I could watch TV during.

I started making the wig a while ago. I bought some plied wool yarn and took it apart, to get some chunky curls. The wefts are made of two layers of tape, and the cap's tape.

I pretty quickly realized that I couldn't get enough fiber to make a full wig, so I'd originally stuck the heel of a sock onto the cap. A couple days ago, I finally decided to knit her a real hat. 
The hat's attached to the wig, and it really makes the wig fit better.
She's got a skirt in progress, too. It's on the needles and I work on it before bed.

I've been having trouble finding the motivation to actually sew anything except class work recently.
I've been having trouble finding the motivation to sew for classes, too.
I dropped out of school again.

That's not what this blog is for. This blog is for doll things. Here are more pictures of the doll wig.

Helena's dress that I made her in about 8 minutes doesn't actually cover her butt all the way. Being a BJD, she had a defined vulva. This is why she really needs a skirt or something.

Over on the other side of the cleaning supplies is Maddie, who looks fantastic and makes Helena look like a hack job.

Anyway, I'm back. Doll updates are going to be coming as they do. I think Helena is a bit into being a pirate cosplayer, so prep for some of that.
Poor girl really needs shoes.