Rement released Black Cat Antique Shop in November 2018, and it was an amazing set. The Chess package included a miniature chessboard with chess pieces, a book about chess, and a small cardboard box labeled Tarot of Cats. The Rider-Waite Major Arcana, redrawn with cats, were supplied as miniature cards to go in the box. To quote the youths of today, Rement didn’t have to go that hard, but they did. These are some of my favorite miniatures, even though I have not used them a lot.

Natalunasans sent me two custom Lego Friends minifigures, one of Silencitx and one of Ethancitx. They’re pretty damn adorable. Silencitx is smirking, and Ethancitx is even wearing a long flowy skirt!

I’ve been wanting to have Silencitx and Ethancitx play with Ethancitx’s dolls of Hardshippers, so I just spent $80.00 to recreate the core Hardshippers in Lego Friends. That’s Silencitx, Ethancitx, Little Meghna, Little Allison, Little Theo, Truthlet, the Magister, the Stylist, and the Hippie. God help me….

I decided that Fancy Pippi was not as chaotic and mischievous as I wanted, so I embarked on another custom doll of Pippi Longstocking. This time the headsculpt is by Mexican BJD sculptor CreamSoda, and it is the version of Holly with closed eyes. This headsculpt was made to go on a 15cm [!!] body to create the look of a large-headed elfin character. The wide smile, enhanced by the EARZ!!!, made me think of Pippi. She seems to be smiling so hard that she has closed her eyes.

Upon chatting with CreamSoda [Rhonda], I discovered that she could make the head in a custom size, so I asked for it to be made smaller than default. I commissioned a faceup and a red mohair wig from CreamSoda as well.

As soon as I got her, I marveled at the cheeky grin and the wonderful paint job. The dimples accentuate the smile, and the teeth are accurate [children’s top front teeth are usually earlier and larger than their other adult teeth]. Because of her small neck socket, I used an upper torso from the discontinued Obitsu 21cm doll, but the arms/hands and hips/legs/feet are all from the newer Obitsu 23cm doll with the soft bust. I fastened the torso together with my old standbys, hot glue and heat mold plastic.

One of these days I will add more freckles to Modern Pippi and also redo her braids so that they stick out. I also want to give her a utility belt and bandolier full of Useful Items. I really wanted to take some photos of her, though, so here she is.

Her shirt and vest are from a Mattel Barbie 50th Anniversary 2008 Most Mod Party Becky. Her skirt is from a Disney ILY 4ever Nightmare Before Xmas doll and fashion. Socks are from unknown seller. Boots are from MGA Project MC2, I think.

This is one of those dolls where the parts recombined, came apart, rested for a while, combined with other parts, etc., etc., but I think this is the final combination. This is a Jakks Pacific Juku Couture head that somehow lost most of the cranium. I had to rebuild part of the neck hole and most of the skull dome. And I made a faux fur wig.

The body is an MGA RH Jr. Karma Nichols body that I sawed in two at the waist for some reason, probably to add a joint, but I ended up just regluing it back together. I removed the arched feets and replaced them with Obitsu 22cm feets. I took the nail polish off the hands and the lipstick and face paint [except eyebrows] off the head.

This is Jacob.

After spending a lot of time on Halloween gingerbread house kits from MGA Make It Mini Miniverse, I also redecorated a mini resin gingerbread house that I found at Michaels, a craft store. The pictures below show the latest versions of my mini Halloween houses, all featuring the addition of 3D printed candy corn pumpkins. The first two photos show the Miniverse houses. The last photo shows the mini house from Michaels, where the scene is supposed to represent a snowy Halloween.

Today I tried using clear resin for gelatin and a bunch of fruit inclusions. The lemon slices on top, orange sections, and grapes are from an MGA Make It Mini Miniverse fruit tray. The kiwi slices are nail art deco. It looks like a bunch of not-particularly-appetizing fruit trapped in gelatin, which is the intention, I suppose. Huzzah?

This TRANSLUCENT TOWER OF TASTE is 1.625″ in diameter and made by AmysRetroMinis on Etsy. It’s so beautiful that I want to sob. I have had less success with my own gelatin salads with inclusions, probably because I haven’t been using clear gelatin.

Over the years the Magister has amassed quite a few gelatin salad recipes and gelatin salads [and related molded foods] themselves. What started as a facetious appreciation of gelatin salads has turned into an enjoyable 1:6 scale obsession! Let’s check out his inventory….

I got a new MGA Miniverse kit that included a double decker silicone mold, so today the Magister got two more molded salads/desserts for his collection!

In my search for 1:6 scale kids, I came across Playground Kids made by Ertl. The headsculpt is copyright 1990, and they were made in the early 1990s. Each Playground Kid is a doll 7″ high with plastic head, hands, and shoes and a cloth body. Each doll comes with a toy, like a tricycle, a swing, a teeter totter, etc., that they can sit in or on and ride. Their hands are sculpted in clenched positions so that they can hold on to handlebars, swing chains, etc. They have rooted hair and come with hairbrushes. There were also eventually a line of smaller dolls with their own ride-on toys, also made by Ertl and representing younger children. Ertl also used the same kind of dolls branded as Farm Kids, with more agriculturally related toys. The Playground Kids concept succeeded well enough that it spawned imitators, which can be found on Ebay with searches like “playground kids clone doll.”

Anyway, Ertl collaborated with Coca-Cola to issue a line of branded dolls in this style along with branded toys. Unsurprisingly, the dolls are called Coca-Cola Kids. I found a lot of five Coca-Cola kids for slightly under $40.00 shipped. Well-loved and grimy, they came with tangled hair and none of their toys. I decided to see how I could fix them up and, given that I did not spend lots of money on them, perhaps experiment on them to make them more self-supporting and articulated, able to be integrated in my 1:6 scale world.

I got back from a weekend with Lyra. We went to the Sturbridge Doll and Bear Show in Sturbridge, MA, yesterday. I bought a 1:6 scale antique doll for $75, which was probably a little high. She has a cloth body with a china shoulder head [head and bust in one piece] and lower arms. She’s 12″ high, from the 1870s, according to the seller [Collins Gifts in Rye, NH], and very worried in her expression. Her clothes seem to be from that period too and handmade. I’ve been wanted to add a 1:6 scale antique doll to my small populations for some time now, and here she is: Agnes Clothilda Blood!

MGA’s Make It Mini Miniverse recently issued a set of miniature alcoholic drinks, and @natalunasans surprised me with three of them. Among others, I got the set that I was most excited about: the set with four tequila shots and a golden octopus to hold the glasses. I added red rhinestones to the octopus’ eyes and invented my own multicolor drinks with my various resins. Then I took pictures of [from left], the Hippie, the Magister, and the Stylist with their drinks.

Used some leftovers from various MGA Make It Mini Miniverse kits as well as some polymer clay decorations sold for nail art.

I was displeased with Mini Silencitx and Mini Ethancitx being the same height. Ethan is two years older than Silence, so, at such a young age, the difference in height between the two would be noticeable.

To that end, I spliced the top half of the Mr. Z toddler body onto the lower part of an MGA Rainbow High Junior Karma body. I’m ignoring the double navels as well as the difference in color between upper and lower parts because the results work well enough for me. I’ve retained some necessary torso flexion and made Mini Ethancitx when clothed look like a pudgy kid who’s older than Mini Silencitx.

In the first pic of him dressed, Mini Ethancitx wears the pajamas from the rescently released MGA Rainbow High Junior Skyler. He also wears her slippers and carries her cosmetics case with some nail files and nail polishes in it. He looks adorable!!

I think I just leveled up in disgustingness of gelatins. The one on the left is Veggie Medley according to the Magister and Barf on a Plate according to Little Night. The one on the right is Spicy Volcano according to the Magister and Just Because You Can Doesn’t Mean You Should according to the Stylist. Even the Magister looks a little dubious about their edibility!

I think Veggie Medley is lumpy and slippery in a bad way that no one likes, while the Hippie figured out that Spicy Volcano goes nicely in tacos.

Veggie Medley is made of 1) clear resin containing chives, mustard seeds, and red pepper flakes, 2) translucent red resin containing whole cherry tomatoes, and 3) clear resin containing boiled egg slices and carrot slices, garnished with 5) boiled egg slices on top and 6) pickle slices around the base. Spicy Volcano is made of 1) orange “hot sauce” resin mixed with translucent red and translucent yellow resin with 2) layers of yellow “cheese sauce” resin, “hot sauce” resin, and translucent yellow resin for sauce and garnished with 6) grated cheese, 7) chives, and 8) red pepper flakes.

My most recent forays into miniature things made with resin have been greatly enhanced by the baker’s dozen of colored UV resin bottles that @natalunasans sent me!

The Magister has a fondness for gelatinizing things. He has at least one cookbook all about encasing things in gelatin. In May, I even got him a mini gelatin salad all his own!

I unironically love the creative things people were doing with gelatin and aspic and jellied things, particularly in the 1950s and 1960s. Ever since I made the Magister his own cookbook and got him his own gelatin salad, I wished that I could make my own mini gelatins.

MGA has been issuing an extremely popular line of Make It Mini miniature food craft kits that include little bottles of resin, little ingredients in little packaging, and little utensils. From previous sets, I have amassed at least 20 mini bottles of resin [meant to serve as cream cheese, soda, maple syrup, hot sauce, etc.], many cut fruits [including bananas, strawberries, and pineapple], and some vegetables and spices. I have been saving them to make veggie salads, fruit salads, desserts, and, of course, gelatin fudz. When MGA released Blue Razz Jelly, a mini reusable silicone mold for a blue raspberry gelatin dessert containing raspberries, I ordered my own small silicone molds, suitable for chocolates, as well as Blue Razz Jelly. I organized all my bottles of resin and all my inclusions [things to put in the resin] and waited eagerly for my vacation, when I planned to make many gelatin salads.

I started off on December 19th with one of the chocolate silicone molds. Unlike the MGA Make It Mini silicone mold, the chocolate molds are…well…chocolate-colored and opaque, which makes curing the resin a challenge. MGA uses UV-activated resin in the Make It Mini fudz, and anything that blocks the penetration of UV light, such as the opaque silicone of the chocolate molds, inhibits the resin setting. Putting in too many inclusions can also complicate the curing, as I discovered when my first experiment came out uncured on top because too many mini marshmallows blocked the UV rays. My first result did not look sophisticated and exciting at all, but it did look like a remarkably realistic culinary experiment performed by dorklets who cared more about stuffing it full of sweet ingredients and less about making something aesthetically pleasing.

I bought a lovely little limited edition Little Witch Doll, Seattle Grunge version, made by dollmaker Isabel Anderson. Down to $95.00 from $115.00 for a Black Friday sale, she ended up being $115.00 with free shipping. I loved her thick eyebrows, sculpted eyelids, and terminally unimpressed expression.

Sweet Sue got a new wig off Ruby Lane, an online marketplace, after years of looking frazzled and neglected. Her new wig may look frazzled, but that’s just because it’s as old as she is. The style looks much better!

Now I just have to do something about her bloomers always falling down…

I’m just writing down her name somewhere so I’m less likely to forget it.

I moved the Kenner Bride head from @natalunasans over to a TB League/Phicen Lady Death action figure body for greater articulation. She’s wearing a Mezco Living Dead Fashion Victims dress, Mattel Barbie leggings with breakfast foods, a Mattel Barbie Extra motorcycle jacket, and bootfeet from an unknown action figure.

Even though she’s in Bride of Frankenstein makeup here, Fay Pompion is actually a regular person. She’s a voice actor and self-proclaimed “scream queen” known for screaming with great emotion a la Fay Wray.

The only articulated body matching the Mattel Princess of South Africa head is a tall Mattel Made To Move body with freakishly elongated torso and legs. To reduce this doll to a more realistic height, first I set her next to a standard Made To Move body. As you can see, most of the extra height comes from the torso and the legs. I took 0.5 cm from the ankles and the wrists and about 1.5 to 2 cm from the middle of the torso.

Bell is an unusual doll, being a stylized, but not idealized, elderly woman. She’s a JPT X POP JPT-003 Hunter figure that I bought nude with heads. Head sculpt, torso, and hands are all sculpted to detail her loss of subcutaneous fat, prominent bones, and age spots. Unfortunately she arrived with a split down the front of her neck, so her head is kind of balancing precariously on her neck. She’s really amazing. I love her watchful expression.

I finally got around to putting back together Aphanarit and Reeve, who were beautifully rehaired from their default states by Trini doll fan ZielaHime!