Doll Sized Find – Shopping Bag

This week I ran into Pier One Imports to pick up a $2.00 clearance item for our camper.  I worked at Pier One for several years in high school and college so it was a lot of fun to get in there and take a peek around.  I usually don’t have much need to go in there these days.  I thought I was doing a great job with my will power and just picking up the one little item I needed until I got to the check out.  They are selling this adorable little bag to use with their gift cards.  Well, of course, I thought it would be perfect for a doll and quickly added it to my purchase!  It didn’t break the bank at $2.00, but I was a little disappointed in myself for my lack of will power.  🙂

Saige is our only modern doll (although we do let the others time travel) so she was chosen to be my model.  I wonder what treasures she found at Pier One?  When I was her age I found a silver ring with a dangling heart charm there.  At some point it got lost, but I’ll always remember how much I loved that ring.

Happy Birthday Saige!

Today is Saige’s birthday.  It’s pretty fun for us because Saige’s birthday is only a few days away from my dear daughter who owns Saige.  My girls’, of course, wanted Saige to have the ultimate doll birthday party.

It started with a little disco dancing…

Then moved on to a pinata…

And even included presents purchased by my daughter with her very own money…

I still can’t believe we finally found the Our Generation laptop!

Both the dolls and my girls’ had a great time, so it was a great day.  Happy Birthday Saige!

***Saige is wearing my version of her “Pink Sparkly Dress”.  You can find my basic tutorial for it here.

Photo Challenge

Well it was another busy week and weekend!  However, I did finally manage to clean off my full s.d. card.  Now I can stop trying to limp along using my cell phone to take photos.  Hopefully that will mean more frequent posts too!

This week Doll Diaries put out a 30 day Instagram photo challenge.  I saw it on their Facebook page, but couldn’t find it on their website.  It included things like music, bugs, polka dots, and family.

I’m not on instragram, but we thought it woulds still be a fun thing we could do with our dolls.  Our time was extremely limited this week; so we just chose a couple of items from the list (out of order) and knocked them out.  Hopefully our future photo sessions will involve a little more planning.

The challenge for Day 1 was “sky”.  Here we have a photo of Saige against a beautiful blue sky.  We chose Saige to use because of her book title, “Saige Paints the Sky”.

The challenge for day 3 was “friendship”.  This wasn’t the picture I originally took for “friendship”, but I happen to set them down in this position when I was finished photographing them and I thought it was a better portrayal of friendship.  I wonder what secret Ruthie is telling Cecile.

This was the original picture.  Which do you prefer?

We also tackled day five, which was “outdoors”.  Molly is sitting under our orange tree holding a tiny orange that fell to the ground.

Then we moved on to day six…”road trip”.  Molly and Saige decided they should be the ones to enjoy a little road trip.

Hopefully we’ll have some time to take a few more photos this week.  I’m really enjoying the challenge.

Our Generation Retro Accessories

I think I’m a little late to the party on this one, but I thought I’d tell you all about it regardless.  Anytime we are near a Target we try to stop in and see what Our Generation items are available.  It seems Target isn’t a fan of keeping that area well stocked.  A few weeks ago we were by the only Super Target in our city and stopped in with very high hopes.  As usual, we were dissapointed, but they did have a display of Retro Accessories, which we had never seen before.  Since then I’ve discovered Our Generation has come out with a whole retro line!  (It appears to me that the Retro line is only available at the Super Targets.)

You can view the accessories on the Our Generation website.  I’m almost 100% sure our store had a few sets that are not pictured here.

We picked up the Pink Lady set.  It was too hard to choose, so I let the girls.  The purse is similar to American Girl Ruthie’s and comes with a cute pink handkerchief.  I also LOVE the Gotta Bowl set.

Here Saige just rolled out of bed and reaches for her glasses.

And a close up..

Molly decides to do a little shopping and grabs the purse and glasses for a few fun accessories.

Who do you think wears the glasses best?

Happy Valentine’s Day!!!

It’s the big day…the dolls finally get to have their Valentine party!

Here is the set up for the party.

The trees are something we made several years ago…just a cone with hearts glued to it.

Here is a closer look at the table.  We have our Valentine vase in the back and the cookies Cecile received in the heart tray up front.  The rest of the accessories are from Our Generation’s Kitchen Baking Set.

The dolls had a fabulous time at the party.

Saige handed out everyone’s Valentine cards.

Evelyn wonders which of her friends this one could be from?

Molly and Sofia sample the spread.

And best of all there is lots of time to chat with friends.

 

Wishing all of you a very happy Valentine’s Day!

Valentine Attire

A big party calls for something new to wear, right?

A few weeks back JoAnn’s  had an assortment of Valentine fabric on sale.  I picked up a yard of fabric for about $3 with the intention of creating something for the doll’s to wear to the party.  I usually make three of everything, but I decided to change it up this time and create three different outfits.  Since I had just spent quite a bit of money on patterns for the historical dresses, I wanted to do this on the cheap.  You too could  re-create these outfits.  I’ll give you a brief overview of how I made each one.

First we will start with Molly.  My daughter specifically asked for a skirt with ruffles.  This skirt features two rows of ruffles although it is a little hard to tell in the picture.

I own the miniskirt pattern by Liberty Jane and used it as a jumping off point for this skirt.  Just as a note, I actually find that pattern is far too tight for my dolls.  For this skirt, I cut two pieces of fabric 6.75″ wide by 5.75″ high.  I sewed down one seam, hemmed the bottom 1/4 inch, and created a casing for 10.25 inches of elastic at the top of the skirt.  I happened to have a fat quarter in plain pink and used it to create the two ruffles.  I cut out two pieces of fabric 20″ wide by 2″ high.  I wanted the ruffles to have a nice clean finish so I sewed the two long sides together and turned them inside out.  Then I gathered each ruffle and attached it to the skirt…one of the very bottom and one overlapping.  To finish it, I sewed the final side seam.  The shirt is the free trendy t-shirt pattern over at Pixie Faire.

Saige is our next model.  My other daughter loves long skirts so I wanted to incorporate that into Saige’s outfit.

I used this free maxi skirt tutorial.  However, I didn’t like the thick waistbands so instead I cut the skirt an inch longer and just rolled the top over a couple times and secured it in place with a zig zag stitch across it.  Saige’s shirt is once again the free trendy t-shirt patter from Pixie Faire.  I found when I did not use a knit fabric for the t-shirt it was not quite large enough to close the back completely.  Just the bottom inch or so didn’t close so I didn’t worry myself too much about it.  I felt like the outfit was a little bland though, so I added a few touches.  The gold belt is actually just a piece of 12×12 glittery scrap book paper.  The boots are the tan sherpa boots from Springfield that I painted gold using this tutorial from Doll Diaries.   I used the Tulip fabric paint they recommend.  Here is a closer look.

Last of all, we have Cecile.  I’m not much of a fashionista myself, but the inspiration for this dress came from a friend’s fashion pinboard.

I created Cecile’s maxi dress by starting with the free Liberty Jane tank top pattern.  Then I cut out approximately an 18″ wide by 12″ high piece of my heart fabric.  I hemmed the top, bottom and sides and gathered the top slightly.  I have to note that I don’t know the exact amount of hemming I did.  I just adjusted as needed to make it the correct length based on where I wanted to attach it to the shirt.  Then I simply sewed it to the shirt right sides together.

Now at least three of our dolls have new duds for the party!  Which outfit is your favorite?

Reader Photo Contest over at Doll Diaries

Tomorrow is the last day to enter the New Year’s Eve photo contest over at Doll Diaries.  Here is our entry!

The dolls attended a New Year’s Eve ball.  At midnight Molly shouts “Happy New Year!”.  Cecile offers a midnight “kiss” to Saige.

And a couple more photos taken from the ball…

Saige’s Pink Dress

While the doll world is focusing on American Girl’s latest Girl of the Year, Isabelle, here at A Day Late. A Doll Short. we’re still catching up on last year.  One of my daughters received the 2013 Girl of the Year, Saige, as her Christmas gift.  Saige had some great outfits, but they were a bit out of our budget.  I decided to see what I could do to create some similar outfits on a budget.  I spent New Year’s Eve whipping up the first one, Saige’s pink dress with the metallic gold polka dots.

(photo courtesy of the American Girl website)

In the photo above, Saige’s hair is covering one of the main design points of the dress.  It’s a one shouldered dress!  I had purchased the Colorblock Dress pattern from Pixie Faire in hopes that I could use it for both this fashion redo and to make a Christmas dress.  However, then I came across this great tutorial for a one shouldered dress from Sew Adollable!  Perfect.

I combined the two patterns/tutorials, added in a few of my own touches, and this was the result!

Obviously there are some glaring differences… no metallic dots and I didn’t have a wide enough ribbon on hand for the detail in the original dress’ waist.  Still, I’m very happy with how it turned out.

I cut out the top of the dress using the Colorblock Dress pattern and then modified it to a one shoulder design using Sew Adollable’s instructions.  I kept the mid-piece from the original Colorblock pattern.  It would make a great base for some larger ribbon if I ever try this design again.  My last modification was changing the size of my skirt to around 25 inches wide from the original 30 inches in both patterns.  It was also getting late so I put some simple pleats on the top of the skirt instead of sewing a ruffle.

I paid $2.50 for a yard of the fabric, $3.99 for the Colorblock Pattern (but you could use Sew Adollable’s for free!) and had the ribbon on hand.  I’d say that is a budget worthy Saige dress!