My Child Doll Restoration

A very nice girl in Canada sent me these rather tragic My Child dolls.

Both were very stained, with gerying faces and hands. The dark-haird one even had some food substance all over her face, neck and chest. I decided I needed to save these poor gals, post haste!

I stripped them down and prepped a cocktail of detergent and fels naptha paste, which I applied with a toothbrush to all the messy spots.

You might recall this post where I show my new method of spot-cleaning my stuffed animals using a Waterpik flossing system. I wish I got a video of how easily all the gunk came off with the water pressure. It was amazing! Dirt just vanished away, like counter crud in some sort of infomercial. If I find another dingy doll I promise to make a video, it was fun and cool and not hard on the dollies at all!

Here they are, wet but clean!

After they dried I applied new makeup using watercolor pencils. Don't they look pretty!

Click on the image to see!

Time to do their hair!

I scrounged up an outfit for the knot-top and washed the original jammies blondie came in.

And voila! New dolls!

I put them up on my little white shelf along with my other two My Child Dolls. I have given them names too!

Here we have: Ebony, Robbie, Allie and Erica.

I must say as a side note, I have had the most horrible couple of weeks at work and just in general. I am so grateful I have toys to help get me through. They are faithful friends who always help get my mind off things.

Moon Dreamers on my Little White Shelf!

I took down the Fairy Winkles today and out up my collection of Moon Dreamers!

This collection is coming along nicely, although I am missing the hardest to find items: the necklaces, the records, the hair clips and Ursa Minor. Anyone paying attention to the market on eBay would know that these things don't come up very often. I have only seen Dream Central a handful of times.

Fairy Winkles on Display

For the past month or so I have had my Lady Lovely Locks on display on my little white shelf in my craft room. Today I decided it was time for a change so I busted out the Fairy Winkles collection. Click on images to see them superlarge.

 

My collection is almost complete. I am only missing the address book play set and the mail away set. There is also a variant candy box out there that I need to get my mits on. Oh, and did you notice the bell charms on my dress dummy?

I had enough charms to make three complete necklaces. Now . . . got to find a place to wear them!

The Hedonic Tredmill and My Little White Shelf

I have been in bed for the past five days recovering from a minor abdominal surgery. During this time I have had the pleasure of finishing several books on social sciences and psycology. I am always interested in how the human brain works and how it relates to life's troubles (sugery) and joys (toys!) and I always want to maximize my experiences of pleasure while minimizing the things I find lame.

I started collecting very early and even though I loved getting a new toy and shopping for toys I began to notice a problem. When I had all my toys together in one big room stacked to the ceiling I felt rather gross, kind of like the old ladies on Hoarders. I suddenly couldn't focus, didn't appreciate that hard to find item or that completed set. Everything looked like a rainbow of sameness and I got sick of my room-o-toys and put everything in storage for awhile.

That feeling didn't mean I was suddenly done collecting or that I lost interest in toys. On the contrary, I was always looking for more and trying to complete sets and collections. I struggled for years on what I should focus on and how much time and money I should spend on the hobby, and now that I am a bit older I think I have come up with the perfect "toy enjoyment" equation.

The hedonic treadmill is a principal of the human condition that states no matter what joys and sorrows we add to our lives we will eventually bob back to the same depth of happiness or misery we enjoyed before the joy or sorrow was added to the mix. In other words, a new rare UK My Little Pony in the mail might give me a day, a week, a month of happiness, but eventually I will require another rare beauty to come along in order to maintain that happiness. That burst of joy will fade and that pretty pony will become another hunk of plastic in my collection.

The book "The Upside to Irrationality" gave an answer to how we can maintain that new burst of joy for as long as possible. In several studies involving a vacuum cleaner and a DVR (I wont bother repeating them here because I am lazy) behavioral psychologists came to the conclusion that in order to make happy things last longer you must interrupt them. On the flip side, in order to make unpleasant things go as quickly as possible, you must take care of it all at once, without interruption.

How does this apply to toy collecting?

When we moved into our new house, long before I learned about the hedonic treadmill, I decided that I would continue toy collecting under the following conditions:

1) The item had to be cheap or a very very good deal. In order to find those deals I have to wait and wait and wait. (Interruption) I don't get to have everything I want now, I have to wait until it is half the usual cost or dirt cheap at a thrift store.
2) I only have one shelf in which to display my toys. This satisfies the principles of interruption by "hiding" the items I have and only trotting them out on display maybe only a few weeks out of the year. With this tecnique I never get the color-overwhelm or feel "grossed out" by my hoarding. I also do not take the toys for granted.

So, even though I love seeing the big toy rooms online I enjoy a small display here at home. Today I felt good enough to get out Lady Lovely Locks and put her on the little white shelf.