A Long Gone Collection . . .

One of my favorite toy lines was the Kenner Littlest Pet Shops. I used to have almost every set made. I started collecting when I was 11 and kept on collecting until I was about 19. I spent hours and hours with these things and loved them to pieces!

When I got married we were very poor so I decided to sell the collection on eBay. Here's my six-month old daughter posing with them:

This adorable little cutie is now NINE!!

The lot ended for about $500, which is probably less than it would have sold for today as I was very meticulous about every set having its accessories. I also had a good number of Baby Buddies (An LPS spin-off).

Now it's time to rebuild the collection. This time I am not selling them off again. I made that promise to myself. Time and time again I get an almost complete collection and then I sell it off to buy something else. But then I go through the rebuilding over and over again. No more! Everything stays even if it has to go into the attic for most of the year. Yes . . . I am a toy hoarder.

Here is a link to the best LPS site I know of: The Littlest Pet Shop Guide by Zuse

Display Backgrounds - Plan of Attack!

I am starting to get serious about designing great toy displays. I want to be able to set up a collection to look like a catalog picture, or better. See this post for more details. The project would involve the creation of backgrounds and display props that I can set up and rearrange to suit whichever toy I am displaying at the moment.

I have been gathering prop parts for a few years now, just throwing them in a box until I am ready. Here's some of what I have thus far:

Various tree parts that could be painted different pastels for Lady Lovely Locks or Forest of Feelings. They could also be joined and kept their original color for My Little Pony displays or anything else that might have a tree in the background.

A cloud base. Not sure where this came from. I came upon it on eBay a few years back. Good for Care Bears, Moon Dreamers, My Little Pony, etc.

A few other small parts.

As far as the background goes, I have an idea in mind. I will create layers of background that can be switched and matched around to suit the toy.

The first layer would be a gradient sky. Something like these:

I would also do a dark starry night sky for things like Moondreamers and My Little Pony Pegusi and Care Bears.

Then I would create a separate set of land layers such as hills, castles, far away trees, etc.

Then I would create multiple, independant foreground layers like tree clusters, bushes, flowers, waterfalls. These would be done sticker-style so that I could place them anywhere in the display that I desire.

The way I see it, given the items I collect, I would only have to do a few types of backgrounds:

* Fantasy Forest
* Clouds (either in day or night)
* Manly (for stuff like He-Man and Thundercats)
* Under Water
* Urban (for collections like Sweet Secrets, Fairy Winkles--it would be an indoor setting)
* Generic outdoors (like the picture above, but customizable for SSC, MLP, etc)

As far as the materials I would use, that is still undecided. I would want something really sturdy like particle board. I would have to paint the picture on sturdy canvas and glue the parts onto the board and use a jigsaw to cut it. I just want it to last. I think the materials question is probably my biggest hurdle in the whole project. Any thoughts are welcome on this. Meanwhile I will continue to search for props and dream up ideas.

FInds for December 2nd 2010

It's been probably the most insane week of my life. Between sick kids, job interviews and other minutia I have had zero time for toys.

All work and no toys makes Angel something something . . . .

Anyway, here's my small haul from the thrift store yesterday:

A second Baby Brite, more Ruxpins, a Glo Friend, a couple G1 My Little Ponies, a caboodles case, a Lolly doll, a Yum Yums, a Chubble, Lonely Hearts Horse, a He Man Guy, a Care Bear, etc.

Perhaps my favorite was this bell charms collector's case:

I wonder if all Bell Charms were made by Imperial. Or were there several manufacturers of them like with silly bands and slap bracelets? Not sure, but I do like this cool case. I will post a picture of myself wearing my charm necklace sometime. I also collect vintage dresses from the 40's-80's and I have a great 1970's dress that looks cute with my bell charms.

Speaking of toy hunting, check out this post on the Ghost of the Doll forum. Can you believe she found all that stuff?! Wowzers! I need to move to Texas!

My other awesome find is this cute Yum Yums plush. I am seriously debating collecting these cuties. I was too old for them by the time they came out but my little sister had them and they are super cute:

Kawaii (a Japanese toy company) purchased the licence for Yum Yums and now there are all sorts of new merchandise. Check out this eBay store for a great selection of the new items.

Finds for November 24, 2010

Found some fun things today. Lots of nekked Jem dolls, TMNT action figures, a vintage Barbie, a Chubble, Baby Brite (missing her jumper) the third Bright Heart I've seen this year, Polly Pockets, a dress for my My Child Doll and my favorite: a new Bradley doll!

Isn't she a cutie? I now need to see if the Chubbles works and maybe work on restoring Baby Brite. I missed thrifting. Hopefully I'll feel good enough to go out again next week!~

Also, on eBay today I snagged the rare Fairy Winkles set I have been searching for along with the variant jewelry box. As far as I know both sets are only available in the UK.

Blinky & Ursa - Before and After

I can't even begin to tell you how horrible of a week it has been. Not only am I STILL sick, my camera broke. Since part of my livelihood relies on my camera I will have to buy another one at about $600. Ouch! For now I will have to use my crappy cybershot. But this isn't a blog about my problems. Let's talk about toys, they never fail to make me happy!

I purchased Blinky and Ursa recently for about $17 shipped--which is a good deal considering it was a complete set with some extras.

Here's what they looked like when they arrived:

If you click on the image you can see how sort of sad they look. Both had a lot of playwear. So I put them  through a Mr. Clean Magic Eraser treatment (never fails to get stuff off!) and then I worked on Blinky's hair. One of the problems I generally encounter with certain dolls is the bangs sticking straight up. Lady Lovely Locks dolls are famous for this. I have worked on several ways to try and get them flattened again and was very happy to discover (after much trial and error) a method that works every time.

First, I fixed Blinky's pigtails. Then I wet the bangs, put gel in them and placed a band aid on her face, but made sure the bangs were not near anything sticky. This is important because you want the bangs to dry but not stick to the glue on the band aid.

And here's what they look like all clean and dry!

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!

Finds for November 19, 2010

I've been down with the flu for almost a week now so I haven't felt good enough to get out to the thrift stores until today. The pickens were slim but I did grab a few things:

I'm not sure what that pink doll is. I think it's a Monchichhi knockoff. I was happy about the Quints book. I have a box of quints dolls I need to go through. I plan to start seriously collecting them soon.

Just for fun I had my daughter scan the book. Click on the images below to see the Tyco Quints coloring pages!