Celebrating 26 years!

Marv and I were married 26 years ago today.  What a wonderful journey we have had so far!  I love you sweetie!

Vinyl/ABS Plastic Ball Jointed Dolls

I have a number of big resin doll BJDs but I have been working on my display shelves in my doll room (doesn't every house have a doll room?) and they are too short to display the larger dolls so I have been populating the displays with some smaller BJDs and I thought I would share them.  I posted them on the Den of Angels forum for off topic dolls so some of you may have already seen these.

The Cat is "Freya" by Hujoo. in white ABS plastic.  I painted her face using pastels and acrylic paint.  After each layer I did a quick spray of a matte workable fixative (Krylon).

  Her dress is for Blythe, if I remember correctly.

The Kitchen set I have had since I was about 10 years old.  Its made by AMSCO and was designed to be Barbie scale.  I love it.  My dad recently cleaned it up and fixed all the wiring so it lights up again (it uses C batteries).  I have the burner under the coffee pot turned on in the photo and you can kinda see it glowing.

Below is a Jun Planning Ai vinyl doll.   This specific doll/outfit is the Matricaria one. 

She is posed in a vintage German grocery shop that works very well with all my Re-ment foods.  I LOVE Re-ment.  I am totally hooked on them.  I use to buy them at a wonderful store in China Town that sold all Japanese items.  But now that I no longer live near there, I mainly get them on ebay.

New wig for my French Fashion Doll

Recently I got together with some of my doll friends who collect antique French Fashion Dolls.  One of my friends taught us how to make 18th century wigs for the dolls....as if the dolls were attending a costume party.  I had a wonderful time and have been continuing to work on the wig.  Here are some pics of my first attempt.

My doll is a Bru...early moon face...with wooden arms/hands and leather body from the late 1860s.

The wig is made from Tibetan Lamb.  

(Ignore the mess on my desk!)  I am still having trouble with the wig being a bit too frizzy.

I am also working on a dress for her.  Here she is trying out the fabric, feathers, handmade beaded flowers and a miniature ship that seems to have found a new home!

Porto's Bakery

I love Portos!  I was excited to learn that my favorite Cuban bakery has recently opened a location closer to me.  When I lived in LA and worked in Burbank, I would often have lunch at their Burbank location.  Also a great place to order from for parties!  The location below is their Buena Park location....not super close to me, but far better than driving all the way to LA!  My hubby and I checked it out last Sunday and I snapped some pics:

YUM!

OC County Fair

Marv and I spent Sunday evening at the Orange County Fair.  We like this fair a great deal.  I use to enter the LA County Fair when we lived in Tarzana and always looked forward to going each year. But the OC Fair turned out to be a much more doable fair and has all the great things I love about really big fairs but is in a smaller footprint.  I also think the home arts are better at the OC Fair and I particularly love their visual arts section.

I took some photos of the cakes in the culinary arts section for your enjoyment...my favorite is the wedding cake that looks like a geode....amazing.   And I also love the cake featuring characters from Miyazaki's films.

Christian Hacker Grocery Shop Redressed

I spent some time cleaning the large Grocery Store.  I also got the Christian Hacker book and found this shop (424/4) listed in the book.  So I can now confirm that this is indeed made by the Christian Hacker Factory sometime around 1905-1907.  Here are some fun pics of all the items put back in the store.

 The Front Windows

The Cheese Display

The Bakery Display

The Back Pantry stocked with meats and butter

Hat Shop Re-Dressed

I spent some time cleaning the Hat Shop room box...it took a long time with Q-tips!  But it looks much nicer now and the mirrors and glass are nice and shiny.  I have not fixed the door to the glass cabinet yet.  I need to buy new hinges for it, so for now it is tacked in place with museum putty.

These glass shelves spin when the clockwork mechanism is wound up and released. 

I have a large collection of blown glass bottles from glass artist Sue Ellen Fowler.  I have been collecting them for 25 years or more.  I think they look wonderful in this shop, so I decided to make the left side of the shop a perfumery shop and the right side the Millinery shop.

19th Century Dutch Dollhouse

This is another recent addition to my collection of antiques.  It is from the 1800s though it has had quite a bit of restoration work done to the exterior.  The work was done years ago by Phoenix dollhouse artist, the late Mickie Haynes.  She sold the house to Jackie McMahan and it was on display for several years at Angel's Attic Doll & Miniature Museum in Santa Monica.  As with the previous items I have posted about, I bought this house when the Museum closed its doors following Jackie's death in January of 2017.

The house is about 2 1/2 feet tall.  I believe it originally opened in the front, but was updated somewhere along the line and now has 3 doors cut in the back of the house. The yellow molding that goes around 3 sides of the house must have been added when this is done.  Perhaps the front of the house was too damaged to allow the door to open and so it was stabilized.

When it was restored a new base was created for it and it houses a small electric transformer which powers a bulb on each floor.  (The new base ends after the bottom yellow molding and includes the stairs)

When I first saw the house it was set up as a grocery store, with a wonderful 3 shelf unit which had cakes and groceries on it, and some wonderful old furniture and dolls in the upstairs rooms.  By the time I was able to purchase it, all of the interior furnishings had been sold.  As I went to retrieve it from its location on the 2nd floor of the museum, I noticed the shelving unit that had been in the house had fallen out and was under a nearby chair!  I scooped it up and restored it to the house, though I have no way of knowing if the shelves were original to the house or not.  But they fit perfectly.

I have done a lot of research and finally found a very similar house in the museum in the Hague in The Netherlands.  (link at the bottom of this post).  That house is only 2 stories but it is also arranged as a Grocery store on the first floor and if you look VERY closely at the picture of it on the Museum's website, you can see some shelves through the door.  So I am content in my belief that the shelves are original to the house.

As I have several Grocery stores in my collection, and I also have a number of vintage and antique potted plants, I have decided to set the first floor shop up as a florist shop for now.

There is very minimal furniture inside.  I added a metal fireplace and some beds and will continue to work on furnishing the house with items from the appropriate era as I find them.

Here is the link to the similar house in the Hague Museum in Holland and a picture of that house.

Haags historisch museum

Don't forget to look closely at the picture on the site, and zoom in to see the faint shelves though the window!

Christian Hacker Grocery Store from 1905

Here is the largest and most spectacular of the 3 shops I bought from Angels Attic.   It is an Art Nouveau style Grocery Store.  When I first started visiting Angel's Attic I would always go to see this shop.  It was my absolute favorite thing in the museum.  I feel very fortunate to be its current caretaker!

It is huge, measuring just shy of 4 feet in length.   I believe it to be a Christian Hacker shop from 1905.  I am still researching this one as well as the Hat Shop in the previous post.  They are identical in motif and match the one in the Nurnberg museum.  It is that museum listing I am using to date and identify the maker of this shop.

  

As you can see the back doors open as do the closet/side doors.   The mirror back panels have some age related crackling to the silvered backing.  The mirror glass is in fine shape.

Below is a close up of the door knob.  The hardware is the same on all the doors.

The two front windows are hinged and they swing open.  You can see the 1 damaged drawer in this photo.  The screw on the outside panel is for a doorbell.  It came off in transit and I need to reattach it.  The shop was re-papered in the past, both the walls and the floor. I also think it was carefully repainted in some areas.  Most notably on the decorative panel above the glass doors.

Side view (Both sides are identical)

Top down view

Here are the markings on the bottom of the shop:

This is a picture of the Grocery Store as it was displayed in the Museum.  All the contents and dolls came with the shop.  Now that I have finished dusting and cleaning it, I will be setting it up with all the little food stuffs.

Here is the link to the similar shop in the Nurnberg Toy Mueseum:

Lydia Bayer Toy Museum Nurnberg