Lottie's Trip To Bohol [Day 3]

Lottie, Toffee and I had our early morning stroll along the beach, to witness the sunrise.

Lottie and Toffee were a little curious about the green stuff on the ground. Those are sea weeds.

"There's a lot!"

Alona beach has its own charm, even though it's occupied with a lot of fishing boats, and the boats obstructs the view of the beach. I think the boats themselves give this beach character.

We had to move to a different resort this day. Our next stop was Bellevue Resort and the beach is pretty cool. We were only able to come up to our hotel room at 3 pm, but it was like 1 or 2pm when we arrived at the resort, so we had a lot of time to spare at the beach before unpacking.

Ah! I love this place! It's isolated and exclusive.

I couldn't help myself but walk towards this floating platform thing across the resort. I didn't even shower or change to swimwear. I immediately went to the water with my shirt and shorts, lol.

It was a struggle to get back to the shore, though. I couldn't climb back up this platform specially since the water was chest level, and the ladders available only had one rung. It was too high for me at the time. I also couldn't climb up the rope ladder on the side of the platform because my arms are weak, and I couldn't pull myself up, wet clothes and all. I'm glad I brought my wet bag with me, so I used that as a flotation device to swim back to shore. But it was so exhausting and gross because the shoreline was too far away, and I was barefoot, that my feet sometimes touched the sea grass. It disgusted me. I was screaming in disgust while I swam back.

Our hotel room was really nice!!!

Can you see the floating platform on the water? That was where I went earlier, street clothes and all, haha. It's easy to see where the light blue colour ends and the dark blue colour starts in the water because of the sea grass, which I hated so much.

The view from our porch. This place is gorgeous!

And look, the gang is here to join Lottie!

Ariel was hiding her face the entire time because her nose is dirty. It's true, there's a smudge of blue on her nose and I couldn't take it off. She's undergoing spot treatment, as I speak.

Hannah and Nakoma were cool about Ariel though. They didn't humiliate her for acting this way in the group photos.

All three of them were wearing tops out of balloons! I didn't have time to sew them new clothes for this trip! LOL

My Barbies: Asha, Midge, Nikki, and Trichelle. They only came to this trip for the photos. They didn't really want to get wet, just like the Liv doll gang.

Of course, Lottie had her own photo with Toffee here.

I changed clothes and went back to the beach. The sun was high and it was perfect for photography.

I tried canoeing and it hurt my groin muscles a little, lol, but I'm glad that I was able to canoe. I never thought I could, to be honest. 

I found these sand mountains and thought Lottie might like sitting on top of one of them. She did.

I love this beach, to be honest. The water was really clear, and the shallow part of the sea was very wide during the high tide, so it was cool to stay near the shoreline but still be able to swim around. I didn't go near the platform again because of the disgusting sea grass.

I also spent time just sitting here on the sand, just looking at whatever I could out there, trying to process everything in. It was very peaceful.

I couldn't get enough of the water so I swam again, this time at the resort pool. There was an infinity pool so it looked really good from afar, and there was also a 12-foot deep pool! I still get scared swimming in a deep pool even if I can swim, so it took a while for me to enjoy this very deep pool and just go for it. I must say, I got over my fear of the deep pretty well, because my swimming was very calculated and the pressure of the water didn't let me sink down below at all. I was swimming in the middle of that deep pool without any help, omg.

All this time I had to wear goggles, because I wore my contact lenses and didn't want to get them wet with salt water. Also it's really painful to swim without goggles, so I'm glad I brought a pair with me. I was able to look at the floor of the sea very well.

The Day 4 post, which will be the last post for this series, will be up soon! Thank you for your patience!

Harumika Dress Form and LPS Blythe Hybrid

I found these while thrifting:

Left: A Harumika dress form with no stand, from the New York City designer dress form set.

Middle: An unidentified anime figure's body. Hope I can identify the owner using this website: https://www.animecharactersdatabase.com/. A figure of Perona from One Piece. (Thank you for the ID, "Unknown"!)

Right: A Littlest Pet Shop Blythe head, from LPS Blythe Style Skate set.

A clear envelope with some crafting supplies. What I find most important in this is the cutting mat.

Now I have a cutting mat, yes!

Back to the Harumika dress form. It didn't come with a stand so I have to improvise. I have a short wooden dowel, and a balloon cup stuck on a jar lid, which was previously a doll stand I used for my dolls. 

There is a shallow hole underneath the dress form which was for the original stand, so I inserted the wooden dowel through it and it fits perfectly! I don't even need to add glue!

Then I inserted the wooden dowel through the balloon cup and it also fit! Now my dress form with stand is complete. I might leave it as it is, or paint the wood, the balloon cup and the jar lid black to match the dress form's colour.

/What's special about a Harumika dress form is that you can drape pieces of fabric on it and tuck them in the back to secure them. There's a tight slit on the back of the dress form for tucking fabric there so you don't have to sew anything. You can use a ruler to tuck the fabric there if you don't have that special tool that comes from the Harumika set.

Then this anime body Perona figure I found, at first I had a different plan for it because I knew I have an anime head in storage in my new place. While rummaging through the toy box at the thrift store, I found this random LPS Blythe head, then I thought of sticking the Blythe head to the body.

As you can see, the neck hole is just right for the neck peg of this body. So I gave the head transplant a try.

And it works!!

I had a heart shaped wood from a lot of toys and found use for it when I painted it black with a marker and stuck the figure onto it with sticky tack. It works!!

Afterwards, I gave the figure a wash specially the Blythe head because it had paint on its face and hair. I also stuck a lollipop I made from a wooden bead and toothpick to her raised hand to complete the look.

Now these aren't at the thrift store but at a local supermarket. I found this Sikaly doctor doll.

Then I noticed the joints of the doll.

Oh those are Liv joints! This doll has a Liv clone body...

... but I spoke too soon because her feet are Barbie sized and unarticulated. This is still good, because Barbie sized shoes are more accessible than Liv shoes!

And I noticed this cheap doll called Anita. Wow look at all that hair!

And the dress looks somewhat decent! The doll apparently has chopstick legs, but it's nothing a body transplant can't fix, right?

Donating Dolls

Tonight I donated rebodied Barbie and Liv heads to a local department store, including a blonde Kid Kore Katie doll (not rebodied at all) that I just couldn't warm up to when I thought I would before. I also included my nude Paddington Bears that have been stored in a box for months. I just don't think I'll be able to find use for them anymore, so off they went.

I didn't even document the whole thing. It was just something random that I did tonight. I was about to head out for a movie, when I thought, hmm, I could simply drop off a bunch of dolls at the department store tonight. And I sorted through my spare doll body parts box quickly and got what I could manage to put together in a short time, and I think my bag had five to seven nude dolls in it when I left the house.

I feel a little bad that I couldn't dress up the dolls before I donated them, but I think those kids who will get them would be creative and motivated enough to dress them up on their own. 

My body parts box still have a lot of things in it, but they're mostly broken or what I still might need in the future so I'm still holding on to them. I'm actually thinking of styling this particular Barbie head with jagged hair, and cut its hair into a bob so I could somehow salvage it. I've been wanting to do this since I joined this doll restoring group on Facebook. I caught wind of this man's name: Dana Rivenburgh, and he was a beloved member of the group, known for stylishly cutting his Barbies' hair short. Too bad I only joined the group after his death this year. I would have loved to see his fresh doll posts. (I actually saved some of his own doll photos so I could copy their look for my dolls. Thank you, Dana, for the inspiration!)

I just got home and thought that the movie I saw is a waste of time, lol. I still have some energy to sort out additional toys I could donate. Perhaps some plastic toys this time, which I've acquired from buying toys by the lot.

Brown and Pink Coordinates

I have been a bit unmotivated to write on my blog as of late. Sigh. Anyway...

A few days ago, I made my Mattel Sharpay - Liv hybrid doll wear a Takara Jenny coordinate that consists of a jacket, a belt and pants all in this odd brown pattern. I tried the whole outfit on Made To Move Asha and the pants do not fit her at the waist. As usual I have no appropriate shoes that fit Liv dolls.

I made Fred look more pink.

I found a pink coat at the thrift store, and thought, This is so Fred, so I had to get it. Then I forgot that I have a pink cowboy hat, and found it recently, so I put it on him as well. Now he looks tacky as ever and I love it. The colour is inspired by his old fashions. I looked up photos of this vintage doll and saw that Fred had a lot of pink and tacky outfits, so he has to wear a similar one too!

In other news, I found my cling wrap roll, finally. I forgot that I placed it in the box where I kept my poor Christmas tree, so when I came looking for the tree because I wanted to set it up in our living room (Yes, it's totally acceptable in the Philippines to put up Christmas decorations at home when it's still October), I was pleasantly surprised that it was also there. Now I can make shoes for my barefoot dolls using the wrap and hot glue, haha.

Also this afternoon I found bootlegs of the Shopkins Season 5 blind backpacks! I had to get one set to compare to my authentic ones. Comparison photos of those soon!

And I want to share this photo I found on Tumblr. It made me laugh so much.