Tag: fashion

Tiny Tuesday!


A strange path led me to adopt/rehome a High School Musical “Troy” doll. Most Ken fashion dolls are 12 inches tall (in human terms, six feet, as they’re 1:6 scale). The HSM dolls are 10.5 inches (a human five feet, three inches tall). I am enchanted by the smallness and have him representing a character in the Neverending Saga (the second set of characters–in fact, he’s the twin brother of the character who creates her own Tarot cards, as mentioned in a previous post).

I had some smaller male doll clothes I could dress him in, and the original Ken dolls’ shoes will fit him okay (new Ken shoes are HUGE on him). I got him dressed and photographed for Instagram.

As a personal aside… In 2008, when we had my mother’s memorial service in Alabama, all of her grandchildren and all but one of her great-grandchildren were there. At that time, three of the “greats” were in the six- to seven-year-old range. They absolutely lit up my life with their energy and fun. They’d brought High School Musical DVDs with them, and danced and sang together while they watched them. It’s a great memory to have, so it tickled me to get the HSM “Troy” doll.


Little did I know that a second High School Musical “Troy” doll (different facial features and hair from the first one) would be joining us. There were no Ken clothes that seemed right for him, so I began looking at some of the designs I sewed for Runway Monday challenges (thinking the female dolls I used as models might have better-sized clothes for him). What he’s wearing is Dupioni silk fabric that I hand-painted. I then wrote the first lines of my work in progress on the fabric before I cut it. This was in 2012, and I STILL have not written that novel.


The uncut fabric after I painted and wrote on it. You can see the entire post here should you wish to go down memory lane.

When I put the outfit on the doll to see if it would work, I thought instantly of Eddie Van Halen’s many colorful concert outfits and that amazing smile of his that never quit. That’s how this doll ended up with EVH’s Frankenstein guitar.


Eddie, Ed, Edward, and my preferred, EVH


He’s a little bit country. He’s a little bit rock and roll.

Tiny Tuesday!

As I catalog and store my dolls and their fashions, I decided to take another look at my Top Models. Longtime readers will recognize the original twelve muses.

Barbie Top Models Abby, Tanya, and Barbie; Summer Top Models Summer (the first!), Susannah, Lacy, and Rita; Nikki Top Models Tamala and Faizah; and Teresa Top Models Kikki, Jessica, and Meggie (formerly Maggie, but name changed because of a conflict with a different “Maggie” doll)

Summer was the first Model Muse body sculpt I bought. I needed a redhead for a 2008 photo shoot to promote my novel A Coventry Wedding. She kicked off a passion for these dolls and helped inspire the first season of Runway Monday, also in 2008.

To prove my devotion to the Model Muses, these twelve dolls were later joined by an additional fifty-nine Model Muse body sculpts from the many Basic Barbie collections and other dolls created by Mattel.

Tiny dolls: big collection. Lots of inspiration and imagination thanks to them.

Another word about creativity

ALL the time, I hear people say, “If I only had time, I’d write [poetry, my novel, a play, my memoirs],” and I agree that time is important. Yet so many writers manage to get that done while taking care of families, holding down demanding jobs, and even maintaining romances and social lives. I usually think it’s not TIME that’s lacking, it’s energy.

I don’t mean only the energy that makes us bound from bed and get cracking on our schedules. I mean the mental and emotional energy it takes to create. It’s a different kind of energy and sometimes discipline and time and inspiration are not enough to put us into a creative frame of mind.

And that is FINE. Sometimes our energy is needed elsewhere. It’s up to YOU to determine if your reasons are legitimate or simply another excuse.

You will never get that poem, novel, short story, play, memoir read or published if you don’t write it. But again, writing takes a lot of energy.

It was a little frustrating for me over the past few days to have so many other things to deal with that I couldn’t get into the zone I need to be in to write. I mean, if you are compelled to write, even when the power is out and the sun is gone and the water is frozen in the pipes, you will light a candle and grab paper and pencil and write. IF YOUR ENERGY FOR IT IS THERE.

We have a few more expected bad days coming to us here, and the water issue is far from resolved, though for now at least, we have power. And I’m absolutely fine with the times that Tom and I have just focused on managing to keep us and our animals warm, our toilets flushable, and our food source safe. We have sat in the dark in front of a gas fire that barely kept the chill away, devised solutions, and remained companionable throughout.


When there was daylight, I worked on this coloring page though I was shivering. When the power would come on for a while at some random time, I used the light to work on her some more. I felt as if her beauty and spirit kept me company and made me know that if I couldn’t write, at least I could embellish someone else’s beautiful drawing.

This is why I call it coloring therapy. It doesn’t rob energy; it helps rebuild it.

This is the book I took it from.

These are a couple of the dolls I picked up at the recent estate sale. I will definitely use their fashion as inspiration when I color more drawings from this book.

I have a count of my boxed dolls now, and a count of my Monster High dolls. I have all the others to count, so I’m waiting to provide a grand total on here. The prospect remains scary.

Strike a pose


I picked up this coloring book back in 2017, but I’ve never colored anything from it. Mainly because the drawings are on the front and back pages, so I don’t want to pull them from the book the way I do single-sided pages I color from other books.

Most of the things I color I put on Instagram instead of here, but tonight I wanted to do a quick coloring session while I worked out something in my next chapter in my brain. (I color A LOT to prepare for writing fiction.) So I grabbed this book and fell for this picture. Didn’t photograph it before I colored it.

Here’s the blurb. The drawing is based on a photo in Vogue from the September issue, 1955.

For fun, I did some research. The model–actually a supermodel of her time–was Anne St. Marie, who was married to renowned photographer Tom Palumbo. He took thousands of photos of her, and she was truly sensational. Here’s the original Vogue photo taken by Henry Clarke.

Tiny Tuesday!

Recently, during research I was doing for my work-in-progress, I thought about the old TV show “The Wild Wild West.” We did watch it when I was a kid, but I fear a lot of it was over my head. (I’ve never seen the Will Smith movie.)

Anyway, the show is often credited with helping create steampunk. Though steampunk is a fashion trend that mostly slipped right by me, I’m fascinated by it.

If I were sewing, which I’m not, I’d be daydreaming about how to make doll fashion from what I already own, including these little charms. Not pictured here are a bunch of keys. I love keys and locks.

Sad but not too sad

Over on my sidebar, I’ve long had a link to Polyvore. I loved using the site to make fashion boards for my characters or just of things I liked.

I decided to go back and look at some of them, but when I clicked on it, it took me to a new site: Ssense, which apparently bought the site and then shut down everyone’s accounts. In doing a little research, they did provide the option to users to download their stuff by May 15. Let that sink in for a second, as today is May 16. And I thought, I missed it by a damn day?!? Well, no. The deadline was May 16, 2018. Another freaking thing I was too busy to be aware of.

A reasonable person would say, “Becks, if you haven’t used it in two years…” Except, now I’m writing some of the characters I used it for, and their boards are gone, and I no longer have an account to create more.

Anyway, I’m experimenting with a new site, Fashmates. Here’s a first attempt.

That’s not a baseball jersey, but he’ll allow it.