Redress Success featuring Omma (5 inch Fairytopia Omma by Mattel)

 Treesa here. It's been a while since I've attempted to redress one of these 5 inch Mattel fairy dolls. The last one that I posted about was Mariette back in 2017. Admittedly, these dolls are challenging to redress. They're small for starters. But from my experience, the most difficult hurdle when redressing these fairy dolls is their wide-armed stance. The arms are only articulated at the shoulders, so trying to position them so they'll fit into the armholes of a shirt or dress, even a sleeveless one, tends to be difficult, especially with those posed wrists.

But, as frequent readers of this blog know well, I have a weakness for dolls with 'fantasy hair colors'. And it seems that children who played with these dolls back when they were first released in 2004 had a tendency to lose the small accessories, like the factory issued 'flower petal' skirt and hat that Omma would've originally come with. So these fairies are often in need of clothing when they're found for sale secondhand. Considering that Omma's friend, Organza, still needs to be redressed, something tells me I should keep on the lookout for small doll halter tops.

The top that Omma is wearing in the photo appears to be from a 2003 Bratz Strut It! Meygan doll, according to my online research. I don't actually collect Bratz dolls, but I do tend to buy mixed bag lots of doll clothing and accessories from thrift stores. So I often end up with some very random clothing pieces.

The skirt was part of a 2015 Bratz Deluxe Fashion Pack, that I bought after other doll collectors online shared how they'd used pieces from these packs for other, hard to reclothe dolls like Barbie's sister Stacie. I think the green leaves on the skirt's sunflower print coordinate pretty well with Omma's factory painted green bodysuit. And the autumn leaves outside provide a lovely photo backdrop.

I hope you enjoyed this 'redress success', and Happy Fall to you all.

Signed, Treesa

Barbie Tie-Dye Fashion Kits at Dollar Tree (Product Sighting)

 Attention friends and visitors. The following is a notable product sighting from Treesa.

This weekend, I spotted some Barbie Tie-Dye Fashion kits at my local Dollar Tree store. There seemed to be two different styles available, a sleeveless dress and a one-shoulder dress. I haven't actually tried out the kit I bought, yet. But I wanted to upload this quick post, just in case any of my readers were interested in checking out these kits for themselves.

Signed, Treesa

On Scaling

 Greetings friends and visitors, from Treesa.

I picked up this adorable, small plush manatee thinking that he might work well in doll scale. When I first bought him, I didn't have a clue how large a baby manatee was supposed to be, scale-wise. But thanks to the internet, I knew that I could figure it out. According to my online research, a newborn manatee calf is between 3 feet and 4 feet long at birth. (Like their land based 'cousins', elephants, manatees are large animals and their babies are born big.) This equates to 36 inches on the low end or 48 inches on the high end. To figure out how big a newborn manatee would be in doll scale, all I had to do was pick which scale to use and then do the math.

After seeing the real world measurements for newborn manatees, I was fairly sure that this plush would be too small to work with an 18 inch doll like American Girl. According to the label, this manatee plush is 7 inches long, though when I measured him myself to verify that, he actually seemed to measure up a little longer. Regardless, I started off my calculations using American Girl dolls as a reference point. American Girl, and similar 18 inch doll brands, are 1:3 scale. This means that something measuring 3 inches in our world should be 1 inch for them, although many mass-produced 18 inch doll accessories are notorious for being under-scaled. Anyway, a newborn manatee calf that's 36 inches long would be 12 inches in 1:3 scale, at the very least.

The next set of calculations that I did was for 16 inch dolls. This scale would include my Tonner doll, Tennille, and my Disney Store Singing Dolls. Dolls in this range are 1:4 scale, so a 36 inch newborn manatee would be 9 inches in their world. This measurement was closer to my target length, but still off scale-wise.

Finally we come to Barbie, and similar 11 1/2 inch fashion dolls. They are the primary focus of this blog anyway. Barbie dolls are 1:6 scale. Therefore, a 36 inch to 48 inch newborn manatee would be between 6 inches and 8 inches in Barbie scale. That's pretty much spot on with this plush.

So, here's Manny the manatee with Finnick, a Dreamtopia Rainbow Cove Merman. I thought that the name Finnick would work well for a merman, since he has a tail fin, or tail fluke? I'm not really sure of the terminology. Anyway, that'll wrap up this quick update post. I hope that all of you are doing well.

Signed, Treesa