? About Mini Dolls

[keristars]

I feel silly for asking questions all the time! It's getting to the point where I'm wanting to order clothes for my doll who isn't even here yet - I'm such a dork for AG. And books. Mmm, books. I added another 20 or so to my collection this week alone, due to some lovely eBay buys, and my AG collection is so close to complete! I even got some extras in a few auctions that I can send to a friend with a 3 year old daughter. [img]wink.gif[/img]


Anyway, one of my eBay buys was for a mini Kit set, with the club charm, and stickers, and bookmarks, and a couple other things I've forgotten. She arrived two days ago and is absolutely adorable!



That's her leaning against my new glass pen set, which I picked up the same day in St Augustine (it's a bit blurry because I haven't figured out all the settings yet, but I got loads of great photos of the Oldest House in St Augustine which dates to 1720, after the British burned the town to the ground, and there's some really cool things I think look like Felicity's collection).


Now, I knew that when I got her, she wouldn't have a proper wig or open-close eyes, but when I was playing with her and showing her off, I noticed that her right (our left) arm is about 2cm shorter than the other! You can see it in the picture, although it's really exaggerated because of how she's sitting.

Is this normal with mini dolls? I don't know if I pulled one arm too far when inspecting her, or if she's just crooked and I need to adjust her properly. When I was moving her arms the first time, the left one (our right) made an odd popping sound, and it still does that if I go to move it after leaving her along for a while.

I'm afraid to take her sweater off completely to inspect her arm sockets, because the last time I messed with it, it got really stretched out, and I don't want to mess her hair up. It's so hard to keep that kind of hair neat.


[img]graemlins/star.gif[/img] <font color="#e57c61">--- KERI ---</font> [img]graemlins/star.gif[/img]

[Kenshinchan]

My Mini Kit does not have that problem. I wonder if the stringing in her arm came undone? If you feel comfortable doing it, I suggest you gently stretch her sweater just a bit, so you can look under the "shirt" and see if her arms are in their proper place. (If you pull the sweater up gently you can should be able to see one joint, then the other.)

[keristars]

I'll check. I also realized that I got the arm backwards. It's the one that pops that's shorter, which is our right in the picture. - that might make a lot of sense, if the right arm needs restringing, that'd be why it is longer and moves more easily.

[keristars]

Ooooh, this doesn't look good. I ended up removing her sweater to get a proper look, and her right arm is actually LONGER than her left - it's not an illusion or anything, I pulled out my ruler and checked!


Her elbow to her wrist, left arm, is 1.5cm

Her elbow to her wrist, right arm, is 2cm!

Her hands are the same size, and her arms at the widest part of her bicep are the same, and also just below her elbow. Nothing else looks weird, though I've never seen a photo of a naked mini doll (much less mini Kit) before.


[img]graemlins/star.gif[/img] --- KERI --- [img]graemlins/star.gif[/img]

[Kenshinchan]

How odd! It's INCREDIBLY hard to measure Mini Kit's arms, I've found, but it looks like mine are the same, at about 1.5 cm. Does the plastic look deformed at all, like it got stretched? If not, I hvae no idea what happened.

If you put Mini Kit's arms over her head, is one truly that much longer than the other? (In the pic you have, the right looks a little longer, but if I pose my Mini Kit at that same pose, the right arm looks a touch longer too.)

[keristars]

I just held her next to my ruler and eyeballed the sizes. I've gotten good at that with my art classes, but it was tough to make sure she was positioned the same way on each side. I used the centimeters because the notches were easier to read than the inches, and the lengths matched up so well.

I thought her longer arm looked stretched out, like it had been pulled on while the vinyl was soft, which is why I looked at the widths - which are the same. But her shorter-arm's fingers are shorter, I noticed, when I raised her hands above her head. It's just a bit, and possibly because they're curved in more, and I only notice from the palm side.

It's difficult to tell if one arm is shorter than the other when I raise them, though. It's almost like her shorter arm curves more, but that might just be an illusion because of the length (and I measured it in sections, so I know it's not shorter because of the curve).

The length is most noticeable when her hands are at her sides, because the one drops down further and her sleeves end at different spots - one is at her wrist, one is at her thumb, probably midway between the two joints.

And yeah, she was crooked in the photo, which exaggerated the size difference, but it's definitely there. I'm thinking of emailing the seller and asking if she knows about it. I don't mind that her arms are different lengths, I'm just baffled!

It's kind of cool to have one arm shorter, because it feels like she's more "mine" or special. [img]tongue.gif[/img]


[img]graemlins/star.gif[/img] <font color="#e57c61">--- KERI ---</font> [img]graemlins/star.gif[/img]

[AG Crazy in Wyoming]

May I high-jack your thread and ask some additional mini doll ???? I want to make a doll cake similiar to the old style of placing a Barbie doll into a cake skirt. How large is a mini's head and about how long is it's torso? Do you think I can wrap a mini in plastic wrap securely enough to put her into frosting [img]eek.gif[/img] Thanks for any #'s you can get for me.
~Bugs

[Kenshinchan]

That's sweet that you think your Mini Kit is interesting and special, and not defective. [img]smile.gif[/img] Great perspective!

(It's too bad it's not her left arm that was longer than the right...I remember many months ago there was a Drabble comic where they had one character leaning out the car window to get food from a fast food restaurant, money from an ATM, etc., and then someone noted that archaeologists thousands of years from now will be baffled by the fact that everyone they dig up will have right arms longer than the left ones. [img]wink.gif[/img] )

Bugs Mc, I am no expert on cake skirts. Does it involve a semi-conical cake that goes all the way up to the waist? I'm wondering if the best way to deal with it would be to wrap the doll's legs and body in plastic wrap, but to make a blouse for the doll and then concentrate the cake/icing on the skirt. The blouse would get lots of icing on it, sure, but it would help keep the icing off of the cloth body. (You probably COULD put enough plastic wrap around the cloth to keep it from getting dirty, but you'd have to overlap a lot over the arms, and would probably have a bulky result, not to mention the icing which would make the doll look REALLY bulky. You could get away with a lot less plastic wrap if you used a cloth blouse to keep the body clean from stray frosting, but wouldn't protect from an all-out dunk.)

Mini Kit's head, with her bulky hair, is 4 1/4 inch in circumference and a touch over 1 1/2 inches from chin to top of head. Her entire cloth body is about 2 1/2 inches long.

[keristars]

I think a Mini Doll cake would have to have different proportions from a Barbie cake. The "skirt" will probably look weird because of the more proportionate mini dolls and less defined waist.


However, you could try making a plastic wrap wetsuit for the doll. Cut two little holes in the middle of a square for the legs, then pull it up over her body and tuck it in around her sides and arms. Then take another piece to wrap around the legs and over the hip joints - if you want the legs to be posable still, that is.

Or you could cut a toilet paper roll tube to size and use it as her stand, and put the cake around it, so that she doesn't actually touch the icing or anything. I'll draw a picture of what I mean to show you. It could work pretty well, I think.


[img]graemlins/star.gif[/img] <font color="#e57c61">--- KERI ---</font> [img]graemlins/star.gif[/img]

ETA: Instead of tacking on yet another post... [img]wink.gif[/img]



I hope it's not too hard to read. I tried to pick contrasting colors for the descriptions, but my handwriting with my tablet isn't as clear as my handwriting on paper. [img]redface.gif[/img] The stylus slides a bit more than I'm used to.

<font color="#33CCCC" size="1">[ August 26, 2006 04:53 PM: Message edited by: keristars ]</font>