Back in the early winter of 2015, I discovered the amazing Russian artist aGatti, who makes the most incredibly lifelike, mature, MSD size dolls. Even though I am usually drawn to the more realistic sculpts, I wasn't sure her dolls weren't maybe a little too realistic, especially compared to most of the dolls in my collection. But I fell in love with her little Feegle characters. Unfortunately he had been offered as a pre-order a few months earlier, and was no longer available. But she said she would release him again in 2017. 

So yesterday she put him up for a limited pre-order, along with a new second Feegle character.
​Well, I just have to have both of them, so sent an email to start the pre-order process.

They are just 16.5 cm tall, and perfect for little 'dwarf' characters, to go with my Fantasy crew...

The plan is to dress them in similar fashion to the little 'Wee Folk' figures my sister and I made
​many years ago. The Feegles will become posable versions of our little 'Warrior Dwarves'.

...and the 'Remus' series, sculpted by my sister (her photo)

Even though they won't be arriving until some time in the fall - September or October
​- I'm very excited to be able to get them.

*aGatti doesn't have a website, but sells through her Flickr page - aGatti / Flickr

There's so many great pictures from this photo shoot, that I just had to share a few more....

....and one with the Guild Inn in the background. I figured the old stucco building could pass for something from long ago, and I did clean up most of the construction debris in PhotoShop, but there was nothing I could do about the chain-link fence.

A few more photos of Asa at the Ruins Gardens...

The two Exotic Blue SID gowns are finally available for purchase.
​For more information, click on the photo below....

It was the perfect day today for taking some photos at the Guild Inn Ruins Gardens. The property has been under redevelopment for some time now, and all the usual parking lots are closed, and there's no parking allowed on the street either. So we drove along the western edge, where there's a long trail through the woods along the shore of Lake Ontario. I was determined that I was going to take pictures this time, so off we went.  The woods were full of wildflowers - trout lilies, trilliums, marsh marigolds, and forget-me-nots, so it was quite a lovely walk.

We spent quite a while in the ruins, and I got some great photos of my beautiful Asa....

I finished the last of the bodice embroidery this morning. I didn't have enough fabric from the baby onesie to make five tube tops, in addition to five sets of sleeves, so I made little semi-circle inserts to sew into the bodice necklines instead.

The five dresses. The skirts of the lighter pink dresses are not quite as full as the darker ones, as I was limited by how much fabric there was in the actual human skirt ruffle layers. 

Now to dress a bunch of my ladies, and take some photos.

I've taken a few pictures to show how I transport my dolls around for a photo shoot, or on a road trip. I made three specific sized boxes out of corrugated cardboard. The three sizes are to accommodate Iplehouse JIDs (and other MSDs), KIDs, and BIDs - and they have separate lids. I made a stuffed  'mattress' cushion for the bottom of each box, as well as a second smaller pillow to place on top of the dolls to hold them in place, so they don't fall forward and rub their faces on the lids of the boxes. The dolls actually lay deeper in the box than the photo would suggest.

On a road trip, each doll gets their own individual box, and each one is labelled with the doll's name in order to make it easier to get the doll that's needed for a specific photo shoot. The boxes were designed to fit three high into the overhead compartments inside the back of our RV. 

When we are taking the dolls out of the RV for a hike, or on ferries, or anywhere we can't access our vehicle, I can fit two of the same size doll - or one the right size, and one smaller - into a box. It's a snug fit, but that's okay....

With such a snug fit, the lid needs to be secured with elastics. Then I can carry two boxes in one of my cloth bags. I pay attention to which way the dolls are positioned, so that they are heads up in the bag. A JID and KID size box will fit in my bag, but I usually take just the smaller dolls, so then there's either two KID boxes, or a KID and BID box, which is obviously easier. 

April showers brought May showers. And May showers are bringing floods. 

We are on day two of four days of pouring rain. The ground was already saturated, so the water
has no place to go.  Everything is a swamp, and my kids are getting fed up with being stuck
inside. It's even too wet for Ringo to go sail his boat in a puddle.
​
But Elin decided to prepare herself, and brought out her ark...

Chloe brought her giraffes, hoping they could go on the ark too....

"But there's only two of each kind allowed!"

"But the giraffes don't want to leave their kids behind!"

"Do you think my bunny can go too?"

(I'm so glad I figured out what was wrong with my camera.
​It's so nice to have properly coloured photos again!"

I took a bunch of studio shots yesterday and was very surprised by how dark and yellow they were.

They were sharp enough, but the colour was terrible, and I'd never had studio shots turn out like that before. I tried colour correcting them, but finally contacted my son, who knows WAY more about photography than me. He gave me some suggestions, which I looked into, but none of them panned out. So this morning I decided to check my camera manual to see if somehow one of the settings on my camera had changed.  And sure enough it had.  The white balance was set on 'Flash".  I guess when I borrowed my sister's flash unit a few weeks back, it had sestet the white balance on my camera, and I'd been shooting at the wrong setting the whole time...

Which totally explained why I thought so many of my recent photos were so dark and yellow, and so many of the warmer colours were blown out. My camera was compensating for flash.
Well, I set it back, and took another studio shot...

Success!!  It was back to normal.  What a relief!  
​And here I thought it was my deteriorating eyesight.  
​I'm glad it was such a simple fix!

Bright sun is not ideal for taking doll photos, but it was getting towards evening,
and the sun was getting lower, so shadows weren't quite as bad. With the bright
​ sunshine, thee were constant rainbows in the mist over the falls...

"Look at all those people down there on that boat!"

Most people pay no attention to us taking doll photos, but two young ladies came up to us and asked if we were taking photos with our granddaughter's dolls. I said "No, they are my own dolls."  Which made them smile even more as they proceeded to tell us about taking a figure along on a trip for someone, and taking photos of it. "It's great to stay young at heart" they said.