The Life and Times of Ann Estelle
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ME Too'sday

1/31/2012

 
Gentle Reader,
It's Tuesday again ..... so here is a picture that may look familiar, if you read the previous post.  Back in 2008 (when I first received the My First Kenmore kitchen) I made Ann Estelle an apron.  An apron, in fact, "fit for a queen".
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Here is Mary Engelbreit's illustration - from the 2003 book "Queen of Christmas".

Enjoy,  R.
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What's in an inch ..... or two??

1/28/2012

5 Comments

 
Gentle Blog Reader,
Have you found that when several Ann Estelle devotees get together, one topic that always comes up is "how old are these kids?" and "what scale should their life be lived in?"  Right from the start, I want to make sure y'all understand that I think your dolls can and should be any age you want them to be!!  And I think it is fine if everyone ends up on different "pages" on this topic.  (I'll tell you a little about what age my clan is at the end of this post.)

O.K. - with that "be your free inner child" credo taken care of - what I am going to try to do here is present a group of photos that will study just what Ann Estelle would look like if we set her age at different points.  I'm going to use as a back drop the "My First Kenmore" kitchen set that was sold a few years back, marketed for Barbie-size dolls.  I'm going to assume that if this kitchen was "in real life" the counter tops would be at about three feet from the floor.  And, taking a list of average heights for (real) little girls (provided some time back by Andria), I'm going to shrink a photo of Ann Estelle and 'shop her into the the Kenmore kitchen as if it was "real".   (And yes, I am only looking at overall height as an indicator of age, not other things such as the proportion of the head to the rest of the body or the eyes to the head.)  (And yes, these are pretty sloppy 'shop jobs - I haven't taken the time to clean-up Ann Estelle's aura!)
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So, there you have a lot of images, a lot to think about.  And the last piece of the "puzzle" is to show you how a "real" doll looks in this not-real kitchen:
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And as you can see, if I want to use this Barbie kitchen (and most of the other 1:6 scale props marketed for her) and I insist upon determining the dolls' ages in this "clinical" manner, they are going to be six foot tall adults!!!

But I am quite comfortable using this kitchen and not thinking of my dolls as very tall adults!  How can that be??  Well, as I said at the start, we all set our own "rules" for play - that's what makes it "play", right?  And my own rule is that I enjoy the way my dolls look with this kitchen.  I think of it in terms of not being a "real" kitchen but more like a kitchen in a "real" child's playhouse - those things are about half scale, aren't they??  (Never had one as a child but I had a friend who had such a playhouse and I envied her mightily!!)  There are lots of props to be found in this scale and if I use this scale I can fit "rooms" into spaces that are "only" about 14" tall.  The drawback is that I can't fit "adults" into the same scenes.  But then again, I don't have many "adults" and my gang seems to live fine without 'em, thank you very much!

So, what "age" are my dolls???  Somewhere around ten or eleven, I think.  Definitely beyond baby-hood.  Definitely before puberty!  And, in many senses, very precocious - I enjoy seeing them working on projects that would, in reality, be beyond the ken of a ten or eleven year old!  Annie Laurie and Sudha are at this moment working on a lab project involving recombinant DNA and the entire broadband signal industry!  But when they leave the lab, they still like to play with dolls and read "Winnie the Pooh".  So who knows how old they are??!!

Enjoy,  R.
5 Comments

What's in a name?

1/26/2012

 
_ Gentle Blog Reader,
I know that many folks that play with the ten inch dolls and are lucky enough to have several of each sculpt like to rename their dolls and some want to name them with “official” Mary Engelbreit names.  For those so inclined I’ve done an informal survey of names that have been used over the years by Mary herself and by companies to whom she licensed for dolls.  I looked at both two and three dimensional dolls; both cloth and hard product dolls.  Here is a list, arranged with the most frequently used names at the top:

_ Ann Estelle (4)
Hannah (3)
Rebecca (3)
Audrey Ann (2)
Georgia (2)
Gracie (2)
Josephine (2)
Lilah (2)
Michael (2)
Sophie (2)
Tommy (2)
Alice (1)
Anne (1)
Beatrix (1)
Caroline (1)

(revised 10.09.12)
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_ Celeste (1)
Danny (1)
Ellen (1)
Elspeth (1)
Goldilocks (1)
Kate (1)
Little Red Riding Hood (aka Red) (1)
Louisa (1)
Margaret (1)
Maria (1)
Mikayla (1)
Ned (1)
Rosie (1)
Sweetie Pie (1)
Sydney (1)

_ As we describe on the “Ann Estelle Story” page, Ann Estelle is the name of Mary Engelbreit’s maternal grandmother.  I have heard it said that Audrey Ann is/was one of Mary’s maternal aunts and that Tommy is one of her cousins , the son of Audrey Ann.  Mikayla is the name of her granddaughter.

I’ve also heard two versions of why Tonner chose to name the boy in the ten inch series Michael (who appears as one of the magnetic “paper dolls” and a non "Home Companion" paper doll) and not Tommy (who appears often with the “Home Companion” paper dolls.)  One is that Tonner gave the choice of the two names to a group of fans at a convention and they voted for Michael.  The other is that there was some sort of licensing conflict with the name Tommy, thus he used Michael instead.
Update 02.23.12:
It looks like both the above explanations about why Michael is Michael are urban legends (i.e. false).  Claudia did the intelligent thing and just plain asked Robert Tonner recently and he said he liked the idea that Michael was a clothes horse and that is why he choose the name over Tommy.  I am guessing this refers to a description in Mary Engelbreit's 1997 "Child's Play" paper doll book:  Michael has "a closetful of clothes to choose from whenever he gets dressed.  And he always tries to choose the right ones for whatever he's going to be doing ..."  So there you have it! R.

And so you can also name your dolls' pets with true ME pedigree, here is a list of the pets’ names from the paper dolls:

Bingo = Gracie’s hamster
Bonny Rose = Lilah’s puppy
Bubbles = Ann Estelle’s goldfish
Frank = Tommy’s mouse
Henry = Ann Estelle’s dog
Jean Pierre = Gracie’s guinea pig
Mabel = Audrey Ann’s cat
Maggie Lou = Georgia’s dog
Violet = Gracie’s cat

What, no one keeps pet birds?!   R.

Show your support for Ann Estelle!

1/26/2012

1 Comment

 
Gentle Blog Reader,
I've submitted a photo of Ann Estelle into the Doll Duel "contest" that Tonner has set up - the same picture of her dressed in a cowgirl outfit that appears two posts down.  Go to dollduels.com  and check out all the photos of Big Dolls, find our little Ann and give her a vote!  Let folks know that there are many of us that still adore this doll!!

It was hard for me to find a "catagory" to put her in - I settled for "Fairy Other"!!  No "Goodness and Light" here, unfortunately!!
Thanks,  R.
1 Comment

OT - the office cat

1/25/2012

0 Comments

 
Gentle Blog Reader,
I must admit that somehow the organization (or something?) of the new Tonner website has apparently befuddled me and only this evening, when I went back to my old link to their You-tube video channel, did I realize I'd been missing all the new videos for a while.  So it was fun to catch up!  I still enjoy watching the "goings on" at the Tonner company even though I'm no longer an active customer (my heart belongs to the ten inch Ann Estelle line!)

If you continue to join me here at The Life and Times of Ann Estelle, you may also come to realize that I enjoy the company of cats.  So I just love it when "Kitty" appears in the Tonner videos.  Check this one out on YouTube.....
I had a good giggle at the point in time that one begins to hear a crunching noise in the foreground of the soundtrack.  Yes, Kitty is there, doing her cat thing of chewing (?) on something on the desk between the camera and Robert!!  
Enjoy,  R.
0 Comments

ME Too'sday

1/24/2012

 
Gentle Blog Reader,
It's Tuesday and what does that mean??  "It's Red's Tamale Day!!!!"  I only wish - since that would mean I was about twelve years old again (plus I really do like tamales)!!  Nope, what this means is the kick-off of what I hope will be a nice tradition - we will share some of our own interpretations of Mary's illustrations on our dolls.  "ME Too'sday" - As in "Tonner can do it - me too"  (Not very elegant grammar, I do admit!)

And what better place to start than way back at the beginning for me.  I made this outfit in late 2003 or early 2004, and it is the first one where I tried to follow an ME illustration.
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Since that time I added Tonner's wonderful boots (from Michael's cowboy outfit, I believe) to my collection and they look much better than my early efforts to make boots!  But I must admit, I am, to this day, intensely proud of these gloves!  And I've tried and tried since then to make similarly well fitted gloves and never again succeed so well - it has to do with the type of fabric, I'm sure.
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Here is Mary Engelbreit's illustration from 1991.  I would assume that she was referring back to this drawing when she drew the cowgirl outfit for Georgia, the paper doll, at Halloween 1998.  And Tonner then based his 2000 outfit on that paper doll.

I hope Mary and the Tonner design team all had as much fun with their creative process as I did with mine!

Enjoy, R.

Next up: What's in a name??

The Year of the Dragon!

1/21/2012

1 Comment

 





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Gentle Blog Reader,
We are soon to arrive at the Year of the Dragon and I just can't resist showing you some photos of a celebration in our neighborhood from a few years back.  It started with the sound of gongs and firecrackers!
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Ann Estelle and Gabriella, a Customhouse Petite Ai.
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Mimi (an Effner head on Tonner body) was especially focused on vigorously gonging her gong and got a big surprise when she turned around to find .........
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a dragon had come up behind her!!!!!  (Mimi seems to have things sneak up behind her a lot.  I wonder why?)
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Andreas (who you have already seen at the skating pond) is a stalwart young man and he did the heavy lifting to support the dragon's head.  Michael, Yoi (a Secretdoll BJD), and Jack (an Effner head on Tonner body) followed up with the scaly body.  Here they are resting from their efforts with hot tea and lots of fortune cookies.
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Andreas, in a muffled voice: "Hey guys, give me a hand getting this thing off, please!"
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_I had lots of fun creating this dragon mask using artwork from the Canon Creative Park.  http://cp.c-ij.com/en/index.html    Some very old friends may recognize the Samia silk that I used for his beard - yes, I've saved some "hunks" of it this long!!!

I also wanted to share a great little website which provided me with the greeting in Chinese at the top of the post.  You can watch the characters write themselves and hear the greeting spoken in Mandarin!  http://goodcharacters.com/newsletters/gong-xi-fa-cai.html

Wishing you good luck and good fortune in the Year of the Dragon!!!  (Red envelope please!) R.

Next up:  ME Too'sday!
1 Comment

Many thanks!!!

1/17/2012

5 Comments

 
Dear gentle blog readers,
How nice to see old friends and so many nice comments!!  Thank you very much.  Andria thanks you too.  I tried to get her to make a blog post but you know how shy she is - she just blushed and said "oh no, YOU do it!"

We both want to urge you to look beyond the blog/home page too.  ["Beyond the Blog" .... sounds like a science fiction movie from the 1930's?]  Lots of wonderful things to see on all the pages and all the pages under the pages, etc etc!

I don't expect that I'll be making daily blog posts (although yes, it does look like I like to talk, doesn't it!?) but while we were in the throes of website design for the last several weeks, I kept thinking about things I am eager to share, so I have a couple of posts stored up in me.

Today I wanted to show you where my gang spends their time.  I call their address Joe Pye Towers.  Why "Joe Pye"?  Because the color I stained these two armoires reminds me of the somewhat faded, gentle pink of Joe Pye Weed flowers.  "You could look it up".  (What story is that from - I can't remember?)  This furniture is what is called entertainment armoires in the trade.  In other words, they are wide and deep enough to hold big TVs (or what used to be "big" TVs up until a couple of years ago when TVs became HUGE instead of just big.)
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They came with solid wood doors which I changed to framed glass:  Not only do I like to see my gang, but I like to keep them as dust free as possible and safe from curious cats.  Each tower has three "rooms" (and two drawers at the bottom).  The "rooms" change and evolve with the seasons and the current interests of the gang.  (And you can probably tell it was Christmas time when I took this picture.)  Right now winter has definitely settled in, especially in the penthouses.  Here are some pictures of the skating pond.
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These pictures will introduce you to (from left to right) Georgia, Sophie and Ann Estelle (Tonner dolls) and Andreas (a porcelain doll from Germany).  Also here is the one doll of my gang who is not in the same 1:6 scale as the rest - the little elf whose name is Lily Robgoblin.  (Lily is a Realpuki BJD made by Fairyland).

Generally speaking, I don't find my doll "play" going the "Fantasy" route but Lily is one of two exceptions.  So she flits in and out of the day-to-day life of the rest ot the gang (along with her familiar, ABC [A Blue Cricket]).  "When did personifying ten inch tall figures of vinyl as little children become anything other than "fantasy"?" I hear you say!  Well ..... there's "Fantasy" with a capital F and "fantasy" with a lower case f, right?!

Enjoy, R.
5 Comments

Welcome the new year and a new blog!

1/15/2012

9 Comments

 
Gentle Blog Reader,
How intimidating this is, starting the first post of a new blog!  The first blog post ever, for me!  Who am I writing to?  Why are they reading it?  Are they reading it??  Does it matter if they read it or not???  It doesn't really, does it?  How freeing!!!  Although I suppose, sometime in the future they may find that excessive, un-read blog posts in the early 21st century contributed to global warming and the extinction of polar bears ..... oh dear, now I'm worried again!

Maybe what I will tell myself is that, as long as we keep making blog entries, this first one is going to quietly sink down to the bottom of the page, out of sight beyond the lower edge of your computer's monitor and eventually settle into the silt down there.  That's comforting.

But wait, maybe after it has sat in the silt for a while, it will fossilize and eons from now some cyber paleontologist will dig it up and look at the fragments and ......  oh, what the heck!  Without anymore preamble, let me introduce you to a doll project that I've been having fun with for the last year.  I'm actually almost "done" with the entire project and thus to share the monthly entries is going to be a piece of cake - just pull out year-old photos and slap them in a blog entry!  (But along this line of thought, I have to tell you that I'm very proud of myself that I have been on-time throughout the last year with this project and I have kept going and will see it to completion.  "Good job R."  Thanks.)

A little over a year ago I received a Farmer's Almanac calendar that emphasized Native American names for the full moons.  I found these names interesting and often the scenes they conjured up in my mind I found very amusing.  This led me to try to "immortalize" these full moon scenes with my doll gang.  You must know that my own sense of humor can be somewhat esoteric at times and thus I'm going to probably leave you saying blankly "What???"   Well ..... "you had to be there".

So without further ado, I present the January Full Wolf Moon - "Dancing with the Star Wolf"!!  Enjoy, R.
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9 Comments

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