Halloween Alchemy

Kana here.  It's time for more hilarity with me and Lily!

So the human's be frantically prepping for a Harry Potter themed craft fair in December (which means the human sized bookshelves now have doll-sized chocolate frogs and pumpkin pasties and wands everywhere.  And potions.  And potion ingredients.  Enough that we finally set up a little alchemy and potions show of our own.  We've got a workstation, a desk for doing all the paperwork that comes with running a shop, and lots and lots of shelves for potions.

Total number of individual little bottles in our shop:  about 300

It all started with this little shelf the human found on the side of the street for free.  It's supposed to be a wall display cabinet, and it has nice iron scrollwork on the door and sides.  And it's perfect for the massive number of potion ingredients.

Lily, being Lily, did not label anything.  So only she knows what everything is, and what goes with anything else without being a hazard.  Thank you, Lily.

We also got a new rather large mortar and pestle set (it's the Outlander Megamini kit from Amazon).  Pretty sure the human thought it was going to be smaller than it is.  We us it anyways.

More potions.  And bottles of sparkly fairy dust.  And racks of ingredients.  All the potions can be worn as charms.  We should make more.  Or rather, Lily and the human should.  I'm just going to watch the hilarity.  The last time they made potions, they stripped the finish off the new kitchen counters.  Oops.

The cabinet of completed potions.  Also unlabeled.  Just...uh...don't touch anything?  Some of the ones on the bottom might be poisonous.  (No, I don't know which book Lily is using to brew these.  Neither does anyone else.)

We also got new portraits taken in the shop, and I think these are our favorites so far.  We'll start our potions business after I make Lily label everything.  I swear.

Lily's Magical Marketplace

Lily here.  So we're all packing for the annual Great Summer Adventure (tm) in which the humans drive up to Maine for a weekend and pretend they're living in the Middle Ages.  And this time, the four of us are getting drafted to be the booth models.

But first, we set up a little fair of our own, to show off all the things that will be on display this weekend.

First there's the food.  It's not a fair without food.

We've got bread and cheese and sausage and pickles and eggs and gingerbread and pasties.  The pasties even come in two flavors, and they definitely look good enough to eat.  All the food was made with polymer clay, except the display tower in the back.  Those are erasers on the Wellie Wisher snack stand that the human repainted.

Then there's my magical emporium booth stocked with potions and wands and potions ingredients.  And journals and pens to take notes on potion brewing.  I have a little workstation set up so I can brew things on demand.  

Polymer clay wands

44 bottles of various potions ingredients, made from little glass vials and scraps of floral arrangments

The open book is actually a miniature version of the Voynich manuscript.  No one really knows what it says, but there's a theory that it's a New World herbal written in an extinct language.  So I'm using it as one.

Obligatory photobomb

Now with lightsabers (Free Star Wars doll clothes patterns)

Lily and Shepard here.  We're evil twins.  Or evil clones.  Or something of that sort.  (Only since Shepard is such a renegade, I think I might be the good twin by definition.)  But we're both persuasive, and in this case, we convinced the human to finally do something with the giant pile of old clothing in her sewing room.

With all the talk about the latest Star Wars movie, and the fact we *already* own a droid, it was only fair that the human should make us Star Wars costumes.  I'm dressed as Rey, and Shepard is dressed as Luke from 'A New Hope' (desert planets are pretty much the same, right?)

 Shepard is wearing a modified Japanese hippari and monpe made from an old gi.  Turns out there's no better way to get the weathered and worn look than actually using weathered and worn fabric.  The leg wraps are a pieces of woven brown ribbon, and the belt is a piece of nylon strapping with a buckle.

And I'm wearing a tunic and a pair of shorter monpe made from the same gi fabric.  It's a lightweight twill.  The sash is a piece of vintage Japanese cotton 3" wide by about 45" long.  The belt is all one piece with two buckles.  The arm wraps are the same woven ribbon as Shepard's leg wraps.

Download the patterns here!

These is a modified and resized version of the Little Darling in Japan patterns offered by JenWrenne.  Her instructions for making a hippari and monpe are here.  The pants have elastic waists.  Rey's tunic closes in the back with velcro.

Also, you can buy the lightsabers at the Museum of Science store here.

And now for some more pictures! (Yes, the lightsabers actually light up when we hold them.)

Dual wielding!

LIGHTSABER DUEL!

This should be a book cover pose.

Shoujo Manga Extravaganza

The human may have gone overboard when I told her about the extreme lack of manga in our bookshelves.  After all, she has a manga collection, so why shouldn't we?

So I got to pick some, and my first choice was a set of Sailor Moon manga, all ten volumes, the latest 2014 edition.  The first volume is in English, but the rest are in Japanese.  It matters less for us than for humans, I think.  (Besides, the human reads Japanese anyways, and her good manga are all in Japanese, so it's only fair we get the same.)

And yes, it has actual images and text.  Each volume has about a chapter of manga.

But while I like the more modern (yes, yes, I know Sailor Moon is 90s manga.  But they're putting out the new anime still so it counts.) manga, I also wanted a few shoujo classics.  So I had the human track down some old Ikeda Ryoko manga from the 70s.  AND I'll be sharing those with everyone.  (The Sailor Moon manga are my personal property and no, I'm not sharing those.)

And these are the real classics that practically founded the shoujo genre.  We have 'The Rose of Versailles', which spawned at least 10 musicals, various translations, and one English movie 'Lady Oscar'.  It's the human's favorite.  Then we have 'Brother, Dear Brother'.  If 'Rose of Versailles' inspired the setting for Revolutionary Girl Utena (another 90s favorite), then 'Brother, Dear Brother' was responsible for the *ahem* drama *ahem* of the cast.  And finally, 'Claudine', which was super dramatic and super sad.

(Random interjection:  Did you know that Shirogane Naoto's persona designs (Persona4 and spinoffs) were heavily influenced by 'Rose of Versailles'?  That's how much of a cultural touchstone this is in Japan.)

As always, the human was kind enough to include real text and images in my manga.

So.  This is the one and only content warning I will give.  All of Ikeda-sensei's manga that I'm showing off here contain LGBT characters.  (In fact, all of the manga I have now contain LGBT characters.)  I hear some people don't like to be surprised by that or something.  So I'm telling you BEFORE you download it.  Oh right, additional content warnings include suicide (all of the above), and transphobia (Claudine only).  So, maybe not the right manga for someone under the age of 13.

We're dolls.  We're allowed to read anything we want.

And now, the manga you've been waiting for:

Manga

Instructions

Instructions Addendum:  The binding is going to be different for these.  There is no cover to cut out.  Instead you'll be using duct tape to bind these.  Follow the instructions until the part where you attach the cover.
1.  Cut out two small pieces of cardstock the same size as the pages.
2.  Glue the cardstock to the first and last pages.
3.  Spread white glue down the spine.
4.  Cut a piece of duct tape the same length as the book is tall and 1" wide (half the normal width of duct tape is fine)
5.  Place the book down the center of the duct tape (so treat the duct tape like the A/B piece in the instructions) and fold the duct tape to cover the spine.
6.  Fold the dust jacket over the book.

If you liked these, please visit our etsy shop at JinjiaMixedGoods for more printable books for dolls.

Also, we're holding a book pattern giveaway until 12/31/2015.  Leave a comment here with what book published before 1923 (aka 'in the public domain') you'd like to see made in doll size to enter.  The winner will get a full 18 patterns for a complete Hogwarts textbook collection.