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| Amelia Thimble in Sew Enchanting |
Meet Amelia Thimble, introduced at the Tonner Convention, and now available for purchase. She's a high quality resin BJD (she's strung, resin, wigged, with changeable eyes and everything), and she's 4" (about 10.2 cm) tall.
This puts her right between Real Puki (9.5 cm) and Puki Puki (11 cm) size (in Fairyland terms) or close to a LaTi White basic size (9.8 cm), making her a truly tiny BJD. This means that BJD collectors may have additional clothing and accessories to choose from--assuming her body measures in the same realm as these dolls.
First, Amelia is available as a
basic doll. $145 will get you the basic version, with a smiling face, a dress, bloomers, shoes, wig, and a face-up, of sorts. Unfortunately, I'm seeing pencil lines on the sculpt in the close-up photos, which is really too bad. (My complaint--check out her upper lip in the close-up photo.) However, I highly recommend face-ups by Leah Lilly of
Froggy Duds and Beesou of
Overnight Flight. They can fix up your BJD to be just perfect. Additionally, she doesn't have applied eyelashes, which even at 4" adds to any BJD.
The basic Amelia scheduled to ship on September 30. She appears to be an open edition.
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| Basic Amelia Thimble |
Spend a little extra, and you can get the limited edition,
Cute as a Button, for $160. She's limited to 300 dolls, and also includes an outfit. Still, the same issues appear with the face painting.
Several outfit sets are available, and they are darling.
Sweet Notions is a set of three different outfits for $80, limited to 250 pieces. My favorite outfit set is
Sew Enchanting, which includes a little doll for Amelia, also limited to 250 and $65 retail. The
Sprinkled with Love Baking set would be a perfect gift for a friend and fellow blogger of mine, Kathie. It's just adorable, and includes the little accessories shown for just $45.
Amelia also has some pretty cool accessories:
Rags, Amelia's puppy, is $39, and includes her own pillow and food bowl.
A
Carry-All bag costs $60, but won't ship till the end of October. It's super-cute, though, and looks like a purse.
Two furniture sets, Buttons & Bows, allows her to set up her own
bedroom ($85) and
dining area ($60).
Price comparison wise--she's a decent price, even if you paid an additional $50-80 for a face-up for her. Puki Puki, which are currently sold out, $197 for a nude basic doll. It's an additional $28 for a face-up from
Fairyland. A full-set doll, which would include the outfit, eyes and wig, costs around $295, and usually requires a significant waiting period. If we look at the 11 cm size, Real Puki, we can see full-set dolls (with face-up, eyes, wigs, and outfits) also run around $295 and $188 for a basic.
Lati White runs about $145 for a doll without a wig or outfit, but including the doll and the face-up and eyes. Their waiting period can run from six weeks to six months.
Several things to consider, however: Amelia Thimble will almost certainly be off-topic on
Den of Angels, as she will be an "American" sculpt. This shouldn't persuade you from buying a doll you like, by the way, nor should it discourage you from considering it a ball-jointed doll. If it's strung, made of resin, and has changeable eyes and wigs, it's technically a BJD.
Additionally, since Wilde Imagination is offering this BJD with a face-up, wig, eyes and outfit, and she's smiling and cute, this might be a great introductory doll for new ball-jointed doll collectors. She might be perfect--her joints look really nice, even if her face-up looks a little like Mini Mood. My fear, however, is that she might not be engineered properly. What if she's kicky, or her elastic is too thick or thin, and she won't stand on her own? What if her wig falls off? (If it does, check out my other blog,
BJDs for Beginners.) I would hate to see this doll cloud new BJD owners view of BJDs forever.
I may end up buying one--she's a bargain after all--and sending her for a new face-up. If you spend a lot of money on resin, you want a high quality face-up after all. But even still--the price tag is really reasonable. Wilde Imagination is a reputable doll company, too: you wouldn't have to wait six months and send your money overseas, hoping that some one you've never heard of will make your doll by hand for you. This is a low-risk BJD investment. And really, quite affordable.
Maybe my friend Carolyn will buy one. I hope so!
Lots of great photos and more information about Amelia Thimble can be found in this story about her in the
October 2011 issue of the Doll Reader. It's a PDF file, so give it some time to load.
