Tonner ballet dolls on sale - last day!

All of the ballet dolls in Tonner Doll Company's current collection are on sale for just $89 each. That's a pretty good bargain--but a little annoying for those of us who bought these from the dealer at full price.

There are three available--and they include both ballet feet and high heel feet:

Classical - Tyler head sculpt
Spring Time - Daphne head sculpt (real life photo of my doll is shown here)
Starlight - Kit head sculpt

These dolls would make a great gift for the dancer in your family. And they sure are priced right!

Spring Time

Spring Time, a photo by alington on Flickr.

Another new arrival - Spring Time. She's a newly released Tonner Ballet doll, and the second Daphne sculpt offered this year. She is available from dealers now.

She's brunette with brown eyes with a rather frou-frou outfit that is surprisingly well done with tulle, sequins, and silk flowers. I'm rather delighted with her overall quality.

She includes high heel feet as well, and I'm kind of interested in trying her out in formal wear. You can check out lots of additional photos, including of her braided up-do, on Flickr.

Tonner Doll new releases: Mainline Preview Ballet

Tyler makes an appearance in the Tonner Ballet series as Classical, a limited edition of 400 for $209.99. She has a release date TBD. She has rooted raven hair, blue eyes, and a lovely navy and white outfit, navy ballet shoes, and also included interchangeable heel feet.

No photo is available yet, but Spring Time is a new part of the ballet collection as well. She has a 3/5/2014 ship date, and she uses the Daphne head sculpt. She has the cameo skin tone with golden brown hair, brown eyes, and wears a pink satin and chiffon dress with sequins and floral decoration. She also includes pink ballet shoes, and high heel feet. She's limited to 400 and retails for $224.99.

Morning Mist

Untitled, a photo by alington on Flickr.

One of the new ballet dolls from Tonner Doll's latest release, Morning Mist has arrived. Limited to 400, she retails for $199.99, though many Tonner details are offering a discount. She uses the Daphne head sculpt, who hasn't been seen in Tonner's regular line since Ultra Basic Daphne (a TonnerDirect exclusive) in 2010, and before that, 2009's Evening with Simon.

She's true to herself with light blonde hair and green eyes. Her outfit is surprising detailed--sparking purple tulle with lavender tulle underlayers, micro sequins, and lots of gold detailing. Her sleeves are detached.

She includes sparkling hose, gold stud earrings and purple ballet shoes, plus an extra set of high heeled feet for fashion play.

You can see additional photos on Flickr.

Tonner Ballet

For the fairytale princess in us all (?), Tonner has released one new ballerina and two new outfits. They are simply gorgeous. None have estimated delivery dates yet.

Above, it's Sugar Plum Fairy, an outfit limited to 300, retail is $124.99. It fits the 16" Tyler body, and it includes the shoes, tights, headpiece, and it's a single dress with attached tutu and panties.

Blue Bell is an outfit limited to 300 also, retail $124.99. It's a single-piece dress/bodysuit/tutu as well, and it includes tights, blue slippers, and hair decoration as well.

Wood Nymph is $224.99 for the dressed doll, and she uses Model #6 head (I think this is Gina/TDLM) with green eyes and rooted chestnut hair. She includes high heel feet in addition to ballet feet. Her dress is a single piece with attached panties, and she includes the hair decoration, shoes and tights as well. She's limited to 400.

Fashion Doll Photography - Christmas Vacation

Photographing my fashion dolls in venues other than my home is something fairly new for me. It began a couple of years ago when a friend of mine and I hosted the official travel doll for the 2009 National Barbie Doll Convention. Since then I've taken various fashion dolls to local areas for impromptu fashion shoots. Over the holidays we made a couple of trips for which I decided to take a fashion doll, much to the amusement of my family.

Happy Go Lightly in the lobby of the War Memorial Opera Hou

The first trip was a quick visit up to San Francisco to see the Nutcracker Ballet at the War Memorial Opera House. I thought Happy Go Lightly Silkstone Barbie (HGL) would enjoy dressing up in her finery to attend a beautifully produced ballet in such an historic location. She took the opportunity to don Sheer Sparkle by Dressmaker Details. Photographing dolls out in the public is a constant learning experience. Available lighting, on-site props, people milling about, the camera, and the photographer's skills (just to name a few) all influence the outcome of the photo. In this case, there were so many folks visiting in the lobby that it was impossible to get a photograph of HGL without someone stepping into the picture. The unfortunate aspect of this is that it messes with the perceived scale of things. Also, I need to learn more about my camera's capabilities. While the lighting at the Opera House is fine for it's intended use, it's underlit for photographing HGL. I currently use a point and shoot digital camera and right now I only know either flash on or flash off. With the flash on, HGL was in focus but I couldn't see the background. With the flash off, HGL is a little fuzzy but we can see not only HGL but the background as well. And isn't that why I took her to the ballet in the first place? So for now, to explain the fuzziness, I'm going with the old Hollywood standby of claiming she wanted petroleum jelly slathered on the camera lens to give her a more youthful look.

Endless Summer Poppy Parker with Minnie Mouse.

For our next trip, we went to Disneyland. For this little junket, I took Endless Summer Poppy Parker. Poppy has become my favorite fashion doll (shh, don't tell HGL or any of my other dolls!). She has such a youthful appearance and she wears so many different clothing styles well. For this session she wore a jacket, top, belt, and pants from Clear-Lan and shoes and jewelry from the Ask Any Girl gift set from the 2010 Fashion Royalty Convention collection. This photo session went much better as we were outside for most of the photos which gave me natural lighting to work with.  Also, while there are just masses of people at Disneyland (the fire marshal actually closed the park to newly entering people due to overcrowding) the people have more space to spread out so I was able to do better about avoiding folks stepping into my picture. Here Poppy poses with Minnie Mouse in front of Cinderella's Castle.

While I do occasionally run into glitches with my doll photography, I still enjoy the experience immensely. When I first began I was a little timid about how people would react. Now I don't worry about that because I've experienced how much fun it is. As a matter of fact, on both of these trips, I had complete strangers come up and photograph my doll as well! And I know that with time and practice, my photos will begin to better meet my expectations.

If you'd like to see more pictures from these two photo shoots, please visit my Flickr.