Sadie's Living Dead Dollhouse, Part 3

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With most of the room-painting and façade out of the way, the fun stuff was now being done.  Furniture was the easiest and most fun part of the process. Since LDD Minis are on the lowish end of 1:12 scale, finding furniture that suits them is pretty easy, and it was fun testing out the look by placing the dolls with the pieces. It was a lot harder designing the photos for the Lottie photo story because the "default" figure there for scaling was the seven-inch Arklu Lottie and the LDD Minis Lottie had to be undersized as a toddler in the scenery. 7-inch dolls don't have many options, but LDD Minis effortlessly take command of a 1:12 environment and are much easier to stage when they're in their own little world.

The stuffed chair and sofa down in the living room are old dollhouse pieces from my mother's childhood. I think the red tartan perfectly suits the mix of red walls and green marble in the living room, and the pieces look so comfy with a Mini sitting in them. The legs of these pieces have fallen off multiple times, and when regluing, I identified a couple which had been mistakenly swapped between furniture pieces in earlier repairs. 

I found a miniature color wheel light like you'd see in a retro kid's room, which is functional. A switch on the bottom activates the light, and the wheel works like a wind-up dial that you twist and then a motor lets it rotate for a limited time.

For Sadie's bed, I always knew she would be using a burial box, but my initial plan was to source one of those wooden angular coffin boxes you get at craft stores, with the hinges and all. I could have used a LDD Minis coffin, but the bar code printed at the foot and the flimsier cardboard construction made it unsuitable for my purposes, and I thought a wooden hinged box would be better. I started rethinking when I realized the angled shape of the coffin lid would mean I'd have to account for the lid hinging diagonally within the room space, and I thought a more formal rectangular casket would mix better with the look of a classic bed. From there, the biggest challenge was finding a box with the right proportions. You don't see a lot of skinny boxes that can hold an LDD Mini, but I found one option with promise and measured the doll to verify it would be able to fit inside. I was delighted to get the piece and find the fit to be essentially perfect. The doll isn't wedged in tightly on the sides and there's enough room for a pillow. (You can tell how long ago certain steps were when I'm using Lottie as the model, because I didn't get Minis Sadie until December was well underway.)

The first step was removing the clasp on the side, since it didn't suit a funeral casket. To keep the lid closed, I put in a cylindrical magnet on each half after I bored holes for them to slot into. The magnets ended up not being in direct contact because they got pushed in unevenly, but they attract enough to hold the lid closed flush--without them, it would rest cracked open at a sliver of an angle. I then glued some pieces on for texture--four knobs for furniture feet to stand it above the ground, supports from the wooden staircase to serve as pallbearers' handles (on the side with the hinges, only one piece because the hinges were there, and two on the opposite side), and for textured carving for the lid, I chopped pieces of the cardboard backing of a Bristol board pad to serve as panels to add texture. I didn't have thin wood, and the board was easy to cut to size. I had tried carving a design into the top, but the cardboard is so un-carveable that I added a second panel and tier of texture on top to cover up that attempt.

I then painted it all black while the casket was closed. I put a small dot of glue on the side with the hinges to keep the lid closed while I removed the hinges, since they would need to be off while I lacquered the piece for appropriate gloss. I didn't have enough polyurethane, nor a suitable vessel, to immerse the piece for optimal coating, but I tried pours and some smoothing and got something good enough. The panels on the top caught a lot of excess fluid that needed to be wiped away in order to keep the sharp contours.

Once this was done, I noticed the coffin tipped off its feet when I had the lid opened all the way, with its weight taking the body off-balance and sending it sideways. This was unacceptable because Sadie has every right to decide whether she wants to sleep open-casket or closed. As a result, I decided to spend $2.30 to weight the body and prevent this.

From one perspective, this was the most economical solution. From another, it's definitionally not!

The coffin righted itself before the last quarter and nickel were put in, but I over-weighted it just to be sure. These coins are glued in.

I then painted the interior black. 

My next step was creating the plush element for bedding/casket lining. I got some patterned white fabric and glued it to the interior walls, letting some hang out of the lid like a casket's version of a bed skirt. 

This made the lid resist closing with the added thickness between the halves, so I loosened the screws a bit and dug out the lower magnet more so this would be counteracted. Some stuffing was put in before the fabric so the bed would be softer. A doll could literally not care less whether her bed is legitimately comfy, but I care! Deeply!

I then made a pillow of the same fabric, with glued edges and some stuffing. I turned it inside out so only one seam is on the outside. This piece is not attached to the bed.

I glued in one sheet of the same fabric to the lower edge of the interior as a sheet, and then partially sewed and partially glued a comforter out of pink fabric with some stuffing, also glued to the foot. The sheet is placed so it can tuck over the top of the comforter with the pattern outward. The lid got lined with spare white sparkle felt from Sadie's DEADvent dress. I think the casket looks quite cozy, and a doll tucks in perfectly, and the lid closes while occupied as well. 

I've always treasured the magic of a comfortable bed and a wonderful sleep, and always loved a toy bed that looked comfortable for the toys in it, so it was really important to me that Sadie's be a good one.

I also realized the really cute possibility that the casket can be a pair of beds if Sadie has a sleepover--one friend can sleep in the lid with the use of a spare pillow and blanket. It's like a horizontal twist on bunk beds! So I found a bedding set at the craft store and bought it to make this easier on me. 

These can rest on a chair in the corner when not used for a bed.

When I had been making portraits, I thought of printing one of Bloody Mary before realizing that the most proper use of her character would be to put her in the bathroom mirror--indeed, this was the driving force behind making a bathroom for the house. But how to do so? I'd printed a cutout of Mary at the right size, but I didn't know the right way to execute the gag. I was considering gluing the picture to the front of the mirror and finding something to layer over to blend it better--grey translucent cellophane? But this seemed difficult and unlikely to look good, and then I realized she could be behind the glass after all! I just had to scrape off the backing of the mirror to leave clear glass where I wanted the printed picture to show! 

To make a very long story short, the scraping didn't leave crystal-clear glass behind, but it worked out. I had cut the hair off the cutout because I thought maybe I would have less showing for more of a phantom effect faded at the edge, but then decided the hair was better, so I scraped off in that silhouette and applied a black backing behind it all to fill in the hair shape and blend with the cutout. After the scraping and before the portrait was glued on with the black backing, I broke the mirror and glued it back together and shaded the cracks to make it spookier. I also put bloody paint leaking out of the cracks, which I planned to continue onto the underlying wall and the sink basin. I think the effect of the ghost in the mirror is very effective this way.

Then the order from Real Good Toys arrived--the interior doors, the kitchen table set, and the shower. 

The doors came with no designated knobs, but I had wooden pieces for those. They have removable pins that let you switch which side of the frame the hinge is on (and thus, which way the doors swing), which was very useful for planning and testing the bathroom, and have trim panels to cover the wall frame on the other side. The doors don't fit tight into the doorway in the wall, so you have to glue the attached jamb edge onto the wall to secure it once aligned. Both doors will be white, but Sadie's got some bloody paint marking her room outside.

The two doors were glued with the attached frame jamb on the hallway side of the wall, and the aesthetic trim frames were glued on the inside. Sadie's door swings toward the fourth wall.

The shower module is pretty nice. It's solid wood with tile texture inside and a showerhead, round decorative knob, and shelves inside. The curtain is a plastic sheet, but it's adhered to the top of the rod rather than being threaded through, and it cannot be bunched up and swept aside to open and close. That's really disappointing.

It's also still too big. While I can actually create the first layout I imagined with the shower...

...it's super cramped and uncomfortable. There's also no place on the walls where I can hang the painting of Faith, which is essential. So I had to re-rethink.

When I shot the Lotties' photo story, I had improvised an L.O.L. O.M.G. plastic hat box as a bathtub for Minis Lottie, and that had worked pretty perfectly.

So I thought I could do that here--make a tub/shower unit with a smaller tub that has a smaller footprint. Horror and showers are best friends, but I'd hate to leave Sadie unable to take a bath. I love baths and I want that bliss for her.

With this box shape for a tub, I can rearrange the bathroom so the sink and Mary's mirror are on the other wall, and the Faith painting has room to hang above the toilet. I can cite the shower module and build the fixtures and curtain around the tub and make it a shower set too. 

I fitted the door in the bathroom wall, but this resulted in me having to cut down and shred the edge on the fourth wall so it wouldn't overhang, because I hadn't gotten the measurement quite right. The wall edge looks really ugly, but it is what it is.

I ordered a white copy of the O.M.G. hat box to serve as the tub and glued the lid to the bottom to add a bit of texture. To add a shower curtain, I wanted a microfiber fabric that was able to bunch up and wave rather than being stiff and incompressible, so I picked a black glasses polishing cloth I could spare. I pierced holes in it which I threaded on a copper-colored wire, and put the ends of the wire folded into more wooden spools painted the same color as hubs that can glue flat to the walls. One hub connects to the ceiling while the other connects to the dollhouse wall with a right-angle vertical bend to the ceiling, allowing the added bathroom wall module to still be removable.

I didn't even realize until adding the blood paint just how similar the sink I ended up with was to the original scene I drew in my teenage-era fan art of Bloody Mary!

I then added a showerhead positioned straight down into the tub and a tap made from miscellaneous parts.

This layout is correct, but the Faith painting I prepped previously was still too big, so I ordered more mini frames to try making another pass in a smaller frame. Having to downsize the Faith painting regardless of what I did technically invalidates my new solution for the shower/tub--I could have downsized the painting and had the Real Good Toys shower module in the corner with no problems. However, I stand by where my work took me because letting Sadie have a bath and a closing shower curtain are net positives, and using the O.M.G. box as a tub feels like a nice memento of my first time playing with LDD Minis.

The Real Good Toys table set had four chairs. Two is enough for the kitchen.

These are finished pieces with a glossy feel, which will make repainting harder if I need to. A Mini doesn't actually sit too well in them. The seats are just a tad not long enough in front to prop the legs up and keep them seated, so it can take some fiddling. A lot of the time, the doll wants to fall forward off the chair. 

The door kit also came with some partition extender boards which could fit around a door to put it at the end of a wall. I just saw building materials that could save me future supply purchases! I took one of the wider partition pieces to be the surface of a bedroom desk, and used other wooden spool-bead pieces to build its legs, ending them on knob pieces to keep the table above a Mini's lap while sitting on a chair from the table set.

Perfect.

I painted the desk white.

I took a longer partition and sawed it down and painted it white to serve as a floating wall shelf in Sadie's room for her LDD collection!

I'll tell her to stop here. She doesn't want to deal with a collection my size!

You can also see a doily I used as a rug, and some of the poster prints now taped up with tiny pieces to hang in the room. The crochet doily is too thick and wiggles out of shape when it moves, so I'll be looking for a thinner fabric embroidered one to replace it with, but the size is right.

I also got a wardrobe piece which I painted white and put on the opposite wall next to the standing shelf. I put another poster on the interior side of the door.

I also used more pieces of long partition, unpainted, to be shelves texturing the attic.

I didn't cut the left ones on an angle to match the ceiling; they're glued to the straight side wall.

I got my gloss paper to print photographic pieces that called for the texture, printing a picture of Alison, S1 Eggzorcist, Lottie, and Quack, as well as a photo of Teddy's tea serving, the autographed Hollywood picture, and the Dahlia movie poster. The pictures of Lottie and Eggy, the autograph, and the Dahlia poster got added to Sadie's room.

While I taped the previous pieces, these ones got lightly glued. I don't imagine I'll shuffle around the images ever, so it didn't matter. The autograph is a loose piece, though.

During all this, I was also thinking about company for Mini Sadie because I didn't want her to be alone in this house all the time. I did get a small BJD body, curious about the possibility of rebodying a Living Dead Dolls Mini onto it, but despite my diligence to check the sizes, it is taller than a Mini body, and it wouldn't do to swap Sadie onto it because her costume would be too short on this. The proportions aren't radically, distractingly different and Minis clothes seem like they'd mostly all fit, but it's just too tall for Sadie to use.

I suppose this not working out ends up making sense, anyway, since it would look strange for her to have this nicer body but not her playmates. But it's such a nice piece, and I didn't want it to go to waste. I love articulated tiny dolls, and letting a LDD character be this wonderful poseable mini would be fantastic. Who could use it and make sense here? I looked back at the cast of dolls produced as Minis, and I was absolutely blindsided by the idea that popped into my head. 

What if Ms. Eerie is mama?

Ms. Eerie is a formal mourner with an adult honorific, suiting her being on a taller more articulated body next to Sadie--she'd be an adult character in her LDD Minis world, and this body fits even more correctly in the dollhouse, letting a grown-up character with this body be a good resident. Her costume is long enough to work on the taller body without issues. And her look is simple and spooky enough that she would read nicely as Sadie's hypothetical mom. In LDD canon, this is very unlikely just because Ms. Eerie died so much later than Sadie, but perhaps she adopted Sadie after the girl had several decades as an orphaned undead child, or maybe Ms. Eerie is moreso a guardian than a mother figure and the relationship is more unique. 

The other thing that made this feel like a strangely good idea was that I'd also purchased a round-topped straw hat to test on the Minis and painted it black, and I realized if I got Ms. Eerie's Mini, I had inadvertently already made the costume piece she was missing--original Ms. Eerie had a hat in the same shape. 

The reason this idea shocked me so seriously is that I've long considered Ms. Eerie to be one of the weakest LDDs and never imagined I'd have anything to do with her. As a full-size doll, she looked so simple and so cheap with her minimally tailored dull satin dress. Her funeral wreath's tripod was also just cardboard.

Her face and hair and veil are great, but that costume totally sank her for me, and I don't think I'm alone, because Ms. Eerie generally sits on the low end of the aftermarket. To find myself so compelled to get her as Mini Sadie's guardian created a total double-take for me.

Mini Ms. Eerie arrived. She's from Minis Series 5, replicating LDD Series 4. She brought pleasant surprises--for one, she actually fully includes her hat! She's just not photographed with it on the LDD archive.

This is a flocked felt piece, so the brim is wonky, but it fits great and looks fantastic and I don't have to worry about it cracking and falling apart! The pattern on the mesh is dots, while the full-size doll had a webby mesh design. Mini Ms. Eerie also has red toenail paint true to her original doll even though the Minis shoes don't display it. I think the smirking Minis face suits the character and the cheap feel of the dress is much more forgivable on a miniature doll. It's a good character design at the end of the day, but I think the simplicity and fabric work against the doll in full size and make her look underdone and low-quality. 

Ms. Eerie gives me vibes of "the mysterious widow who definitely killed her husband", though that's not suggested by her poems, where it's said the funeral occasion is her own.

The swap onto the BJD body was not ideal, but I made it happen. And this fully animated the character design and eliminated her aesthetic deficits entirely. With high articulation, she's fantastic.

The imperfections are there. Ms. Eerie is a touch pinker than the body, and her dress is quite tight on it. I also had to cut away at the feet a lot to reduce their size enough to fit the shoes, and to create a neck attachment that stayed on, I sacrificed the ability to tilt the head, so it's just a swivel like another Mini. I cut the neck peg down and slid one of the attachments, cone-shaped, around the center of the rod. The ring of her neck hole is held between the flat-cut neck on the body and the piece inside the head, like this--peg is black, cone is orange, body parts in pink.

To have this secure fit as well as tilt would be beyond my patience. To let her neck hole fit around the neck on the body would involve cutting away at either the head or neck, and then there would be nothing affixing her head at its vertical position. The head is a tad loose as it is, and I'm much happier with it staying put and simply swiveling. The neck peg is also a rotating hinge rather than a ball and cup, so there would have been no way to let her head tilt forward and back and side-to-side. I could theoretically secure her head to the peg directly by having a thick cylindrical piece around the peg that fit precisely in the neck hole and keeping it glued to that peg...but I'd have to choose one direction or the other as far as tilt...and I'd have to cut the neck hole wider to let it cover the joint and sculpted torso neck. If the head could rotate around the peg, then I wouldn't be able to easily rotate the peg itself and change the direction of the hinge, so Ms. Eerie would be able to look down and up in any rotation, but never tip her head side to side...or vice versa. It wasn't worth it to me to find a way to create a connection for even one tilt direction. Swivel was fine.

And yet, despite being so sure I had sacrificed some motion, I was stuck on the engineering question and then thought of just looking at what I had and trying to bend the neck hinge anyway...and it works!

 Well, whaddaya know?

I can even pinch a little to turn the neck peg and achieve side-to-side tilt while the head can turn independent of the peg to move on the other axis! And even if I don't want to do that, the head pops out so easily that I can manually twist the joint to face the other way and put the head back on. This is fantastic. She has all the motion!

I found a ton of fun in this character once she was able to move. Her mourning clothes and evil spooky face come together great for a spooky cemetery diva who's more of a romantic than a downer at a funeral.

Like, yes, she killed him...but also, she slayed.

And I'm deceased.

That's one of Return Sadie's wire-stem roses cut down for her as a prop.

She can get quite dramatic and passionate when in mourning. Sometimes it takes death to really make you fall in love with someone.

I'll never tire of tiny dolls who can pose a lot, and this solution made me adore Ms. Eerie, a character who never got my love before.

I may think about trying this again. The pool of viable other LDD Minis candidates (based on color match and costume viability on a taller frame) is very small, but perhaps Lou Sapphire could work on a body like this, and he would be another doll I'd potentially like more through a Mini. Maybe Sadie's dad, or Sin's. (Sin herself, again, has no horns, so I don't want her Mini.)

Ms. Eerie joining the cast caused a slight issue because there's no living space for her. Real Good Toys does sell an addition for either side of the house, but it has to be built in to replace a couple of the walls during first assembly and can't be added on after the fact. Even if it could be brought in after assembly, on either side it would cause logistic and logical issues, like connecting to a room inappropriately or not working with my current layout. Another addition they offer is a conservatory module, which could easily stand alone as its own detached model like some kind of greenhouse or fancy crypt on the house's grounds, and that would be an easy way to give Ms. Eerie her own space and separate her a little when I want it just to be the Sadie show. The conservatory is just an expensive piece, so it's more of a commitment, but I'll continue to consider it. Alternatively, the center nook of the attic is a great spot for a bed...

...but again, there's the navigation issue of Ms. Eerie having to go through Sadie's bedroom to get to her own. Sadie's not young enough for that connected-rooms setup to feel right. I could theoretically patch up the attic hatch I cut and carve a new one on the opposite side, above the hallway. That's a more logical place for it and it would let Ms. Eerie go up to the attic without intruding on Sadie...but that sounds like a nightmare to execute, the ladder would be in a space I'm deliberately keeping inactive because the bathroom walls get in the way of access, and the removed conservatory feels far more aesthetically proper for Ms. Eerie's personal room than the dusty attic does. She's the funeral lady; she needs a viewing room. I can keep a Minis coffin up in the attic as a spare bed, but Ms. Eerie won't live there.

I was also thinking of candidates for a proper housemate or playdate, but was a little stumped. Sin would be the obvious choice since the she and Sadie  are always dressed alike and come from the same series, but Mezco didn't introduce the devil-horns Minis head in time for Sin to benefit, meaning her Mini looks really unfinished and unsatisfactory. Damien would work since he's a similarly generic creepy kid who can be read as Sadie's brother, but I don't know if he charms me as much. Lottie would make easy sense in the house, and I already had her, but with me having put her into an alternate-universe story where she's a toddler babysat by her friend Arklu Lottie, it felt like mixing storylines in a way that didn't work for me, and I'd since sacrificed my copy for parts and ruined her (I plan to get her back through the mausoleum pack of Series 3 Minis). What about Lulu, the roller-skater who tumbled down some stairs and got completely wrecked? Her original doll has earrings and a tattoo that leave me totally unsure how old she's meant to be, but the Mini easily looks like a little girl in a tutu and her skates. 

As mentioned, Lulu is one of the hardest Minis to find for some reason, but I eventually tracked her down on an independent collectibles shop, thankfully offering her at a price most Minis today go for. She wasn't scarce and hugely expensive with a correlation that normally comes when something is hard to find. She was just merely, oddly absent on resellers, consistently. She's from Minis Series 5, same as Ms. Eerie, since both were part of the original Series 4.

I've never been sure how to feel about Lulu in full size. She's got pink hair and a tutu and a beaten-up face, but also has hoop earrings and a tattoo that make her age very unclear. She's not quite cute, though her retro skater theme is fun and she has a unique gory novelty--she has a compound fracture with a rod of bone poking through the sock on her right. That alone makes her worth consideration for a collector, but she's a hard doll to swallow even if the fracture doesn't repulse you.

Some of her tonal oddness and age vagueness may be explained by being inspired in some way by the wife of one of the creators, as has been reported. That creator was the one who left the brand allegedly at Mezco's decision, so it might mean Lulu is off the table for Return if the line continues past S1. It could be too weird or dicey for the remaining team. The same creator also led to the creation of Rain, an angel personally memorializing his late mother. That character might also be too intertwined with him to revive, and regardless of that creator allegedly bringing his departure from Mezco on himself, I'd land on it being ethically wrong and disrespectful to use the character in his absence.

Lulu's Mini is a fair bit cuter than her full-size. I didn't know ahead of time if she kept the tattoo, but her earrings aren't depicted, and it looked like Mezco even gave her unique Minis boots depicting her skates, which were themselves created for the original Lulu. Minis Lulu won't have working wheels like the big doll, but the detail is still cool.

Here she is unboxed.

Lulu's hair is pretty impressive for its scale, successfully recreating the pink pigtails of the original. Her elastics haven't fallen apart, so I'm not touching them. This hairstyle is too small to securely replace them with non-decaying alternatives. A few hairs got trimmed for being overlong. I'm sure her hair is rooted in the bare minimum to cover her scalp and tie in pigtails, but it's to great effect because the proportion of her hairstyle doesn't look a bit oversized. Tiny dolls tend to have "bigger" hair that looks denser or hangs wider just due to how fibers work on a smaller head, and that makes for proportional discrepancies between the hairstyles of most adapted LDD Minis and their larger counterparts, but Mini Lulu's hair doesn't look meaningfully bigger than it does on her original.

Her face has similar paint, with the pink bruising effect and the black eyes with pinwheel irises that remind me of Lilith's. 

The eyes are ringed by brown. She doesn't have the painted undereye creases that make the big doll look more intense, and her mouth looks cleaner, just having red lips without the smeary paint blurring around them making her lips look beaten-up. Her pink eye rings are also much paler. It makes her a little brighter and more cute to have that detail absent, though as adaptation, it's lacking. She should look a little more like this to be truly accurate: 

I am so okay with the way she was produced, though.

Mini Lulu does not have the small hoop earrings of the larger doll.

Her costume is much like the full-size, being a cream-colored satin leotard and a dense, stiff white tulle tutu. The leotard is awkwardly sewn on this body, though. I think the top hangs too low on the torso and looks asymmetrical, and it can't be adjusted. It's acceptable, but you look twice and you realize her torso isn't properly covered and the costume looks like it's sagging from being too large. 

In the back, the bow from the leotard has been translated, though the straps are on only one side. On the full-size doll, the straps crossed in an X on the back.

The tutu is a separate piece that just slides up and down the body and rests snug. It doesn't stretch with waist elastic or have velcro. The main body is a full leotard sew that covers Lulu. This leotard costume is the only LDD option if I want to stage a LDD Mini girl wearing a swimsuit. Faith never got a Mini, and you have no idea how badly I want that. 

Around her right wrist, Lulu has a soft cloth sleeve depicting a plaster cast. This is a stretch fabric similar to a sock knit, and the full-size doll had one as well. The cast is rough and unfinished on the ends, but it looks fine for the scale. Lulu came packaged with it closer to her shoulder, but I slid it onto the lower half of her arm. The full-size doll has proportionally longer arms and a longer cast that goes from wrist past her elbow. I put Mini Lulu's cast decisively on her wrist because it makes sense there...and I can relate. I broke my right wrist as a kid. I'm a little surprised both Lulus used a soft piece for the cast, because the Bride of Valentine and Purdy used permanently-affixed gauze to depict bandaging, and the Bride preceded Lulu. It would have also been a great way to have some other character depicted to have signed Lulu's cast.

Mini Lulu's legs depict the retro stripe-topped socks her original doll wore. While the Mini does not have the compound fracture with a bone sticking out of the sock, there is a bloody patch painted in the correct spot on her right calf.

I appreciate this touch. The fracture was likely ditched on the Mini because it was too specialized to make a new part for, or because the proportions made the limbs shorter. On original Lulu, the fracture was above the boot and below the top of the sock, and there just wasn't room for that placement here--Mezco would have to stick the bone through the boot for that, and that wasn't worth it. Having the bleed hidden under the boot is a sufficient nod to the bigger doll, and it serves more as an Easter egg on the Mini! Every time LDD rewards investigation with hidden details under the costume, I love it, and Lulu is possibly the only Minis example of this practice, unless Mini Lilith's costume is covering bloody torso paint. (I want to look into Rotten Sam and Sandy someday, but I have the pessimistic hunch that they won't have Raggedy Ann hearts painted on their torsos!)

Lulu's skates are built on the LDD Minis boot sculpt, which is pretty much an exact downscale of the main LDD round-toed boot. The wheel platforms are separate pieces affixed to the bottom of the boots, and filling in the gap in the soles. The wheels are not separate turning pieces and are merely painted. They're pink, while they look neon red on the full-size doll.

These boots (or more accurately, the skate add-ons) are wonky in terms of molding, and I had to swap their sides and fiddle with the rotation of Lulu's hips to get her standing stably in them. It's still very very touchy once she's stood. I gather the full-size doll, who can actually roll, isn't much better for standing up securely, but that would be for a different reason than the Mini.

Lulu does keep the detail of her left shoulder tattoo, but it's an entirely different design. While both are purely black ink and have a spooky image and a slogan, full-size Lulu's tattoo depicted skulls that looked like they were in a hole in a wall and featured the brilliant slogan "HELL ON WHEELS". Here, Mini Lulu has a skull stabbed by a sword above "DIE".

This is so fine and intricate for its size that I doubt Mezco couldn't have rendered or simplified the original tattoo at this scale, so maybe they just wanted to try out an alternate idea? I don't know. Alternatively, the Mini is based on a prototype draft of Lulu and the details were locked in for the Minis production and allowed to stay while they were changed before the main got produced, but I can't say that with any confidence. I do feel confident saying the compound fracture or earrings have no bearing on this theory. I believe Minis Lulu lacks them for logistical reasons regarding manufacturing on a mini doll with proportionally shorter limbs, not that she lacks them because an earlier draft of Lulu did. Changes like the face paint schema and tattoo could (and I only say could) have been artifacts of an older draft, but the earrings and bone seem like they were omitted here as a choice, rather than them being absent on the model the Mini was based on.

Lulu's head/body color match isn't perfect, but there's not enough discrepancy to be distracted by it--which is good, because her right arm and legs have key paint details that make Lulu the character she is, and swapping bodies or repainting efforts would be at their expense.

Resurrection Lulu's designs were palette swaps of each other, with the new framing being the sport of roller derby. The "0" player number is a hilarious touch.

Resurrection Lulu.

Resurrection variant.

While both of these dolls are tamer and have a fun clean modern edge to them, they're also less quirky and interesting than the original Lulu to me, despite being less repellent. This take on Lulu isn't as nasty, which, better or worse, defines the OG's vibe for me.

I was quite charmed by Mini Lulu. She's just the right mix of sweet and scary, and I think much of her appeal comes from the adaptation to Minis. She's pretty impressive for adapting so much at this scale (the face paint, the tied hairstyle, the tattoo and socks and wound, the cast, and the fancy costume and skates) and has nuances that make her more devilishly cute than disturbing and gross. Main Lulu is still kind of nasty vibes, but the Mini is really endearing. I don't know what the LDD community read on Lulu or her Mini is, but the Mini is definitely one of the better doll adaptations and I can understand her lack of presence on the aftermarket through that lens. Sadie enjoyed her company immediately.

Like on the big LDDs, the roller skates add height.

And now she can try the sleepover-casket arrangement!

I don't know if my mood has shifted toward getting big Lulu. She's still a novelty doll to consider, though.

The kitchen got some decoration. I put portraits of Gluttony, Butcher Boop, and Madame La Mort all in as characters associated with food and drink. Gluttony's frame is splattered with same the yuck that he is, and has ropes like the ones on his belt loops, dangling with a knife, bones, and a chicken leg like a supply storage. I also put a spare mini BJD hand from Ms. Eerie's new body in the pan on the stove. Most of the accessories are held with putty.

The Betsy tea menu on the table has a small triangular card wedge on the back letting it stand up.

On the other walls are the Boop and Madame portraits. Madame took the frame I had first prepped for Faith's painting before I had to rework the size.

The fridge has the Alison and Teddy-tea photographs on the doors, glued on in lieu of sufficiently tiny flat magnets.

I realized I could also print another news article I made for Series 5 as a fridge-door clipping.

When I was pulling the photos off the fridge door to rearrange it, the ink bled and started to wipe, and when I tested on Alison, the ink totally wiped away into a photo-negative. I'm not even going to pretend to understand that, but it looked really cool, so I left it and blasted the pictures with my hairdryer to hopefully dry and cure the ink. I'm guessing my printer has the wrong ink for this paper. 

The Chloe picture I wanted to print for the dollhouse was originally shot under the idea of it being a wall hanging of a normal portrait, but turned sideways to mimic Chloe on her back in burial position, so I naturally had to fully realize that idea. I needed the new frames to do so, however, because it was a square composition and the frame had to be symmetrical so you could believe it really was just turned sideways. I did this print matte "under glass".

I also made a frame for a picture of the Banshee.

I then made a coffee table for the living room almost identical to Sadie's bedroom desk, just with shorter legs and colors and gloss suited to the room.

There are multiple good configurations in the living room with the table, chair, and sofa.

Okay, that's where I cut off for this post. Further work will be coming in the future!