Warning: image-heavy page! My photographs of old-fashioned dolls I've seen around, as well as dolls, plushies, and figurines from my collection. Dolls in traditional Czech dress:  These were brought by a classmate who studied there. The picture isn't very good quality due to the lighting and the fact that I took it on my Nokia N8 back in 2012, but I tried editing it to make the colours a bit more vivid! Here is a bigger picture so you can see the details. You can click here to see more Lidova Tvorba dolls and read more about their history on the company's website. Dolls in shops: 
This one is a very strange example, as she's not being sold! I found this lost, naked little Freya Chocolate in a Miniso store, standing alone... I think someone, probably a child, lost her! I hope she found her way home eventually... it was actually only my second time seeing a Sylvanian Families doll in real life (and the first time holding one, although I returned her there to be found), they're expensive and somewhat hard to find here. When I was still in medical school, quite early on (maybe in 2012-2014?), I saw Sylvanian Families dolls for the first time in person! They were these cute babies with pastel carriers/cribs and such... they quickly caught my eye because I always loved playing with those tiny flocked bears and bunnies meant for crafts. I have smaller than average hands (I could tie knots nobody else could untie without ripping because they can't undo such tiny knots, fff), so these tiny toys always felt very easy to hold and fun to play with, even when I was very small and anything small immediately felt cuter to me. I still prefer drawing very tiny drawings, like you'd find in notebook margins. Anything small is infinitely cuter! Sylvanian Families dolls are bigger than those tiny craft flocked bears and bunnies, but also flocked, so they have that nice, furry texture on top of a hard plastic body... what's more, they can even be posed! They don't have the range of a ball-jointed doll or anything, but you can rotate their little arms and legs (make them sit or stand), even their heads, although the babies can often only turn their heads. You can also undress and dress them, some even make custom outfits for their dolls! The price tag scared me off back then, though. My collection: 
When I finally had a job of my own (beginning in mid-2022, I spent about two years unemployed before that, everyone said I was knowledgeable but lacked experience, the pandemic also happened and delayed my license exam, aha, but I passed on the third try... no shame in falling, you just have to get back up!), I had plans to buy Sylvanian Families dolls online someday, when imagine my surprise—I found them among the toys in an airport, on the way to visit my family! I stayed behind a little to look through them, there were big sets and small ones, even a themed ballerina set, but the Silk Cat Family stole my heart! My very first Sylvanian Families dolls. ;3; They're all so dear and so cute... in this picture, I made little decorations for them from scraps from older dolls' heat-damaged clothes (the flowers) and gave one an actual dried rosebud. ;3; The father has a vest I removed for this picture, because I think the shirt he wears underneath is nicer and goes along better with the spring colours the rest of the family wears. 
On the way back home from visiting my family in early December of 2022, I found another little Slyvanian Families doll being sold in the airport, a tiny Chocolate Rabbit family child! Her name is Breeze Chocolate. She came in a tiny, clear, plastic case resembling a dollhouse with a triangular roof and embossed flower-like accents, and a small pink handle. She also had a miniature grand pink piano to play! How could I resist? She also strongly reminded me of a beloved toy I lost as a small child, so finding her felt like my lost teddy coming back in another form...  The park background she came with is really cute, but doesn't seem to go with the house-like design of the box and the fact she's playing piano, so I made her a little room with my collection of pretty tissue boxes I don't want to throw away. I even made her a rug! I have many more boxes with different colours and patterns, so I can make more scenes and things. ^^ They’re a little uneven (maybe I’ll replace the back wall later?), but her room looks so pretty now! Fasting ups my productivity, I also punched out a presentation that same morning—I later gave said presentation before colleagues, it was my first presentation after graduation. ^^ If you want to see the process behind these pictures (or look at other pictures I take of dolls, nature, or my artwork), you can see process pictures on my instagram. ^^   I sadly have no picture of the lost childhood toy Breeze reminds me of, but this tiny jointed teddy bear I found in February 2022 (so about two months before I found lovely Breeze Chocolate above in a similar, but even more house-like plastic case!), being sold with some stationary resembles him! They have the same structure, but different colours/materials. Mine came in a very tiny, clear, rectangular case that you can open and close, so it was like a little home for him... it was a clear plastic box with a little paper background of a room. He was purple with velvety dark red/maroon paw-pads/soles and a black stitched nose and mouth. I used to carry him with me when I went outside in my bag. HI wish I knew what happened to him. My memory started to become very bad then, I often lost bags by leaving them on a table and walking away, so he was probably was still in one. ;_; I hope whoever took the bag treated him kindly or gave him to someone who'd appreciate him.  My very first special interest was The Little Mermaid when I was about 8. My dad came home from a business trip with her interactive storybook PC game and I was mermaid-obsessed for years afterwards and collected all the TLM merchandise I could find! I also collected books and anything mermaid-related. ;3; A lot of my things went missing or got opened (I mostly kept dolls in their packaging unopened!), played with, and wrecked by others, but a few items remain.   I really like this tiny ballerina! It reminds me of her music box and the Wish Upon a Starfish episode from the series... my friend's reminded of the original story instead, where she danced gracefully, but every step felt like stepping on knives... she's on a little pink magnetic base that's supposed to let her dance if she's placed in a separately-sold stage of sorts.  These are some of my oldest plushies! They can be worn around the wrist like bracelets as they have little cloth-straps with velcro. They're soft and cute. A white lamb with a pink face, a pink elephant with white inner ears, and a white bunny with a pink patch on its chest. They all have small, black stitched eyes, the lamb has a black nose, and the bunny has a little mouth and nose. I don't remember what they're from (maybe a kid's meal toy from Herfy?), as I used to snip tags off of plushies so they looked more "alive." ^^;     These pictures are very old, taken with a webcam in the early 2000's! I don't know what happened to this figurine, many of the figurines I sed to collect are lost or broken... this little girl wears a bonnet and a ruffly dress, hugs a teddy bear, and sits on a heavy suitcase. She looks a little sad, I think she's leaving home. The background is from petitart. |
