u/HoarseNightingale

Unlike many of you I'm happy to have a doll be articulated if I can't afford an MTM to match. I need the dolls to be able to sit even if they can't sit all the way up.

I bought the doll on the right and though i still think whatever batch she's from is not as peachy as the Amber doll I'm looking to rebody, i think it will be close enough. I can always use scarves to cover the skin tone change.

But since the deluxe was delivered I'm not sure I want to anymore. The deluxe is beautiful and it would be a shame if I didn't keep that face. I have no specific attachment to Amber. I just liked her hair so much and she is fairly pretty. In the meantime I got a redhead MTM. So now I'm debating. Do I add another red haired doll? Do I give her away with the extra 2 blond rigid limbed Millies i didn't mean to buy but to get the two others i wanted i had to take them.

I'm wondering if the donor head would look good on the 3 headed doll I have shown here with one of the deluxe kit heads. Then I'd still have the chance to enjoy them both...

Any other ideas that don't involve buying another body, I've agreed to stop Shopping so much. I've been buying up a lot of dolls for two very specific and special projects so it makes sense to hold back.

Tl:dr I need to get some backgrounds printed up to avoid paying for another room box. What I need is a doctor's office, hospital rooms, and a background that will work for gym/martial arts.

In 2019 I bought a custom roombox made for me, with furniture that was all included and it was fully decorated. It cost me 42 dollars plus shipping on Etsy. I got busy and then got a new source of chronic pain so I took a break.

I decided to refresh some of the photos on my insta (chronicpainbarbie) because so many of the photos are clearly my floor or kitchen table. And I have plans to do a lot more photography and a lot of it is of dolls with other disabilities. But buying a roombox - just the walls still smelling of mdf and no decoration starts at 100. And that's a small box.

I have also realized that since most of my scenes to come are in a doctor's office and I have the equipment (I have the ambulance and other play sets but for my particular purpose using the ambulance as a doctor's office looks a little too Mattel. I have also gotten a lot of different workout playsets.

What I need is either a good source for backdrops in general that might work, and also if you know of particular ones for my purpose. I'll be using depth of field most of the time to blur the background a bit - but most of the things I can easily find are more for outdoor sets.

If you just have photos you use - it would be good to know if you printed them yourself etc.

The photo I'm showing isn't at the standard I'm planning for in the future. My stuff is mostly in boxes until our renovation is finished but I wanted to share something.

Caption: My Bestie happens to be here during Pride. She let me pick out her outfit and we're taking a break after the first half of my very slow 3 block daily walk. She's telling me a funny story about her kids.

Photo visual description: The photo is of two dolls sitting on a parkbench in front of a wooden wall. One has long dark red hair and is wearing a silver puffsleeve top and a rainbow tutu. She is gesturing with her hands. The other has a dark blonde pixie cut and is wearing a white t-shirt and a tie dye skirt with pink soled white sneakers and a fitness tracker. She is relaxed and seems to be listening.

I bought the Amber doll from the 90s series clueless because i loved her hair. The only problem is the two MtM options in the spreadsheet page are both beautiful and fairly expensive dolls.

I figured if two dolls look good with the same MtM body then they can probably be a base for each other. My main issue is being able to have the dolls sit in chairs. As much as i love MtMs they are not made in big enough numbers.

I'm not sure if y'all can see this but in the second photo I show them next to each other (it's hard to see with one in the box). The deluxe is quite pale and Amber is very peach. I was wondering if anyone has had luck rebodying her.

My guess given the sheet is that someone tried to find the best place to put her but that none of the new bodies are peach enough. And if i can find either of the MtMs cheap enough to justify buying, I love their heads. I could just give the doll away. Is anyone interested in trying to find her match?

Hey everyone.

This is an amazing tool, but there is a way to make it even better.

I don’t know if it’s owner will share the original document (or if they already are) but what I’d like to do is look up the dolls on the left and add their model numbers the same way it is done on the right.

The best thing about this is that then the spreadsheet would be searchable.

I know this ia a big job, but with other volunteers (we would need to coordinate our efforts using something like google docs) we could each just do 20 a piece and it could be done rather quickly.

This would help me - and anyone with vision issues use the document and find what they are looking for quickly. The photos are good because you need to make sure you haven’t gotten the numbers mixed up or some other similar mistake. But I would really love to make this document even better, especialy since more made to move Kens exist now - this thing could quickly become even longer than it already is.

If anyone knows the author’s name, please tag them in a comment. I’ll try to look it up but this community has a ton of posts - and i’m trying to limit my screen time.

Thanks in advance!

My Barbies love these sneakers but are tried of people telling them the laces are untied. How do you tie them?

Because my sneakers have stretchy laces that don't need tying I'm tempted to cut the laces and put crimp beads on the end even though those are too big for the scale. I can tie my own laces but I'm starting to think I'll need to use hemostats to tie these (this is a skill I'd need to learn) and then I'd super glue the knot.

What do you all do?

I got this Amber used (not this exact one) and I think she’s beautiful. But I can’t stand the old ratios that the Barbies were based on.

Every other doll I have is one with one of the new bodies. The seller warned me that her skin would be hard to match and I’ve spent time with the awesome matching powerpoint, but I have to admit I don’t entirely understand it. There are some pages with the Brunette socker player and the rest of the dolls on the right are as pale as can be.

Does anyone have a suggestion for a doll with articulated knees (at least) and a modern body that I might be able to use? I will have to replace her outfit anyway I’m pretty sure, so maybe I get something that doesn’t match but has a turtleneck and long sleeves?

Mattel molds the fingers together on many dolls. For some reason we find the look of a 4 fingered hand attractive enough that we use that format for most animated things. But they chose to merge the very fingers that need to be split to do the Viulcan salute. And this must be a conscious decision because the recently made Spock doll can do the salute.

Barbie can be anything, except a human ambassador as soon as we invite warp engines.

Xandra's friend Fanw wanted to invite her to a party but wasn't sure how to make that happen since Xandra can't sit for long.
She invited her and asked how to make it work for Xandra. Xandra brought her own camping recliner so she could have a comfortable place to be.

The party was a great chance to spend time with friends. Xandra wouldn't have been able to come if Fanw hadn't been so sensitive to her needs, and to trust her that she could come up with a solution.

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For the first time since 2020 I’m reviving my Barbie Dioramas. I am going to make them a feature of my health and wellness blog, along with articles by me and interviews with others. Because I already have loads of stories of personal friends with disabilities, I have been buying dolls used as much as possible to cover their visible disabilies. That isn’t easy to do. Especially since most of the disabled dolls have stiff legs and arms.

Anyway - I love making the scenes and telling the stories, and so I’ll be sharing them here. But I will say for anyone who might become interested that I started doing this at a time when it was far less popular to do, and made to move Barbies had just been added as well as the new body types. If you don’t want to spend a lot of time rebodying dolls (I did, the face is Tris from Divergent, the body is the first Made to Move Barbie) and looking for matching skin tones (could mattel give us this info? apparently not), and you don’t want to DIY a lot of the furniture, I highly recommend thinking carefully before buying a doll with a stiff body, and find a local library or other such place that you can 3D print things at. My friend told me that wallpaper stores give away their gigantic sample books, so I’m going to try that, and I’m going to try using photography to create the illusion of multiple locations. We’ll see how to that goes. Editing was never my strength photography wise.

I’ve been collecting more disabled barbies because I’m reawakening my chronicpainbarbie insta to be part of a blog where I iwill be writing my own articles but also I’ll be interviewing people with other disabilties and chronic illnesses, along with medical professionals, people who work in research, or drug sales, etc. The Dioramas seemed to be really enjoyed on The Mighty. If I had realized when I decided to revive it how much more expensive it was going to be because Barbie hybrids and dioramas are a much bigger thing than in 2019… Well, it would have been a different decision.

I have a lot more posts about the doll/me with my friends and dealing with transit and work, but almost none in the doctor’s office. I’m hoping that the Ambulance and Day at the Doctor sets will work out well enough despite everything looking pink. They both have things I remember from my recent hospitalization years ago.

I know people with all the disabilites that I’m going to be doing scenes about. In fact most were things I was there for. But I feel like there is one big oops that Mattel has made, although I suppose kids don’t mind very much when their dolls can’t sit in a chair because their knees don’t bend. I love the chelsea with the scoliosis brace and I’ve gotten another chelsea to sit in the chelsea wheelchair I got on ebay. One of the things kids should be able to do with them is roleplaying going to a doctor. Depending on your disability you might be going quite a bit. Currently we just added two more speclialist types to my list of people I need to see. I thankfully can now sit up without too much pain, but I have to wear a brace like hers, usually, to make sure I don’t aggravate things.

Now for the chelsea maybe she'd dwarfed by the chair enough that she doesn’t need to sit for appointments (I intended to find a smaller chair)

But except for the Barbies and Ken’s in wheelchairs none of them can sit in a doctor’s chair. So you have to have them lie on the table. I think most people here can verify that lying on the table while giving a history, or having to update the doctor is a very vulnerable feeling. I only do it if otherwise the visit would be causing me a lot of pain.

And why did they make a leg prosthetic that can bend at the knee, but then the other knee isn’t articulated. I like the idea of making hybrids to solve such problems but I was really glad to buy this one already rebodied. I have a story that involves a coworker who had to crawl in an escape room where they promised me a person with a prosthetic leg would be fine. I asked if she wanted me to contact the staff, and she told me that wasn’t a problem but it would be easier to crawl without her leg.

Apparently hearing aids require being rebodied because removing them doesn’t work well - did anyone hear have any luck?

Also I’m considering buying another Barbie in petite to dress my paramedic in the uniform of the original one. I like the original one, I especially like her face, but she seems hard to find a body to match. Whereas I can find a petite MTM and then I’ll have a doll that can actually drive the ambulance, or kneel to give someone CPR. If anyone has rebodied the paramedic for similar reasons let me know which doll you used? I know she is in the spreadsheet of new bodies, but I’m honestly a bit confused by the correlation of dolls on one side to dolls on the other. The body side always looks less homogeneous than I would expect it to look for this reason.

And my bald barbie - I guess some scenes with her can be standing (I gave my friend my very nice wigs which I waan’t wearing anymore when her hair fell out for the second time and I’d like to show that).

Anyway this is a rant, and I hope that isn’t against the policies here. Look, I shared a picture! I don’t know why my chronically ill doll is wearing a tutu like skirt for this scene. I think I had just gotten some cool clothes for her.

Does anyone have a recommendation for a skirt that goes beyond the knee, but doesn’t get in the way of the wheels of the wheelchair?

Any recommendation for rebodying my chelsea’s so the scoliosis doll can sit when she talks to the doctor?

Any leads on where I can find some kn95 mask looking things?

I’m so glad this community exists. In the future I think I’ll share any new photos (when I can unpack my photo studio in a few months) with the text here and not screenshot my insta. Afterall I have the url for it in my profile anyway. But this was the easiest way this time.