Dragon Boat Festival Gigi by Ruby Red Galleria

Dragon Boat Festival Gigi by Ruby Red Galleria

Just wanted to show you "Dragon Boat Festival" Gigi. She's part of the Ten Ping line by Ruby Red Galleria. She's so cute! She has a truly beautiful little girl sculpt. I think she's even prettier than Ten Ping. I'll show you pictures of them both together so you can compare them. Gigi is the one who is smiling. :) She came with a little illustrated book that tells the story about Gigi and her friend Ten Ping going to the Dragon Boat Festival, a traditional holiday in China.

Gigi and Ten Ping by Ruby Red Galleria.

I did an initial review of Ten Ping, here, and a second review where you can see her body and posing, here. Gigi has the same body as Ten Ping, so her posing will be the same, and she can share clothing. 

These pics show some of the details of her costume. Her vest is beautifully detailed and lined, and lifts off to reveal a long-sleeved white shirt underneath.

Her shoes are made from fabric and look wonderful.

 Anyway, that's Gigi.  See ya!  Click on the pictures to make them bigger.

 

A few notes on Ten Ping's clothing and size

This fabric reminded me of Lilo and Stitch, so this photo had to happen.

I thought I'd return to talk about what clothes and shoes fit Ten Ping by Ruby Red Galleria.  First, she's the same size as their Strawberina doll, so any clothes or shoes made for Strawberina will fit Ten Ping and the Four Kindergartners girls. 

She's close in her chest size to the 8" Ginny dolls, so I thought I'd try a Ginny outfit on her.  The socks, panties and even the shoes fit!  (Although the shoes were tight.)  The dress fit perfectly in the chest area, but as you can see below, the dress was short on her.  A dress that is long on Ginny might work perfectly for Ten Ping, but most of the clothes are going to be short. This cute red dress might work if I put a petticoat underneath it that peaked out below the hem of the skirt.

Oh, by the way, I could barely get her hands through those cuffs!  It was a tight squeeze. Ginny must have skinnier hands.

Ten Ping in a Ginny dress and shoes.

Any panties, bloomers or socks made for 8" Ginny will be perfect for Ten Ping, though, so my girl managed to get quite a nice undergarment and sock collection gleaned from Ginny eBay listings.  Tights for Ginny would be too short in the leg for Ten Ping, unfortunately.

I searched the internet for patterns for Ten Ping, but the only ones I could find were from the delightful Etsy seller jenwrenne.  She has several Ten Ping patterns.  I bought two of them, and they were pretty nice.  She sells them as PDF patterns only (which means you have to have a printer to print them out), but includes lots of detailed and illustrated instructions for the garments.  I was pleased.


Shoes were surprisingly easy to find.  She wears 30mm shoes, but could go up to a 32mm and it would still work.  Those sizes work nicely either with socks or without.  I found two sellers in the United States that sell this size shoe.  (There may be more, but I haven't discovered them yet.)  The first one on this list has both 30mm and 31mms and a much wider selection.  She even has some cute sneakers in the 31mm size.

The Elegant Ankle Strap shoes sold by Audrey's Doll Gallery are perfect.  The picture on their web site shows them as glitter shoes, but the 30mm size doesn't have glitter. I already posted these links in a previous post, but here they are again so that all the Ten Ping clothing information can stay on one page.

Juju's Dolly Mall 30mm
Juju's Dolly Mall 31mm
Audrey's Doll Gallery 30mm Elegant Ankle Strap Shoes


By the way, Ruby Red Galleria does sell clothes and shoes for Ten Ping, but I thought I'd give you a few alternatives as well.

Later,

Ten Ping's jointing and articulation

Ten Ping by Ruby Red Galleria

I was really fascinated by Ten Ping's joints, so I wanted to go in depth about them.  This 8"/21cm vinyl/plastic Ruby Red Galleria doll has the range of motion of a ball-jointed doll, but without the stringing.  She's built more like an Obitsu doll, with tight joints that hold their positions beautifully in a lots of natural-looking poses. 

I have a lot of pictures to show you, so I'll keep the sizes small so the page will load faster.  You can click on the pictures to see them larger.

First, Ten Ping can both touch her forehead, and touch her mouth.  A lot of dolls can't do this!  Some doll's hands can reach almost to the mouth, but stop short and can't quite reach.  Her arms can be very expressive, and stay in whatever position you put them in without flopping.  I really like the hand and foot sculpts.  They're detailed and cute.

Each of the knees has a two-part joint.  When the legs are straight, the joints are closed and look like this.

But they bend into a sitting position with a small manipulation to the kneecap.   Ten Ping can sit up nicely in a chair. 

You can fold the legs further by carefully bending each of the parts of the knee caps as far as they will go, which looks like this.  She can kneel and stay upright while doing so, although the knee joints look kind of funny when she's in a kneeling position. 

On top of that, there are swivel joints in the legs that let the legs swing out or in, and allow Ten Ping (or her friend GiGi) to do any of the following cute little girl poses.

This pose is SO CUTE!!!

She can even sit with one leg over the other, like so, ANNNNND she can sit cross-legged.  Oh, and she also stands nicely unassisted, which is useful for photography sometimes.  In the photo where I have her standing with arms out, she was actually balancing by herself unsupported. 

Oh, and I forgot to mention her head is on a ball joint, so she can look in any direction, including up and down as well as side-to-side. 

Anyway, I thought the articulation on this little doll was pretty neat.  Hope you liked my pictures.

You can see my first post about this doll here. 

Ten Ping by Ruby Red Galleria

I was lucky enough to get this lovely little girl in a trade.  (Thanks, Deb!)  My new little girl is Ten Ping by Ruby Red Galleria.  Or, more specifically, she's a version of the Ten Ping sculpt reinvisioned as a Malaysian girl named Mia, part of Ruby Red's Four Kindergartner doll series.  She's one of the sold out editions, so I feel particularly lucky to get her. 

Here's a little bit about the dolls:  As of July 2015, there have been 8 versions of the Ten Ping sculpt as the character Ten Ping.  There have also been three separate offerings of the "Four Kindergartner" dolls, with four dolls in each set, all with the Ten Ping sculpt but representing different characters (Miki from Japan, Jar-Lu from China, Ishara from India and Mia from Malaysia).  Plus now there is a new (and very beautiful!) sculpt for the Ten Ping line, a smiling girl named GiGi who is designated as Ten Ping's best friend.  GiGi is sold out everywhere as far as I know (I could be wrong).  I'd love to get a little girl with the GiGi sculpt some day! 

My Mia was apparently the first Mia produced for the original Four Kindergartner line in 2013.  I love her hat and her sweet little face!  It's very apparent that the entire doll was made with care and attention to detail.  She even comes with separate panties as well as tights, which is so nice for redressing.  So many dolls will come with one or the other, but not both. 

There are so many nice little touches that I'm not sure I can even go through them all.  The doll herself has little delicately hand-painted freckles, and applied eyelashes that are set just right.

The handbag is a rich, dark green satin to go with her outfit, with a gold embroidered design.  It's a functional bag, and really opens. 

I absolutely love the hat.  It has cream lace just on the crown, and is the sweetest design!  It has shirring around the outside and a brim of dark green velvet, and is fully lined. 

The dress on this edition is all one piece (no separate shirt or skirt).  It is fully lined in a cream cotton, and closes in the back with hooks.  I've seen other editions of Ten Ping where the dress is in several separate pieces (a separate shirt and overdress, for example). 

She is a vinyl wigged doll with a 5.5" head.  I put a Monique Gold Collection "Honor" wig on her in size 5-6 and it looks SO CUTE!!!  It's a perfect fit, too.  Here's the pic:

By the way, I discovered the 30mm Monique Elegant Ankle Strap shoes fit her perfectly, even with socks or tights on.  I bought four pairs of these in different colors, and they all fit.  The picture on the web site shows them as glitter shoes, but the 30mm size doesn't have glitter.  You can find them here.  Weirdly, I also tried the 30mm Monique Lace-Up Boots on her, but they were slightly too tight!  I guess it just depends on the shoe.  If I could find boots in a 32mm, that might be perfect.

EDIT:  I just discovered another web site (an eBay store, this time) that sells a large selection of 30mm and 31mm-sized doll shoes.  They're called Juju's Dolly Mall.  You can find their 30mm shoes here and their 31mm shoes here. 

To see my post with pictures of Ten Ping's jointing and articulation, please click here.

Snow!

I live in the middle of Alabama, where it only snows once a year.  Ya blink and you'd miss it!  LOL.  We just got our yearly snowfall, and I was totally unprepared for it.  I only had one doll in my entire house that looked like she was dressed for winter, so I grabbed her and threw her outside to get a couple of pictures.  I wish I'd had a few Poppy Parkers already dressed in sweaters, but as it is, I ended up taking pictures of my Ruby Red Galleria "The Jade City" Sugilite.  Hey, she's a cutie, so the pictures ended up being cute, anyway.  So, here she is in the one centimeter of snow that fell on the ground! 

It's really rare here for it to snow more than once a year, so it'll probably be another entire year before I can get another snow picture. 

January in Alabama is awesome.

Review of Jade City Sugilite by Ruby Red Galleria, Part 2

As promised, here is the second part of my review of Ruby Red Galleria's "The Jade City" Sugilite.  I re-wigged her in a black Monique "Pretty Girl" wig size 5-6.  Her eyes are still her default green eyes. ... They're so pretty I don't want to change them!  When I bought her from Lone Star Dolls, the nice lady who owns the store sent me the Lone Star shirt free, so Sugilite had to model it for all of you.  She's wearing a skirt that had been made for Marley Wentworth.  It fits her in the waist perfectly.

I took some pictures of her head cap and joints, because it's impossible to find information about these dolls on the Internet.  Pretty much if the info/pics aren't there on the Ruby Red Galleria web site, you can't find them.  I don't even think there's a forum for these dolls yet.  (If there is one, please tell me.)

 You can see in the picture of her bald head that she has a head cap that opens.  You can barely make out the words "open" and "close" on there ... with arrows showing you which direction to turn to get the head cap off.  There is also a slot on top where you can stick a coin to help you twist the cap off.  The head cap came off easily for me, and I found I didn't need to use a coin at all.  There are two tiny squares of velcro stuck to her head.  I'm having a love/hate relationship with those things right now.  On the one hand, they keep the wig tight to the head so the wig won't fall off; on the other hand, the hairs sometimes snag in the velcro and if you're not careful, it could potentially pull out some hairs from your wig. 

I didn't try to change her eyes yet, but you can see she has tiny bits of putty holding her eyes in.  You can also see in that pic how her head is held onto her neck.  I love it:  Her head can move in any direction, up and down, and hold its position.  The joints in her arms and legs are also nice and tight, and hold their position when moved.  No floppy joints on this doll!

I've also included pics of her knees bent and straight.  The way the knee is designed is pretty cool.  I've seen another doll with a similar knee design (can't think what doll it is at the moment).  The bent knees are not completely attractive, but they work.  She has cute feet, at least.  LOL!

I didn't include nude pics because I didn't want the blogger people taking offense and yanking this blog off the Interwebs.  (You'd be surprised how many people get offended by NUDE PLASTIC.  LOL.)  I can tell you, though, she's jointed just under the spot where her breasts would be if she were an adult doll, instead of jointed at the waist.  She sits quite nicely and holds her position well when sitting.  I was surprised to see she can also stand unsupported!  She didn't come with a stand, and doesn't really need one so long as she's on a flat surface.  (And isn't knocked over by a cat, I suppose.) 

You might also want to note she does NOT have high-heel feet.  Her feet are flat like many Asian ball-jointed dolls (BJDs).  I think it's awesome because (1) she's a young girl and (2) she can fit perfectly into Yo-SD shoes.  (Please see Part 1 of this review for more info on that last part.) 

Well, that's pretty much it.  I hope I didn't talk your ear off.  Heh heh.  You can click on the pictures to make them bigger.

If you missed it, you can find Part 1 of this review here.  

Review of Jade City Sugilite by Ruby Red Galleria, Part 1

This review is pretty long, so I'll have to do a Part 2 as well to show you some pictures of her jointing, and inside her headcap.  For now, here's an overview and my first pictures of my new girl!

I drooled over Ruby Red Galleria dolls for an entire year before actually buying one.  I kept seeing magazine ads for them, and they always caught my eye.  This one is 2012's "The Jade City" Sugilite.  I'm still learning about this series of dolls, but I'll tell you what I know.

Sugilite is part of the "InMotion Girl" series of dolls by Red Ruby Galleria.  She is 12"/30cm tall.  ... I love that size!  She is a high quality vinyl/plastic, and has changeable eyes and wigs like an Asian ball-jointed doll.  She is super-articulated, with bending wrists and ankles.  You can take off her hands if you have to if you want to fit tight sleeves on her.  Her design is a little bit like the larger-sized Obitsu dolls.

She wears size 10mm eyes and a size 5-6 wig.  I was really pleased to see they didn't skimp on quality for the wig and eyes.  The wig is soft and very well made.  ... It does NOT feel like a cheap wig.  (I can't abide cheap wigs!)  The face paint is well blended and nicely applied, and she has real eyelashes.  Sugilite comes with green eyes.  

Here's the weird thing:  I looked at Ruby Red Galleria's web site, and they have a few different types of dolls they call their "InMotion" dolls.  One kind is a doll called Lia that seems to have the exact same face and body as Sugilite ... but Lia is designated as her own line(?) and is in a separate part of the web site from Sugilite.  It's really weird.  There are also a few other dolls that also seem to have this same face sculpt and body, yet are given different names.  It's really confusing to me.  Over a week ago I e-mailed Ruby Red Galleria to ask about it, and they never answered my e-mail.  Sigh.  Maybe one day I'll figure out their dollie naming system.

By the way, I have to thank Dale from Lone Star Dolls for putting up with me and being such a great person to buy from.  Thanks, Dale!  You're awesome and I love my Sugilite.

A little bit about the clothing

The dress is wool, and fastens in the back with small hooks.  I had to take her hands off to get the dress on her. ... The hands pull straight out with a firm but gentle tug, similar to Fashion Royalty dolls.  I'm already terrified I'm going to break the posts in her wrists, but they seem fairly sturdy.  I was able to get her jacket on easily without taking off her hands, though.  All the clothing is nicely made and lined.  She also comes with an extra sleeveless white shirt (that snaps in the back) and pink shorts, and some white panties to wear under the dress.  No socks and no stand. 

The only velcro used for her costume was on her boots.  The boots open all the way down the back with a thin strip of velcro.  It makes the boots very easy to take on and off, and the quality was nice on them, too.

She also came with this shirt/shorts set.

Size compared with other dolls

Sugilite's (and InMotion Lia's) body is pretty much exactly Yo-SD sized, even her feet, so she can wear Yo-SD clothes and shoes.  (Yo-SD, also spelled YoSD, is a resin doll made by Volks.)  I just tried some Yo-SD shoes on her, and they fit perfectly!  Yo-SD has a larger head than Sugilite/Lia, so their wigs will be too big for her. 

Sugilite/Lia's chest, waist, and arm measurements are also very similar to the Tonner 12" Marley doll (although her hips are wider than Marley's), so she can wear shirts and sweaters and some dresses made for Marley.  Marley pants and shoes will NOT fit.

I think it'll be way easy to find clothing for this doll.  Yay!  That just makes her more fun.  

More on Sugilite to come in Part 2.  

The box has a sizing chart on the side showing her exact measurements.

Reminds me of a friend I had as a kid.  My friend had this exact same hair color!