Senin, 21 Juli 2008

How I Take Care Of My American Girl Doll

So you finally bought your daughter that classic American Girl Doll. Now comes the most important task of taking care of your American girl doll. I came up with a top 5 list for how to and not do take care of your doll.

Also a good tip for cleaning your American girl doll's face is with baking soda. Yes baking soda, all you have to try and do is scrub your dolls face with a little bit of baking soda and water. Make sure not to scrub to hard, as you don't want to damage the face paint.

Here are some of my Top 5 Do's :

• Don't Keep your doll to long in the sunlight. Sunlight will fade her paint!

• Wash your hands before you play with your doll.

• Vacuum your doll's cloth body with a little tiny bit of starch rubbed into it.

• Try and brush our your dolls hair with a good wire brush.

• Keep your doll in her box if you can

Here are my top 5 Don'ts :

• Try to keep food and drinks away from your doll.

• Don't store your doll in a damp wet environment. Wetness can cause mildew and mold !

• Use a hair dryer or other heat source on your doll

• Put your doll or her clothes in a dryer

• Keep doll away from your little brother!

American Girl dolls at 18 inch beauties preserved in American History. They take after real life people and should always be treated as a real life person.

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Be a Doll, Babe (part 1)

The Tyrannical Ideal of Feminine Pulchritude

Let her who is satisfied with her physical attributes raise her hand!
Most people, and especially most women, are dissatisfied with their appearance, their weight and/or the shape of certain parts of their body.
Women engage intensively in grooming and shaping up, and spend no small amount of time inspecting, examining and actually even falling into a depression on account of their breasts being too small, too large or too pendulous.
Fat legs, broad hips and other defects are a source of endless suffering. The unrelenting and, from her point of view, disadvantageous comparison with the ideal model can be highly frustrating to a woman unable to free herself from this dictate and make friends with her body.
Too many women feel not without cause - as if they were under constant judgmental scrutiny. While men win the role of observers and evaluators, so to speak, women are the objects of such observations and evaluations. The balance of forces between them is such that men select and women are being selected. The woman being depicted as a sexual object, and the use that is made of her and her body, particularly in advertising, generate a process of women's dehumanization; woman is not a person, but rather something else - a symbol, an object, an exhibit, an ideal and so forth.

Women unconsciously internalize this message and invest a great deal of effort in meeting expectations and finding favor. Needless to say how this must negatively effect their degree of self esteem. The American women's magazine Marie Claire recently published the findings of a survey. Of hundreds of men who were asked whether they felt embarrassed or bothered by what their spouses thought of their appearance, sixty-seven percent replied in the negative. But eighty percent of women answering the same question replied that they were embarrassed or ashamed of their bodies, or certain body parts, and that they were afraid their bodies were "not beautiful enough.

Beauty, that was supposed to be an abstract notion like freedom, love or the soul, has long since become a product to the marketed, and a means of control and subjugation, directed mainly at women. Under the influence of social forces possessing vested interests, the ones that control magazines, the advertising trade, television and cinema, the components of womanly beauty are assigned their standard specifications, a recipe, as it were, based on clearly defined and absolute components.

The beautiful woman, so the contemporary social message informs us, is very slender, very young, rather tall, and fair complexioned. Such ideals of feminine pulchritude, held up to view for emulation and as standards for comparison, gaze upon us from every advertisement, practically shrieking, with every inch of their emaciated flesh I am attractive. We are all influenced by these messages. Women use them as a yardstick for measuring their own attractiveness, thus arriving at a warped perception of their own physical attributes as being hopelessly deficient or defective.

The female child imbibes, with her mother's milk, the great significance that society - with its predominantly male-oriented perceptions - ascribes to her outward appearance. Little girls soon learn that they must try to find favor in the eye of their beholders, that their appearance is a matter of social value, and that beauty is a basic dimension in woman's sexual roles. The child reaches puberty in full awareness of the significance of her looks, and usually suffers emotional problems related to that aspect of herself. Looks being linked to self-esteem, a body that fails to conform to the reigning ideal may well bring its owner to low self-esteem and a sense of shame and insecurity. Here, society makes no allowances. Constant anxious attention to her appearance becomes a major part of woman's life, a source of frustration, unflagging investment and invidious comparison. She internalizes the message that her appearance will be her passport to success in life, and that her efforts to achieve physical perfection will be rewarded, in both her personal and her professional life. A body conforming to socially dictated criteria becomes women's status symbol. None of which, of course, makes women any happier or healthier. On the contrary, such constraints foster self-hatred and a stinging sense of failure.


Nili Raam is a renown expert in her field in Israel, as a Comunication Consultant for business, professional and executive improvement. She is authour of a few published books and many articles. niliraam@netvision.net.il

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How the Bratz Have Changed the Doll Industry

Young girls have played with dolls for hundreds, maybe even thousands of years. Children have always had the desire to pretend, it is part of the growth of their minds and how they learn to interact with the world. That is very likely the reason that dolls have had such a prominent part in society for such a long time. But dolls have not always been the same. In the past few years, the entire nature of dolls has begun to change, as can be seen with the Bratz. These Bratz dolls have (perhaps not single-handedly but certainly as a large part of an ongoing process) changed the fundamental role that a doll plays in a girl's life.

For many years, long before the Bratz were created, dolls existed largely as a way for a girl to pretend to be a mother. A doll was something that had to be cared for. This was their largest and often only role in the girl's life, a role that continues today in the form of baby dolls and such. These types off dolls are still very popular, particularly among the very young girls, but they have been joined by another breed of doll: the fashion doll.

Fashion dolls are not a new phenomenon by any means. In fact, they have been around for decades. The best-known truly successful entry in the early days of the fashion doll genre was Barbie. Barbie was a new kind of doll, an adult, with much more sophistication than could really be found with baby dolls. Suddenly, a doll was not necessarily something that had to be cared for. Rather than pretending the doll was a child to mother, girls everywhere found Barbie as a new outlet for imagination. She was a teacher, a doctor, an astronaut, a wife, whatever role a girl could dream up, Barbie could fill.

For decades, Barbie reigned as queen over the world of fashion dolls. Her place of supremacy was largely unchallenged, as no one could touch her wholesome image and her sheer flexibility of role. But society began to change, and Barbie was losing her grip. As girls became more and more concerned with fashion and edgy culture at earlier ages, Barbie's appeal was reduced to younger girls, leaving a large gap open of preteen and early teen girls who were still young enough to like dolls, but considered themselves to be too old for Barbie. It is that gap that the Bratz dolls stepped into.

The Bratz fit the need perfectly. They are edgier, more stylish, and all around more grown up in focus than Barbie. They do not have Barbie's wholesome charm, but they make up for it by hitting a number of cultural chords within the girls of today. Unlike Barbie, who gives girls a limitless range of imagination, the Bratz dolls are more focused on being one thing: the representation of what every young, fashion-conscious girl wants to become. That is the great key to the success of these dolls. Barbie has tried to keep up, updating her image to appear more trendy and hip, but as yet, she continues to lose ground.

Copyright © Jared Winston, 2006. All Rights Reserved.

About The Author:

Every generation of youth has their icons, and currently for young girls the most popular among them are the Bratz dolls. From Bratz Rock Angelz to Bratz Petz, there's no doubt that this hip crew is living large. Stop by our fansite to see why this line is making so many waves.

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Sabtu, 19 Juli 2008

Barbie Dolls - Where Did They Come From?

Dear Santa, Please can I have a Barbie doll for Christmas?

Barbie dolls have probably been on Christmas wish lists for several generations of girls. In fact Barbie has become a household name for many years. Who created the first concept of the Barbie doll?

The story started with the birth of Ruth Mosko in Denver Colarado in 1916. Ruth married Elliot Handler in 1938. Elliot Handler and his business partner Harold 'Matt" Matson formed the company Mattel. The name was created by a combination of their names 'Matt-Ell". Mattel originally manufactured picture frames, but after making dolls furniture from scraps decided to focus on toy manufacturing for which Mattel is now famous.

Ruth Handler noticed that her young daughter Barbara was more interested in playing with adult dolls, than the baby dolls that were available at that time. While traveling in Europe she saw a German doll called 'Lilli' which she bought for her daughter. The original 'Lilli' doll was not a children's toy, but a joke style gift for men.

Mattel bought the marketing rights for 'Lilli'. They changed the doll's name to Barbie, named after Ruth's daughter Barbara. Barbie was first released for sale in the United States in 1959 and became a hot seller. Barbie's boyfriend 'Ken' was introduced in 1960. Ken was named after Ruth's son Kenneth.

The Barbie doll was first displayed at the New York International American Toy Fair on March 9, 1959. This date became Barbie's official birthday .There is now a fictional biography of the life of 'Barbie' with additional family and friends created and sold as separate dolls.

Barbara White is not related to Barbie and does not have as many outfits
To browse through some of the many versions of Barbie and her outfits which have been produced since 1959 visit http://www.barbiworld.com
For more great articles check out Barbara's free article submission directory http://www.articlesbeyondbetter.com


Barbara White has a passion to empower others towards success and excellence in their personal and professional lives.

Barbara has a background of over twenty years in educational leadership, teaching children and adults to be their absolute best and overcome all challenges. Now as President of Beyond Better Development, Barbara works with individuals and organizations to accelerate growth and success. For more information visit her website http://www.livingbeyondbetter.com For more great articles go to http://www.articlesbeyondbetter.com

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The Little Souls Dolls

Little Souls dolls are valuable and unique treasures created by children who are in need. Sales benefit those very children and part of the sales go to the Children's Hope Foundation.

The concept behind the toys is as sweet and endearing as the faces themselves. Each doll is created by hand, just as you would suspect. The beauty lies in who makes the Little Souls Dolls and who benefits from the sales.

They reminded me of something my great-great grandmother would make by hand for a beloved child. When I read about the history to the Little Souls Dolls, I knew that I had to have one.

Little Souls Dolls look like folk art, each one with a unique and loving face that is sure to warm your heart. Upon looking at the collection of dolls available online, I immediately fell in love with the quaint toys that beckon the onlooker to another time and place.

The children create the dolls while staying in the hospital. Each child is given instructions and materials necessary to create the doll. They also make up a story about the Little Souls Dolls they build. Many of the children who make the dolls are quite ill and they find great joy in attending the doll making class and they find great joy in creating a new friend.

The Little Souls Dolls that you buy are not the same ones created by the children. Those stay with their makers, but the doll company takes photographs of the dolls and they write down the stories that accompany the toys. The photographs and stories are sent to Ardmore, Pennsylvania where they are duplicated by the employees of the Little Souls Doll Company.

Proceeds from each sale benefit the very children who make the precious toys. The concept behind the toys is quite brilliant and moving. It takes quite a bit of time and money for the company to send employees to various hospitals across the United States. The materials for the dolls are donated by the company as well.

The stories, on the other hand are completely free. Perhaps the stories created by the children are of more value than the dolls themselves. I find the Little Souls Dolls to be of great importance. They represent the many lives of children who struggle with illness at such young ages. They are reminders of how very delicate our lives really are.

Catalogue: Arts & Entertainment
Title: The Little Souls Dolls By: Lisa Scott

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Learn how to make a knitted doll

Many times, you have some free time to spend and you are confused as what to do then? There are many great ideas to utilize that time efficiently and creatively. One of them is making or designing some craft work. Craft is the art or skill of doing something in an artistic way. There are lots of craft ideas such as candle making, scrap booking, fabric painting, painting projects, knitting etc. Among these, knitting is the most favorite craft work for women and many of them love to knit soft toys such as dolls.

Making a knitted doll
The knitted doll is very soft and simple to make. You can make it with any soft yarn kept for baby clothing that will really make it a gift for your kid. For making this, you need to have scissors, darning needles, ruler, knitting needles of size 8, cream colored ball of yarn or nay other color of your preference, a piece of 5/16 blue sheer ribbona and 5/16 blue elastic.

Steps to make a knitted doll:
1. You need to cast on 34 stitches with the help of soft colored yarn but remember to leave a 5 inch end that you will sew later.

2. You have to knit eight rows so that the bottom of the doll is formed.

3. Then, change the pattern to create the body of the doll and for this you need to knit one row, purl one row till you complete 62 rows.

4. Next, cast off your stitches and cut the knitted piece from the ball of yarn again leaving 5 inch that you will sew later.

5. Now thread your darning needle with any of the 5 inch end and sew the end in the closest side. This will later roll up the sides of the doll such that the stitching is not shown.

6. Again, thread your needle with remaining 5 inch end and sew it to the closest side so that you can roll up the knitted side to form the doll.

7. Once you have the knitted piece complete, you need to roll and shape it up in the form of a doll. You have to lay down the knitted piece front side down on your work surface but keep the backside facing you flat.

8. Next, roll the edges tightly starting from each end so that they meet in the middle but remember to keep each rolled side even in size.

9. Now, turn the knitted piece that you have rolled up over your work surface. This way, the rolled side should be facing your work surface and the other side with eight knitted rows towards you.

10. Then fold the rolled knitted piece almost in half and the edge of the side you have just folded should be touching the top edge of the eight knitted rows.

11. Next hold the folded knitted piece tightly with one hand and wrap elastic twice over the folded area nearly one and half inch down from the top. This will make the head of the doll and also secure the fold you made to form the body of the doll.

12. Now, partially unroll the folded over knitted piece below the elastic but you need to unroll the knitted piece till you get the resemblance of the arms on either side of the body and also knitted areas stretched between them.

13. Now, flip the partial unrolled portion below the elastic over the head. This will make a hood covering the head with rolled up arms near the elastic that divides and creates the neck and hands.

14. You need to cut 15 inch length of sheer blue ribbon and wrap this blue ribbon round the hood from back to front in same position as the elastic. You can tie a bow in the blue ribbon with the bow in front of the doll. You can trim the end of the ribbon at a slant.

Thus, you have a knitted doll that you can gift to your kids or decorate it as a craft work piece.

To know more, visit our recommended website craft-books.net

Olivia Andrews, writer of craft-books.net is a freelance journalist and has written many reviews on subjects such as finance, education, health, entertainment, music, apparels, gifts, crafts, travel and mobile phones.


Olivia Andrews is a freelance journalist and has written many reviews on subjects such as finance, education, music, apparels and mobile phones.

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