A Little Book of Bluefairies: Making Little Granny's Christmas 2020

To those who are new to my LGC story things, a bit of a background: I made this originally at 2017 since I wanted to make something fun with my ball jointed dolls. My thought behind all of this was that the dolls are kids who are in a play about Little Granny and her friends having Christmas time. My plan was to make stuff easily and most likely as shabby as I could. Make do what ever materials are available and don't make a fuss about anything if not necessary. You can see this especially from the 2017's story, the backgrounds and basic looks for each dolls were created back then and has changed very little. I upgraded the starry sky of course, but many of the Granny's home was the same as in the first story. Of course, as I continued making it, this became kinda bigger and required more props and stuff... aaaand it just went and whisled while going.

This 2020's Little Granny's Christmas was originally going to make another appearance on December 2019. I had already made the story, photographed and preset three parts of the story here in the blog waiting to be posted at the 1st, 2nd and 3rd of December 2019. I guess there wasn't much of inspiration that time. I didn't feel like making it and when you don't then you must think of something else instead. So 2019 I posted introductions of some of my dolls instead of Little Granny's Christmas story and postponed the story over for a year. I wasn't completely sure if I should make a full story but alas - suddenly I really got a big inspiration to making it on the middle of September or something like that. I had two weeks of layoff from my work (one/month on September and October) and had thought that on November's layoff week I would work for LGC but... the layoff was cancelled. I'm of course happy there was work, but I could've needed it truly. The rest of the schedule of photographing and making the preset posts would be super tight. So, it all began mostly with the stuff I already had and I started crafting some new landscapes like the trees etc.

Basicly, I had three spots where to put the sets and storage stuff while changing the sets and photographing some. In front of the doll's drawers, in front of the window was on the right side of the of the drawers AND left from the snowy settings was a big plastic box which sometimes was covered with some sets. Oh yeah, high end crafts and very neat. NO! I'm super messy, if I'm beginning to clean I will make a huge mess before it's clean.I had build really neat fireplace for this set, but damn I lost it so I had to make new one. It's cut from styrofoam sheet and covered with grey corduroy, painted with black and grey acrylic hobby paint. I have some tealights that have battery inside so they're safe for this sort of projects.

This is the one on the left side of the bigger scene where the starry sky and other bigger props and scenes are photographed. What I learned from my previous story making sessions was to always check out the first photos that they are OK and not to take a set apart before looking trough the photos so that there was enough material for each post.

I wanted to make some snowy frosty trees... and this was the best method to do it. Thin cardboard, not excantly white as the silk paper (?) isn't pure white either. The thin layer of pattern paper glued with paper glue stick to the cardboards. I made about 5-7 different pieces of snowy trees and I layered them on the background in different. I used these in the travel scenes mostly becouse they were the easiest way to change how the sets look. The snowy ground has always been very cheap velvet fabric pieces. I did cover some cutout trees with it earlier and they are still one of the core pieces of this.. eee show.

Some pieces are really basic. We bought a TV - styrofoams are from that, and new ceiling light which had this box used as a base of this prop. Any bigger structures are easiest to build from these materials and they are easiest to recycle when you can just tear them apart and showe them to the recycle containers outside. Hotglue gun is the best friend, even if you do burn your fingertips sometimes.

I always store fabrics for various reasons as well as... stuff like cardboards, foamcoreboards, styrofoam etc etc. Thi set was about 80 x 90 cm and it became Dragon's cavern. One of the biggest sets I managed to build, this has already been teared back to pieces. I wish I could store some of the bigger sets but it's not sensible as there's excactly NONE space left for anything that doesn't come to pieces or can't be stored flat.

Making of the mountain, I got the idea of the cave showing near the top (LOTR cough cough). The walking platforms were - of course - made from styrofoam blocks and sheets. Only down side with the thin styrofoam sheets are that they don't hold their ground if doll happens to stand on that place where there's nothing under it. It can take a good few minutes to trying to balance a doll on such unstable ground. Ouch.

I had created the starry skies before but if you've not seen the back of it before, there it is on the top left. Top right has the hassle and mess going on, I have Re-Ment sets, scissors, comb (for me), tape, dolls, glue and so much stuff hanging around waiting to be used. Bottom left is the Dragon's cavern from the outside and bottom right has all the participants of the scene laying around so that they don't fall down and break any noses, hands or other parts.

Dragon is Latidoll Yellow Limited Dragon Ver. Aabie. She/he came to me with all dragon parts, I totally forgot the horns, there was no need for the sword in this story. The parts are really neat, there's different part for the body. Setting the doll in some sort of balance included horrendous amounts of fiddling. Move foot and the wing will de-attatch, doll will fall over and and aaargh! I'm quite sure that Dragon isn't a part of future of Little Granny's Christmas. I will never assemble these parts on her again if that's really not necessary, they were too unstable and when you're trying to pose so many little dolls together it can really be frustrating when one is falling over and one has parts that want to fall when trying to make a pose. Aabie was postal elf in the 2018 story, and I don't know if she'll have a part in the next one. If I'll make one. Don't know yet.

Princess Chrystal is Fairyland Pukifee Bonnie, I got her few years ago and this is her first appearance in any of these stories. Bonnie doesn't really have a name still, I kinda want to name her Kristel, as it fits in my finnish mouth better than Chrystal and is equally pretty name. Wig is by SweetNeat crafts, clothes by me and eyes by SoulInABoxDolls. Her skates are Azone Pureneemo skates bought from Ami-Ami few years back. They came out really handy in this. Other skates, the ones that can be put on top of the shoes are crafted last year before I decided not to post the story back then. They are made of crafting plastic sheets and painted with miniature/craft paints. Snowman was made from styrofoam and painted white. Nose, eyes and mouth blocks are painted styrofoam glued in places and the hair is dried heather branches, crown is painted silk clay.

ANYWAY!!! It was much work and also much fun. You can see some of the making of LGC from here

back at the 2018 post about how it was created. I used basicly same pieces of Re-Ments this time too. The pieces were from at least these sets:

- Moomin Homestyle Dishes

- Moomin Warm House

- Moomin Happy Garden

- Petit Sample Playback Seishun Days

- Little Twin Stars Twinkle Sweet Factory

- Rilakkuma Hokuou Kitchen

I bought some new carpets at Granny's home but not sure if I mentioned them two years ago and there was some new doll house items. If you have any questions about any item, you can ask them in the comments section. Most of my followers are propably familiar with BJD's so I won't spend time telling more about them if you don't ask. AND I'm dead tired right now! If you made it this far, thank you so much!

May the 2021 be better year for us all.

As promised here are links to the stories beginning from 2020, I'll include the 2019's advent calendar too placed in it's own place of year 2019, even tough they weren't a part of Little Granny's Christmas.

Little Granny and the Ice Princess 2020 1 - 24 + epilogue