#doll chateau alva

[aro-tarot]

Lily got her face-up yesterday, and while I had a heck of a time with glueing the lashes on (which I haven’t had since maybe the first time I glued lashes on a doll), I really like how it came out. There are already a few scratches, a few I’m not sure how they happened, but I don’t really notice them much. I also changed her eyes. With the lashes, the brown looked good, but it was hard to get them to look as nice in photos, so she’s using Lottie’s old green eyes now. I also just ordered a new comb last night since mine is breaking, so I can get her wig combed better next week.

Tomorrow I’m going to be doing another face-up. All of my dolls have their cute faces, but my brother has commissioned me to paint his blank girl. She’s supposed to have an old movie kind of look, so wish me luck 😊

[poupeesdecirque]

Weekly Photo 36/2024

... do you want to listen to a story?

The Storyteller. <3

I like to image that aside entertaining Pierre he also wanders around and reads books to the young and elder and everyone who is interested in hearing a good story.

[fixing-bad-comic-art]

hey i saw you like doll chateau. i have one of their 1/6 limited dolls and tbqh i def recommend. poseability is limited at that scale but the the aesthetic is amazing. you can check ebay and insta for second hand sales. damaged dolls can go for cheap if you dont mind fixing them. also if you like weird dolls dream valley and miracle doll have some really cool sculpts

i know but my dream doll is the Alva head on a k-12 body and dangerously, denver doll has a layaway option.....

its already going to take 6+ months to get here, might as well just have the smaller hits over a few months jfjdjfjfj

context for those who dont keep up with bjds: the alva sculpt is only a few months old, id recon that theres probably folk who ordered it on release day and still dont have it yet so theres not a way in hell at getting the alva head second hand for at least a year. and the k-12 bodies are delicate and fidly so a lot of them on the second hand market are in Rough shape and i just dont trust myself with that level of repair work. plus i Really like the white skin for doll chateau sculpts and everything id find on the second hand market will be Way to yellowed to go with a new alva head in white

and like i know the alva heads neck hole is slightly to big for the k-12 body but .5 centimeter difference is easy enough to fix with a little suede since ill probably be sueding a lot of his joints anyways. this boy is getting an elaborate fit and hes going to need the suede to keep his pose djdj. like i knkw doll chateau is kinda known for possibility especially on the k 12 bodies but Still jfjdjd

and aslo??? i don't know how ive never seen these companies before but i Love them????? im dying because i Adore all of the miracle dolls But Damn Those Prices Huh??? ima have to hunt around on DOA/ ebay if i even want to dream a dream djdjjd

and the doll valley clorise is just Ideal??? i just wish i could find a boy body for her face i liked. tbh if i do ever get a clorise id probably snag a doll chateau boy body to go with it. dbdbbd. like i know her sculpt is meant for the girl body and those are lovely, i just prefer boys, and im a simp for doll chateau fjjfnfjf

also just because i feel strongly about this, this is a pro artist blog. please dont intentionally buy a recast,

[blackswaneuroparedux]

Consuelo Vanderbilt Balsan, Duchess of Marlborough (1877-1964) 

Consuelo Vanderbilt was one of the most highly sought-after heiresses of America’s Gilded Age: the period between 1870-1900 when US industrialists became the richest men in the world. The only daughter of railroad millionaire William Vanderbilt and his formidable wife Alva, Consuelo was pre-destined to marry into the British aristocracy like her godmother Consuleo Yznaga who had married the heir to the 7th Duke of Manchester.

In 1886 William Vanderbilt inherited $65 million on the death of his father. Wishing to upstage her social rival Mrs Astor, Alva commissioned a Rococo summer house she christened the Marble House on Newport Rhode Island that was modelled on Marie Antoinette’s Petit Trianon at Versailles and the largest privately-owned yacht in the world called the Alva. Her palatial Vanderbilt mansion on 5th Avenue could comfortably host 1000 people at a legendary masquerade ball she held in 1883 costing $3 million.

Though surrounded by such opulence, Consuelo Vanderbilt was schooled strictly by a series of governesses and tutors. Her mother Alva forced the pretty child to wear a steel corset contraption that would keep her spine ramrod straight, she was whipped with a riding crop when disobedient and was forced to abide by Alva’s golden rule ‘I do the thinking. You do as you are told’. Consuelo blossomed into the beau ideal of a Belle Epoque beauty: slim, delicately pretty with a swan-like neck and thick, dark, luxuriant upswept hair. She had five proposals of marriage including one from Prince Francis Joseph of Battenberg that Consuelo declined.

Lady Paget, American-born Minnie Stevens, introduced Consuelo Vanderbilt to Charles Spencer-Churchill, who had become 9th Duke of Marlborough in 1892 inheriting the monolithic Blenheim Palace and crippling debts. Consuelo disliked ‘Sunny’ Marlborough and in a rare act of independence became secretly engaged to New York socialite Winthrop Rutherford. Alva fought back: first threatening to have Rutherford murdered then pretending that Consuelo’s disobedience was quite literally killing her. According to Consuelo, she was locked in her room until she agreed to marry the 9th Duke who had negotiated a settlement of $42.5 million in railroad stock from the Vanderbilts plus an annual allowance of $100,000 for he and his future wife.

The 9th Duke married Consuelo Vanderbilt in New York in 1895 telling her after the ceremony that he was in love with another woman and that he ‘despised anything that was not British’. The Duke and Duchess of Marlborough returned to England via Paris where the duke dressed her like a doll at Worth and replenished the family jewels with Vanderbilt money acquiring pearls that belonged to Catherine the Great and the Empress Eugenie. As Consuelo wrote in her autobiography The Glitter and the Gold (1953), ‘jewels never gave me pleasure and my heavy tiara invariably produced a violent headache, my dog collar a chafed neck’.

On meeting the Dowager Duchess of Marlborough, Consuelo was told ‘your first duty is to have a child and it must be a son because it would be intolerable to have that little upstart Winston (Churchill) become duke’. Consuelo did produce an heir and a spare, Lord John and Lord Ivo, while also conquering London society and dazzling the Prince of Wales and his Marlborough House Set. Consuelo’s father bought Sutherland House on Mayfair’s Curzon Street for the Marlboroughs to entertain during the London season and Consuelo was inducted into the social round of Marlborough House balls, Royal Ascot, weekends at Sandringham and boxes at the Royal Opera House.

The Glitter and the Gold demonstrates Consuelo’s talent as a perceptive witness to great moments in late Victorian and Edwardian history. She attended the Duchess of Devonshire’s fancy dress ball in 1897, Queen Victoria’s funeral in 1901, the coronation of King Edward VII in 1902 for which she was Queen Alexandra’s canopy bearer and travelled to India for King Edward’s coronation durbar as a guest of Viceroy Lord Curzon. The Marlboroughs travelled to the court of Russia’s last Tsar Nicholas II where Consuelo had a private audience with Queen Alexandra’s sister the Dowager Empress Marie and commented ‘her courtesy to us was favourably compared in court circles with the Tsarina’s failure to give us an audience and the realisation how unpopular the latter’s unsocial nature was making her’.

In 1905 the Marlborough family was painted by John Singer Sargent. The most beautiful duchess in England was also drawn by Hellieu and painted by society artist Boldini. But in 1906 the Duke and Duchess of Marlborough separated. As Consuelo concluded, ‘we had been married eleven years (and) life together had not brought us closer. Time had but accentuated our differences. The nervous tension that tends to grow between people of different temperament condemned to live together had reached its highest pitch’.

The Duchess quit Blenheim Palace and took-up residence in Sutherland House. It was to her credit that the Prince of Wales’s set did not drop her though she spent an increasing amount of time in the company of the aesthetes who called themselves The Souls led by Lady Desborough. Guests at Sutherland House included H. G. Wells, George Bernard Shaw, Sir J. M. Barrie, Margot Asquith, Lady Astor, Lady Cunard and the Grand Duke Dimitri of Russia. She took a small country house, Crowhurst, on the Marlborough estate and – taking a cue from the redoubtable Alva – became a leader of the women’s suffrage movement and a frequent visitor to the Strangers’ Gallery in the Palace of Westminster.

In 1921 the Duke and Duchess of Marlborough formally divorced and Consuelo married dashing French aviator Jacques Balsan who she had first met in Paris at her coming out ball hosted by the Duc de Gramont. It was, in Consuelo’s words, a marriage of love. The 9th Duke of Marlborough married a dazzling American beauty Gladys Deacon. Marcel Proust said of Gladys, ‘I never saw a girl with such beauty, such magnificent intelligence, such goodness and charm’. The marriage ended acrimoniously with the 9th Duke evicting Gladys from Blenheim after she had ruined her beauty injecting her face with paraffin wax.

Consuelo and Jacques Balsan lived an idyllic existence at their chateau St Georges-Motel near Fontainebleu where cousin Winston Churchill and his wife Clementine were frequent visitors. The aging Alva Vanderbilt bought a neighbouring chateau to be near her daughter. The 9th Duke died in 1934 and Consuelo was once again welcome at Blenheim Palace as a guest of her son the 10th Duke. The Balsans were evacuated from France in 1940 at the onset of the Nazi invasion and set-up home in Casa Alva south of Palm Beach in Florida.

Consuelo Vanderbilt Balsan died in Long Island, New York, in 1964 and was buried on the Blenheim estate next to her younger son Lord Ivo Spencer-Churchill.

[aro-tarot]

I lost track of time, so the lighting outside wasn’t that good. Anyway, Lily’s head arrived today! She’s a Doll Chateau Alva on a Dollzone body. She’s my first hybrid, and finally I have a Dollzone doll that isn’t in peach resin lol. I chose pink for the head, and the in-stock body is also pink. Also, my first Doll Chateau doll. She’s so cute! Alva’s my favorite sculpt, so I’m happy I got it during the discontinuation sale 🥰

Lily is friends with Bennett and Colin. The three of them all work in/for the magical pop-up library. Lily is head in the nonfiction department. She also loves to laugh and bring laughter to others and not just knowledge.

[poupeesdecirque]

Weekly Photo 16/2024

What would be spring without the Storyteller? Right. Not spring. He is secretly still the head of the family and when spring arrives he will stroll around and enjoy the colors, the blossoms and the insects buzzing around.

[poupeesdecirque]

Weekly Photo 36/2023

The Storyteller.

One of the entities roaming this world, their job is to entertain the reaper to balance them, to keep the population of the fairyworld everliving.

But this one special fella here.... has some personal issues with the council. Atropos truly regrets his decision to put Sei in charge along with Pierre, they are a duo made in heaven (... or hell?).

[poupeesdecirque]

Last glimpses of autumn with the Storyteller.

I truly wanted to take him out but there was so much rain and storm, only short time frames in which I was able to get the dolls out without getting completely soaked.

But that's how nature is, you have to deal with what you get, get creative with everything, with what is given. I can say I will miss autumn it's still my favorite season.

[poupeesdecirque]

Guess who is back with getting on my nerves? THIS FELLA. Seriously he is such a hand full.

The Storyteller’s first time in the snow and all he does is demanding photos and I end up battling my perfectionism OTL lil shithead.

Also I swear we are done with snow photos now, time to enter spring soon :>

[poupeesdecirque]

Weekly Photo 16/2023

This actually consists of two different photo shootings and I could not decide which one to post, therefore I combined them.

Storyteller and I are trying to get used to each other, I love and hate him at the same time. sigh. I love him as a doll but I am so damn critical when it comes to photos of him.

[poupeesdecirque]

Weekly Photo 46/2022

I knew he would look great with autumn colors again, despite him being a former spirit of spring... his roots are within the seasons. Yes, he is melanchonic in those regards and he had a hard time coping being forced to stop to see himself as a part of them .... but someone will pay for it.

[poupeesdecirque]

Weekly Photo 21/2022

Sometimes the Storyteller misses his old life as head of the spring fairies. It took him ages to detach from them it was a rather cruel time, being forced to ignore them from now on. Even when attending those exhausting and boring council meetings. Especially with Atropos controlling his every breath while staying there.

Not to mention the other spirits didn’t change their mind regarding him, still seeing him as unfitting for any position because he was more the type for clowing around.

[poupeesdecirque]

I finally managed to finish the Storyteller. I can’t really believe it, but he is officially done!

[poupeesdecirque]

Weekly Photo 51/2021

If one of my OCs really got me involved this year it was the Storyteller. He wiggled into my mind and left big impressions. His doll version is still not finished (waiting for a body since January ‘21), but I am full on planing his back story and details, making him more and more special to me.

[poupeesdecirque]

Weekly Photo 33/2021

The Storyteller. One of the Beings of Time & Space, guarding the present, telling the stories of this dimension, in a constant battle against the grim reaper who interferences with their storylines, forcing them to rewrite over and over again. The Storyteller is forbidden to meet the creatures whose story they tell.

The Storyteller is choosen by Atropos, within the council of entities. There is no way someone can decline Atropos’ decision. The current Storyteller is a younger Being than the former one, who lost their imagination along the way and had to be replaced to keep up with the weirdness of the current reaper.

The other side about being a Storyteller is that you basically loose your former life, your former rang and are forced to give up your personality, as your only duty is to care about the Storyline - about others than themselfes. But this one here is pretty good at finding loop holes ... and started to self insert themselves into storylines, to interact with the creatures along the way. The Grim Reaper already found out and they are constantly gambling within the Storylines; which leaves Atropos even way more tired than before as he is the one who has to fix up the mess these two make every time.

[poupeesdecirque]

Some of you might remember that actually the Storyteller was ordered back in January 2021 with an addition of an optional head being ordered in February 2021. Well, the additional head arrived in March 2021.

... the full doll itself wasn’t shipped until December 2021. The Storyteller was stealing bodies off other dolls for photos but that’s finally in the past, he is an own doll now. Waiting times in this hobby are weird sometimes, you have companies shipping after month and other take a year, depending where you order.

Also you can see how different the head looks compared to the original one, mine has an eye mod. I never mentioned that before but yeah I modded the eyes before theUgliestWife painted the head for me. I am not sure what will become of the now leftover head as technically I would need to mod it too, but well there is so much on my plate in regards dolls right now (this one here needs some work on the body to go with character related things) - I will eventually come back to it later.