A Long Awaited Arrival - Photo Shoot

 

Hello my friends!! How are you this lovely day? I hope you are doing well! Today I have a post that I was going to post back in September and didn't get a chance to due to making costumes for Villain Takeover! Hurray? LOL!! XD In all seriousness though, I am so excited to introduce you all to a dolly I found back in 2020 and finally completed in 2021. Ladies, gentlemen, and dolls, allow me to introduce to you my dream custom...

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 Pleasant Rowland!

Okay, so y'all have probably already noticed Pleasant in past posts (Yes she is indeed in them, sneaking around in the background like the imposters in Among Us!... That meme is so dead I'm so sorry), but allow me to give a bit of backstory on her.

So a Pleasant Rowland tribute doll is something I've wanted to do pretty much since Courtney came out. For those of you who don't know, I'm not a fan of Courtney, like at ALL lol (No offense to those of you who like her)! 'XD

I have a few issues with Courtney, I don't really like that her clothes are NOT accurate to what a 9 year old would wear in that time, but much closer to what teens or young adults would wear, I feel like there are time periods that would have been so much more interesting and educational to talk about (I honestly feel like American Girl is more concerned about using time periods with clothes that will sell well instead of actually using times that will be most historically interesting, which is a shame :/ ), she looks quite a bit like Maryellen to me for some reason? And then there's the whole Pleasant Company thing....

They placed Courtney in the year American girl first released, and Pleasant Company started. Now for some reason, this struck an off cord with me. Why? I don't know. The reason for her wanting Molly seemed reasonable enough, but I guess I would have preferred if they placed a doll in that time that it be a dedication to Pleasant Rowland of some sort, who started it all.

So I considered this idea for several months, but ended up deciding to wait indefinitely due to the fact that buying a used doll, a wig, and any other supplies I might need to get a cheap enough dolly into good shape would add up very fast lol!!! XD

But then, out of nowhere, like pineapple in a coffee cake, a thrift store AG dolly appeared! My mom went to pick my sister up from an airport about 3 hours from our house and checked the thrift stores while she was there. She saw a Truly Me #22, a doll we like to refer to as "Blonde Avery", on the top shelf behind the expensive counter for $20.00. Mom said that she decided to just leave it since the doll was pretty trashed for that price, but if I wanted to see it we could try checking it out if it was still there when we took my sister back to the airport.

And low and behold, she was still there! You could almost see the light of heaven shining down on that top shelf, and hear the angels singing and birds chirping in the distance. She was..... Trashed. Yeah she was trashed lol! XD but I decided to still ask an employee if I could look her over. Upon closer inspection I realized two things,

#1: I probably looked like a crazy person to this poor employee, who had to watch 5'10" me try to smell a doll through a face mask.

#2: The doll actually wasn't as bad as she looked.

So I decided to buy the doll, my mom managed to talk these people down to $11.00 (what a legend), and I took her home.

Here's what she looked like when I first bought her, she was very dirty and marked up, but her cloth was clean and her limbs were super tight. Her hair was gross and knotted but it wasn't really damaged. I was so confused I have never seen a doll in such bad and good condition at the same time. It was weird LOL!

She also had this strange black goo on her arm? So gross like what even is that?? *_*

I ended up opting to see what dolly looked like with her hair washed and fixed before deciding what to do with her. And though I think she was BEAUTIFUL with her original wig ( I actually think she looks like an angel this way XD), I ended up deciding to make her into my dream custom :)

So there you go! after a rewigging and some cleaning (And yes all the marks came off including that black one by some miracle), she's here! Here's a....

Before

And after!

Here's a bit more of her personality as well! Pleasant is 9 years old and her year is 1950. She is a lover of all things history and of learning, she is bright and curious and always has an interesting history fact to share! She likes wearing dresses and exploring, and she's also a collector of teddy bears (which is a reference to the Pleasant Bear line by Pleasant company) and dolls. With such determination and a can do attitude, there's no doubt that Pleasant is going to do big things someday ;)

(Image via American Girl Fan)

And just because I thought it'd be fun to show you, this is the picture my doll was based off of! This is a real picture of Pleasant Rowland as a little girl :D

I really hope you enjoyed getting to officially meet Pleasant and learn more about her!!! I had so much fun creating her and I'm so excited to have her in my collection :D Also, so sorry that the lighting is so inconsistent, I did this shoot on two sperate days and one of them was in between a Ballet shoot for my charity group.

And no I'm not joking I looked like this while taking the pictures. I was really determined to wear these crazy bronze shoes I bought at the thrift store that day for some reason, I am very strange XD

Anyway, thanks so much for dropping by! It always really means a lot, I have a really cool post for next month (hopefully 'XD) that I'm so SO stoked for you all to see! I got one of those light ring things for Christmas so it should have some cool effects and hopefully finally good quality indoor photos? I don't know maybe we shouldn't get our hopes too high on that part LOL! So be on the lookout for a Sneak Peek if you're an email subscriber! We're also almost to 50 followers guys OH MY CHERRY CHEESE CAKE!!! As I've said in the past there will be a HUGE surprise when we hit that number so if you'd like to see what that surprise is, please give us a follow! :D By the way, so sorry for not answering your comments for so long on the last post, we had a family member pass away over the holidays (Only a few hours after the Christmas post was published actually) so there's been a lot to do and cope with, we're doing okay now I promise! I just wanted y'all to know I wasn't trying to ignore you :) Well friends, I'm off! There maybe an extra post next month like this if you'd be okay with it, it'd be to introduce a very special doll who was given to me by some incredibly kind people, I just need to finalize her personality a bit first but let me know if y'all want to see that! I love you all and can't wait to hear from you in the comments! Have an awesome day!

-Katie :)