The doll above is a Factory Blythe with the original eye chips and positioning, although with eyes modified to "sleep" and replaced eyelashes. I'll cover those changes in future tutorials. Today I'm going to show you how to replace the original Blythe doll eye chips and change the positioning of the gaze as shown in the doll below.

If you've been following along you may remember a couple months ago I customized my first Blythe dolls and promised tutorials. but then my son required a bone graft surgery and we spent November going to one or more doctor's appointments every week to prepare. My son had surgery on Monday. It went exactly as planned and we spent only one night in the hospital, less than half the time usually required. He's recovering well and you can keep up with his progress and see photos on my Instagram and Facebook. I had a suspicious number of orders for a Monday, almost all from repeat customers, and I know that's because many of you are trying to support us. I want you to know we are all sincerely touched and extremely appreciative!

So, on to the tutorial. I apologize if it's a little confusing; I took photos of the same process using two different dolls. Just follow the steps for any Blythe doll, and possibly also for Pullip dolls, although I will have to update once I've customized one of those. Begin by gathering your materials. You will need a candle, glue sticks, a Blythe doll, and new eye chips. You can purchase new eye chips from my shops, especially Etsy, from the link in the Home page. Make sure the eye chips you buy will fit the Blythe doll you are customizing. There are several sizes of Blythe dolls. Right now all the eye chips I am selling are for the 12 inch Blythe. I am also working on a Blythe eye kit.

To remove the eye mechanism first remove the back of the head. Remove the screws first and make sure you save them.

Next use pliers or a skewer to unhook the spring from the bar next to the eye pull string.  If you want the eyes to "sleep" you will not need the spring, but if you want them to work as the originals you will need to save the spring and not pull it out of shape, so be gentle.

When you have removed the screws and spring you can pop the back plate off with a flat head screwdriver, butter knife, or similar implement.

Here is the original mechanism. Make sure to take a photo or make note of the arrangement of all the pieces before you remove anything.

Unscrew the gaze bar, which is the little paddle-shaped plastic piece screwed in as shown above. The original Blythe gaze is slightly downcast, as shown in the first (blond) doll in this post. If you desire that just leave the paddle as is. If you want Blythe to look up, as shown in the second (brunette) doll in this post you will need to sand the straight top edge of the paddle's "handle". That is the part of the paddle without the screw hole. The more you sand this edge the more your Blythe's gaze will look up. Be very careful when removing and sanding this piece and don't lose it. It is essential to the function of Blythe's eyes and is not easily replaced.

Next remove the pull string. You can use tweezers to help you untie the end if you want to save the string. If not you can just cut the string, but you will need ribbon or something to replace it.

As gently as possible use a flathead screwdriver to pry the eye mechanism out of its slot. This can be quite difficult. Sometimes slightly heating the plastic with a hair dryer can ease this process.

Remove the eye mechanism.

If you have a factory or Tomy Blythe you will need to remove the screw to take off the scalp.

Save any pieces you remove in a baggie or somewhere they won't get lost.

To remove the eye chips heat the ends of the glue sticks so they melt slightly but don't drip.

Adhere the glue sticks to the eye chips.

To speed the process you can do four eye chips at a time. Leave the glue sticks in place until they cool.

Draw a straight pin or knife blade around the edges of the eye chips to loosen them.

Then pull the glue stick off and the eye chip should come with it. Often the eye chips will stick and you will have to repeat the process two or three times before it comes out.

The doll I'm working with here is a Basaak Blythe and the eye chips were extremely tight. Some of them broke when I removed them and I had to cut and sand out the pieces before I could proceed. I've never seen this happen on another tutorial, so I don't know if it was a fluke or if this is a specific problem with the Basaak dolls, but if this does happen be prepared to remove the broken pieces fully or the new eye chips will not adhere. You can actually purchase blank Blythe dolls without eye chips and I think in the future this may be what I do as it will save a great deal of time!

I used an X-Acto knife and sandpaper to remove the broken eye chip pieces. Supposedly all you have to do most of the time is just wash out the white glue with warm water, but that didn't work at all with the Basaak Blythe. They obviously used super glue to fix the eye chips in place!

When the eye channels are completely clear you are ready to insert new eye chips.

I ordered custom eye chips and they were too tall to fit in the Basaak Blythe eye sockets so I had to sand down the posts and repaint the pupils. Sometimes you will have to sand the sides as well to get them to fit, especially with custom eye chips.

When your eye chips are sanded and painted, if necessary, use white water-soluble glue to insert them. That way you can easily remove them later if you want to change them out. If they are stuck you can soak the eye mechanism in warm water and the glue will dissolve.

Press the eye chips in place. Sometimes they snap right in and other times you have to hold them until the glue sets.

Once you've inserted all the eye chips and let them dry you can insert new eyelashes and color the eyeshadow if you desire.

After I re-inserted the eyes I had to touch up the face paint where it was smudged. Then I re-inserted all the components I removed earlier. Look at the photo below to see how the gaze changed after I sanded down the gaze bar paddle. You can purchase eye chips and other Blythe parts and even ready-made Blythe dolls from the links to my shops on the Home page. Stay tuned for more Blythe tutorials as my son's recovery advances.

As many of you know, I am self-employed largely as a result of our adoption of two children with special needs. I feel incredibly blessed to live in an age when I can work from home, create my own career, and communicate with people all over the world. The Internet changed my life and has given me more opportunity than I ever imagined it could. That does not, however, mean it's made this life terribly easy. The fourth quarter of the year is a notoriously busy time for anyone in retail, and for a solo momtrepreneur like myself it's just insanity.

​This year, more than ever, I'm feeling the pressure of trying to be a mother as well as run a successful business. Our youngest son has a major surgery scheduled this Monday. He will be getting a bone graft and some facial revision to help correct his cleft lip and palate. We've always known he would need this surgery and his team of specialists have been working together for years to get him ready. This particular surgery is time-sensitive and must absolutely be performed during the optimal window of his dental development. We hoped to have it done during one of the school breaks but it just didn't work out that way. So now, right at the height of the sales season and my busiest professional time of the year, we have the surgery, and last month we learned our cleft team had gone out of network with our insurance company. Facing a $10,000 bill, we applied for Gap Coverage so we could pay in network, and thankfully it was granted. That process, however, required extensive phone calling and paperwork-filling for myself and my husband, and my son has visited almost his entire network of doctors in the past month to get all his pre-surgery check-ups and procedures finished. 

If you watch my social media on Instagram and Facebook you also know we discovered a rotten support post on our house that spread mold and decay into the interior walls and floor and then we had yet another water heater leak, so besides all the doctor visits we've had to work around contractor and plumber schedules. We performed much of the interior renovation ourselves. My husband has become a champ at installing drywall and I helped out with the painting.

Add to that all the cooking and cleaning and entertaining of the holiday season, and you'll understand why I haven't written a blog post or newsletter for ages. I sincerely apologize. I have been working hard to get new things made and posted for sale and the slideshow above shows a few of these. I know how much people love trunk sets during the holidays so I managed to finish a few, as well as one doll and book set, and some single dolls. I was honored to create an adorable matryoshka birth announcement set, and my daughter and I collaborated to design some cozy winter poncho wraps. 

We are trying to fit an early birthday celebration into the weekend since it will be so long until our son can eat solid food and run around again, so I have my stores either on vacation or set for really long handling times. You can still place orders but I am not guaranteeing new custom order deliveries for Christmas and anything paid after 9PM on Sunday will likely not ship until Friday at the earliest. I truly hope you will still place orders because to be honest I need the money! As soon as I know how long we will be in the hospital and how well my son recovers I will update my handling time and get everything out as soon as I possibly can.

Please keep us in your thoughts and please know as soon as I am able I will get back to writing tutorials and posting new projects. This is my "why". I am so grateful to all of you for supporting me, reading my blog, shopping with me, emailing me , over all these years. You made my little family possible. You gave me the ability to drop everything and step away from my career when it's necessary for me to be just Mom. I'll be spending the day and night in the hospital on Monday, at the very least, and possibly longer. There may be a delay in my response to messages and questions during that time.
​Many blessings on you fall, until I can write again, Amanda

For some time now I've been curious about Blythe dolls with the color change eyes. All of a sudden my Pinterest and Instagram feeds have exploded with images of amazingly beautiful customized Blythe dolls. I finally decided to order one and teach myself to customize these dolls. I've now finished two dolls and I have enough material for at least three different tutorials. I'm trying to organize my photos and thoughts to get those finished for you. My first doll already sold but the second doll and some doll parts are available from my shops (shop links on the Home page).

There are several different Blythe dolls and I'm not familiar with them all yet, but the first is the original 1972 Kenner Blythe doll with color change eyes. Those were regular toys, a little scary-looking, back in the day but now they are worth thousands of dollars. Apparently the rights to manufacture Blythe were bought by Hasbro and then Takara. These dolls are worth several hundred dollars. Finally, there are a slew of off-market Blythe dolls. There's what is called a "factory" Blythe, which is marked Blythe and sometimes Takara and sometimes Hasbro on the body and head, supposedly just nude dolls with or without wigs, that come from the factory before packaging. I kind of doubt that's true, but who knows? I can't afford any of the real Blythe dolls to see how they compare. Then there are fake copycat Blythe dolls called Basaak Blythes or Basaar Blythes or Icy dolls or others. The Basaak and Basaar Blythes look just like Blythe but the quality is noticeably worse than the factory Blythe dolls. The Icy doll is nearly identical to Blythe but with a slightly different face sculpt. There are also nude dolls with a Blythe faceplate but without hair or eye chips, solely for customization. Besides the 12 inch Blythe shown here there is also "Neo Blythe", "Middle Blythe", "Petite Blythe", and "Mini Blythe", but I'm still foggy on those and I don't own any. It seems like the Blythe heads can be used with a dizzying array of bodies. You can buy bodies by themselves or poach them from existing dolls. So far I have made two custom Blythe dolls. One is made from a Factory Blythe and one is made from a Basaak Blythe.

This alluring beauty is Vadoma, a fortune teller. Vadoma is a Romani name meaning, "one who knows" and comes from a word once used to describe magicians in the gypsy culture. Vadoma is my second Blythe customization. My first Factory Blythe taught me these dolls are an expensive hobby to acquire, with the basic nude dolls costing around $70, so I used cheaper parts for this one since I'm still teaching myself how to make these. I started by re-sculpting and re-painting a Basaak Blythe faceplate. Then I replaced the Basaak eye chips with a pair of galaxy chips I made and three pairs of chips by another artist from eBay. I converted the eyes to sleep eyes and hand-beaded the pull strings. I replaced the sparse eyelashes and colored the eyelids with ombre shadow. I picked up a distressed Azone ball-jointed body for a fire sale price because it had a broken neck and very custom paint job. I removed the paint and re-painted the body and made a new neck attachment.  I added my exclusive "quick change" Velcro skull dome and wig, so a new owner can easily change out wigs. Finally I put together an outfit from vintage and handmade clothes and jewelry.

You can choose from four different color for Vadoma's eyes as well as change the direction of her gaze.

Because Vadoma's crystal ball is attached to her pull string she always has it with her.

You can use Vadoma's Velcro skull with one of my wigs or place a rooted scalp over it to change her hair.

The Basaak dolls aren't the greatest quality, and this one had a couple issues. The skull cap kept coming loose so I had to glue it down with white glue to stabilize it. You can soak the head in warm water to remove the glue if you need to get inside her head. The head seams don't meet at the bottom on one side (see the slide show for a photo) but Vadoma's hair covers that problem.

I'm most proud of Vadoma's pierced ears, which I did myself, her galaxy eye chips, which are the first I've painted, and her pull strings. I bought the crystal ball charm months ago on clearance because it was cool and I've just been waiting for a way to use it. This was the perfect project! I have Vadoma for sale in my shops and I can also sell her at a discount if the buyer contacts me through this website and pays through PayPal. I hate to let her go, though! She's just gorgeous and I'm really proud of how she turned out.

My first custom Blythe doll is this Taylor Swift portrait doll. A few weeks ago I ordered a Factory Blythe on a ball-jointed body for myself. As soon as she arrived I posted photos on my Facebook page and my sister immediately asked to buy her as a Christmas gift for my niece. My niece had a photo of Taylor Swift, one of her heroines, and asked the doll be made to look like the photo. So, I sculpted and re-painted the faceplate to get it as close as possible. My sister won't want to have to open the head to change out the scalps if my niece ever wants to change the hair, so I added a Velcro dome and chose a wig that can be worn up or down. I converted the eyes to sleep eyes but I left the eye chips as-is, since my niece really likes to change the color and at that point I hadn't learned to change the eye chips and didn't have any to replace them anyway. Amazingly, while I was looking for an outfit I found a banjo in my doll stash and I was able to string it so it really plays!

You can order your own custom portrait Blythe (made from a Factory Blythe doll) from the contact form below. A custom Blythe includes the doll, one outfit with shoes, either a wig or rooted scalp, eye chip change, custom eye lids, and sleep eye conversion, and your choice of body, for $400 on this website with payment though this site or PayPal or $500 with payment through Etsy or eBay. Add $150 to the price if you'd like me to use a Takara or Hasbro Blythe as the base. Please allow 6 weeks for completion of your doll, as almost all the parts have to be ordered from Asia and take up to a month to arrive. I am working to obtain and list Blythe parts in order to speed up the turnaround time! Check my shops on the Home page for ready-to-ship dolls that cost less than the custom order dolls.

Last week my oldest was home from university for several days so of course I had to make all his favorites foods. He's diabetic, so these foods have all been adapted to fit into a ketogenic lifestyle, with the exception of his favorite Ragu of Beef over Mashed Potatoes. He requested I make the potatoes but we limit how much he and I eat. He, in particular, was able to eat a lot this time due to a great deal of manual labor cleaning up our yard after Hurricane Michael. Physical activity lowers blood sugar and he did so much wood chopping he had to correct with sugar and starches several times in one day, so it was alright for him to have a large serving of mashed potatoes. Although we are several hours inland the wind was strong here and we had several branches the size of small trees down and hanging dangerously. My husband had to work long hours, of course, so I was grateful for my son's help and the help of our neighbors cleaning up.

After several days of low carb pizza and Keto chocolate cream pie and Halo Top ice cream I gained about six pounds, so now that things are back to normal I decided to do a long fast. Autophagy, the process through which the body removes and replaces damaged cells, kicks in after about 12 hours of fasting and peaks around 40 hours. I rarely fast longer than 42 hours because of that and also because I start to feel unwell around that time. Once I made it to 72 hours fasting, but today at 40 hours I couldn't remember the user name to log into our banking app to deposit a check, even though I was just on it earlier paying bills, so I decided it was time to eat! I didn't eat because I felt hungry, however, and today's Keto-Ade recipe is one reason for that. This is a vinegar tonic, very popular right now, but made without all the sweeteners and juice and stuff you usually find in them. This will fit right into a ketogenic lifestyle and will even work for a less-strict carnivore diet.

Keto-Ade Vinegar Tonic
Serves 1
2 TBSP vinegar
3 drops each Young Living Slique Essence, Cinnamon Bark, Black Pepper, Ginger, Bergamot, and Lemon Essential Oils
2 cups water

Mix all ingredients and sip upon awakening, before meals, or when feeling hungry while fasting.

As most of you know I am in Dr. Fung's private Facebook fasting group and the moderators there are very much against coffee with cream during fasting. Any food, even Keto food, raises insulin response which can knock you out of autophagy and which causes weight gain, and they believe the cream prevents autophagy and that broth also does this. However, Dr. Fung himself allows both cream with coffee and broth during fasting (Dr. Fung approves the group but does not monitor it himself) and I avail myself of both to extend my fasts when I would otherwise be unable. Last night, for example, I was terribly hungry around 22 hours of fasting so I had some broth and coffee with cream while everyone else ate supper and that was enough to help me go to bed early and actually fall asleep without eating. Just in case, however, I like to have a vinegar tonic.

In The Obesity Code Dr. Fung explains vinegar is a protective compound because it dampens insulin response. While most magazine and Internet recipes will tell you the only vinegar that works is the raw, unpasteurized apple cider vinegar, Dr. Fung uses sushi as an example of a high-carb food made safe through the use of vinegar and sushi vinegar is rice vinegar which is not raw. So, although I used the apple cider vinegar because I had some, I think any vinegar you prefer will work. I've heard good things about coconut vinegar but haven't found any around here. The oils I use are all from fruits and herbs that have been shown in studies to reduce hunger and increase metabolism and autophagy. Because they are essential oils they have no carbs or calories and you only need a tiny bit. The Slique Essence does contain stevia but because it is so diluted you can't taste it. If you want to avoid stevia all together during fasting you can substitute Grapefruit Essential Oil. Remember, most essential oils are NOT safe to eat. Young Living's Vitality oils are specially formulated to be edible (although any YL oil that is made as a Vitality oil is edible; they are just labeled differently for FDA compliance but they are the same oils). You can purchase Young Living oils from the link on the Home page.

One of the things I've really been missing since we switched to the ketogenic diet are doughnuts. I know I'm not the only one; all my kids have wished for them at some point. It's not like we ate doughnuts all the time before, although if I'd known our son would get Type 1 Diabetes I would have gotten them more often while we still could! We did have them every so often, however. Luckily for me, I prefer cake doughnuts to the yeast-raised kind, most likely due to my Midwestern upbringing. Cake doughnuts are the prevalent recipe in the Midwest and yeast-raised, like the famous Krispy Kreme or Cafe Du Monde are iconic in the South. The reason I say I'm lucky is, as far as I can see, the yeast-raised are impossible to replicate without using wheat.

I've been messing around with doughnut recipes and I think I've gotten pretty to close to a regular cake doughnut. These do require a couple things for success: a silicone doughnut pan and Vital Wheat Gluten. Wheat Gluten is the protein found in wheat. It helps make baked goods elastic, like regular wheat products and has very few carbs. If you have Celiac Disease you will have to substitute eggs or something else. The original recipes I found for doughnuts were either too eggy or tasted very dry. I added butter for moisture, but it does make the doughnuts very apt to crumble. If you want a sturdier doughnut you can replace the butter in my recipe with heavy whipping cream or eggs. I was the only one who found that dough too dry; everyone else loved it! I'm at my lowest weight in two years, and if I can lose that much while eating doughnuts for dinner I'll take it!

Keto Chocolate Doughnuts
Makes 6
Dough:
3 TBSP Unsweetened Cocoa Powder
3 TBSP Coconut Flour
3 TBSP Almond Flour
6 TBSP Vital Wheat Gluten
3/4 tsp Baking Powder
1/4 tsp Baking Soda
1/4 cup Monkfruit Granulated Sweetener
1/2 tsp Salt
7 TBSP Sour Cream
3/4-1 cup Unsalted Butter, softened

Frosting:
1/4 cup Powdered Monkfruit Sweetener
1 TBSP Unsweetened Cocoa Powder
2 TBSP Heavy Whipping Cream
1/4 tsp Vanilla Extract
1.5 TBSP Water

Mix all frosting ingredients until smooth and set aside. The frosting will firm up and become the texture of chocolate mousse. Preheat oven to 300 degrees. Grease a doughnut pan well with butter or coconut oil. Mix all dry ingredients for doughnut dough. Add sour cream and 3/4 cup butter. The dough should seize together into a ball. If it resembles coarse crumbs keep adding butter as needed until it makes a smooth ball of dough. Bake 10-15 minutes or until the edges of the doughnuts just begin to pull away from the pan. Do not over-bake. Cool the doughnuts completely in the pan and then turn out onto a platter. Frost with the frosting very gently (in my quest to make these moist I made them quite fragile) and add sprinkles if desired. I can't find Keto sprinkles, so I just add a tiny bit because my youngest always requests them!

We were so excited about these we had them for supper one night. The kids were thrilled! I never have understood why doughnuts are acceptable as a meal for breakfast only. I'm sorry it took me so long to get this posted. Both kids had a little stomach bug last week and I got it over the weekend. Today I had one home from school with a cough and runny eyes and sore throat. I had a Parent-Teacher Conference with his teacher and when I got there she was taking cough drops for the same thing. I took a bunch of ImmuPro and Inner Defense supplements when I got home, because I sure can't afford to catch another illness! Those are some Young Living products I really recommend.

The eBay links for the doughnut pan and wheat gluten are affiliate links; there is no cost to you but if you buy something on eBay (anything, not just these products) within 24 hours I will get a small payment. Affiliate links help me keep my tutorials and recipes free for you, so thank you in advance for using them.

I am beyond thrilled to announce the arrival of my custom-designed Atelier Mandaline Truly Fitting™️ doll eyes! I've been working since February to bring these eyes to you and I am not disappointed. I worked with a manufacturer to design eyes especially for dolls with shallow, wide, almond-shaped eye pockets such as American Girl and similar dolls and I am happy to announce these are a perfect fit. Now you can change out your doll's eyes for a different color or replace eyes that are stuck, damaged, or cloudy. I have four eye colors right now and plan to order more as I can afford it. You can buy them from my Etsy and eBay shops at the moment and I plan to add them to this site soon. You can link to all my shops from the Home page. Read on to find out exactly how to replace your doll's eyes. This method will work for any vinyl doll and it's perfect for dolls with a narrow neck opening. For another eye swapping method see my tutorial for dolls with wider neck openings.

The doll I am working on today is Tenney by American Girl. As you can see, Tenney has one sticky eye that no longer wants to open all the way as well as a little chunk bitten from her nose. I will replace the eyes in this tutorial and tackle the nose later.

Step 1: Soften the head. In the case of American Girl you can untie the drawstring in the neck or cut the zip tie to remove the head and soften it. You need to heat up the vinyl to make it pliable. Cover the doll's hair and face paint if desired with a plastic bag to protect it in case it gets wet. Line a bowl with a towel and set the head in the bowl with the eyes facing downward. Boil water and pour the boiling water into the doll's neck opening. Use a flashlight to see inside the head and make sure you cover the little lumps inside the head with water. Those are the eye pockets and they need to be soft to remove the eyes. I used to boil the whole head to soften it, as I saw on You Tube, but Camille of Camille's Doll Spa in Chicago posted this genius method on Instagram and that's the only way I do it now. It is much easier on the hair and paint.  Please note, if your doll has pierced ears or rooted hair you will need to line the inside of the head with an oven bag, like the kind you roast Thanksgiving turkeys in, before you pour in the water or the water will just all run out. I may or may not have learned that the hard way!

Let the water sit inside the head for 8-10 minutes or until the face is very pliable when you squeeze it. You can lift the head out of the bowl to test how squishy the vinyl has become. When you can easily change the shape of the face by squeezing it you are ready to remove the eyes.

Step 2: Remove the eyes. Using a long implement like the handle of a wooden spoon, press on the backs of the eye pockets inside the head. Push on them to force the eyes out the front of the face.

You will probably also have to squeeze the front of the doll's face around the eyes as well until you can pop them out. You may have to warm the head more than once if it takes you a while to get the first eye out. If the face has become too cool to remove the second eye warm it up again before you proceed.

Do your best to keep the eyes straight in the sockets when you are trying to get them out or in. I got one of the eyes turned a little sideways and it became hopelessly stuck. I had to re-warm the head several times and ended up having to dig out the eye with a nut pick and gave myself a big blister!

I chose my Variegated Violet eyes as a replacement for the originals. As you can see, these eyes are a near-perfect match for the originals, size wise, and in my opinion are even better because the silver rim around the eye is smaller. These are much easier to situate so the rim doesn't show when the eyes are inserted.

Step 3: Insert the new eyes. Soften the head again by filling it with water as before. While you wait for it to get soft go ahead and carefully rub baby oil on the back and sides of the eye casing. Make sure you don't get the oil into the eye casings. The baby oil makes it much easier to insert the eyes. If you feel like it's too runny you could also use petroleum jelly. You can apply the oil to the eyes or inside the eye sockets or both. I use a cotton swab to apply the oil.

When the face is pliable and the eyes or sockets are oiled place one new eye directly over the eye socket. Make sure the eye is as straight as possible because if it gets turned sideways it will get stuck and could be damaged. These eyes are almost exactly the same size as the eye pocket. Press the eye into the eye pocket. You can squeeze the face around the eye with your other hand while you press the eye in to make it easier. The eye should pop right into the socket. Repeat with the other eye. If you work fast you can get them both inserted without softening the head in between.

Step 4: Straighten the eyes. When you insert the eyes they are often a little wonky, gazing in slightly different directions or with the silver rim visible. Very gently press on the frames of the eyes with a nut pick or bamboo skewer to straighten them up. Make sure they are looking in the same direction and the rim isn't showing.

Voila! Look at those gorgeous eyes! I am even more pleased with these than I thought I would be! These new eyes just popped right in for me, far more easily than the last eyes I replaced using actual American Girl eyes. Now you can make your doll look exactly as you want or repair your doll without having to pay the pricey American Girl Hospital fees!

My eyes come in four colors: the classic Blue Pinwheel similar to the originals used in vintage American Girl dolls, jade green with a hint of aqua called Sea Jade, Root Beer Brown, and Variegated Violet, which range from lavender to dark purple. These are my most popular and requested shades but as they sell I hope to offer even more colors. I do offer custom-painted eyes in my Etsy shop. I've created everything from glow-in-the-dark reptile eyes to zombie eyes to just ordinary hazel eyes and I'm happy to work with you to bring your vision to life! As always, please take a look at my shops using the links from the Home page.

I'm happy to announce all Atelier Mandaline shops are open! Hurricane Florence finally arrived and has been steadily soaking us for two days, but we are doing fine. We will have a lot of leaves and sticks to clean up and the kids and dogs are stir-crazy, but we have been extremely fortunate, for which we are grateful. I also want to thank all those who called and sent texts and reached out here on the blog and Facebook page to make sure I'm okay. You are truly a treasure and I'm so happy to have you in my life!

Please consider helping those in the Eastern part of our state in any way you can; many have been devastated and it will only get worse when all this rain falling up here in the foothills flows back down to the coast. I will most likely be doing a fundraiser in the near future; please stay tuned for that. In the meantime, to make up for the inconvenience and loss of income from nearly a week's closure, I am running a sale on eBay and Etsy. You can link to all my shops from the Home page. 

Well, almost a week after I closed my stores we are still waiting for Hurricane Florence to show up.  It truly is a terrible thing for the Eastern portion of North Carolina; it's just sitting, dumping rain, a slow motion disaster. Here in the Lake Norman area, which is about an hour northwest of Charlotte, we are getting the steady, slow rain we really need, plus some gusts of wind we don't.  Knock on wood, this is all our area will get. The kids were off school yesterday, my stores have been closed since Wednesday, my husband has been at work day and night all week and weekend, and I'm getting seriously bored! I've finished cataloging inventory numbers for my newest pieces and photographed and pre-listed a bunch of new stuff, including several Jamberry nail wraps, cleaned the house until my dust allergy forced a suspension, read two novels... what else to do? My son has been begging for garlic knot rolls and we still have power, so I decided to try a new Keto recipe.

I adapted the popular Fathead dough recipe to create these Cheesy Garlic Biscuits.  The texture is definitely more of a biscuit or muffin texture. I'll have to keep trying to get a yeast bread texture in future recipes, but this dough could be adapted to create all kinds of baked goods and has the soft, fluffy loft that's so difficult to create while staying Keto. I make my dough in the food processor. If you don't have a very large or powerful machine make this dough in two or three batches. I tried to do mine all at once and the blade got stuck and I got a nasty cut on my thumb trying to remove it.

Keto Cheesy Garlic Biscuits
Makes 12

Biscuits:
3 cups colby/jack or cheddar cheese, shredded
4 ounces cream cheese
2 large eggs
2 1/2 cups almond flour
2 TBSP coconut flour
2 tsp baking soda
6 ice cubes
1 recipe Garlic Herb Butter

Garlic Herb Butter:
1/4 cup salted butter
1/4 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp dried Italian Seasoning

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.  Make the Garlic Herb Butter by melting the butter together with the seasonings and set aside, keeping warm. Soften the shredded and cream cheese by heating in a pan or the microwave. Add all ingredients to a food processor and pulse until blended. Blend in batches if necessary. The dough should be the texture of modeling clay, somewhat, but not too sticky. Line a muffin tin with paper or silicone baking cups. Divide the dough into 12 pieces. Roll each piece into a ball and place in the muffin cups. Place the muffin tin on the top rack of the oven. Underneath it, place another pan with about 6 ice cubes. The ice cubes help the dough rise. Bake 13-15 minutes or until the tops are golden brown. Remove from the oven and brush the tops of the muffins with melted Garlic Herb Butter. You can make extra butter for serving by combining the same ingredients but just softening and not melting the butter.
Per biscuit these have 327 calories, 28.7 grams Fat, 7.3 grams Carbohydrate, 2.9 grams Fiber, and 13.8 grams Protein

This is a great dough to make use for anything with a traditionally fluffy texture, such as biscuits, muffins, quick breads, or even cake. You can change the seasoning to suit your taste. Try adding sweetener or flavored extracts such as lemon or vanilla or Young Living Vitality Essential Oils for cooking. If you add an extract just be careful to keep the texture the same; you may want to replace a little of the cream cheese with a different wet ingredient or add a little more coconut flour to keep the clay-like texture of the dough. If you don't want any cheese flavor use part skim mozzarella cheese in place of the colby or cheddar. Any pan will need to be lined with silicone or parchment, as this is a sticky dough. If it's still raining tomorrow I might have more recipes for you!

Unless you live under a rock you have no doubt heard about Hurricane Florence, currently barreling straight toward the Carolinas.  You might think, since I live in the Appalachian foothills of Western N. C., I am safe from the storm, but it's increasingly looking as if that's not the case. Therefore, all Atelier Mandaline shops will close tonight until further notice.

I hate to close up shop because honestly, I need the money and I am just starting to see the typical fall sales increase.  However,  I am all too well aware of the danger we're in. I'm trying not to panic, but the continual resurrection of Fran and Hugo by meteorologists has me scared. In 1996 I experienced the longest night of my life, the time I drove through Hurricane Fran. I was attending university in Greenville (considered part of NC's "Inner Coast") and Fran was supposed to hit us directly. We were told we would be without water or electricity for at least a month. My younger sister was also at ECU and my parents were making me share my car with her (even though I bought the car with my own money, incredibly unfair in my opinion... but that's a story for another day!) and the day Fran came ashore was her day to have the car. I wanted to go inland to our parents' house near Raleigh but she refused to leave and she also refused to bring the car to me. She had all the vast confidence in her knowledge of the typical college freshman and she had determined the storm wouldn't hit her. Besides that, she lived on campus and would have far more access to supplies than I. Finally around 4PM I convinced her to bring the car and I got out of town. 

By the time I made it to Wilson, about 45 minutes away back then, it was apparent I waited too late to leave. The sky was pitch black, as though it were midnight and not 5 PM. Trees were bent nearly prone across  Highway 64 and I had to drive in the center of the road. Rain lashed the windshield in sheets and branches and leaves and even several frogs blew into my windshield and the wipers were as nothing. I was rolling along, blindly,  wondering what on earth I could do. Back then the highway between Wilson and Raleigh was a straight, empty stretch of road through apparent wilderness. I didn't want to face the storm from my car but I couldn't see any gas stations or anywhere I could shelter. Suddenly, seemingly from nowhere, an 18 wheeler pulled onto the highway in front of me. I could see the truck's tail lights and I pulled up as close behind it as I dared and stuck right behind it, following it all the way to Raleigh (To this day my children love to hear the story of the time my guardian angel saved me in the form of a truck!). There, I had to part with the truck and cut through downtown Raleigh to the bedroom town of Garner. The trouble was so many roads were closed due to flooding I kept getting turned around by police. After three or four detours I was hopelessly lost. The street signs were unreadable, spinning like tops on their poles. I drove on desperately in what I hoped was the right direction when I saw the Rialto theater and realized I was heading the wrong way. I turned around and  after a bit the tall facade of Shelton's Furniture became visible, guiding me. The rest of the drive was a straight shot and I eventually made it. The drive, typically a two hour drive, took more than six hours.

Despite all that the storm hadn't reached its full potential yet. We spent a long and fearful night as it got increasingly worse. I slept in the basement, convinced the skylights in the roof were going to break open. Morning showed trees down everywhere and the entire back yard flooded. We were without power for several days and counted ourselves lucky, since we had water. Many in the area were without water or power for up to a month. It turned out the Fran forecast was completely wrong. It just brushed over the coast and hit Raleigh head-on. I had driven right under it the whole way. I ended up stuck in Garner, meeting the neighbors at our grill in the mornings for coffee, spending the days helping cut and clear fallen trees, taking cold showers at night. The worst part of it all was my sister's extremely annoying smugness for ages and ages afterward!

Fran taught me respect for hurricanes and contempt for meteorological forecasts, and I'll never forget those lessons as long as I live. Now I'm responsible for my children and my house and my business and since my husband is in charge of the power grid for the Carolinas, he will be at work and I will be on my own. We are praying for the best but preparing for the worst. I hope I'll be able to reopen soon.

Summer is ending. Yesterday we moved our oldest back into his university. Since he started a semester early he's already halfway through his sophomore year and this was his third move-in. It's almost unbelievable to me, my little boy could be starting his third semester of college. It seems as though I started my third semester of college fairly recently!

The third move-in doesn't warrant nearly the amount of shopping and planning and decorating and commemoration and tears of the first. In fact, I tried to snap a photo but got him looking at his phone and then it started pouring rain so I didn't even get my usual photo off all three kids in front of the campus fountain. We already have all the WCU shirts and hats and chairs and stuff so we didn't go to the university bookstore. Instead we went out for lunch, swung by Walmart to pick up some last-minute essentials, and then we hit the thrift store. I always love checking fresh out-of-town thrift stores when I'm traveling and this one didn't disappoint. My eagle-eyed kids spotted Funko Pops and then found this Tyco My Pretty Ballerina doll from 1990 still in her box. She works and was in such good shape I already got her restored and listed in my shops. You can link to my shops from the Home page.

This is a transitional time in my life, as well as the year. My oldest persuaded me to enroll in entrepreneurship and microeconomics classes to help me run my business better. And finally, after nearly eight months of effort I finally found a trustworthy (I hope!) manufacturer and paid a deposit on my first order of custom-designed doll eyes. The order costs more than I've ever spent on inventory and this is the first time I've ever taken out a loan to purchase goods for my stores. I lay awake for hours after sending the payment! As you know, I've had  few of these deals fall through, so please send me all the good vibes you can muster in hopes this works! To begin I ordered eyes to fit American Girl and similar dolls with a wider, shallower eye pocket than most dolls. I designed four colors. If these turn out and sell well I hope to eventually expand my color and size selections. 

I took a business trip earlier this month and picked up two huge consignment lots, mostly fashion for girls and women, but also some cameras and electronics and men's shoes. I'm working on getting these listed. All my stores are getting more fall and winter pieces. I'm now a Top Seller Stylist on Poshmark, which means you can request I style you for a season or a specific event, like a wedding or vacation. Just ask for styling and make sure your style card is filled out with your size and preferred brands and styles and I'll create one or more outfits for you and send you a discounted offer. 

I really feel like I'm on the cusp of expanding my business in a big way, and it's frightening and exhilarating at once. The entrepreneur classes are helping me feel like I have more of a grasp of what I'm doing, although fitting in yet another thing isn't easy.

I've been working on my personal transition, as most of you know, for almost a year, ever since our son's Type 1 Diabetes diagnosis. I've been going slowly and deliberately. First I researched the disease and changed our diet to ketogenic. After a few months I added intermittent fasting. For the past month or so I've been adding new activities, like mountain biking. I would love to see a faster transformation, but I don't want to burn myself out and quit like I have in the past. August has not been kind to me. I strained a muscle in my shoulder or neck three weeks ago. It seemed like it was better so I went biking and swimming last week and inflamed it all over again. Sitting on the couch with a hot compress on my neck combined with eating out during my business trip (even though I only ate one meal a day) and a couple cheat meals with wheat or potatoes requested by my son before he left combined to pack on four pounds. I know it's not the end of the world, and it doesn't erase all my progress. When my son was diagnosed I was wearing a tight 2X in clothes, but yesterday, even with some weight gain, I wore a size M shirt and I tried on a size L shirt I was planning to sell and found it fits so I'm keeping it. Even so, I don't want things to get out of hand so I am planning at least a few days of meat-heavy zero carb. Several doctors in my Instagram feed have switched to the carnivore diet and transitioned their patients to it and they report great improvement in health from joint pain to diabetes, so I think it won't hurt to try it for a while and I know from experience how well it beats bloating and whisks off weight!