Wilde Imagination's Patience as Glinda

Wilde Imagination's Patience as Glinda

 I had a problem with my Patience in Wonderland doll. I wanted to make her clothes, but I couldn't stand the idea of redressing her. I love Alice in Wonderland and I love my Patience in Wonderland. I kept putting off taking her clothes off to measure her for new ones and eventually I just had to accept that I really didn't want to do it.

 So I had to buy another Patience. (At least that's my story and I'm sticking to it.) There was simply no other choice.

 And now I have a Patience as Glinda. Actually she's been sitting in a box in my wardrobe for several weeks now, I just haven't had time to open her up. And luckily, I've never liked the Wizard of Oz (come on Dorothy is supposed to be like nine years old but she's clearly a full-grown woman, that's creepy.) so I'm not going to have any qualms about redressing her. But first, I thought I would share some pictures.

Can we get a little more pink over here?

 My first impression after I deboxed my Glinda was that she looked like the sort of thing a six-year-old girl would hallucinate after overdosing on fairy floss (cotton candy to you americans.) She is exceptionally puffy and fluffy and pink! And sparkly, but there was so much pink that I don't think I even noticed the sparkliness for several minutes. And the skirt is frankly enormous.

The dress is standing up by itself here!

 That dress! Seriously, it isn't the sort of thing I like, but I can't help being impressed and a little overwhelmed by it! The dress itself is made of some sort of light pink nylon taffeta with an overlay of palest (almost white) pink chiffon. The sparkly clusters are not glitter but more like tiny silver studs with some sort of oversized glitter pieces here and there and of course sequin stars. 

At the neck there's an attached silver star shaped ornament with rhinestones and a plastic like butterfly shape that's absolutely covered in iridescent glitter (and yes it sheds glitter). The sleeves fasten at the wrists with snaps, something I don't think I've ever seen before in a doll this small.

Layers and layers of skirt!

The skirt is made up of several layers so that the dress can actually stand up on it's own! Under the sheer sparkly layer is the taffeta of the dress itself which is lined in a fine pink net that gives it extra stiffness. Under these layers is a separate petticoat of a coarser white net.

Even the petticoat can stand up by itself!

And if that wasn't enough, when I took her dress off I discovered it had a little bustlelike attachment sewn into the waistband as well!

Just in case the rest of the dress wasn't frilly enough

The back of the dress is a little more subdued.

Normally I'd call this sparkly, but compared to the front it's positively somber.

Under the dress she wears pink glittery shoes with and elastic strap. They're cute, but not very interesting.

When she arrives her accessories are taped to the side of the box in a little plastic bag. Two little plastic bead bracelets, another glitter covered, butterfly cut-out (this one is threaded on ribbon to be worn as a neklace) and a wand. The bracelets are nice, but not really anything special. The glittery butterfly cutouts, I don't like. They look a little cheap compared to the rest of the outfit, they shed glitter which is not one of my favourite things and tying the necklace on nearly drove me insane.

Jewels fit for a. . . fairy?. . . witch? I'm not quite sure.

I was surprised by how heavy the wand was! It's a metal rod with the star and rhinestone thing from Glinda's neckline repeated on the top, except instead of rhinestones there's a large pearl. And from the weight it's clearly real metal. Actually the weight presented a bit of a problem. The wand comes with an attached poly band to tie it to Patience/Glinda's arm, but I found that unless I balanced it just right as soon as I let go of it, gravity would take over and the star would fall to knee level and Patience/Glinda would have a wand handle poking her in the face. The only way I could get her to look like she was holding it was to balance it on both of her forearms rather than her hands.

The wand and crown. Sounds like the name of an English pub.

The crown. . . I'm still not sure how I feel about the crown. I'm either impressed or disappointed. I can see what they were trying to do, and when it's on the doll, it looks how it's supposed to look. It fits in with the outfit and looks like the crown from the movie when the doll is wearing it. But when the doll isn't wearing it and you look at it by itself, it's kind of clumsy and blah. It's made from some sort of cloudy, translucent acrylic, and like the wand, surprised me with it's weight. It's absolutely covered in a fine, iridescent, glitter, I'm not sure if that is sprayed on or embedded in the plastic. Details are picked out in chunkier shedding glitter that's a little messily applied. There are little sequin stars again, and the rhinestone star again at the front and the lower edge is completely encircled in rhinestones. The rhinestones at the bottom are coming away in several places. And there's an attached poly chinstrap. Which is good. And bad.

The chinstrap is good because there is no way the crown would stay on without one. It's bad because once you put the weight of the crown on top of the dolls head, combined with the weight of all her hair and the weight of her already large head, Patience/Glinda's teeny tiny body is kind of crushed. This isn't an issue of artistic balance, the skirt's so big everything looks in proportion, it's a question of physics. Once Patience/Glinda has her crown on, it's really hard to get her to stand up, even with a stand. Her head kept tipping to one side so much that she would twist out of the stand, or one side of the stand would end up on her waist, the other side would be in her armpit. With the combination of the wand and the crown if you were the sort of person that likes to rearrange their dolls and change their poses frequently, Patience as Glinda would probably be the most frustrating doll in the world.

Lucky for me I am never going to put her in this outfit again, so I will never again have to do the crown and wand balancing act. The fully dressed doll looks amazing, the outfit is lovely, and detailed, and slightly overwhelming but not my thing at all, and the doll is great. My Patience in Wonderland arrived with her hair all squashed and weird, with Glinda that problem has been avoided by turning her head to one side in the box. Simple but effective. And I can't wait to see who else she might be.