Hearts 4 Hearts Girls Lauryce Doll Review

After months of searching and waiting, Lauryce is finally here!

All I can say is WOW!  She was so, so, so worth all the waiting and the searching.  I have been checking  every Target store every time I went for months.  It has become part of my Target routine to always take any H4H doll they had on the shelf over to the scanner to check for stock in the back (which there never was).  I even found both of the newest dolls, Mosi and Shola, in Target recently, but passed on them to wait for Lauryce.  I had been looking for her on Amazon too, but only saw her available from third party sellers for four times her retail price.  After finding Target restocked with the other H4H girls, and still being disappointed that there was no Lauryce, I finally found her available on Amazon for $24.99 with free shipping.  I ordered her from Amazon, and I'm so glad that I did.  I still haven't seen her in a store yet.  I guess the old routine of looking for her every time I go there  might be a hard habit to break. :)

On with the review... Lauryce is a Hearts 4 Hearts Girl from Playmates Toys.  She comes in a covered window box.  There is a large picture of her on the front flap of the box, which opens like a door, so you can see the actual doll through the clear plastic window.  The front of the box stays closed with Velcro dots on the right side at the top and bottom.  The "larger than actual size" picture on the cover just does not do Lauryce justice.

 

The right side of the box has links to visit hearts4heartsgirls.com to find out more about Lauryce, and facebook.com/HeartsForHeartsGirls for the latest news and updates.  

The left side of the box has more information about Lauryce.

 A donation is made to charity when you buy a Hearts 4 Hearts doll.  The donation concept is similar to that of the Karito Kids dolls.  A portion of the purchase price of every H4H doll goes to World Vision, a humanitarian organization that helps girls like Lauryce.  World Vision is dedicated to building a better world for children and their families and communities in the US and around the world.  World Vision does this through education, water and hygiene, micro enterprise, community development, and disaster relief.

The back of the box has pictures of all of the Hearts 4 Hearts Girls dolls except for Shola, the newest doll.

 
 When you open the flap on the front of the box, you can see Lauryce through the clear plastic window.

The inside of the flap looks like a scrapbook or bulletin board with pictures and notes about Lauryce.

Straight out of the box, Lauryce is adorable!

She has the most beautiful inset gold-green eyes.  I just love the look of inset eyes, and hers are striking.  I believe that Lauryce and Shola have the same color eyes.  She has tanned skin and rose colored lips

Included in the box is a mini storybook made of heavy cardstock, a blue comb with a purple hairband, and a friendship bracelet for girls.

I put the friendship bracelet on Lauryce to wear as a necklace.  It has two plastic heart charms.  The pink heart charm  has the logo silhouette of two girls on one side and has the word GIRLS on the other side.  The purple heart charm has the Hearts 4 Hearts slogan, "Changing the World one heart at a time!"

The first page of the mini storybook is the title page which says Lauryce's home is in New Orleans.  The book is written as if Lauryce is telling her story in her own words.  

The next page is about Lauryce's family and pets.  Her popa (dad in Creole) is a high school history teacher and her moman (mom) runs an art shop nearby in Carrollton.  She has a rabbit named Pearl, a dog called Rowley, and a cat named Sookie.  The facing page is about Hurricane Katrina which happened when she was four years old.  Her family had to go stay with her aunt in Baton Rouge.  A tree fell across their porch, there were lots of broken windows, and everything inside was ruined.  I can really relate to this story, being a Hurricane Katrina survivor myself.   I don't live very far from New Orleans, and some of our relatives from New Orleans came to stay with us.  We were without power for a week at my house, and there was a lot of damage everywhere you went.  Most people needed a new roof or had some kind of damage.  Businesses here were either closed or only open for very limited hours each day.  You couldn't even get McDonalds or any other food after 6 pm.  It was a very strange and terrible time.  It was months before life returned to normal.  This is part of the reason why I was so drawn to Lauryce.

The next page is about helping others.  Lauryce started the LiL Hearts Club (Living in Louisiana Hearts Club) to help animals because of the stories of all the pets lost and left behind during and after the storm.  She and her friend help out the animal shelter and also walk dogs for people who are busy.  They take their pets to visit nursing homes, to help the people there feel better.  Lauryce's parents also sponsor two children from Haiti.

The last page is about Haiti, which has both hurricanes and earthquakes.  Lauryce tells about the two children in Haiti that they sponsor.  The book was short, interesting, and fun to read.  It encourages everyone, even children, to find a way to help others.

Lauryce comes wearing  a sleeveless dress with a ruffled grey bodice and a satiny skirt in a pastel watercolor print.  She has white underwear, a wide purple and white polka dot hair band, and pink slip-on plastic shoes.  She has shiny silver colored heart shaped earrings and a matching silver bangle bracelet.  The silver bracelet and earrings appear to be made of a soft plastic, painted to look like real silver jewelry.  This is probably for the best, as you won't have to worry about the jewelry staining her vinyl, like you would with a real metal jewelry.  On the other arm, she is wearing 4 rubbery bangle bracelets in pink, green, purple, and blue. 

She has rooted honey blond hair that is long and wavy with a crimped texture to it.  It is silky and hangs in place beautifully.  So far, I have been really impressed with the quality of Hearts 4 Hearts dolls hair.

Lauryce stands 14" tall, and she is made completely of vinyl.  She doesn't have a stuffed torso like American Girl dolls, her little body is made of vinyl too.  She is also shorter and slimmer than AG dolls, but H4H girls make great younger sisters for American Girls.  Here is Lauryce with Kit for size comparison

We also have Dell, so I had to add a few pictures of Lauryce and Dell together.

Lauryce & Dell's nature walk adventure.

As you can see, Lauryce is much more tan than Dell.  Dell is like my middle girl, she doesn't tan, she gets freckles.

I would highly recommend Lauryce, and I'm pretty sure any of the Hearts 4 Hearts Girls, based on our experience with Dell and now Lauryce.  Their quality is excellent and their price is affordable.  A portion of the price goes to charity, and they are instilling in children the desire and goal of helping others.   They have the same posability as American Girl dolls.  I like that they can stand easily on their own.  Her face mold is beautiful and her inset eyes are so incredibly lovely. 

What do you think of Lauryce and the other Hearts 4 Hearts Girls?  Leave your thoughts, questions, and comments below.

 

Ellowyne, Patience & Maudlynne

These are my three newest girls from Tonner and Wilde Imagination.  All three were ordered from the Tonner sale a couple weeks ago. 

Maudlynne, Ellowyne, & Patience

I received a question from Nicolette, asking if Maudlynne would make a good pal for Patience.   That's an excellent question, so I decided to answer it here, in case anyone else was wondering the same thing.  By the way, if you like Ellowyne, you should definitely check out Nicolette's blog, Dilly's Dolly Blog.  She has some very beautiful pictures of all of her Ellowyne dolls, plus great links to sewing patterns, craft tutorials and more.  

To answer Nicolette's question, I think Maudlynne and Patience would make great pals actually.  They are very compatable in size.  As you can see from the pictures, Maudlynne and Patience both have larger heads, whereas Ellowyne has a smaller head more proportionate to her body.   Here's another picture to better show their size comparison in height and proportion.  Ellowyne is 16" tall, Maudlynne is 15.25" tall, and Patience is 14" tall. 

 

A Friendship Story 

"Maudlynne, I'd like to introduce you to Patience, " said Ellowyne.

Getting to know each other.

Budding friendship.

"Let's put our heads together and think of something fun to do."

"I know what we can do," Patience whispers.

"Come on Maudlynne, let's go outside."

"It's such a beautiful fall day!"

Friendship in bloom.

Sharing secrets.

Friends Forever

What do you think?  Do Maudlynne and Patience make good pals?  I would love to hear everyone's opinion on how these two look together.   Leave a comment below to let me know what you think.  And if you have any questions, or a request for anything you'd like to see posted here, please let me know.

Cutie Pops Doll Review & Customized Eye Pops

Cutie Pops are 11" fashion dolls from Jada Toys.  They have ponytails that can "pop" off to change their hair.  Their eyes can also pop off to be changed.  Each doll comes with a set of open eyes, a set of closed eyes, and two sets of ponytails.  I have seen these dolls in stores for quite some time, and always thought they were really cute.  Even though I admired how cute they were, I had not bought one because their glittery eyes just seemed a bit overdone for my taste.  I finally decided to get Chiffon and attempt my very first doll customization.  Here is my Chiffon with her custom eye pops (more details on her customization after her review).

Chiffon came in a huge heart shaped plastic window box with a cardboard back.

Back of the box

Included in the box with Chiffon is a pair of blond hair ponytails, a pair of pink yarn ponytails, open eyes, closed eyes, 4 hair bows, and 10 style pops.  The style pops are smaller decorative pops that can attach to her dress and hair bows.

Here is Chiffon with her blond hair ponytails and open "awake" eyes.  Her blond ponytail pops are long and wavy.  The hair is pretty silky and brushes through easily with a wire wig brush.  She comes with a tiny plastic brush with very short bristles, but I don't recommend brushing the hair with plastic brushes.  I always use a wire wig brush like an American Girl brush, which is much better for doll hair.  

She has bright pink lips and very faint pink heart shaped blush marks on cheeks.  She has big cupcakes in her eyes and big plastic glittery heart shaped lashes. 

Each eye pop has a heart shaped plug on the back that corresponds with the heart shaped hole in her eye.  When you pop off her eye, you are left with a partially painted eye with a hole in the center.  Here is a closeup of what it looks like.  You can see the heart shaped plug on the back of the eye laying on her ponytail on the right.

After changing her eye pops, here she is with her very glittery closed "sleepy" eyes.

You can even make her wink with one open eye and one closed eye.

Chiffon has yellow hair molded onto her head.  Her hair pops have a heart shaped plug that fits into a heart shaped hole on each side of her head.  You can see the turquoise colored heart shaped pop next to her in the photo below.  There is an extra round peg in addition to the heart shaped plug to hold her hair a little more securely.

Here she is wearing her pink yarn hair pops with her open eyes.

I like her sleepy eyes best with her pink yarn hair pops.

There are two different textures of pink yarn in these hair pops, which makes them even more fun.

 

Here are both pairs of hair pops and the 4 hair bows.  You can see the heart shaped plug on the first bow that fits into the hair pop.  The smaller round hole in the bow is where you attach the style pops. 

The dress has plastic hearts with holes attached to it that fits the plug on the style pops.

There was a piece of cardboard attached underneath the dress with a plastic tie.  I guess that was to make sure the dress stayed straight in the packaging.  I just clipped the plastic tie with scissors to remove the cardboard.

Her cute little dress is pink gingham with turquoise and white trim.  She came with 7 cupcake style pops and 3 heart style pops.  She has an adorable pair of white rubbery boots.  The pink cardboard in the back is the piece that was attached to her dress.

She is articulated at her neck, shoulders, hips, and knees.  She has molded on underwear.  Her tiny feet seem to angle inward.

Her legs cross very easily when she sits down due to the inward angle of her feet.  She can sit in a chair beautifully, which is good since she doesn't come with a stand.  She can not stand up on her on, so she would need to be posed sitting in a chair or you'll need to buy a stand separately.

Here she is with no hair pops and no eye pops.  Not such a Cutie without the Pops.

She is pretty close in size to LaDeeDa.  They both have big heads, but Cutie Pops heads are bigger.  Cutie Pops body and legs are bigger around than LaDeeDa's too, so Cutie Pops can't fit in LaDeeDa clothes.  For size comparison, here is Ever After High Apple White, Cutie Pops Chiffon, and LaDeeDa Peppermint Pose Cyanne.

Here's a closeup of the two pairs of eyes that come with Chiffon.  The pair of open eyes have really big cupcakes in the pupil, along with a heart that overlaps into the lavender iris.  Instead of eyelashes, she has big plastic hearts that are completely covered in glitter.  The closed sleepy eyes are turquoise with pink polka dots, completely covered in glitter, and the plastic heart lashes are across the bottom. 

Cutie Pop Customization

To customize Chiffon's eye pops, first I clipped the plastic hearts off with a pair of scissors.  I used some sandpaper to gently sand smooth the outer edge so that there were no bumps where the hearts were.  I used Folk Art acrylic paint to repaint the eyes.  I decided to change her eye color to blue, since I had to paint the iris to cover the bottom of the white hearts.  I painted the iris first, then came back with black to cover the pupil painting over the big cupcakes.  I painted all the way around the top edge of her eye with the black paint.  With white paint, I painted a larger dot and a smaller dot in the black pupil.  I got a set of false eyelashes from Sally's Beauty Supply, and cut them to fit where I wanted them on the eyes.  I glued the lashes on with super glue.  Then I trimmed the lashes shorter, and I think I actually got them a little shorter than I wanted.  Here she is with one original eye and one customized eye.

And here she is with both of her eyes repainted.

Here she is with her repainted eye pops and her pink yarn hair pops.

 
Side by side comparison.

Before

After

I hope you enjoyed this Cutie Pops review and customization.  I'd love to hear your thoughts on the Cutie Pops dolls in the comments below.