New Year, New Topic and Cleocat!

Hello! Hope you had a very happy Festive season and are enjoying the New Year so far! I had intended to do a Yule/Christmas (we celebrate both!) catch up and present haul, but that seems to have led to A LOT of procrastination, so I'm just going to carry on blogging as normal! I've also decided with the New Year and a rekindled love of my Blythe dolls to include a new topic on my blog, DOLLS!

One surprise I received for Christmas was from my sister:

It's a Zelf! And Dandy-Lion the Zelf at that. A Zelf that is a Lion...if you hadn't guessed!

At first I wasn't sure about it, Lottie said she got it for me because she was seriously stuck for what to get me  and I had a small collection of various Dam, Russ and Weetos trolls when I was a kid, and these look a lot like trolls. I'll certainly agree that he does have that Troll charm to him that I always loved as a kid! I unpacked him and looked through the little collector's leaflet that was included at all the different Zelfs you can get, and decided then and there that I wasn't going to get into collecting them all, I can't really afford it and between the Lolita and Blythe dolls already stuffed into my tiny terrace house, there was just no room for another collection.

So I plopped him down on a shelf next to my TV, with those eyes staring at me:

And I caved! Oh no! So I decided to get one a month, in January, James treated me to Cupie, the Cupid Zelf.

Then I joined the Zelfs buy and sell group on Facebook. I lurked, a couple of days went by. Then I noticed a couple of topics cropping up about sending off for a Cleocat and receiving email, letters and the Zelf itself back. I looked it up, you have to send off receipts for purchases totalling £30 and a form you can either print off or cut out of the magazine. Our printer's bust, I dashed out and bought the magazine, then trucked down to Toys r Us for £30 worth of Zelfs. I settled on Two scented blythes, Frostette and Spellinda, and a playset to get the exclusive Ribbita Zelf - thought I might as well since it was such a big purchase! I'm not overly fussed on the playset if I'm honest, but it's a cute way to display 3 Zelfs, so it can stay for now - Ribbita is ADORABLE though!

I sent off and waited a couple of weeks...then an email arrived saying that Cleocat was on her way and would be a few days...
I missed the postie, another day to wait...
Then finally...

She's here!

Her packaging is gorgeous, it's trimmed round the edges with gold and an Egyptian theme print:

 You can see some of it here, and her phrase "Glam yourzelf up and feel like a queen!", also her the Limited Edition label, her name and type of Zelf - Cleocat the Pharoah Zelf!

A close up of Cleocat herself and with her charm and comb:

The back of the packet with all of her information, I like that her birthday is listed as "3000 years ago (give or take)" it's a nice touch!

Now, personally, I hate when toys are left in their packet, it doesn't seem like the right place for them! I like to see them played with at least a little - even if it is by a collector like me! So out of the packet she comes:

On her little backing tray. I tried to keep the packet as intact as possible because I like to keep the boxes for all my Zelfs but the glue was super strong on this one so a fair bit of it got torn, most of her illustration is still okay though!

Fully liberated and sat in my hand:

She is really beautiful in person and much easier to see all that gorgeous detailing out of the packet! She has white hair with gold tinsel, which is nice, but a little odd as the tinsel tends to droop at the back where it isn't supported by the hair and is much more flexible, a few twists of the hair to mix it in mostly solved this problem though. Gorgeous blue jewels on her headdress and chestplate and beautiful blue eyes to match. She also has a Loincloth which is made from a very flexible like rubber material - I did worry when I saw this that she wouldn't be able to sit down or pose properly, but as you can see it doesn't hinder positioning her at all. There is gold and turquoise detailing over her headdress, chestplate, loincloth, around her eyes, on the inner parts of her ears and on the back in three rings towards the end of her tail, the loincloth belt and her "cutie mark". Very glamorous! Cleocat's dark blue/grey colouring means that these details also stand out really nicely and are not overpowering.

Here's some shots of Cleocat's back, it felt strange taking photos from this view!

As you can see her "cutie mark" consists of the Zelf "Z" with the Eye of Horus just above it - an ancient Egyptian symbol of protection, royal power and good health - very fitting for this Pharoah! 

Cleocat's comb and charm:

A golden yellow comb continues the theme and a golden Pyramid with blue jewel matches purrfectly!

But what's this?

The back of the Pyramid has Cleocat's number out of 10,000, as you can see I got 635! The charm is a really nice weight, and slightly cold to touch, so made from some kind of metal/plating.

Next to look through the collector's leaflet pack:

There's a little collector's certificate which again has the number out of 10,000 on and offers congratulations on the "lucky find" - well maybe not so in my case since I sent off for her, but there are only 750 available, so maybe so?

I haven't seen much about the Series 4 Zelfs available, so I was actually excited to have a look through the leaflet too!

There's quite a few new Zelfs which I'm looking forward to seeing more of and a couple of repeats such as Pandela who I really want a chance to get hold of, so I'm glad she's in another series!

So that's the new Cleocat Zelf, I hope you enjoyed looking through all of her photos and reading my small review. I really love this Zelf and am glad I managed to get a hold of her, she sits pride of place next to my Catsby on the Zelf shelf!

(L-R: Ribbita, Dandy-Lion, Cupie, Cleocat, Frostette, Catsby and Mint Spellinda)

Ooooh, which leads me onto one other Zelf related thing!

My other half James, doesn't believe in Valentine's day, he thinks its a Hallmark holiday and I do agree with him to a point. We were discussing it whilst walking through town a few weeks ago and glancing round at all the usual soppy tat. James was being particularly harsh about it all and basically saying that people who fall for the commercialism are all morons, so I set him straight and said that sometimes people need a set day of the year to celebrate the love and appreciation for their partner, otherwise it could easily be forgotten with the busy lives people lead. Anyway, I didn't think much of it and wasn't expecting anything, especially since we celebrate out getting together anniversary 2 days prior and he'd already bought me a Blythe for that, until he came home from work on the Saturday with a little gift bag! It had an adorable written card and The Great Gatsby on DVD in. I was so touched! He knows I've been wanting to watch The Great Gatsby for what seems like an age, so we even sat and watched it together with a delicious dinner we'd made together. He's a keeper ;D What a fantastic evening, makes me well up with tears of affection thinking about it!

A few days later, we popped out for some bits for the house. On the way home James said he wanted to pop by the big Sainsbury's for some donuts, I sighed, he eats a lot of donuts so I'm pretty sick of the sight of them. I waited in the car since Zac had nodded off in the back. He came back with a shopping bag, I peered into it, no donuts...but there was...a Zelf! On closer inspection I noticed he'd written "The Great..." above Catsby, I was very very amused! You might be able to see it in this photo:

But if you can't, don't worry, here's a picture I snapped before freeing The Great Catsby:

So you see perhaps the mysterious Great Catsby is worthy of sitting besides my Cleocat...perhaps...