The Woes of Buying Doll Boots, Skates, and High-tops on eBay #DollCollector #DollClothesPatterns

In a room with a white floor and a mottled blue wall, we see the following boots (left to right, back row): silver cowboy boots; black high-top army-style work boots, and yellow go-go boots (from a Vintage Barbie, with a 1960's style heel); and then in front of these three we see a pair of red rain boots with cream-colored soles. The logo for Chelly Wood dot com appears in the upper right corner of the photograph.
Please visit ChellyWood.com for free printable PDF sewing patterns and tutorial videos for making doll clothes to fit dolls of many shapes and all different sizes.

Doll boots can be a lot of fun to dress your doll in, when you’re making winter raincoats and ponchos for them to wear in your fall dioramas. But if you’ve ever tried to buy vintage Barbie boots, you’ll probably already be familiar with this little problem:

The photo shows a woman's finger inserted inside a white vintage Barbie go-go boot, but the back of this boot is cracked wide open, exposing the woman's finger. This is an unnatural crack, not one that is meant to be there, but one that has appeared after much play.
Please visit ChellyWood.com for free printable PDF sewing patterns and tutorial videos for making doll clothes to fit dolls of many shapes and all different sizes.

Some sellers on eBay are experts at hiding the flaws in their products. Then, when you buy it and it arrives home, you take it out of the package and say, “Wait a second… is this a bait-and-switch?”

That’s why it’s always a good idea to look through every single photo offered by the seller before you buy. A lot of times they will leave the photos that show damage or stains (like the stains on the doll boot below) until the very last photo they upload.

In this photo, a vintage Barbie go-go boot from the 1960's is worn on the finger of a woman, but all along the front of the boot, we see tiny splotches of yellow stains. The boot itself is slightly cracked in front but still sealed at the top.
Please visit ChellyWood.com for free printable PDF sewing patterns and tutorial videos for making doll clothes to fit dolls of many shapes and all different sizes.

Still, as I said in last week’s doll-shoes-topic blog post, eBay is a great place to stock up on doll shoes, for dolls of every shape and kind. Just make sure you know what you’re buying.

Let’s say, for example, you stumble across these cute little ice skates, and they’re labeled “fashion doll skates.”

Tiny ice skates are held in a woman's hand. They are white with white laces and rust-colored soles. The silver of the blades shines in the light of the camera's flash. They are well painted with very few flaws, but one skate's blade has a strange leg coming down from the skate's sole, like the leg of a miniature table. The other skate's blade is free of this extra knob or pole that sticks out below the skate about a half an inch.
Please visit ChellyWood.com for free printable PDF sewing patterns and tutorial videos for making doll clothes to fit dolls of many shapes and all different sizes.

Well, to say they are “fashion doll skates” would definitely be true, but they’re not just for any old fashion doll. They’re made for Bratz dolls.

For those of you who don’t know what a Bratz doll is, they are dolls that come with detachable feet that already have the shoe on them, as shown below:

This is a photo of a doll's foot (removable) with a silver ankle bracelet from which dangles a pink and silver star pendant. The foot wears a white shoe with a Mary Jane style strap across the top of the foot but a sandal-like heel to the white shoe. There's also a pink and white striped strap that wraps around the heel higher up. One can barely tell that the sole of the shoe is pink like the star and the stripes on the back strap of the shoe.
Please visit ChellyWood.com for free printable PDF sewing patterns and tutorial videos for making doll clothes to fit dolls of many shapes and all different sizes.

So if you ordered those “fashion doll ice skates,” once they arrived, you’d look inside them and discover this little problem:

Here we see two side by side photos. On the left we see a very detailed Converse High Top sneaker, with all the details painted on. It's a blue sneaker with white laces, tiny silver eyelets, a white rubber-looking sole that has tiny black stripes running along it horizontally, and it even features the Converse All-Star circular logo on the high-top. This photo is taken from a side view of the tiny sneaker, which lies in the palm of a woman's hand. But the photo right beside it shows the sneaker from an above-view, looking down inside the sneaker, where we can see that it is not designed for a fashion doll because the inner "well" of the shoe is filled with plastic, leaving only a tiny opening for a plug-shaped appendage (like a door-knob shape) to pop into the shoe.
Please visit ChellyWood.com for free printable PDF sewing patterns and tutorial videos for making doll clothes to fit dolls of many shapes and all different sizes.

Yeah, I bought that sneaker from a seller on eBay who really knew how to play the game. I sent him a message that said, “Will these sneakers fit Ken dolls?” to which he replied, “I don’t know. They’re made to fit 1:6 scale action figures.”

Well a 1:6 scale action figure could mean GI Joe, Action Man, or any number of toys, most of which have their feet already attached, but (as I discovered after the fact) a few of which do NOT. But I assumed, “Oh, hey, if it will fit GI Joe, that’s good enough.”

And I bought them. Like an idiot.

Thankfully they do fit on my Bratz dolls, but that dirty scoundrel on eBay knew good and well they wouldn’t fit Ken. I mean, who doesn’t know what “KEN” refers to?

The image shows a Bratz 8-inch doll wearing a handmade skirt with a handmade short-sleeved shirt. Click on the link in the caption, and it will take you to a page where you can download and print all the free printable sewing patterns for making these doll clothes, along with links to tutorial videos that show you how to make this outfit.

As you can see in the image above, though, those high-top sneakers make the Bratz dolls’ legs look sort of stubby. Overall, I was pretty disappointed that I fell for the old “I dunno” trick on eBay.

When that happened to me, I gave up on trying to buy myself a pair of Converse High Tops for my dolls and decided to just make myself some. And because of that incident, this pattern joined all the others here on ChellyWood.com:

Image of doll wearing Converse-like high-top sneakers with pattern for sewing the shoes. Words overtop say "Before printing, enlarge to fit an American sized piece of computer paper: 8.5 x 11 inches."
Visit ChellyWood.com for free, printable doll clothes patterns to fit many different sized dolls.

And mine DO fit Ken! See…

In this photo, a Ken doll wears a pair of black Converse style sneakers, while African American Lammily doll wears a pair of powder blue Converse style sneakers. The Ken doll appears to be standing with his feet together, quite still, while the Lammily doll appears to be leaning in with one foot cocked in the air while the other foot lifts up on tiptoes. Although we don't see the dolls' faces (we can only see them from the knees down), the photo gives the impression that Lammily has leaned in for a kiss! The watermark reminds us to go to Chelly Wood dot com for the free printable PDF sewing patterns and tutorial videos for making these doll Converse tennis shoes or trainers.
Please visit ChellyWood.com for free printable PDF sewing patterns and tutorial videos for making doll clothes to fit dolls of many shapes and all different sizes.

That’s my Lammily Photographer doll on the right, so they fit Lammily dolls as well. Here’s a link to that pattern, if you want to download the PDF.

So hey, I made lemonade out of the lemons that I bought from someone on eBay without really knowing what I was going to get. Dolls are for having fun with anyway, so why not?

One of my happiest doll-play memories as a child was when I got a pair of red ice skates for my Barbie. I used to fill up a cake pan with water, freeze it, and then play “Dorothy Hamill, figure skater” with my Barbie for HOURS.

So… Much… FUN!

Yes, skates are super fun to pose your dolls in, as are boots and high-tops, but the moral of the story is… know what you’re buying before you buy!

Just look at these skates (below). If you saw the image on the left, you’d think, “Those are cute.” But once you see the image on the right, you can see that the paint is faded on one side of the skate.

There are two photos of a little fashion doll roller skate. On the left, a woman's hand holds up the roller skate so you can see just the left side of it. There appears to be pink laces painted on the white roller skate, and the front wheel of the skate is also painted with a pink ring in the middle. On the right, the same woman's hand holds up the same roller skate, but now we're looking at the skate from straight ahead, where we can see not just a profile of the laces but the whole area where the skate is painted with pink laces -- except the right half of each lace is faded. So on the left, the laces are pink, but on the right, the laces appear to be faded where you can't see much of the pink color anymore.
Please visit ChellyWood.com for free printable PDF sewing patterns and tutorial videos for making doll clothes to fit dolls of many shapes and all different sizes.

So be wary of sellers who only offer one photo or who only offer photos taken at a single angle. Buy from sellers who let you see up, down, around, behind, and right inside your doll shoes/boots/skates, etc…

Now before we go, I want to mention my friend Dodi’s shop again. She’s an honest seller on eBay, and I’ve really enjoyed the “Little Extras” doll shoes that I’ve bought from her in the past. To learn more about these doll shoes, go back to last week’s Tuesday blog post, “Where to buy CUTE doll shoes.”

These are some of the shoes I’ve bought from her:

A rainbow of shoes arcs across the center of the photo. These shoes can be described left to right as follows: red flats, black flats, blue slippers with tiny white flowers atop the slippers' cushioned area at the front of the foot, and pink Mary Janes. The ChellyWood.com logo appears in the corner of the photo.
Please visit ChellyWood.com for free printable PDF sewing patterns and tutorial videos for making doll clothes to fit dolls of many shapes and all different sizes.

Dodi’s shop is called Barbie1959Pink, and she’s an honest seller with very fair prices for her hard-to-find Barbie shoes! She’s also giving my followers a special offer right now: “any of your followers that mention you in my store can get a discount prior to payment on my shoes.”

And now for my closing statement, which is (yet again) a plug for my paid course…

If you enjoy the doll clothes sewing tutorials that are free on my YouTube channel, you should have a look at my paid courses on the Creative Spark online learning platform. Here’s what people are saying about my course called “How to Alter Doll Clothes Patterns” so far:

Student 1: “I love this course! I am learning so much. You do a wonderful job. Thank you so much.”

Student 2: “This is more in-depth than I thought.”

To read more about my free sewing patterns and tutorials, please visit the “Helpful Tips” page.

Disclaimer/Credit/Affiliate Marketing Link:

*ChellyWood.com earns money by linking to Amazon, eBay, Michaels, Etsy, and other online affiliate programs. Links provided above may be affiliate links. For a full list of my affiliate programs, and to understand how cookies are used to help this website earn money, please see my “Privacy Policy” page.

Ken and Barbie dolls are manufactured and sold by Mattel. Today Mattel holds the registered trademark for them (™).

Bratz dolls are products offered by MGA Entertainment, which holds the registered trademark for them (™). Please visit the MGA Entertainment website to learn more about their company and its trademarked toys.

GI Joe and Action Man action figures are owned and distributed by Hasbro Pulse, which holds the registered trademark for these toys (™). Please visit the Hasbro Toy website to learn more about their company and its trademarked toys. This link will also help you find Action Man figures specifically, and those figures are still distributed throughout the United Kingdom.

All the doll clothes I’ve designed on this website are marked with a Creative Commons Attribution mark. Any similarity to other companies’ or other crafters’ projects of a similar nature is unintended.

Are you lovin’ all this free stuff from ChellyWood.com? Please show your support by telling people about ChellyWood.com. That’s what the “Creative Commons Attribution” mark on my patterns means: if you use my free patterns and tutorials, you should tell people where you got all this great free stuff!

12 thoughts on “The Woes of Buying Doll Boots, Skates, and High-tops on eBay #DollCollector #DollClothesPatterns

  1. Thankfully most ebay sellers are honest, but I’m sure everyone can identify with the disappointing buys you’ve had. The bad sellers can be very bad, but the good sellers can be so wonderful and kind. As you point out, buyers need to read descriptions and look at photos carefully, and ask lots of questions.
    Your sneakers look great, and thanks for sharing the pattern.

  2. Thank you again Chelly. I hope people are taking advantage of all you great posts, patterns and classes. Also any of your followers that mention you in my store can get a discount prior to payment on my shoes.

    1. That’s awesome! I’ll add that text to the blog post.

      I also do a lot of my advertising on Fridays, so I’ll make sure this particular blog post gets a little bit of extra traffic from my Facebook followers as well. I love to support HONEST sellers on eBay — like YOU, my friend!

  3. I hear you on reading carefully. I bought an LOL doll and I didn’t look carefully enough. There was no mention of no hands, but if you enlarge the picture you can see there are no hands. I wouldn’t have minded, it’s for fitting for my granddaughters doll. But it really got me to go back to the site and find out ALL her dolls have no hands. She sells them separately for $15! Burned once, sure won’t order from her again. Thanks SO MUCH for the patterns, with 5 granddaughters I need all the help I can get!

    1. So sorry to hear about your eBay kerfuffle. Ugh! But I’m glad you are enjoying my patterns — and it sounds like your precious granddaughters are also enjoy the benefits of this website.

      Thank you for taking the time to leave a thoughtful comment.

  4. Yes, a lot of sellers either do not know what doll they are for, or overlook or that quite a few off brand shoes are of poor quality. So like Bratz dolls have nubs or pets not feet and have special shoes. I always try and explain who they are for, look for problems and mention if they are clones. But as I am human and also make mistakes. But if I do I always make it right. And on another note, I do hope you getting better. Mental hugs and wellness wishes being sent.

    1. Thanks, Dodi, and yes, it has been a slow recovery, but I’m definitely getting better.

      I’m up and walking around and doing things now. Two weeks ago, I couldn’t say that!

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