Kaya's So Fancy

As I'm sure everyone knows, AG has a spring sale going on at the moment. I believe the sale is on till Tuesday?  Anyway I ordered a CRAP ton of stuff, it came Friday and today I'm going to show you the new things I got for Kaya! Ready?

Here we go!

The first thing I picked up was Kaya's Pow-Wow Hair Set of Today:

Here is the front and back.

The packaging does have nice graphics.

The back has a little blurb what's inside and why.

I have two other hair sets (Kit's and Addy's) that I will show you eventually and one thing I've noticed is how nice the packaging is.

The cardboard folds out and everything is attached with rubber bands.

No ripping, tearing or cutting needed to get anything out! This set was a little harder to get back together but for the most part I've found that these sets go back in the packaging for storage really easily! Something I always appreciate.

This set includes a woven headband, two woven plaques and two long, yellow, satin ribbons:

 It also comes with a nice little instruction card that shows you how to wrap Kaya's braids:

Here is a close up of the plaques:

They're kind of squishy? At first I thought that the plaques were just printed but upon further investigation each plaque seem to be two woven pieces sewn together. That's probably why they feel a bit pillow like. The ribbons are long and firmly attached. My only complaint IS THE GIANT TAG.

The headband is one long piece with two white ribbons sewn onto the end.

Unlike the plaques, this is not double sided so it's thinner and also if I flipped it around you could see how it was woven. AND THE GIANT TAG. Seriously AG. Either come design a small tag for hair items or STOP putting them on all together. I'm getting tired of removing them.

Thankfully there is no tag on the ribbons!

They are just two, very long yellow satin ribbons. And they are also the whole reason I bought this set.

I thought they would look nice with this:

Squee! This is Kaya's Modern Fancy Shawl Outfit. It's one of the special edition sets for 2015 and was also part of the sale. I had to get it. I pretty much fell in love the moment I saw the color. Not to mention the shawl, the boots and all the embroidery! It's a five part set. So let's start at her head and work our way down!

This is the hairpiece:

It's a woven patch, covering three feathers and is on a comb. It slides into her hair easily and stays put. I'm not quite sure which direction the patch is supposed to face (out or towards her hair) but I put it this way so that the decoration was easily visible. Makes sense to me but I'm probably wrong ;)
 
Here is the dress:

It's made of a rich, red satin and is decorated with yellow and white stain ribbons along the bottom. It's not lined (doesn't need to be) but it does have the nice no-snag velcro. Thank goodness. I did actually try to snag it a little bit but really couldn't manage it. I would say older children still need to be careful but it's not as snag prone as the Fairy Dress for the New Orleans girls!

Over the dress goes this:

It's a faux-leather shoulder drape. It's embroidered on the front and decorated with a patterned ribbon.

Here is the inside:

It has two red satin ribbons to help keep it in place around her waist.

The neckline and bottom edge are unfinished but I believe that was intentional. It makes the whole thing look a bit more handmade.

You can also see the embroidery and the decorative ribbons a bit better here.

My one and only true complaint with this set is that this shoulder-drape tends to ride up. I think it needed another set of ribbons closer to her arm pit? I spent a good portion of the photo shoot tugging it back into place. One thing that I really like about this piece is that they also used the no-snag velcro on it too! I thought that was a nice touch since this piece goes over the nice, catch-able, satin dress.

This set also comes with a pair of matching, faux-leather, embroidered boots:

The bottom of the upper is edged with the same patterned ribbon.

The bottom of one has the American Girl logo pressed into it:

They look amazing on!

The boots go up to just a little under her knee and are very easy to get on. They are soft-soled. She seems like she would stand fairly well in them, but my Kaya is older and a bit on the looser limbed side. I think a newer doll would have no trouble. And of course they velcro up the back for ease of use.


The final (and best) piece in this set is the shawl:

It's heavily embroidered, red satin with fringe on three sides. It also has a decorative ribbon trim on the two short sides.

The shawl has thumb loops on the upper two corners:

So that it easily stays on.

Here it is on:

It can be a bit tricky to get on Kaya. She does have to have her arms up and spread a bit for the shawl to reach both of her thumbs. It also tends to catch a bit on the back of her shoulder drape but that doesn't seem to do any damage. Just something to watch out for!

And you can see the embroidery pattern up close here!

Finally, here is everything on Kaya:

I love how rich the red of the dress and shawl look next to her skin and hair. The white of the faux-leather really makes all the embroidery pop too. One thing I really like about this set is how there seems to be very little scrimping on anything. The fringe is thick and heavy and the decorative ribbon is pretty much everywhere they could put it. I especially like the ribbon around the bottoms of her boots and the edges of her shawl. The materials that everything is made out of feel so nice and it's all constructed so well. I'm honestly pretty impressed!

I am really glad I got the hair set for the ribbons though.

I understand that this set comes with a hair piece but I think that the ribbons just add a little something extra that the outfit was missing.

And now for the pic spam:

A close up of her pretty face!

Here she is without the shawl:

Basically I couldn't stop taking pictures for the post. I think I took 90 in all and a quarter of those were just of Kaya in the dress!

I think she had a good time!

And here is one more with Kirsten looking on a little jealously.

I can't blame you Kirsten! Kaya looks AMAZING!

I think it's pretty easy to tell how much I love this set. I have a few concerns but not many. Mostly I wish that they had used anything but white on the bottoms of her boots. There is a reason all the pictures are inside this time and that's it! I worry about the white eventually looking dirty. I'm also a little worried about dye transfer. Hopefully that won't be an issue but if it leaves marks on her skin I'll be sure to let you guys know. Of course I already talked about the shawl being a little hard to get on and the inability of the shoulder drape to stay put. You can see I already need to tug it back down in the picture above!

Other than those few things, this set is perfect! The colors, all the little details of the ribbon and the embroidery, the quality of the materials. It all adds up to one gorgeous outfit. I actually almost got the pink set from last year instead of this and man I'm glad I didn't! Though I do still want that now that it's a more reasonable price.

I think AG figured out some things after last year's special additions. 1. 64 bucks is WAY too high even with an accessory. and 2. Concentrate on the clothes. Each of the special editions this year seem to be higher in quality and much more reasonable in price. I know a lot of people don't like special editions but I don't mind them. I especially don't mind paying $48 for something this nice. With the sale price I was even happier! So A+ this time around AG!

I also really like the hair set. I've always like their hair ribbon sets and these new sets are even better in my book. They have a nice variety of clips, barrettes, ribbons and other things. My girls always need more hair bling!

I hope you all enjoyed this look at Kaya's hair set and fancy shawl outfit! Till next time when we talk about more of the things I got!

P.S. Oh! My Wrennie and my bff's doll Callie have started their own blog here! It's called It's She Dovely and it's just a bit of collaborative fun! Go check it out if you're interested.