Are you curious to know how one becomes a dollmaker? What skills are needed, daily practice, systems and creative paths to take?

Welcome to the place where I plan on discussing all the above. To start this new year on good footing, I wanted to talk today a bit more in-depth about my journey. In the hopes that it gives you clarity if you are in any of the stages that I will mention below.

It is not to brag, or promote that the way I grew is the only way, it is just to give you perspective for your own journey. So you can see there are other ways, that we can all grow differently, that there is no true single path.

Just because it took me 7 years to amass enough dollmaking knowledge to discuss the topic from a teacher’s place, that doesn’t mean it will take you the same to understand all those skills. Just because I always chose to work with my two hands and not hire others to work for me, that doesn’t mean that will be your choice. We are all in our unique paths and I wanted to let you know with more detail how my came along.

This is a long one, so feel free to do more important things if the need arises, and reserve this for when you have some time with a cup of something yummy to drink and read on.

It has been incredible for me to go back through the entire journey and see where I am now.

Maybe this will inspire you to do the same, to go back and see everything you have accomplished, or you might find yourself now in one of the many stages I have gone through and in that case I truly hope it gives you hope and that it inspires to keep forging ahead.

You probably have already heard me say at least somewhere that when I started making dolls I had zero clue about anything. Zip. Nada. This is the absolute truth.

I didn’t know how to sew by hand, use a sewing machine, how to knit, make doll clothes, create doll hair or anything. I didn’t even know how to use a DSLR camera.

When I started the main drive was to make natural dolls, for little kids to play with, as my own daughters were quite small. Whenever I made something I would think of them.

I added simple patch pockets and two-piece hats, made the simplest doll clothes in the world, not just because I intended for them to be super child-friendly but because that was the extent of my skills.

I am very happy to say both the skills and the intent blossomed, by the hand of my growing children and the desire to do “more”.

I wanted to understand doll construction, dressmaking and dollmaking techniques, and very importantly I wanted to sew better doll clothes. I would inspect all items of clothing coming into my house and reverse-engineer the order the garment was sewn together (without taking it apart, as those were our actual clothes).

I would gaze upon knitted finished objects on Ravelry and vintage knitting patterns, wondering about the time where I would actually understand knitting to that degree (I still don’t but I am more comfortable creating things by the seat of my pants).

I started in October of 2008 with this utter lack of skills, making fluffy and squishy children’s dolls, both dolls and dollmaker sporting very wide grins.

Back then I made a bunch of “Sleepy Babies”, a sort of bunting sack doll made with repurposed sweaters and a pointy hat and I sold them for $15. I remember the glee I felt when I then used the money to buy natural toys for my own girls for Christmas, I think they were my very first online purchase. My next one was doll fabric, to make “real dolls”.

It’s funny to think that I started repurposing textiles from the get-go, especially wool and cashmere to make dolls with and I am still doing the very same thing, almost 13 years later.

2009 was a year of much discovery, using my point-and-shoot camera I started to learn a little about photography. I was following many moms and grandmothers on Flickr and marvelled at the way they saw the world, the things that would catch their eye and therefore their camera.

I designed the papoose this year for my girls to carry their dolls outside, a doll carrier that became so popular I was asked to include it in a book. Still the dolls were being made randomly and sold very slowly, most of them would take anywhere from 3 to 6 months to find homes.

Most of my dolls would take me about 12 hours beginning to end, fully clothed. I was using custom spun yarn from my friend Jess, and I was having the time of my life let me tell you. There just seemed to be so much to learn everywhere I looked!

2010 found me with people reserving my dolls and requests for custom dolls, uploads of doll clothing, hats and papooses (I started to learn how to make better doll clothes and wanted to understand production-line work to be efficient in my sewing). I made many different sizes and styles of simple dolls by then, as I eagerly explored doll construction and design.

I was creating a few collections, mostly of seasonal fairies, and already writing quite long stories about the dolls which I would input in their listing. I loved making those fairies because they gave me freedom to use fancier fabrics (like silk dupioni), very ornate yarns and lots and lots of crazy colours together.

This journey is by now two years old, full of a steady stream of dolls and learning.

I opened a blog specifically for my dolls in January of 2011, I had been blogging for a few years on my personal blog, so I was no stranger to writing to the world how I felt and publishing my ruminations.

I did this because it was starting to be a bit too much to write the stories down in an Etsy listing. At that time all my advertising or marketing or whatever I was doing to promote my dolls was done just via my Etsy store and a Flickr gallery page. I kept things extremely simple.

I would post my photos, people would like them and comment or ask questions then and there.

When I opened the blog, it became more easy to explain to others the philosophy behind my dolls, the way I worked, the things that interested me in doll making, how their creative process took place and to share my doll stories.

I saw a huge spike of interest in my work once I was able to communicate what this was all about for me!

I didn’t have a Facebook page even though all the doll makers I knew at the time had very thriving and active Facebook pages, it seemed like it was "the place to be". Lots of comments, like and shares creating a buzz around waldorf-style dolls. Yet I truly craved a more quiet environment to pursue my passion.

For me, with two small children at home and random hours devoted to my doll making, it became more important to concentrate efforts in actually developing my skills and letting people discover me on their own.

If they happened to find my dolls and liked them, then they could stick around. If not, I was sure their path and mine needed not to cross. They would find what they were looking for somewhere else.

This sentiment helped me enormously to combat the guilt of not doing “more” to gain a bigger following or create more awareness around my work. I was just plugging along, learning, meeting people, making friends, all quietly and to my own snail-pace tune.

After all, why would I want to create a massive influx of people wanting dolls from me, when I could only make so few? It didn’t make sense to me to add that level of stress while I was still learning so much and tending my very young children.

At the very end of 2011, even though I had feverishly tried all year, I finally created a pattern that was more in tune with the dolls I was seeing in my head. I called this doll the Figlette. I kept the first doll: Eva.

It took me 3 years to learn enough doll making, through trial and error, to be able to put a pattern together that made my heart sing.

The pattern had very long and slender limbs, ears (unheard of in “waldorf” circles), knees, could sit much easier than my other dolls, had quite long feet that would hopefully allow me to create much nicer-looking shoes, and their faces were a bit more sculpted.

I learned needle-felting this year, but kept it quiet, mainly through creating wool sweets for my dolls.

I also accepted what I had been fighting all this time: I was a doll maker and that came with some responsibility in the creative world and for the artistic soul. I wasn’t just creating toys for little hands, I was feeding my own soul needs and I needed to be more intentional, more careful.

I had to come to grips with the idea that I wasn’t creating dolls just for children anymore, that I was making them for myself too, to feed a very special part of my soul, and maybe it was that special part that was making my dolls so alluring to adult doll collectors.

It is also the year my husband gave me a beautiful gift: a DSLR camera and I started taking much better photos of my dolls, learning how to use depth, light, point of view, to add to my storytelling.

2012 was c-r-a-z-y. Absolute crazy.

My blog was thriving and it was so apparent that I was enjoying taking photos of the dolls as much as writing about them or creating them. I learned so, so much this year. I started to feel very comfortable knitting and sewing and tackling projects that a few years ago would have daunted me and brought me to my knees.

Having accepted that creating the dolls was mainly for me, and that most of them were not ending up in little children’s hand anyways, opened a vast world of adventure for me.

While before I would shy away from materials, techniques or even certain accents, constraining myself into thinking “that’s not child friendly” or “too cumbersome, you would spend too much time and that would make it very expensive”, or even worse yet “that’s not very attuned to waldorf dolls, too much detail”… now I could really start looking at all there was to know.

Exploring everything with an open mind and very open eyes. Not just in doll construction and technique, but in clothing design as well.

I started putting together beginner knitting patterns (lo and behold!). The larger Figlette at this time was 23” tall and she came with a whole whack of stuff, as I started adding more accessories, better finishing techniques and more elaborate wardrobes.

This doll making journey is four years long at this stage, and I felt like my passion was truly blossoming and people were deeply connecting with my work.

In January of 2013, I gave up on Blogger as means to house my dollmaking blog and moved to Squarespace and created a full website. Best move ever. I decided to treat doll making as my business and not just as my passion project.

This is the year I started needle felting my dolls faces, and using mohair weft and creating more and more clothing styles. It is also the year I created the Cloth Figs and decided to finally create a social media outlet for my dolls and opened a Facebook page, that only took me 5 years!

I was no longer making just sweet and cuddly tiny dolls, though I kept the pocket dolls and the Wee Babies (I have special feelings for both).

I created a baby doll pattern that felt more “real” as it was the very eager request of my eldest daughter for her birthday that year, and added weight to a doll for the very first time.

2013 marked the birth of another very special doll: the Mannikin. A completely needle felted doll with an inner armature that allows her to stand and pose. These dolls were all auctioned due to the incredible amounts of time it took to create them.

I was dividing my attention between creating dolls, keeping the blog updated, learning and chatting with people on Facebook.

We are at the end of 5 years of constant doll making practice and by this time I really had a business in my hands, that was actually bringing a small income to my family, not just a passion or profession, but a thriving new business.

I had slowly created a demand for my work, had already a very eager following of people connecting with me at a very deep level and most of all: I had made amazing friends through my customers and my colleagues.

I felt, and still feel, that I was the luckiest person alive.

Do the difficult things while they are easy and do the great things while they are small. A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step. Lao Tzu

Now time takes us to 2014, the year I experimented more and more with needle felting faces and creating doll hair with wool, goat and alpaca.

By this year the hours spent creating each doll skyrocketed.

I offered custom spots via auction for larger dolls and the prices they would fetch were out of this world, which gracefully allowed my family to keep going while we homeschooled our children, in the most magical little hamlet in the land.

I decided to check out Instagram because my friend Juliane had her #onebouquetperday series and Instagram felt very different to Facebook, without all the ads and distraction. I found it incredibly inspiring to connect with so many creatives and photography-driven individuals.

I sold very few dolls via the blog this year, but I auctioned many as they were so unique and different and most of them came with special wooden toys made by my super creative woodworking husband.

6 years in, I now felt comfortable creating dolls, inspired to keep learning and exploring my creativity, looking for other mediums to learn from and enjoying two outlets in social media through Facebook and Instagram, plus my trusty blog.

I felt very at ease handling my camera, writing and talking to people about my work, while in previous years I never really mentioned to people what I did for a living. Not because I was ashamed to be a dollmaker, but because I felt I didn’t deserve the title.

2015 arrived and the biggest, most profound change that happened this year was the creation of the Petite Fig by the hands of Poet.

I can’t begin to tell you what these dolls have done for my creative energy and the path they have forged ahead for me. I have healed many long-standing and deep-rooted wounds by working on these dolls and I will be forever grateful to Poet for showing me the way. I never imagined that dollmaking could be a healing force in your life, yet here I was: mending my own soul.

The time now spent on most dolls was ridiculous. Just the head for a Petite Fig takes me from 8 to 10 hours; the time it would take me to create almost a fully dressed doll when I started.

7 years of doll making allowed me to grow my skills and confidence enough to publish more knitting patterns, accept the challenge to create a doll pattern for sale, create new doll patterns for my own use with confidence (not without tears though, and lots of trial and error), and more importantly to start talking not just about my dolls and what they mean to me, the stories they inspire and the things I am creating, but to explore this subject from a teacher's place.

To let others know how I do things, the thoughts I have on creativity, originality, craft and mastery.

I finally felt I had enough knowledge and certainly experience to discuss doll making as a hobby, as a profession, as a creative outlet, as an artistic medium and as a business too.

I wrote many posts on doll making, you can find my current list on that link.

By 2016 I was working more than full-time creating little wool people.

The hours spent on a single doll were around 40 to 60 hours, even more if we count the long hours editing photos and dreaming clothes, sourcing materials and corresponding with my people.

I read a lot, and took long walks with my young children. We had ducks, chickens, a dog and a very big garden, surrounded by sleepy farms and wooded areas where we walked our dog every day.

I was trying to produce more patterns and tutorials to encourage others to create dolls, because this art had given me so much.

The journey in skills has been 8 years in the making and then we decided to relocate to Mexico for a brief period, to be with my Mother and so my children could learn spanish while submerged in the culture I was born in.

Some beautiful dolls were born just as we arrived and it felt very different having an actual place to work from, versus working out of a room in my house, as I rented a studio for my sewing and dollmaking during our time there.

The time spent on dolls was thoroughly enjoyed, but by this point in time I couldn't pull a doll out of myself within a day anymore.

I could pull maybe a face, and maybe have enough energy to sew the body in the machine as well. That’s about it. Thankfully I had all the time in the world to see the dolls bloom at their own time, without rushing them or needing them to be ready for a certain date.

I finally felt a little bit more secure in what I knew, to the point that I might be of help to others on their journey.

I want you to know I didn’t begin charging $650 dollars for my dolls, neither I begun with a full-fledged idea that this was to be my profession or even a profitable activity in the long run. It certainly wasn’t my intention when I started. I made that first doll and just couldn’t stop!

I don’t see anything wrong with other dollmakers doing that from the very beginning, I just want you to know how I started, what motivated my journey and what engines have powered it all these years.

Life took me on very unexpected turns of events and I just tried to assimilate each lesson thrust upon me, following the immense joy that making dolls was giving me.

2017 was the year I published my first dollmaking pattern and it was a tremendous success: the Wee Baby doll pattern. Later that year I also published the Little Fig doll pattern.

Seeing what others could create based on my instruction, and hearing such amazing reviews about the content in the patterns, even from experienced dollmakers, gave me so much confidence. It made me bloom even more.

I then accepted that year the invitation to teach in Holland during the European Waldorf Doll Retreat, back then named the European Waldorf Doll Seminar.

This year turned out to be full of challenges I met head on and accepted, thanks to the daily encouragement and help of my husband, as usual. It’s funny when you look back, and you can see the little steps you took then that amounted to big projects in following years.

Now 2018 arrived and what a year.

By this time I had two thriving social media outlets: Facebook and Instagram. I had my Love Letters (a monthly newsletter) and Stitchy Notes, a doll making newsletter which is now published during a season of the year, sometimes the Spring, sometimes the Fall.

I created the material to teach in-person workshops all over Europe, as I was invited to teach in even more places during the summer of 2018, once it became known that I was coming to teach at the seminar.

I was writing very long stories and making very time-consuming dolls.

2018 marked the year I taught in-person for the first time and the year I decided to open my Patreon channel too: a place where I could teach single techniques and share my journey, in video form.

I commited back then to a weekly video for my patrons, little snippets from behind the curtain of my doll studio, where they could ask me questions, give me feedback and suggestions.

This Patreon adventure turned to be such an amazing and life-giving journey. I forced myself to be consistent, to be thoughtful and clear. ‘Focus’ was the name of the game in 2018.

To be open, to learn, and while it was taking me so long, so very long to produce very tiny videos, it did bring another fresh bloom for me: the love of sharing my doll making journey in video form.

This year I taught in-person workshops in the Netherlands, Scotland, England, Canada as well as in the United States. I could scarcely believe my eyes when the year ended. Not having taugth once in my life in 2017, I taught 13 workshops in total in 2018.

Never mind that, having had a taste for video and hearing so much pain from many people who couldn't attend any of my workshops due to the cost of travel plus the cost of the workshop, I decided to open my first-ever online class: Making a Fairy with Fig and Me, while at the same time exploring the magic of moveable doll heads with Rye.

We also bought our first home now back in Northern Ontario and I published two doll patterns that year, the Baby Fig dollmaking pattern with two layettes and at the very end of the year I published the Big Fig dollmaking pattern. Completing what I thought was a very nice selection of affordable doll making patterns, to learn the skills it took me 10 years to master and learn through trial and error, starting from the most basic with the Wee Baby, then Little Fig, then Baby Fig and finally the Big Fig.

This year does make my head hurt to be honest. It was the most amazing, most productive and most intense year of learning. If I hadn't lived it, I would have not believed what I accomplished and the adventures my family and I had this year.

I opened the doors to teaching and sharing and an avalanche took me: in-person workshops, doll patterns, online classes, travel and Patreon. Pure and utter madness of the best kind.

You can see now the common thread, can't you? Each year builds for the next. Each lesson or exploration achieved one year, helps me understand more how I work, what gravitates around me and then I work from there the following year.

2019 found us all very cozy, warm and happy. Having experimented with Patreon for a whole year and hearing the feedback from my subscribers who found it overwhelming to receive 4 to 5 videos per month, I decided to shake things up and divided Patreon into three tiers: one for doll dressmaking, one for doll making and one for storytelling by the hand of Poet, my doll muse.

I created a new workshop, to be taught in Portland, Oregon and in Devon, UK; making a doll with a wired head and much smaller dimensions, also with a lot more needle felting involved. I had a lot of fun traveling and teaching in these two places this year, meeting so many students along the way.

I didn't publish any doll patterns this year because I was experimenting a lot with doll construction, mainly through personal experiments like the doll I created under tight requests from my youngest daughter.

I taught the Making a Fairy class twice this year and created a new online class Making a Baby with Fig and Me, welcoming students from all over the world.

2019 is the year I finally became a master at organizing my content, my writing and I learned how to ride the flow of my creative spirit. Something I had been doing very haphazardly due to lack of time to think while I had one hundred ropes pulling at me.

I felt like I was finally taking control of the doll cart, never mind it was 11 years in the making! I had tried many different ways of organizing my schedule, my writing, my ideas and my dollmaking, and they almost all fell to the wayside. They would work for a couple of weeks, when I forced myself to work under x schedule, but they wouldn’t last.

This is because when I add things to my schedule, like teaching a class, or filming, or writing, or making a doll, each of those activities uses a very different kind of energy for me. So I am now not effectively managing my time, but managing the flow of energy and consistent work hours I can fruitfully devote to each task.

I learned this in 2019, I applied it wholeheartedly and my efficiency thrived, my dollmaking blossomed and I was able to add tasks, projects and try new ideas without suffering burnout or feeling depleted. The best advice I can give you here is: set constraints. Give yourself guidelines or you end up saying yes to absolutely everything and becoming overwhelmed.

With my children a little bit older, a small but thriving business, the dolls giving me so much food for thought, I plodded along, looking for more creative ways to exercise and share all my passions.

I put a lot of time and effort on an IG Live series called The Dollmaking Business, as so many people asked me questions regarding how to sell dolls, what is involved, how do you price them, how to market them, etc. This series was repurposed to my YouTube channel the following year and is now there to give you advice.

2020 arrived with big expectations and I have to say, some of them were surpassed, while others flopped on the floor. Let us be real and look at some of those accomplishments.

I reacquainted myself with my dusty YouTube channel, slowly cleaning the shelves and adding fresh flowers and new videos for my subscribers. One of the goals of the year was to resurrect this poor corner of my doll making garden.

Having achieved a nice content-creation routine with Patreon, I felt like I could finally create more content for this other channel, without diminishing or jeopardizing the flow of what I was creating for my patrons.

I started vlogging, which always makes me giggle as I am so used to blogging.

We visited Maui and were forever changed by that experience. Coming back to a world in turmoil due to the pandemic, quarantines and lockdowns. I am so grateful we took that trip, not knowing it would be the last for more than a year.

I had a long list of workshops to be taught in Europe that summer, all of which I had to cancel unfortunately. So many of my would-be students and patrons had their summer plans cancelled as well so we brainstormed ideas of what to do and we came up with a dizzying array of mini workshops to be taught online, via pre-recorded videos and via zoom, which I had been using since 2018 to teach my online classes.

These workshops were a tremendous success and I do plan on teaching some of them again this year. Stay tuned for more info down the line.

I continued my exploration of armatures via an amazing series for the Doll making tier on Patreon. I can hardly wait to show you what came out of it, as I am now in the very final stages of dressing and coming with cunning plans for this little creature.

This year I explored heirloom and historical sewing techniques through the dressmaking tier. You could say that now the sky is the limit when it comes to techniques to try and methods to explore, especially as I am allowed to explore these subjects via Patreon.

As extras for my patrons during 2020, I added the challenge of providing PDFs of the pattern pieces used in the Dressmaking tutorial, plus adding a quarterly Live Patreon Gathering for the Dollmaking tier: a session to meet each other, talk about our work and as Q&A. All these live sessions were incredibly fun and I hope to continue doing the same in 2021.

2020 also marked the year where I invested a lot of time and energy in a free beginner dollmaking series based on the construction of two little dolls for my niece: Hansel and Gretel. The feedback I received on this series alone has given me so much strength to continue on the forged path and to put more of me into my video content.

During the Fall, I taught both online classes and published some very thoughtful letters via Stitchy Notes. Letters which touched a lot of people deeply and I hope to share some of them here on the blog one day.

On the doll front I explored downsizing my beloved patterns: the Petite Fig and the Figlette. People constantly ask me to publish the Petite Fig, I receive weekly requests to make it available and I simply must continue to deny those requests, as this pattern is too close to my heart to allow it to fly freely, yet.

This year I created a doll without a pattern, completely ooak, Miss Jonna and then I finally moved to Macha, a mini version of the Petite Fig, with later incarnations in Fawn and Ealhswith.

Then striking while the iron was hot, I downsized the Figlette, which is my personal and long-tweaked version of the Big Fig, creating not one but six dolls during the summer and ending the figlette madness going back to my personal version of the Little Fig with Miss Blackberry Florence.

I worked on some incredible custom orders, like Coco, Tessa Bleu, Bettina and Greta and semi-custom orders like Miss Georgina and Tiphaine.

I finished the year feeling so happy and content, knowing that I put my best effort in all the paths I walked this year.

Spending time off work, which I have been scheduling for myself since 2017, is also a great way to reminisce and to write down all the achievements and successes, whether little or big, that make this a great year even though everything else is upside down.

Compared to the suffering of the world, my own little progress makes no difference, but I want to believe that I brought a little bit of joy, a little bit of light and every now and then I made someone feel braver, happier or brought a smile to their face.

This is my way of fighting the darkness and to continue to imbue my own life with joy.

The simple task of holding a needle and some thread in my hand makes my entire body relax. I know this. I know what is about to happen: magic.

With each year I get a little bit better at following through with my intentions, because I have seen enormeous rewards when I do. In full knowing that life is going to throw massive curve balls at me and that is best to be pliable and gentle with one-self.

For 2021 I don’t take anything for granted and I have learned something new or different every step of the way. I am constantly adjusting and adapting and I feel there are so many opportunities to explore that some nights I truly have trouble falling asleep.

Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful. Albert Schweitzer

The three things that have helped the most in my journey are:

1. Concentrating in what I need to learn or do, not in what others think I should be doing

2. Putting all my energy into my work and letting that speak for me

3. Documenting my path

   That’s it.

You can see from my doll making story that I didn’t try to do everything “at once”. I started learning, getting my feet wet with customer service, understanding my own needs and the needs of my customers.

I learned how to use a camera and I opened a blog, then I explored more and more my creativity. I opened a Facebook page, then a year or two later I opened an Instagram account. After 7 years of doll making, I felt qualified enough to start sharing articles on my blog on doll construction and design.

I had very small children when I started, not a lof of time, no teachers or dollmaking blogs around. No Pinterest, Instagram or nothing. In all honesty I do feel like that actually helped me because I was able to concentrate all my energy just on the work of my hands, without getting constantly distracted or feeling pulled in vastly different directions.

Even though my time was extremely limited and it took a very long time to get to where I am, every single year I learned more. I still do. Every adventure I have taken on, it has been built on the strong foundations of slow growth from a previous year.

I have experienced so much through my dollmaking that what I know perhaps cannot be condensed or cannot really be taught. It is an integral, almost visceral knowledge. I have become steeped in this creative adventure for so long so that it has stained me through and through.

Doll making has become what my hands do.

Storytelling is the energy that drives it.

The way I see the world is the aesthetic behind my work.

Maybe my path will take me somewhere else, maybe I will change gears a bit, all I know is that I will forever create dolls. If not for others, for myself.

I make dolls because I need to tell stories. Not the other way around. Each doll is a story in and of itself. It contains part of my life, my memories and energy.

I see doll making not just as my profession, my business or as a creative outlet. I see it as a path of self-reflection and inner growth, as I explore emotions, memories, life teachings and more importantly, as I meet people through this foggy window that allows me to get closer to them and to their inner child.

Perhaps you too are contemplating the many benefits doll making can have or already has in your life.

Perhaps you are in one of the above stages and freaking out because there is so much to do, but you don’t have enough time, you don’t know how to proceed or you lack resources.

This is your journey, meet it wholeheartedly at the place where you are.

One of the many reasons for doll making to be such a fulfilling activity is that it nurtures you, it makes you playful. Tackle what you need to do, what you wish to learn, with a playful spirit!

Don’t force it, and don’t pile too much on yourself.

I do believe is important to try to challenge yourself in order to grow, but definitely don’t try to do it all at once.

You will burn out, you will lose sight of what is important to you and you will start to snuff out the little magic that drew you to it in the first place.

From this side of the journey, thank you for being part of mine. If you have read my blog, my newsletters, watched my videos, joined Patreon, bought a doll from me or just have watched my progress via any of the social channels: your attention, your comments and your support is what has kept me going for now almost 13 years.

I wish you a positively brilliant year, where you explore the place you are in your doll making adventure, where maybe you take a wee bit of a challenge or start something new, but do it mindfully, with intention.

Try to ask yourself why you are trying this? Is it to be like someone else? Is it because it makes you happy? Is it because you want to learn? Is it because you want to explore more or you want to build your business? Choose your adventures wisely.

Maybe this is the year you take photography lessons and document your life.

Maybe this is the year you write a novel.

Maybe this is the year you clean the attic and find all your childhood toys, reconnecting with your memories and life experiences.

Or maybe this is the year you finally make a doll for yourself. No strings attached, just following the creative process.

On my end, I promise to keep dreaming, making and sharing, as that seems to be what I do now.

Cheers to 2021.