My Hat, My Hat, My Hat

I've been busy in my doll shop these past few weeks. It's been awhile since I have been able to get to clothes and hats, which used to be the mainstay of my shop. I have decided this is no longer a hobby and it really is a business, so I am working harder to keep things fresh in my store than I have in the past, so that people will always have a variety of things to choose from.



I have been so busy customizing dolls for clients, that I realized my store hasn't been spiffed up with as many new things as I would like in there. So, I set to making some new hats.



If you know me very well, you know I work kind of randomly. Okay, there is some sort of method to my madness, but it isn't very orthodox. I generally start with a plan, and I almost always decide to do something differently from how I started out. I have a really difficult time sticking to a design or pattern or anything that smacks of streamlined production. I tend to mix things up and try to make each thing I make a bit unique from each other thing. If I set out to make 2 similar things, inevitably I end up with 2 different things entirely.



The good news about that is, if you buy from me, you won't likely be getting something that everyone else has in multiples. The downside is that I can't recall how I did something or, most of the time, what I even did at all. So, when people ask me to repeat something as a custom job for them, I often am baffled as to how to proceed. Keeping track of what I do is something that almost never happens. In fact, when I do write something down, give me a day and I will have lost the notes.



My husband, a very organized creature, who makes hand-wired amplifiers, knows exactly what he does and has documentation to prove it. I, on the other hand, am left guessing and have to go by eyeballing old photos, with really no numbers or measurements written anywhere. Lucky for me, I do have a pretty good eye, so generally I can come reasonably close, otherwise it would probably be complete chaos. :)



In the midst of making some hats for my store this week, I had a couple of custom hats to do that were to resemble some other hats I had done in the past. I came fairly close, thankfully, and luckily the hats came out quite lovely, so I was pleased. So, if you are wanting custom work from me, know that you are probably going to get something more or less one-of-a-kind, but hopefully it will come out just as good or better than what it was modeled after. Based on my personality, it just has to be that way. Strangely, I started out as a chemistry major in college. Thankfully, I usually had very good lab partners :)



Hope your summer is still going well. It's almost back to school time for this state. Summer seems to have gone so quickly! I am so not ready for the weather to change. I could go on like this, with the windows open indefinitely. California dreaming...

Blythes in Hats

I'll start this post by saying, I have been so, so lazy! I looked at my last post and it has been literally months and months since I posted last. Thump to me!



Cold weather is creeping back here in Vermont, and that's about the time I start getting creative again. Finally! That's all I can say. The summer this year was quite lovely. Lots of sun. A bit too much water here and there, but all in all, quite right.



I made 4 new hats this weekend. I was thinking, since it looked like I wasn't lifting a finger, that maybe I was just done making hats for dolls. I mean, I haven't actually even looked at my sewing machine for most of the summer. But, the weekend was cold. We barely went out, and I got to thinking, maybe I'll sew something. So I did. 4 new hats. I like them. They are whimsical and romantic, and I am showing them off here. My newest Blythe doll, Jeany, has pink hair. My dear friend, Jeany, for whom she is named, actually gave her to me as a gift! This is her first time in photos. She likes her new hat. Hope you do, too.

Steampunk, Doll-ing

The thing about this hobby of playing with dolls is, you always meet people who are having just as much fun as you are. Playing with dolls when you are all grown up is plenty fun. Since people are aware I make doll hats, sometimes they contact me and ask me to make something specific, something that they would like to see their dolls wearing, but that they either don't know how or don't have the time to make themselves. Usually their ideas are pretty fun and I can come up with something that both they like and I like to make and everyone's happy. Two really fun gals more recently had me making steampunk themed hats for their dolls, which were really fun to make, which led to me also meeting some interesting and fun people who sell steampunk gadgets and whatnot, which are requisite to pull off all things steampunk. The world of handmade seems to be full of fun people doing a lot of fun things. It makes me smile. Pictured are the hats that I made, but, you know, I just couldn't leave things be. I had to have fun playing with the paints and doo-dads in photoshop and that made me smile, too.



Hope you are having a fun day! I think I'm going to spend mine messing with more things steampunk.

New Hats for the New Year

Happy New Year to everyone! I think 2011 is going to be especially grand. Just thought I'd post some pictures of a few new hats I just put up on Etsy. Hope you are feeling festive!

Summer Slow

I think it's just because it's summer, but I am telling you, I feel slow as molasses in getting anything done. I normally am quite productive. Since we've been back from our summer vacation in the Adirondacks, work has been trickling out of me at dead-slug speed. I finished up with my dolls for the Traveling Doll Project. I'm still trying to keep the blog going strong for that. We had the good fortune of getting that project published in Contemporary Doll Collector Magazine and hoping to get the final photos of all the dolls so I can send those on to the magazine for a finishing piece.



In the meantime, I have been making doll hats, not as many as I had been, because again, I am slug-slow, but I have a few recent ones to show you. I have been concentrating on hats for larger headed dolls (Blythe, Pullip and full sized BJDs), and that has been working out for me. I was making about a million sizes, and that just felt too crazy, so, though I will make other sizes, somewhere in the 9-11" head size has been pretty typical.



Hope everyone is finding the wind-down of summer enjoyable. I can't believe it will be Labor Day in no time at all.




I have promised myself I will be more on this blogging thing as soon as fall arrives. The heat and humidity apparently have fried my brain :) Until then, enjoy the rest of your summer!

Think Spring

Spring is officially here, if you haven't noticed. Here in Vermont, spring doesn't usually show it's face until some time in late April, but this year, either nature is playing quite a trick on us, or spring is a bit early. We have really no snow to speak of and we saw the first robin in our yard this week, signaling spring's unofficial arrival. The yard has just started to show a tiny bit of green, which I just noticed today. Nothing to get too excited about if you aren't from the north, but if you are, it is plenty to get excited about, believe me.



Whether spring is really here or not, I can't say for sure, but I am feeling the need for spring colors. Pale green is really my favorite spring color, along with pale blue and English rose. I made Blanche, my Hujoo, a few spring hats in those colors and I think she wears them well. She also has a new blonde wig, which she is wearing here for a couple of the photos. I think I have started talking to my dolls, which is a little scary. They haven't really started talking back yet, but you never know. I've been indoors far too long! It must be time to get outside and get some fresh air and sunshine! Yay spring! I hear it is going to hit the 70s this week, which seems like a miracle to me. 70 degrees in April in Vermont! Unheard of! Can't wait.



Hope everyone is enjoying the first weeks of official or unofficial spring. If you are further south, you probably have had flowers for awhile. It's going to be some time for us way up here, but keeping my fingers crossed they come a little early as well this year. In the meantime, silk flowers on hats will have to do me.



I've got Blanche's hats up for sale on Etsy. Still feeling my way around there. I've been working on pictures, and that takes seemingly forever. Nothing is ever quite the way I want it, but it is definitely moving in the positive directon at least. I'm also thinking I will try to stick with fewer styles of hats and fewer sizes and see where that leads me. Pricing, well, that's a whole other ballgame. Working on it. While I get it all figured out, I'm enjoying dressing my crazy Hujoo, Blanche, in as many hats as I can make.

It's All about tHAT

You might not know, but I have started making and hopefully selling, doll hats this month. Years back a doll collector came to my home from NYC and told me I really ought to consider selling the hats that my dolls were wearing. I kind of balked, since I had been a milliner before, and hat-making, literally a HUGE headache! :) My hat business was called aptly "Over My Head" and it was, truly. All those sizes!



But early this month, I got to fiddling, and within a week I had quite a few hats made and within a couple, even more. I was busy emailing back and forth with friends getting input on all things related to doll hats. Quite sure I have driven most of those people crazy, and now I probably have fewer friends :)



My one-of-a-kind friend Deena over at Fabby Dolls has been very helpful, as has my new friend Bari, who is a terrific sculptor and has a great eye. Can't do much without creative friends these days, that's for sure.



Especially helpful has been Yve over at Freaky Little Things. She is, it turns out, quite a doll collector. She is a marvelous doll artist as well. I have been picking her brain on ideas, especially related to sizing (the thorn in my side, really). Turns out there are almost more doll head sizes than people head sizes! Who knew?!



In the meantime she has got me interested in the whole BJD (ball-jointed doll) craze and I even ordered a mini for a head model. These vinyl or resin dolls, it turns out, make terrific hat models! I'm trying to figure out now how I will come up with an affordable Blythe doll. I've got Yve on the case, though, so only a matter of time!



So anyway, hats are going on over at my Etsy site. I hope to have at least 1 new hat to show a day. They aren't entirely inexpensive, because like anything handmade, they are fairly labor intensive, but if you collect miniatures or dolls, they are fairly unique and, like I said, come in lots of sizes.



The cool thing about doll hats is, the size doesn't matter all that much. Most of the hats I make have fairly shallow crowns and really are meant to sit on top of the head. So, if the hat looks good on a particular doll, you can usually make it work.