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...
