Yes and no. For more information please click on "orders" on the side.
A doll from my childhood. She was not my main doll, but loved her anyway. (Number 1 question asked)
Ah.... The only two shipping issues I have ever had have been with uninsured international packages. The one was found six months later, the other never was. I'm not doing that again.
Our animals are like us and DO NOT smoke. They also don't wear the fashions I make. All fashions are stored out-of-reach of the four legged babies. No perfumes are used in shipping to mask odors either. Since these are not second had, and fabric stores do not allow smoking it is not an issue. If you are highly sensitive to animals then you may not want to purchase any fashions. Yes, I keep them away, and I check over fashions but I would hate for an issue to arise.
For doll fashions, no. I don't follow pictures or written requests for new fashions. All OOAK's are from my designs. I wasn't always good at holding to that in the past, but I need to keep my sanity during my little free time. For reproductions you can ask about specific fashions. See "Commissions" for more info. Jewelry is slightly different. I DO NOT reproduce others work. It makes me mad when I see people openly "stealing" designs at shows to reproduce. We spend a lot of time creating "our look". I won't put others in the icky place of plagiarism. With that said, I take ooak jewelry requests from people in person at shows.
I've had major health issues that has made it next to impossible to fill orders. I've taken requests despite the difficulty, but all with the understanding that I cannot guarantee a timeline. Some VERY patient people have waited several months for orders. Hopefully after March 2011 I will be quicker. Fingers crossed and praying.
I sew for vintage Barbie, superstar Barbie, Silkstone Barbie, Francie, Superstar Ken, working on vintage and silkstone. I found I do own a Skipper repro (long story), but I don't have anything to dress Skipper in. I also sew for Gene/Madra/Ivy dolls. I do not sew for any other doll. I do not sew for humans (unless family).
I find that this question is geared more to discover age. Oddly, I remember my first kens more than my first barbies. Probably because my sister always made me play ken until I "earned" the right to play with her Barbies. Ken in order: a blonde swimmer who wore metallic red pants (the things we remember), Superstar Ken (who we thought was Kissing Ken because his head swivled) blonde rocker Ken and finally Derek (he was my favorite). I played Perfume Pretty Ken for my sister. I am sure there was a few before him, but once my sister got him there was no competion. For a Barbie I cycled through many of them. The first one I owned was second addition blonde Rocker barbie. She was replaced quickly by Deanna? Then Boopsie. Greek Barbie was in there somewhere. I was never satisfied. I do know my last Barbie as a kid was Ice Capades (I believe that was her name). She was blonde (go figure!) and had cool purple eyeshadow, but not like the nasty high blue stuff common of the time. Once I moved more to collecting I got many new favorites including Wedding Ken (nice black hair, but the Barbie's ugly). They made many awesome red haired/titan barbies. The ones growing up were not cool. My all-time wants for Barbies: platinum swirl with white lips, Marlo flip barbie, no bangs Francie, and several others.
I started out wanting to create fashions for my barbies before I was in Kindergarten. I remember using a remnant of green shaggy looking materials at my babysitter's house to create a skirt for my doll. I decided sewing couldn't be that hard while in elementary school and did most work by hand. In sixth grade my grandma was driving through the state we lived in. She was a sewer, bought me a machine, gave me a crash course lesson and drove on. With in a few months I destroyed the machine. I went back to sewing by hand. In middle school at a Goodwill in Milwaukee I found an old Singer. I didn't know at the time it didn't have feeders... I fed the material by hand. That was probably the best learning experience I had. My sister decided to make me something on my machine and broke it. My mom had it fixed and found out that I was missing many pieces. Skip ahead, my sister used it again and broke it beyond repair. She felt bad and bought me an Elna (still use today along with my huskystar). A family friend gave me a "lesson" that basically meant, she sat in the room while I sewed. She laughed at my pinning, and then showed me how to do it better. That was my second lesson. I had home ec in middle school were you make a locker caddy. Those are my 3 lessons. Through stubborn-ness and stupidity I taught myself how to sew by hand and by using a machine.I still don't know most of the names of the parts. My mom doesn't sew, my other grandma doesn't sew and my sister doesn't sew.
