There was a great response to the Kittyrobot giveaway! Total count of entries was 47 with a few blog entries (worth five entries apiece) and many people commenting and tweeting about the contest! I’m very excited for everyone who took place in the giveaway, I think all of the pullrings that Jodie makes are just so adorable and I wish I had been eligible to take part in it (I keep on thinking that whenever it’s time to announce giveaway winners!) because everything’s just so cute and I know a certain Blythe of mine would probably love one with pink glitter…

But you’re all interested in finding out who won, I’m sure. As I hope you can recall, there are going to be two winners and each winner will get a pair of custom pullrings. Which is awesome – you can have two dolls with special pullrings or perhaps just one doll with a set of special pulls (sleepy eyes FTW!).

And now onto the winners…

Click to read more of this entry.

Do you have an awesome idea for a brand new article for BlytheLife.com? Maybe you have an idea but don’t have the time to write it up for submission?

All you need to do is suggest an article idea here!

Tell me what the idea is and what it’s all about and it’ll get written up! New ideas are always welcomed at BlytheLife.com and suggestions and contributions are always needed.

Full credit will be given to you for the idea with a link to your URL (if you leave one) and the article will be posted right here on BlytheLife.com

You can comment below with your idea or send an email to blythelife@gmail.com!

I’m interrupting this week’s installment of Blythe On A Budget for something a little bit more serious and something a little bit more important: protecting yourself online. This article will go over some general safety tips, how to prevent identity theft, thoughts on posting photos, how to make payments safely online and how to set a very good password.

General Safety Tips
Here are a few things that you should be cautious about posting on a public forum or any other public website:

• Your full name
• Birthdate
• Address of your home or place of work
• Phone number (home or cell)
• Full name(s) of your spouse/significant other, children or other relatives
• Photo(s) of yourself

You should always read the privacy policy on whatever website that you’re registering at, as well as any Terms of Service or Terms and Conditions pages that they might have. This ensures that you learn what kind of information that they are collecting about you and what kind of information that they will be keeping on their servers.

Most websites suggest for a readership of 13 years of age or older, or even 18 years of age. It is important to note age restrictions when visiting a website that you are new to. Some websites only want to cater to an adult audience, even if the content is not necessarily inappropriate for minors. This is because some websites include a buy/sell/trade section and it is not legal to enter into a contract (eg. agreeing to sell something to a minor would be a contract) with a minor that does not have adult permission.

Identity Theft
Identity theft is a big issue these days so there’s a lot of things that you should be wary of.

You should not give out your credit card information on a non-secure website, websites like Paypal.com are secure and their web address has “https“, which tells you that they are HTTP secure (HyperText Transfer Protocol Secure). You should be cautious of giving out your bank or credit card information on a website that is not HTTP secure. And you should be cautious of using payment sites that you’ve never heard about before – be sure to do a search online about them to see if they are reputable and if people have been scammed with them before (eg. they could have absurd fees attached or the money just never makes it to where you want it to go).

If you are worry about people finding out who you really are online and you have a Facebook account online that has your real first and last name, you should consider creating a secondary email address.

Say your name is really Jane Doe and your main email address is janedoe@gmail.com and it’s the same email that you use on Facebook. All someone needs to do is search your email on Google and they’ll probably come up with your Facebook profile and any other sites where you’ve linked your email address. By having a secondary email address (for instance: jane2011@gmail.com) that you use for signing up on forums or onto other sites, it can make it more difficult for people to find you on sites like Facebook (but it doesn’t necessarily make it impossible).

You should never tell people things like your mother’s maiden name or the name of the first teacher you ever had. These are common security questions found on websites when you’re trying to reset your password. If someone knows the answers to the security questions and they know your email address or username that you use for that particular website, someone malicious could very easily reset the password to your account and change the password to prevent you from accessing it.

Posting Photos
If you are a minor, you should seek permission from your parents or guardians prior to posting photos of yourself online. Sites like Flickr allow you to filter out who gets to see your photos – which is a good thing if you only want your family members to see them or select friends. Facebook has privacy settings where you can control who can view what information (include your profile information and your photos). It is always important to ensure that your photos are private, unless you feel comfortable with people seeing them. This is especially important if your profile(s) might be looked at by future employers.

A good rule of thumb is to not post anything online that you wouldn’t be comfortable with your parents or grandparents (or someone else that you really respect) seeing them.

Making Payments
When it comes to transferring money, Paypal is one of the most secure methods of doing so (beyond handing money over in person). You should always make sure that the website URL has “paypal.com” in it with “https://” in the front. Paypal, and other reputable banking institutions, will never ask you for your login information via an email. It is recommended to review the terms and conditions that you, as a buyer/seller, must abide by online. For instance, if you are purchasing an item, do not send the payment as a ‘gift’. This makes it nearly impossible for you to get your money back in the event that the transaction goes south as Paypal was informed that you were gifting the money, so why would you want it back?

Always double-check the information you are typing in before hitting send. You want to ensure that you’re sending the right amount of money (in the correct currency!) to the correct email address/name. It’s a good practice to include a note so the person knows exactly who the money is coming from and what it is for. Your username may not match with the username or email that you’re using to send money from.

Setting a Password
A good password will not be a simple word. A good password will include upper and lower case letters. A very good password will include upper and lower case letters as well as numbers. A great password will have all of the mentioned along with symbols.  You want to make your password difficult to guess and difficult to decipher from just looking at your fingers typing.

Example of bad passwords: password, qwerty, [your first/last name or username]

Examples of good passwords: RatrApfop, pAAvpsD

Examples of very good passwords: Ratr12Apfop3, pA29AvpsD11

Examples of very good passwords: R!@atr12Apfop3$, pA2#9Avps^D1!1

Keep in mind that not all websites allow passwords with symbols, most will allow both upper and lower case letters with numbers though. Some even have limits to the minimum or maximum number of allowed characters, so you should keep that in mind when coming up with a password.

In Summary
I hope that this article has been helpful to you in considering how to protect yourself online. Identity theft has been mentioned a lot in the news these days, with many people being targeted after they let slip some information about themselves or trusting the wrong people. When it seems too good to be true, it probably is.

If you have any comments or thoughts that you would like to add to this article, please comment below.

Images used in this article were from the users jnatiuk and emsago of stock.xchng – http://sxc.hu.

Doll Blogging is a new mini series for BlytheLife.com with a new installment going up every other week on Mondays (alternating with the Question of the Week) that will go through the process of planning, creating and publishing your new doll blog.

The internet is a huge part of the Blythe community. It’s how many of us first discovered Blythe, it’s how we learned what a good deal on that EBL was, it’s how we learn about new releases or new crafters in the dolly world that we’re all a part of it. The internet is a marvelous way for us to keep on contact with one another (via email, Twitter or instant messaging) and blogs are another platform that we can use to share our thoughts and pictures.

Back in October 2010, there was an article for Blythe On A Budget that went over a few free blog hosts. The Doll Blogging mini-series will go over a few more things starting with things to consider in a blog name and what kind of hosts you should consider (and that I recommend!). Then there’s a crash course in the basics of coding with HTML, thoughts on themes, templates and design and on site promotion. There’ s a lot of things to consider when putting together a website, a lot more than I realized when I first started blogging (back in 2003 or so!) and now I’ve compiled my thoughts and ideas with some tips and tricks for you to put together your doll blog!

It’ll be a five part mini-series (including this post…) so if you’re interested in learning how to put together a blog and how to promote it, be sure to continue checking out the series! The mini series will be as follows:

• Part 1: The Introduction
• Part 2: Names & Hosts
• Part 3: HTML (March 7, 2011)
• Part 4: Themes, Templates & Design (March 21, 2011)
• Part 5: Promoting Your Site (April 4, 2011)

For those who’re in the dark, Kittyrobot is a fun, quirky and delicious Etsy shop that has yummy looking polymer clay foods that are doll-friendly and resin pullrings that have sprinkles and glitter in them. Are you intrigued? I was super excited when Jodie of Kittyrobot contacted me wanting to know if I’d like to do a giveaway with her. That would be an astounding yes! She was happy to do an interview with me as well and I’m so excited to share the questions and answers we went over. Considering, to me, anyone who can incorporate sprinkles and glitter into a fun and cute pullring for Blythe has got to be the coolest person ever.

Hi Jodie! What can you tell us about yourself?
Hi, Thanks for having me! Well my name is Jodie, I am a 29 year old full time student, and part time crafter/maker/operator of Kittyrobot.

I have two fur babies, who are my whole world, my cats, Anabelle and Sui, I also have two furry little mouse friends, Scruffy and Snowy.

I live in a little beach town on the East coast of Australia, I love all things vintage, cute and kawaii, crafting, sewing, photography, travel, music, and bike rides, and have been in the Blythe hobby for just over 3 years now.

How did you discover Blythe and what drew you to her?
I was a regular Flickr visitor, and I can recall years ago seeing lots of photos of this curious looking doll, dressed in beautiful fashions and never knew what kind of doll it was.

Then one of my Flickr contacts had photos of Blythe’s, finally I knew what they were! And I loved looking at her photos of them, and through her pics, it sort of inspired me to research them a little, I found myself spending more time on flickr looking up Blythe dolls, than anything else I used to enjoy looking at, and finally the bug hit, I had to have one, I thought ‘yep, one will be enough for me’ but of course, it wasn’t, and many more followed soon after.

I was really drawn to what I thought, was a unique, quirky look of the Blythes, I loved how you could dress them up in cute clothes, customise them, and I was also interested in the idea of making cute clothes, and little miniatures for them, I guess initially I loved the idea of being able to combine my love of craft, with my new found love of dollies.

I know that you create some pretty unique things with polymer clay, what can you tell us about that?
We create most of the things in our Kittyrobot store with Sculpey Polymer clay, it is such a great material to work with, sturdy, and easily customizable in color. We stock buttons and jewellery, for both people and Blythe dolls, as well as miniature foods, and scene setters for Blythe photo shoots, and of course, we are always open to a custom order, or creative idea a customer may have.

In the past we have created quite a few fun custom clay pieces, such as pullring charms like cupcakes, macarons, and owls.

All of our polymer clay miniatures are all totally handmade, using quality Sculpey clay, we don’t like to paint our pieces, as overtime I feel the paint could chip or discolor, so we make them in pure Sculpey.

It can be a little bit time consuming, and fiddly to do, we have to be sure to try and make the pieces look somewhat realistic, while also making sure we work to scale, and keep it the right size. We (myself and the other half of Kittyrobot) usually decide on a food, or scene to create, and sketch it out, we will then look up real photos of those foods, and work to try and replicate that.

Most of all we love a challenge, if somebody ever has something in mind, and comes to us to ask about it, its fun to have a play with a new idea we may not have thought of, and then creating it to suit the customer, making them feel satisfied and happy with the end result, that’s the best part.

What can you tell us about resin and how you were came to start crafting with it?
Resin is one of my most favorite mediums to work with, its so versatile! You can keep it clear, or embed anything you can imagine into it, add colors, pigments, glitters, turn it into anything really! It can be time consuming, from start to finish, as it has quite a long cure time, It needs time to settle and harden up in the molds, before you can pop them out and finish them off, with fine sandpaper, and the buff them.

I first was introduced to resin about 6 years ago, I did a short art course, and one element was resin work, we created our own molds, and were taught how to mix, and make with it, I produced a bracelet consisting of 10 small bars of resin with some Japanese paper embedded, I thought it was kinda fun. It wasn’t until a couple of years later, I found some resin finally at the craft store, and began making pieces for a craft market, mostly glitter/sprinkle/sticker/coffee bean necklace charms, magnets and rings, and then later we decided to start making jewelery, buttons, and pull rings, for the Kittyrobot Etsy store.

I think one of the most amazing things about what you do at Kittyrobot is that everything is handmade. How much time do you put into Kittyrobot on a daily basis?
Most days vary, but all of them begin with checking in on emails, or shop conversations we receive while sleeping, along with any updates we need to do via Twitter or the Facebook group, fix up any listings that may have sold out, or relist any new items, Being on the other side of the world to majority of our customers, can be a pain with time differences.

Then we process any sales from overnight, and start getting to work on those, or work on any of our larger consignment/wholesale orders purchased outside of the shop, twice a week we do visits to the post office to ship mail, and nights are usually spent packing orders, and getting them ready for the post. If we have any new product, we will do a mini photo shoot, ready to list items. When we don’t have orders needing to be made, we brainstorm ideas, or play around with ideas we have, creating and crafting new pieces.

Basically I do majority of the online, customer service work, and making of orders during the day, in amongst my full time study from home, while the other half of Kittyrobot is at work, at her day job, and once she gets home at night we create together some more.

Blythe is a versatile doll, which I’m sure we’re all aware of, what made you start crafting things for dolls and doll collectors?
I originally started creating, what I thought were cute items, that were both affordable, but also individual and unique at the same time.

Blythe is a very versatile doll, and also each one has her own little personality and style, so with the custom resin pullrings, and pullring charms, I thought they would be great for those who want something a little different for their unique girl, something that they can customise to suit the exact look they want for their doll, to match her overall look, or to compliment any custom work, etc.

As with the miniature foods, and scene setters, I thought of fun foods, and combos, I would love my own Blythe girls to have, and thought others might like them too, for mini photo shoots, and dollhouse set ups!

Where does your inspiration come from for all the cute things made for Kittyrobot?
All over really, from personal taste in all things cute and quirky, ideas we have, or sketch out, colors and things from magazines, books, vintage treasures, and any inspiring things we see in magazines or on the internet. Mostly, we get inspired to make super cute things, that we feel there is a need in the world for!

How does it make you feel when you see people photographing their dolls with your work?
Super excited, and it may sound funny, but a little bit giddy with excitement!! I love how each Blythe has her own personality,so when the new owner buys from us,and photographs it with their dolls, I feel the items take on a whole new look, and feel, and when they match the dolls perfectly, that’s a super exciting thing! Its so awesome to see so many adorable dolls being photographed, with Kittyrobot items!!

What can we expect to see from Kittyrobot in the future?
We are working on ideas for lots of new items, we are hoping to introduce more variety in the items we have now, and more wearable cuties, more one off Blythe scene setters, maybe even more miniatures, like foods and props for photo shoots, more pretties for the people, and some more sewn things!

We are also hoping to set up a website, and start selling mostly via that! It would be our ultimate goal to someday have a real Kittyrobot store, tiny little shop out in a cute town somewhere, stocking all of our handmade cute pieces, along with pieces by other artists, combined with vinyl art toys, and of course Blythe dolls!

What kind of advice do you have for someone who’s new to the Blythe hobby?
I would say, join up to one of the forums, or various Flickr groups, to meet like minded Blythe fans, the wealth of knowledge from all the super nice Blythe fans, really does help, and its nice to make some friends who share your love, look around and research the different variety of dolls, to choose which one is for you,and most importantly, research the doll seller,so you do not have problems!

Overall really, I would say, have fun with it, at the end of the day its a hobby, and hobbies are supposed to be fun!! Don’t feel guilty if you spend a lot on it, and don’t feel like you have to hide it from anybody, if it’s something you love, its something you deserve to enjoy guilt free!

Kittyrobot Custom Pullrings Giveaway!

Kittyrobot is generously giving away two (2!) pairs of custom Blythe pullrings to two very lucky visitors of BlytheLife.com! That’s right, each of the two winners will be receiving two custom pullrings, made to their liking, by Kittyrobot!

You can get up to fifteen entries for this giveaway draw and you can enter until Saturday February 12, 2011 at 11:59pm PST. The draw will be held on Sunday February 13, 2011 and the two winners will be announced on BlytheLife.com. Remember to use a valid email address for all comments. If you win, your email will be forwarded to Jodie to discuss what kind of pullrings you want and arrangement for shipment of the prizes.

Please only use one email address per person, those using multiple email addresses for more entries will be disqualified.

This giveaway has a little bit of an extra twist on how you can enter, so read carefully! (If this new way of doing giveaway entries proves popular, and successful, I’ll be using it in future giveaways! So let me know if it’s good or bad or just downright confusing!)

Mandatory Entry: Comment below about this interview, any of your favourite Kittyrobot products (be sure to check out things that they’ve sold!) or tell Jodie and myself what you’d like to see in the future from Kittyrobot! This is worth 1 entry into the giveaway draw.

Bonus Entry #1: Tweet about this contest! You can retweet the following up once per day for a maximum of 9 bonus entries into the giveaway draw. You must be tweeting from a public Twitter account and include your Twitter username below for your entries to count.

Delicious goodies and custom pullrings! Check out the latest @blythelifecom interview and giveaway! http://bit.ly/hTqigi

Bonus Entry #2: Blog about this contest! Be sure to include some details about the contest as well as a link to BlytheLife.com, a link to this specific interview and a link to the Kittyrobot Etsy shop! For 1 blog entry, this is worth a total of 5 bonus entries into the giveaway draw. You must comment below with the URL to your blog entry.

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For those of you who don’t want to leave the potential of a customized Blythe pullring to chance, you can check out the Kittyrobot Etsy shop and contact Kittyrobot to see how you can order yourself a pair (or more!) customized pullrings for your favourite dolls!