I’ve mentioned participating in swaps in the past as a good way of getting new things for your dolls. It’s basically trading: someone sends you a bunch of things for your dolls and you send a bunch of things for their dolls. There’s generally a theme, a list of likes and dislikes and even some requirements like “things for dolls only” or “handmade goods only”.

But let’s say that there isn’t an active swap going on, how can you still take part? You can organize a group swap!

Tip: If you’re going to be the swap administrator, you should be able to devote the time to organize the swap from beginning to end. If you cannot take on the task for the next swap, find someone who has the time and energy to do it!

First you need to get a group of people interested – you can create a group on Flickr (or another website) and let people know about it. It’s a good idea to have those participating voting on the overall theme of the swap (eg. flowers, summer activities, back to school, winter, etc.).

Before people sign up, you need to figure out how you will be assigning partners. Will you be using a swapping website like Swap-bot to help you determine partnerships or will you be manually assigning partners based on each persons’ requirements? Also, will you be privy to each persons’ address and other information or are you just assigning partners and making each person responsible for sending their mailing information to their swap partner?

You will also need to make up a list of rules, generally pertaining to deadlines and what happens if someone doesn’t meet a deadline. Are they banned from participating in future swaps, or just banned for the next one? Are people allowed to send food or candy in the mail? (Unfortunately, if people have partners in different countries, it’s probably not the best idea.) Remember that each country has different rules regarding amounts that can be received as gifts via post before the receiver is charged custom and duty fees. While it’s great to get gifts, it’s not cool to get custom fees on a swap package because someone marked it up high.

Let everyone know the deadline and remind people. We’re human, we can forget things. So every time you make an announcement regarding a swap, remind people of when the deadlines are. There should be a deadline for signing up, a deadline for mailing and everyone who participates should let you know when they have sent (if you are using Swap-bot, they won’t need to tell you as they need to let the website know when they’ve sent).

Tip: If tracking/delivery confirmation is an inexpensive add-on, you should encourage people to use it. In some countries, it can be quite expensive to add tracking onto a small package and unfortunately not financially feasible to be used.

Having a Flickr group or a forum group is a great idea because you can easily post up announcements or remind people of deadlines or to create new threads for people to post up photos of what they got!

Most importantly: have fun! You should give yourself a pat on a back for a job well done when your swap goes off smoothly. If you run into a snag (like, say, of someone who flakes), you can always ask for help in the form of a Swap Angel and hopefully you have some generous people in your swap group who are willing to help out and make a few extra things for someone who didn’t get their package!

Happy swapping!

I try to make as much of my dolls’ wardrobe as I possible can. I’m a huge fan of most things crafty and I have been slowly (and slightly expensively) amassing a stash of fabric, ribbons, trims, snaps, eyes and hooks, lace, elastic and so many different colours of thread! While I don’t sew an awful lot (I humbly bow to those who sew on a daily or nearly daily basis for their dolls – it’s hard to find the time when I alternate between full time school and full time work!), I do try to sew as much as I can. I’m not very big on sewing a lot, but when I can, I participate in swaps with other people in the Blythe community. That way my dolls don’t get sick of just things made by me all the time and I can make things for someone else, which is always really fun.

Right now, I would say that 90% of the hats we have are made by me, 0.1% of the shoes are made by me and the clothes are maybe at 33% handmade by me (the rest is a mixture of stock, bought and swapped). I do hope to increase the number of handmade-by-me clothes hopefully over the course of this summer (I do have a lot of fabric that shouldn’t just be sitting around!).

What estimated percentage of your dolls’ clothing is made by you? How much of it was bought or swapped for?

Image from sxc.hu user nazreth.

A year ago, my very first post on BlytheLife.com went live and I was pushing a little fledgling site out of the proverbial nest and into the world for everyone to see. I had hopes for this website, I wasn’t entirely sure how often that I was going to be able to keep it updated, but I had hopes in making it a somewhat visited website just to justify the time that I spent on just making that darn eye in the header.

And my expectations were surpassed. I was introduced to so many people, I was told by people new to the Blythe hobby how helpful the website was to them as a resource and I got to interact with just so many people. It’s been absolutely amazing. Writing BlytheLife has certainly made me more active in the doll community – needing to keep up with hot topics and get things posted. It’s been such a huge undertaking and effort and it’s nice to see that I kept it up for a year!

• 1 year
• 15 giveaways
• 18 interviews
• 35 Blythe On A Budget articles
• 170 posts
• 1066 comments
• 81585 visitors (in May 2011!)

Thank you so very much to everyone who has ever visited this website. It’s my baby and it’s growing up so fast! I’m looking forward to seeing what’s in store for the second year of BlytheLife.

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If you know anyone that you think would be interested in getting interviewed for BlytheLife.com, please send me an email (michelle@blythelife.com) or refer them to the How to Get Featured page! I’m always looking forward to doing more interviews and showcasing more talent in this great dolly community!