After I completed 365, I took a nice long break and did not take a photo of any of my dolls for a nice long while. It was nice to not feel like I needed to take a photo, regardless of how mediocre it ended up being. I loved the experience of the 365 Blythe group, but it was just nice to have a break. Don’t feel like taking a photo? That’s fine. Feel like taking a photo? That’s fine too.

Nowadays, I’m more likely to take photos of my Kenners than any of the other dolls (whoops) and I know there’s some neglect going on. I also take a bunch of photos at doll meets, so there is that… I do take photos of other people’s dolls. And I try to mix it up and bring different dolls to the meets if I can (and remember). I think most of my dolls have attended at least one meet, which is good. It makes me feel better as a doll owner that I’m not really playing favourites (even if I do) and I can also get some new photos of a doll from time to time.

I take doll photos at least monthly. Some months I’ll have new photos every week, but not daily. But at least there’ll be something new every month. And it makes me happy to be able to document doll meets.

How often do you take doll photos?

Going through the dolly wardrobe is a very bad thing sometimes. It gives me the opportunity to consider what I have more of and what I have less of and this is not a good thing because then I see that my dolls have a lot of shoes (which I already knew) and a good amount of dresses… And then I see that they need more tops, in particular non-knitted things (I knit a lot!). And then my dolls also have a severe lack in pants, shorts and skirts.

I did recently acquire another pair of pants for the girls, so that’s something. But I’m also in the mindset that I need to downsize because I just feel like it’s a lot of stuff. Yet, at the same time, it’s really hard to downsize unless you’re really looking at everything with an incredibly critical eye because there’s just so much stuff there that I begin to lose sight of what’s important with my hobby. And what’s important is that it makes me happy. Anxiety over having stuff doesn’t make me happy. The feeling of being overwhelmed doesn’t make me happy either because that’s just not good for me.

It really did take a moment for me to realize that I just need to spend more time with my Blythes. For the most part, despite the internet interactions, it can be a really solo hobby. I spent my first two years in the Blythe hobby only interacting with fellow enthusiasts online. And then Portland happened and now I’ve got a pretty solid group of people to spend time with and talk about dolls with. It’s amazing and very awesome. What I really need to do, and that I’ve kind of forgotten, is that I just need to spend time with the dolls. I got incredibly burned out after doing 365 and while I’d love to do it again, I don’t think school is going to allow for that in the future. I got caught up with the stuff that I lost sight of what was the important part of the hobby for me, and that was the dolls and just the comfort that they bring.

My Blythes need more of me.

I’m spreading the Flickr Pro love this week! I did this last year in June as well and it was a lot of fun.

One lucky BlytheLife.com visitor will receive the gift of one year of Flickr Pro.

All you need to do is comment below, include a link to your Flickr account, and tell me why you think you deserve to get it!

Winner will be randomly selected. Those who do not give any reason at all for deserving to win will have their entry disqualified.

Conditions:  You must not already have a Flickr Pro account, this is for people who don’t already have a paid account. One entry per person per email address. Multiple entries from the same IP address and/or email address will be disqualified and you may be banned from future giveaways.

The giveaway will end on Tuesday June 19 2012 11:59pm Pacific and the winner will be announced Wednesday June 20 2012.

Please include your Flickr photostream link below so if you win, I can gift the Pro subscription to you.

As a person, I’m horrible at hair styles for me. On a regular day, I do a ponytail. There’s occasionally a braid, or a headband or something. But other than that, my hair is very not-styled.

As for my doll’s hair? A lot of them have long hair and I don’t really do anything with it. Sometimes there’s a braid, sometimes I twist it up into a bun… But for the most part, I don’t do anything with it. I’m pretty content to not do anything because sometimes it’s just a pain to find an outfit with shoes that go with it and do something with their hair at the same time.

It’s hard to get myself excited about that aspect. It’s fun to go through the box of shoes to find the ‘perfect’ shoes to go with whatever outfit that I pulled out. That’s the fun part of it for me – the doll plus shoes, clothes. But hair? Ehhh… Sometimes it’s just boring and I don’t like messing with it. Sometimes I do, but most of the time I just don’t…

Does that make me a bad dolly owner?

(Possibly…)

How ‘good’ are you at doing doll hair?

Sometimes I wonder if I’m too cheap for the  Blythe hobby. Or rather, too frugal. My dolls, unfortunately for them, don’t wear very much designer clothing. If they do, it rarely costs very much – either received through swaps, or small commissions. But sometimes I look at what my dolls wear and then look at what other people’s dolls wear and thing that my dolls, if they were on a playground, would get made fun of for not wearing the best of the best. But maybe that is just a reflection on the kind of experiences I had with playground bullies in school.

Realistically, I know this isn’t a cheap hobby (have you all seen the prices of dolls?). And then at the same time, I’m reminded by the fact that I have spent a fair bit on clothing over the period that I’ve been in this hobby. But at the same time… I believe the most expensive item that I own in my dolls’ closet is around $20 USD. Not that expensive compared to some $50+ dolly items that I’ve seen floating around the internet.

I think how much I spend on the dolls’ clothing is a bit of a reflection to what I spend on clothing for me. I’m a fairly frugal person. It’s the occupational hazard of being a full-time student and also the youngest child in the family. I grew up on mostly hand-me-downs and, in a sense, so do my dolls. They get a lot of ‘used’ clothing (likely, used clothes in doll terms isn’t the same as used clothes in human terms), some thrifted, loads of stock items and handmade. As much as I would like to get dolly mail on a regular (daily!) basis, it gets expensive after a while. Although I would love to get daily mail, don’t get me wrong (it’s fun and the only mail I get on a regular basis is a monthly credit card statement), it just gets a little pricey at times

I think I do an okay job with supplementing their wardrobes though. I have been making a lot more since giving myself the goal of making at least two items per month (so far so good! touches wood), so that’s been adding to the closet. I also do a lot of swaps and trades with people, which helps.

Are you frugal with your dolly (or dolly clothes/shoes/accessories) spending? How do you supplement their closet? Please share your tips!