I invite you to take a look back at some of the interviews that I’ve done here on BlytheLife.com since I began the website on July 1, 2010. For almost all of my interviews, I’ve asked the interviewee(s) for hints and tips that they would consider offering to people who are new to the hobby, here are some of those tips and hints from 5 of the people that I’ve interviewed so far!

From Rob & Sioux (interviewed July 2, 2010):

What’s one thing that you would tell someone who’s thinking of crafting and selling something for Blythe?
S: My advice to those of you looking to craft & sell for Blythe is to please remember that Blythe designers aren’t big corporations who make things just to earn a buck. No, many pour their heart and souls into everything they make, it’s very personal. If your only interest is to make money you probably won’t be too happy. Selling things takes a lot of time, energy, and money.

R: For people thinking of starting to craft, don’t give up if you’re not happy with the results! Keep trying until you find something you enjoy making, it can be very rewarding and fun!

From Lisa of Milk-Tooth.com (interviewed July 31, 2010):

What kind of advice would you give to someone who’s just coming into the Blythe hobby?
I would tell anyone new to Blythe not to be shy and never hesitate to ask questions. It can be really intimidating to come into a well-established hobby community when you don’t know anyone or much about dolls but just remember that we were all in that position at one point in time so don’t be afraid! I would encourage them to get involved with their local Blythe scene (if there is one.) Blythe is great at bringing people together! I have made some of my very best friends because of dolls!

From Brigitte of HauteCute.net (now PBrigitte) (interviewed September 1, 2010):

What kind advice do you have for those that are new to the Blythe hobby?
For those new to the Blythe hobby I’d say to really enjoy it, take your time finding the perfect girl(s) and shopping for the perfect wardrobe for them. Let the hobby be fun, don’t get caught up in comparing your photos/doll clothes/girls with anyone else’s, and prepare to make some pretty neat friends.

From Jess of MilkyRobot.com (no longer Blythe-related) (interviewed September 12, 2010):

What kind advice would you give to someone who’s just entering into the Blythe hobby/community?
Blythe will open you up to SO many new friends and experiences. When customizing your first girl, don’t be afraid! Get familiar with the forums, my favorite is Plastic Paradise [now Blythe Kingdom]. There are so many people in this hobby that will assist you in any way with your questions and invite you in with loving arms!

From Melly Kay of CuteStew.com (interviewed November 7, 2010):

What kind of advice do you have to give to someone who’s new to the Blythe hobby?
As far as advice, first I would say learn as much as you can. I spent a lot of time researching the first few months and it helped me understand things so much better. I’d also say reach out and join a forum or get on Flickr and connect with all the Blythe lovers there.The Blythe community is wonderful and there are so many amazing people from around the globe that connect with. I’d also say go into it with a budget and plan of some sort. Blythe is addictive and expensive so prepare yourself for that. Don’t be impulsive like me, lol! Every single time I buy a girl I like on impulse, it never fails that a “dream girl” I really want goes up for adoption a few days after and I don’t have the funds to get her. Take your time, plan your collection out and have fun!!

You’ve done it. You came up with a stellar blog name, you learned a little bit of HTML and your blog? Well, it looks fantastic. But you do a few posts and no one comments. In fact, the only person who seems to visit your site is you. What’s wrong with this picture?

Well, unless you planned to make your blog for complete private and personal use only, you need to let people know about your new website!

Make your blog visitor-friendly
You should follow a schedule when posting, it does make it easier for people to know when there will be new material. For instance, BlytheLife.com will generally have at least 3 posts per week (Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays). I follow a schedule and even schedule the posts to go up at generally the same time all the time (12:00pm Pacific time). Include some information about yourself, have an RSS feed button somewhere that’s easily accessible for those that want to add you to their RSS feeds. Make sure that commenting is enabled.

If you are on Blogger, make sure that you set it so that people who don’t wish to log into their Google account (or any other account) can actually comment on your blog entries. If they can’t comment without taking extra steps, they probably won’t. You need to go to the page about Comments settings and enable it to allow everyone.

If you’re on WordPress, you can install a plugin that makes your site mobile-browsing friendly (it’s called WordPress Mobile Edition).

Lastly on making your site more visitor-friendly, always always always resize your images. I’m not just talking about adjust the height and width of the image itself, but actually resize the file size. You can save files optimized for web-use in Photoshop and most other image manipulating programs. This not only helps your site to load faster but to use less bandwidth overall (very important if you happen to either pay for your own hosting or have a limited amount of bandwidth on a free account somewhere).

Utilize Social Media: Twitter
A great way to do this is if you happen to have some people following you on Twitter. Every single time you have a new post, tweet it with the URL. In fact, tweet more than once. No more than few times before people start getting annoyed at you only tweeting your own blog  and unfollowing you though, because that would defeat the purpose. You’ll want to include in your tweet the URL of the blog post and either the title of your blog or the title of the blog entry.

Utilize Social Media: Flickr
Another way of getting some people interested in your blog is to take a screenshot of your blog (press the “Print Screen” or “prt sc” key on your blog, paste it into an image manipulating program of your choice and crop as you see fit) and put it up on Flickr. And don’t forget to include your URL. This works best if you have a lot of people who have you marked down as a contact, but you can always include the screenshot in relevant Flickr groups.

Utilize Social Media: Facebook
It doesn’t matter if you’re actually friends with everyone that you have added as a friend (I have a relative that I’ve never met before in my life added on Facebook, but she can’t view everything so that’s great). If you’re okay with people on Facebook knowing about your new blog, announce your blog as a status update and include the URL as your website link in your profile information.

Comment on other blogs
Say what? Comment on other blogs? Yes! There’s a great sense of karma in the blogging world, where if you comment on a blog (and if that blog author has the time), you’ll get a comment back! Now, this only works if the person can find something to comment on (which leads you back to making your blog visitor friendly) and if they can find something that they feel that they need to comment on. Don’t be surprised if not everyone who comments on your blog will comment back – sometimes they just can’t think of anything to comment on.

Final thoughts…
Blogging should be fun! But sometimes it can be a lot of work, especially if you want to keep up with the trends or just feel that you ‘need’ to blog. It’s always okay to take a little blogging vacation from time to time, but be sure to tell people about it on your blog and to let them know when you plan to be back.

If you found the Doll Blogging mini-series helpful, please let me know! If you  have any suggestions for another mini-series, please let me know on the suggestions page. If you created a blog and want to see it linked on BlytheLife.com, check out the links page.

If you haven’t already, be sure to read the first four installments of the Doll Blogging mini-series!

• Part 1: The Introduction
• Part 2: Names & Hosts
• Part 3: HTML
• Part 4: Themes, Templates & Design
• Part 5: Promoting Your Site

At a lot of fabric stores, there’s a minimum amount (usually a metre [or a yard] off of the bolt or a fat quarter) that you have to get. And it’s usually quite a bit compared to how much fabric you realistically need for making a doll dress, unless you plan on making several matching articles of clothing (in which case, you can dress your dolls like sextuplets or sell the other multiples). Most people (for those not sewing things for sale), you end up with a lot of excessive fabric since you only needed a small part of it. What to do with all that extra?

Swap it!

I’ve seen some people putting together fabric bundles and offering them up for trade/swap or offering them up for sale. It’s a win-win situation, really. You can get fabric that you didn’t previously have (and not dress all of your dolls in identical clothes) and save some money instead of buying even more fat quarters and having even more fabric that you’re not using because you’ve already used it for a dress or two.

Don’t just offer up your scraps, people don’t want little scraps or shivers or fabric that can’t cover their doll. So if you cut your pieces efficiently from the original fat quarter, you can easily offer your extra fabric up for swap! Be sure to include information about the fabric like what kind of material it is, care instructions (if you have it) and even include a photo of the fabric with something for scale (a penny or a ruler works well!) so someone can see if they would like to use that fabric.

And remember – swap safely!

Did you like this week’s Blythe On A Budget? Have a suggestion for a new article? Let me know here!

It doesn’t cost you anything to share the love of Blythe and it can even help you gain another Blythe-friend (or convert a friend into a Blythe-lover).

Not everyone is instantly attracted to Blythe at first. Some people say it’s something about those weird giant eyes, others will say that the pink (or some people seem to think that’s red) chips are very off-putting and even evil looking! And I’m not telling you to try and convert just anyone into a Blythe-lover, some people just aren’t born that way (sadly), but it doesn’t hurt to try to introduce the dolls to someone else.

This is a ‘budget’ kind of tip mostly because you won’t be the one spending the money. Your new-found Blythe buddy will be.

Of course, you get to benefit as well from introducing a friend to Blythe. Not only will you (hopefully!) get to see stock dolls that you haven’t already seen before, even custom dolls from a customizer you’ve never seen the work of up close and personal, and maybe even get someone local to trade dolly clothes with – you also get the fantastic bonus of having a new friend who will actually understand what you mean when you say things like ‘gaze correct’ or ‘boggle’ or ‘putting hot glue to her eyes’ (for some weird reason, my boyfriend still thinks I’m weird when I say the one about the glue and gets a little bit concerned…).

But not to worry, it’s not entirely self-centred (for you) because your new Blythe-convert will not only be introduced to one of the best dolly communities around, they’re also likely to be persuaded into taking more photos, learning new crafts (everyone seems to do some dolly sewing at one point or another!) and just getting to know more people. Plus your new Blythe-convert will have something in common with you. If that’s not a fantastic reason to introduce someone to Blythe, I don’t know what is.

Just be sure that you don’t scare off your target too early. You’ll want to explain a bit about the history of Blythe (don’t overwhelm them about the different molds until they’re ready for it – but do explain the small differences between Kenner Blythes, Takara and Ashton-Drake Galleries), maybe talk about what stock dolls your dolls are (or a little about customizers/customizing). You don’t want to scare them off! Newbies are sometimes easily overwhelmed and scared off, so don’t start talking about ripping off scalps and shaving pieces of plastic for ‘gaze correcting’ – they might just going to run away from you or think you’re some kind of crazy person (or both).

Part of the fun of blogging is having a blog that stands out from everyone else’s, so today’s installment of the Doll Blogging mini-series is to go over colours schemes, templates and themes (yes, there is a difference!) and design tips that you can use to make your blog really stand out.

Colour Schemes
One of the most basic colour schemes is to have a white background with black text, I use this on BlytheLife.com. It’s consider basic because many people use it (including many professional websites) and it’s easiest for those who may have visual disabilities to view. Of course, you’re not limited to just using black and white and you can use other colours as well.

A lot of colours go well together. If you take a look at a colour wheel, you can find colours that generally go well together quite easily. Colours that lie opposite of one another are complementary (eg. blue and orange; red and green; yellow and purple/violet), primary colours are red, blue and yellow, secondary colours are violet (purple), green and orange. The colours you pick will reflect on the general feel of your blog and writing. If you customize Blythe to look gothic or dark, you might want to go with a darker colour scheme. If your dolls are constantly wearing cute things with lace and pink, you might want to go with a lighter colour scheme (perhaps pastels?).

It’s important to use colours that are different enough to ensure that your visitors can read the text (what’s the point of them visiting your blog if they can’t read it?). So things to avoid would be any neon colours on a white or black background, a light colour text on an even lighter colour background. You want to make things easy for your visitors to read because you have a very narrow window of opportunity to convince your visitor to stay and read your website – if they can’t read it, they won’t stay and they probably won’t be coming back.

• COLOURlovers.com

Themes and Templates
Themes and templates are generally interchangeable on some places on the internet, some people think that there’s a difference while others think that the words are pretty much the same thing. And, to be honest, they’re kind of just the same to me!

Themes and templates exist to make the whole layout-designing process a lot easier. For those who aren’t web designing-inclined, you can use a template or a theme to make your blog reflect your personal style without really having to make it all yourself. They are generally precoded layouts and all you really need to do is follow the instructions given by the person who created it.

Most layouts for WordPress are referred to as ‘themes’ while many for Blogger are referred to as ‘templates’, so there may be a small difference in them after all (although not that great). If you have the know-how, you can replace the images used in the precoded layout with an image that you created yourself. However, if you’re not comfortable with touching the coding, I would suggest that you leave it alone or make sure that you save a copy of the original and work off of a copy of the coding (just in case something goes wrong!).

Templates and themes are available in both free and paid versions. Free versions are generally fairly simple, most designers don’t generally offer a lot of technical support with them (and if they do, it’s usually the same information provided to you in a Read Me file, or something like it). Paid versions can range a lot if price. Very basic paid-for layouts may be under $30, but fully customized to your very liking can go up to several hundred dollars (definitely not a cheap option!). However, paid-for layouts will generally get you a lot more technical support.

• Free Blogger Templates
• Blogger Templates
• Free WordPress Themes (from WordPress.org)
• WordPress Themes Base

General Design Tips
No matter if you decide to go with a theme or to tweak a template to your liking, there’s a lot of things beyond that layout that you should consider doing (and not doing!) when creating a website. Things like music, javascripts, flash images, etc.

A lot of people like music and a lot of people like internet. But not everyone likes them together. If you absolutely must have music on your website, you should have controls that are easily visible to the visitor for them to stop it and start it. It should also not automatically play when anyone visits your website. Your visitor may already have music playing or have their volume turned up with no music playing (and not expect to have music suddenly blaring at them). Also, having music auto-play will make your site load slower! And in this day in age where everyone wants faster connections and the information now, they’re not going to want to wait for that.

Javascripts and Flash images are great. They are. They make things pretty, animated, occasionally interactive. They also make your site load slowly. Very slowly. Some people have Javascripts disabled, some people cannot view Flash on their computer. In other words, the majority of the design that you decided to go with for your website cannot load. And what’s the point in that if it’ll take a long time to load and it can’t be properly viewed as you wanted it to be? I’m sure your Javascripts and Flash images look great, but they have a time and place for everything and that place really isn’t your dolly blog (besides, you should be showing off photos of your dolls instead!)

If you haven’t already, be sure to read parts one (The Introduction), two (Names & Hosts) and three (HTML). In two weeks, on April 4, 2011, the conclusion to the mini series, Part 5 (Promoting Your Site), will be posted.

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