Website Overhaul... Again

I've been working a lot on my visual branding lately, for this and other sites.  I wasn't happy with the website overhaul I did on this site a couple weeks ago, so yesterday I decided to work on it some more.  I knew better now what I wanted from the template, so I tried out a couple of different templates and designed a header image in Canva before finally settling on an overall appearance for my website.

I know this has been a rather ignored site for a long time, so I'm trying to revive it with a whole new look and some fresh posts.  I am planning to overhaul my restringing ebook as well to reflect my branding, and after that I'll look at getting back to work on the expanded restringing ebook and other tutorials I wanted to offer eventually.

I have some new posts coming soon, including an exciting thrift store find and a couple of glow ups!

Making Progress

I've mentioned a few times that I'm doing some updates to my blogs and websites, including this one.  I had been thinking about moving to another hosting company, but ended up deciding not to, at least for now.  But since the blog was very old and outdated, I needed to transfer it over from my hosting platform's FTP publishing, which Blogger no longer uses.

Well, I've finally finished the long, tedious task of transferring all of this blog's photos over from the original platform, which is a big deal, as it was a big job and also a big problem if you tried to view any of my older posts, as the images simply weren't loading.  That was a walk down memory lane for me, though, as I had to open up nearly every single one of my old posts.  I didn't read each one closely, but I read enough, and loaded enough old pictures, that it was quite the revelation for me.

It would have been a shame to lose all the old content, but in some ways, I wish I could have scrapped it all and started over.  Those posts were 13 and 14 years old, and I can totally see the difference: in my writing, in my doll repair projects, and especially in my pictures.  I take far better photographs now.  I was almost ashamed to repost some of those, they were so much beneath my current standards, but I wanted to be true to the original content.

I also found some inaccuracies.  For instance, I've since bought a book on Elise that does a better job of dating Elise ballerinas, and I think it's more accurate than the old information.

So while I'm glad to have all the old photos back up finally, there's still a lot to do.  I need to work more on the appearance of the website, plus I have new post ideas and updates and want to post better photos as well.  I can't forget too that I still need to figure out a new way to automate selling my ebook.

So, stay tuned for more changes in the coming weeks, and thank you for your continued patience!

Thanks for Your Patience!

Fixing up my website has been an ordeal.  I had to move the blog, so all of the pictures were lost and I'm adding them back in manually.  When I moved the blog, I also renamed the website to DIY Doll Stringing (from Doll Stringing Extravaganza), and overhauled the appearance of the entire site.  I am not yet satisfied with how it looks, though, so I'm going to tweak it a bit more once I have all the pictures uploaded again.

I also rewrote several sections of the website, including my doll stringing ebook's sales page.  I'm also in the process of making some updates to the ebook, which will be ready soon!

Thanks for your patience while I make all of these changes.  It'll be a little while before everything is completed, but we're getting closer!

Site Under Construction

Don't mind my mess!  This website is temporarily under construction while I change hosts and update the site.  The buy buttons have therefore been disabled temporarily until I get everything fixed.  In the meantime, if you'd like to buy my ebook on how to restring a vintage strung doll, contact me at admin at doll stringing dot com.

Merry Christmas, from my dolls to yours!

I have had a busy year and haven't been blogging or even working on my dolls very much — until recently. I have several projects I am currently working on or planning to work on, so hopefully there will be new stories to share very soon.

Here are a few of my Christmas presents to myself:

A bent-knee Cosmopolitan Ginger in the Disney mouseketeer outfit, and a Ginger clone in a MIB A&H Julie outfit...

...and a mint, unopened canister of Ginger shoes, part of a fantastic lot of Ginger dolls and outfits that I was lucky enough to win on eBay.

Have a very merry Christmas — and may there be dolls under your tree!

New additions to my collection

I have been too busy for many of my project dolls lately, so I haven't been posting here as much as I used to. However, I have been adding a lot of dolls to my collection.

In addition to fixing up "project dolls," I have a couple of boxes full of clothes that I enjoy finding dolls to wear. Just this week, I have found several nude dolls to dress. Here are a few of my newest additions.

The Ginger on the left is one I've featured before, #444 from 1956. The one in the center is new — a nude with perfect hair that I found and dressed in #226 from 1954/55. The one on the right is another I've had a while, but recently completed her outfit with hat, belt, and lavender socks. The accessories came in a boxed outfit and are correct for this dress.

This little sweetheart is a Ginger clone that I've dressed in one of my favorite clone outfits. I'm not sure who the doll is, or who the outfit belongs to. The dress closes with a Greek key snap, which was used by both Cosmopolitan and some of the companies that sold Ginger clones.

Next we have a pretty little brunette I just got and dressed in #441 from 1954/55. Although I put the outfit together myself, all of it is correct except the bloomers (she has white taffeta fat pants on, but they should be the same navy waffle weave as the dress). The belt has torn before and is a bit short as a result, but is otherwise correct for the outfit.

This next one is probably my favorite of my new additions. She is wearing an outfit I've featured before: Ginger's sailor outfit, which I've since discovered is #333 from 1955. I found one for myself, then found the white belt and red ribbon necktie to go with it. The beanie is a lovely crocheted one made by Regitze to replace the original red felt beanie.

The doll has a broken walking post, which I might try to fix eventually, but for now I'm not too worried — she is lovely enough that I don't care if her head wobbles a little bit!

The trunk used as a backdrop for these pictures is a new addition too, incidentally.

I am hoping that in the coming weeks I will have an opportunity to catch up on my project dolls. Stay tuned for some posts on hair restyling and seam split repair.

Another year, another doll show

On Sunday my mom and I had a booth in another doll show. A fellow Ginger collector and good friend of mine from Denmark, and the owner of GingerDolls.dk, also had a few things (a few small dolls and a boxload of clothes) for sale in our booth.

This particular show ran twice last year — October and December — and we did both shows. This one, however, was more successful than both of last year's shows combined.

I've been slowly focusing my collecting efforts on Cosmopolitan Ginger, and as a result I've been getting rid of dolls that don't fit my collection anymore. There are some dolls that I won't get rid of no matter how my collecting changes, but there are others that I don't care as much for and that take up too much room to keep. My mom would call it downsizing, but I think techically a collection has to get smaller in order for that to be true — and mine is growing all the time.

Anyway, here is a listing of what we sold at the show:

My mom:

* 1930s Madame Alexander Madelaine DuBain
* 1950s American Character Tiny Tears with original trunk, clothes, and accessories
* 1950s magic skin baby with clothes and accessories
* Figurines from occupied Japan
* Carved wooden animals from Kenya
* Doll clothes

Me:

* 1950s 14" hard plastic "Made in USA" doll
* Madame Alexander Alexander-kins with the Maggie Mixup face and a 1960 tagged outfit
* Newer MIB Madame Alexander dolls
* Several "$5 dolls" — nude 1950s fashion dolls, Ginger clones, etc. — all needing TLC
* Doll clothes

Regitze:

* Ginny and Jill doll parts
* Doll clothes

One thing we have found about these shows is that it helps to have a combination of high-dollar dolls ("eye candy") and bargain stuff. So in addition to our nice dolls, we had a number of bargain dolls and several plastic tubs full of clothes (off to the side, out of the picture) for people to dig through. We set our prices fairly low, and by the end of the day our table was quite a bit more bare than what you see here.

Of course, the result is that we will turn around and put a lot of what we made into buying more dolls. The cycle never ends!