Hello again!
Please allow me to share a little confession with you- once you start this blogging thing and you learn how to actually do it properly it is very difficult to tear yourself away! It's been several months now, but I am finally getting the hang of it!
Having followers and guest reviews from another author, Jess, is just so exciting that I want to keep posting again and again! I really should be doing homework...but instead I'm here on the computer. (Don't tell Penny.)
Let's take advantage of my procrastination and talk custom doll projects! My next post will introduce you to our first custom doll. But first I decided to bring your attention to our next planned project.
We have already briefly discussed our upcoming custom doll project of a brown-eyed Felicity doll to play the role of Elinor Dashwood from Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility. We need someone to wear all of this Regency period clothing we are collecting!
The new question became: "What do we do with the green eyes and where do we get brown ones?" I suggested to Penny that she finally make that dark brown-haired, green-eyed doll that she has been thinking about since she was a little girl. American Girl used to make a Girl of Today/ Just Like You doll with dark brown hair and green eyes. However, that doll (#10) was retired and Penny likes to buy new dolls (she likes that new-doll smell) so she can't troll Ebay for one.
Thus hatched the plan to create a green-eyed version of a #16- see the AG Playthings Guide to JLY for a headshot of this doll, as well as a guide to the number coding for JLY dolls. We wanted to create a new historical to be our friend, however #16 features bangs, which are not really appropriate for characters dating to earlier than the 1900s.
I began to sketch out a "dating" plan in my Science notebook- instead of writing about plant cells. This is what I came up with: many of the other 1900s decades are already occupied by official American Girl historical dolls- Samantha for 1904, Rebecca for 1914, Kit for 1934, Molly for 1944 and Julie for 1974.
We wanted to be slightly original, so we were left with 1924, 1954, and 1964 as choices. Bangs didn't seem right for the 1920s when we tend to think of flappers and bobbed hairdos for that decade. So it was between 1954 and 1964: sock-hops or the Vietnam War.....um, yeah. You can probably see where this is heading.... Even though Penny's Dad is a Vietnam vet (yay Marines!) and it would be cool to make a Vietnam-era doll as a semi-tribute to him, she felt weird placing a young girl into that part of US history.
Looking closer at the issue, Penny's Dad grew up in the 1950s and our 11-yr-old doll would be about the same age as he was in 1954! He always enjoys talking about his childhood adventures. Can't really say the same thing about his enlisted years. So after that long thought process, Penny gave the thumbs up for a new 1950s doll. She is big fan of poodle skirts and saddle shoes!
So help us decide on a name for our mysterious-yet-to-be-created 1950s doll- please vote in the poll on the right side of the screen underneath my profile photo! You can choose more than one name that you like- but don't choose them all because that won't help us narrow down the list!
In anticipation of our new 1950s doll we custom-ordered a new dress from Melody Valerie! Check out the first blog entry on the project just as the work is beginning!
(Sorry I just created the longest post EVER...didn't really mean to....hope your eyeballs aren't sore from reading it!)
