Sharing her original post as it’s fun backstory. It’s good to see Mattel showcasing the work of a small artist and supporting her. You guys!!! This historical release!!! I’ve just been beaming all day. AG let me know late last year that I’d be in charge of all the lifestyle photography for the launch and I’ve never been so excited about coming up with ideas!! First up on my behind the scenes series we’ll tackle the process of making Samantha’s house as that’s the very first thing I started working on. I was at a loss as I had never, erm, built a victorian mansion before?? It couldn’t actually be to scale since it’d be the size of a real house (😅) BUT it did need to be big enough for the illusion. I ultimately constructed something 8 feet tall (it was an inch or so away from brushing our ceiling). Cardboard was my best idea since this thing had to be light weight enough to transport to my location. In the end it worked amazingly!! I made it foldable, so the whole thing is currently laying flat in my storage unit and taking up very little space. The house has three sides, a roof, framed windows, and a detachable porch. Accuracy was incredibly important to me (especially since seeing the real house in person last year in NY), so I was pulling out my hair trying to decide which elements to keep and which I absolutely had to let go due to my canvas being so much smaller than the real thing. I’m ridiculously pleased with the outcome!!! Some extra fun tidbits: - In the photo of the house set up on-location, see that big tree to the right of it? @5hensmo and I added all those leaves day-of my shoot since I shot this the day before Thanksgiving. No leaves to be found (except covering the ground lol). - It was very cold, windy, and wet, which means any sunlight you see is from my flashes! - The tree Samantha is leaning against is from my mom’s courtyard; it had recently died and she donated it to the project. I covered it in faux leaves for the shoot and absolutely love it.

Most Madame Alexander dolls can be restrung using the basic method of arm to arm and head to legs with simple paracord, however Cissette 10" dolls are built a little bit different in the legs with a very small and narrow opening within plastic dowel like protrusions that stick out. I found my normal cord did not fit through the small openings when connecting the head to the legs and having two cords passing through the opening. I found this tutorial helpful in giving a visual and also reduced my cord size to 1/16th to be able to pass two lines of cord through the legs. This tutorial has photos and good information on the restringing for this doll. Cissette Restrung; Doll Stringing Tutorial

In doll collecting, we often choose dolls that speak to us either by fashion, or by childhood memories, or by style of the creator. There are vast collections out there in the world with several types of dolls. Some collect only one kind and accumulate them into full rooms. Some collect on a theme, some create a nursery. Doll collections are very personal and they tell a story. Often times I don't know what I'm getting into when I am chasing down an idea. The fundamental concept that I run with is one of transformation. The joy of restoring a doll that is sad into one that is ready for a second life with a new or existing owner. Once the caterpillar turns into the butterfly, I find myself saying "Fly away little butterfly, be free." And I pack that doll up and it goes to it's new home. For this reason, the biggest room in my studio full of dolls is not actually my doll cabinets, it's my workshop where dolls await in parts, shaved heads, and limbs on the shelf to be restored. My doll collection itself, is relatively small on comparison with many of my clients. Through the course of running this business, what has been in my cabinets has often been single faceted. I've chosen the pieces I like and it does run in a theme. A few get rotated out when I get something exciting and new, but I definitely have my favorites that bring me joy. I don't collect x dolls (x = fill in the brand or the era) has really changed for me. What is very fulfilling about being in the doll business is learning about what each of my clients and doll collecting friends love. Often it's very different from what I am collecting and I often go into a conversation about their collection with the thought, "Ok convince me, why is this doll special". It's not meant to be a challenge, but dolls are a special kind of product bought. It's based on emotion, desire, and memories. Each doll collector has a story and that collection is part of that story. Talking about why we collected something particular and the memories or the history it evokes is probably one of the most interesting topics for me to learn. You dive down the rabbit hole of a person's very personal story, and that is why doll collectors are some of the most interesting people to know. You'll never get the same passion when someone talks about the vacuum cleaner they bought or why they needed to go buy paper towels. There could be a story behind buying a new outfit, but many of the products out there we are shopping for are very surface level. Dolls is another story. As I learn about each doll collector's story and collection, it intrigues me. A part of that story lives on in me and over the course of time I have an appreciation for not just the dolls I collect, but a broader appreciation for many types of dolls. Some of the stories have affected me so much that it rubbed off and one of those dolls or several of those dolls have ended up in my collection. As my knowledge grows I can tell more and more what makes each doll brand special and it's brought up my level of love for dolls substantially. It makes me the happiest to know that I've been changed for the better and now it is not "I don't collect x dolls" but "I collect a broad range of dolls". It's definitely inclusivity vs. exclusivity dollwise in this studio. Share your story, what's in your collection and why are you passionate about your doll pieces?

This is just a short notation about some restringing tips that help me. 1. If you are using paracord to restring a doll: a. Thicker is not always better as the elastic looses less and less stretch the thicker it is. Most dolls can be repaired with 1/8" cord from 8"-23" dolls. Large dolls/lifesize dolls can go thicker but not by much. 2. It's less wasteful on cord if you use elastic bands for the arms. It's a very short distance especially once you factor in the stretch of the band. It has been some trial and error finding the right size bands for each size doll, but we are working on updating kits with the proper size for each doll size. 3. All restringing is arm to arm and then head to legs. An elastic band is often the best choice for arm to arm and paracord from head to legs. For the proper length of paracord add 4" to the doll's height to give you enough slack to tie the knot at the end. Not being able to tie the knot at the end is very frustrating if your string is too short especially with all the tension between the limbs. Just allow that extra and you will be sure that you have enough and at the same time make sure you aren't wasting too much extra. 4. It's best to restring your doll completely nude so that you can work freely without the obstacles of clothing. Always undress your doll completely before restringing. 5. Watch the direction of your limbs. You don't want to end up with backwards feet or left and right arms mixed up. It helps after you've attached your hooks to your head and limbs to lay them out next to the body the direction that they go so that once you've threaded through your loops or paracord that you don't have to think about what goes where. 6. Always use the wide part of the hook inside your limbs and the narrow part of your hooks for your cord or band. This helps keep your band from slipping out if it's crunched inside that narrow pinch and you need the wider part to swing in and catch your limb and head bars. It's a lot more frustrating the other way around. 7. Always test your restring by moving the limbs afterwards. You don't want weird movement. Before I push my final knot inside I always look at how the arms, legs, and head are moving. If they aren't tight enough, I have time to untie my knot and pull up more slack. Too tight and your arms are stiff and mobility is strained. 8. Practice makes the process smoother. Try to practice as much as you can, even if you are doing it over and over on one doll. After lots of practice, it starts to become it's own movement that you don't have to think so hard about it, and then it gets easier.

In running a doll hospital, I've definitely gone through quite a lot of repairs and customizations. I thought when I initially started it, that it would be overwhelming as there are so many brands and types of dolls out there, how could I possibly learn to repair all of them? Well I was surprised to find, that really you only need to master a few skills, and that most dolls will fall under those skills 9 times out of 10, so here's a few summaries for dolls from 1950 to today. The four basic skills you need for doll restoration are: Wig, Restring, Eyes, Cleaning, and Cracks or (WRECC). Wig - Refers to the hair situation. Whatever type of hair material used, hair is a major component of repairing dolls to good condition. A bad haired doll takes the quality and beauty of the doll down and a doll can go from unloved to loved with a simple repair to hair. This goes for rooted hair dolls as well, if the rooted hair cannot be restored a wig can help that doll live a new life. Restring - A doll with floppy arms or legs or that is completely disassembled cannot be played with or properly presented by a collector. Many dolls are strung, those that aren't use flanged legs and arms that "screw" into their armholes or legholes, but a flanged doll's limbs can only move up and down, whereas a strung doll has much more mobility. Cleaning - So much of transformation on a doll can be solved by a simple deep clean. Sometimes that's all a doll needs and she's looking herself again. This can be face and body cleaning or just outfit cleaning. Keeping a doll clean shows you care about her. Cracks - Cracks refers to breakage on a doll. This can be cracks at her pressure points such as around the arm and leg holes, at seams where she is welded together, drop type damage which occurs usually at the feet, or mauling damage where a doll's digits go into the mouth and are bitten off. How you complete these restoration categories does start to feel very familiar even among different brands as you find that you don't need different cleaning agents, you don't need to learn a different restringing method, and eye and wig changes the process is relatively the same. Vinyl dolls always need a heat source whether it's blow dryer or boiling to soften the vinyl and remove eyes and are usually pryed out the front or if you can fit your fingers in the neck, pushed out from the back of their sockets. Wigs are always glued to the head. Once you master peeling off one old wig, you don't need to learn the process again for any other brand. Restringing has the same process from doll to doll on hard bodies - arm to arm and head to legs, the only thing that changes is the thickness of your elastic and/or elastic bands size. Repairing a crack on one doll will often be the same process on another doll provided you are working with the same material. Cleaning your doll and working through difficult stains and marks will often be the same from doll to doll. So the good news is that you don't need a lifetime to learn how to repair dolls and we hope to cover most of the variances on tricky repairs in our Doll Forum as we encounter them.

No one wants to fail. Especially when you are running a small business. Failure is not an option and we often sink our entire mental and physical being just to avoid failure. If we do fail it is often not because we didn’t try hard enough, but because success takes time to build. And then there’s that one person who points out viral overnight success and puts that into your thought process to mull over. Yes some people win the lotto too. It will happen out there in the world to someone, but not everyone. And yet more and more of us adapt to owning their own business, putting in 10x the effort and hours than a 9 to 5. Because the journey is more, because the reward is more, and the freedom is more. We don’t want to believe it, but failure gives more meaning and gravity than success and you need both on your journey. Success is the result, but failure creates the meaning behind our success. Without that knowledge, we don’t know why we are succeeding and we don’t understand how to grow. Just as there are different levels of success, there are different levels of failure as well. And while we are not actively seeking a total wipeout failure, those that succeed after a wipeout have stronger businesses than those who never failed at all. When I say leave room for failure, allow yourself to fail because you always get a stronger and better business from learning from mistakes. In this day and age, the concept of skipping right to success is fed into our minds over and over. We want that internet fame, that level of money without the hard work, climbing sales with little effort, and viral everything. Sounds great right? But if you are a business that processes 10 orders a day you have no idea how to handle 100 in a day and run into severe problems instantly. Incremental growth you can learn to manage over time and instant growth can cause complete chaos. If you are a handmade business, you have an instant problem of how to make and fulfill your orders, plus if you cannot recover in an appropriate time frame you have angry customers. Failure is also notorious for uncovering your weaknesses. Everyone has them but maybe you don’t have to address them right away because you are doing ok. All it takes is a shift in the economy or a new competitor in the market and a tank in sales to force you to address your weaknesses. We are often guilty of setting something aside that doesn’t feel important while things are doing well. I’m the three little pigs scenario did you build your house of brick or straw? Because all it takes is a huff and puff from a wolf to show you what that house is made of. It may be fine when it’s sunny, but can it weather a storm? When failures expose your weaknesses, it causes you to be more proactive for an upcoming storm or for the impending wolf. So the thought to take home, is allow yourself room to fail in order to come out stronger and prepare yourself for the ups and downs of business. You’ll have healthy growth, knowledge, and strength in your business.

There were many posts on social media from all the crafters and artisans complaining about low January sales. It's inevitable, the hype of November to December when there is all that holiday shopping and then January hits and it's like someone turns off the water and you get drip drip drip. But I think it's less of January's fault and more of what we are conditioned to expect in today's business. We are consistently targeted by all marketing firms and advertising agencies and apps to subscribe to services which promise that if you use them orders and sales will come flooding in with no effort. In fact that is also what we are promised from social media, that if you are creating content daily and posting reels or gaining 1.8 million followers that suddenly you will get this instant success with effortless sales. This may be true for a select few, but there definitely is more to the story that they are not sharing as so many of us are saying the same thing, "I'm busting my butt until I'm tired, and it's not happening." Even worse, reports are saying that it's getting lower. Lower engagement, losing followers, less sales etc. It's reminding me very much of an old textbook example of the fruit tree. The fruit tree was a sales example, usually apples. The lowest fruit was at the bottom, easy to pick and required minimal to no effort to get. The medium apples required a ladder and were further up the tree and then you needed something special to get to the apples at the very top which was the hard level. You in this scenario are the farmer. Social Media, SEO, and Internet Ads in this day and age is the low hanging fruit. We all get excited for these sales because they are easy. They roll in, they make our phones cha-ching and they are always unexpected because you may have never even spoken to this customer before and yet they bought something. These are always the sales we want more of so we can sit in our pjs at home and do the least effort possible. There are many new businesses and even existing businesses that in this example set up their shop and then wait for the sales to roll in. In the apple tree scenario they come and pick the fruit at the bottom and then simply wait for the next season. Next season rolls around and they are out happy to pick the low fruit but then two more farmers show up to also pick. Wait where did they come from? Suddenly there are less apples and yet they walk away and wait for next season. This season there are four farmers and the share is very small. I don't know why we expect things to stay the same, but somehow we do. Starting businesses has become so easy, that even kids are starting internet brands. More and more people are rushing to start online brands and webpages and maybe you had a lot of easy apples before, but you can't count on that because everyone wants the easy sales, or maybe one year not as many apples grow, what would that mean? As businesses we also must ride the economic times, which means in time periods where budgets are tightened and spending is pulled back, the first to go are those easy low hanging fruit sales. The objective actually is of course get as many of those low hanging easy sales as you can, but also to harvest the entire tree and then plant more trees. So what does that mean? Let's say you are a candle business and your social media is bringing in those easy sales but you need more. Medium and hard sales might be going to a craft fair to gain customers, placing an ad in a local paper, going physically to retail stores to try to get wholesale bulk orders for your candles. All of these these things require considerably more effort to make a sale, but can also be a larger payoff. As effort gets harder, the players in the game are also fewer. I want to say it's not because we are lazy, but I kind of feel that is somewhat of the case. I mean who wants to knock on doors if you can sit in your living room waiting for a customer to come to you with no interaction needed? But guaranteed that the business owner that takes the time to pick all the fruit from the tree will pass up the one growth and sales wise from the person who expects it to just roll in from the low hanging fruit. How do you plant a tree? At some point you will exhaust all your options, not because you didn't do it right, but because (in the candle scenario) a buyer may just not need any more candles. It's not because they didn't love yours or think your business was awesome, but they may unfollow because they just don't need you or your products any longer. They become an unfollow, an inactive customer, maybe a 1x buyer and now you are -1 and need two more customers to grow. Or maybe you've tapped out your current audience and overall you've sold as many candles as you've possibly could. Planting a tree would be to add a new product to your line. Maybe it's lotions and now you can sell your customers both candles and lotions. Maybe that opens the door for gift baskets or sets. Planting a tree could also mean that you are going after another audience. Maybe you targeted women in their 40's before but now you are going after women in their 30's or maybe you are targeting shop owners to retail your products for you. Of course we all want the orchard with many many fruit trees to harvest, but each tree has to be cared for, requires maintenance, and definitely time to grow so it's important not to add too many trees at once or you start to spread yourself very thin both financially and time wise. Having many products in a line sounds very cool and looks cool, but you have to advertise, create awareness, packaging, all the same things you did on your first product. This takes energy, financial backing, and lots of time so don't dive in until you've got solid ground on your first product. It does work and it does start to separate you from the rest of the pack. As others are scrambling for those social media sales rolling in on their own, their January's numbers fell flat. But for those who picked all the apples from the tree, January was a great month.

The answer is yes. Low temperature does affect resin and plastics and could cause your doll to crack while traveling in transit, or in storage where the climate gets low. To avoid breakage, try not to ship dolls where they will travel in or through areas with freezing temperatures. If the location of a doll has climates of snow or ice, it's possible that in transit even to a warmer climate that through transit or as it moves from warehouse to warehouse destination it could crack or break on its own or become brittle enough that basic handling can crack it. This makes winter doll shipping tricky, and you might want to wait until temperatures warm up if the doll is expensive. Vinyl dolls don't seem to be as fragile and won't break just due to cold alone, but storing in freezing temperature can cause vinyl to become brittle over time or attract moisture.

If you are anything like me as a small business, you wear a lot of hats and work long hours. That fateful day when we all hope that we become millionaires at one point is long off, and we are in the day to day struggle of making things work and figuring things out by ourselves. I'm hit flush in the face with all kinds of advertisements that promise AI sales and marketing tactics that will somehow carry your business from the slow pace of growing to the sound of a Vegas slot machine hitting the jackpot. Let me tell you friends, for most of us, that stuff will never work. It's not that we are doing anything wrong, it's that everyone is playing the same game. Everyone is trying to post, everyone is trying to make content, everyone is trying to grow their following, everyone is trying to get more subscribers, and everyone is trying every day to be seen and grow. Some are doing it for business, some for vanity, some for kicks, some for entertainment, and other such reasons. It's like looking into a room of people pushing and shoving at a store's door busters deals before Christmas shopping season. Everyone wants the same thing and all fighting to get to the front and out the door. There is an algorithm at every door. One for Google, one for Instagram, one for Facebook, one Tik Tok, the list goes on, if it's social or web based there is an algorithm for that and it controls who sees you and who does not. Good intentions of course, they are all designed to push things that they think the user will like based on what they've interacted with, what they've shown interest in, what they've searched for and so if you aren't presenting that subject matter you just kind of fade in the background. Many of us have experienced this on a small scale with our shops where listings are popular one week and then the next week fall flat, or everyone saw your post for dolly subject matter and then the next week no one saw anything. With everyone on their phones as a source of entertainment and for cutting boredom or awkward silence, the past time of today is scrolling scrolling scrolling. Social media pushes you to stay on, look at all the people looking, scrolling, if you aren't in front of them you don't exist. Meanwhile small business owners are met with an unbelievable demand of being content creators and unreasonable posting objectives. I've been frustrated myself. I push my customers to "Like" me on Facebook or Instagram, but when I'm ready to release my new dolly product or show what I've recently created, I'm having to find my followers all over again. I was contacted by one of my former Etsy customers not long ago, who came across me on another platform and was so happy to find me again. Again, how is it I lost a customer somewhere on the web? I'm constantly posting everywhere and yet this person could not find me. I searched everywhere, and then found that this same person "followed me on Instagram". How is this possible - this person could not find my store, but was one of my own followers on an active account? Why? Because even though they were a follower, my posts did not end up on their feed because I had been filtered out. So then I had a think about this...so I am busting my butt growing followers, promoting use of social media and then I can just fall off the face of the earth without my customer even realizing they lost sight of me. This reminds me a lot of many situations where I found myself doing all the hard work to make someone else successful. Yes folks, social media needs us to be working hard, creating content, and making platforms look interesting and full of information and to sell advertising, but is it really stable enough to grow business? Or is it a revolving door of people coming and going or getting lost along the way? I think technology as a whole is something that we must keep up with as business owners. We can't sit idle and let opportunities pass us by, but I also think that we need to use our time wisely as otherwise we meet impossible standards of tasks and spread ourselves way too thin. Here today, gone tomorrow is not a mindset that seems very stable to me. I'm not saying get rid of social media, I enjoy posting photos and occasionally getting feedback or likes, but it no longer defines my success in business. I am not going to cry if only 8 people like a post or that my business Facebook page has only 100 followers. Because all of that is superficial. Ok 100 people thought I was interesting enough to click a like button, that doesn't mean they will ever purchase anything from me. In fact social media gets you about 1% in sales from your following. Larger percentages are achievable if you are really killing it but averages peak at about 5%. Now think really hard about that number, and then think really hard about what percentage of your time you are spending killing yourself on posts and creating content. My guess is that it is not 5% or less. Even more disheartening is that algorithms take time to find your customers and build on their success, and the learning is gradual. You have to let it learn and do it’s thing over time which is why there is no instant slot machine kind of reaction on sales. Eventually you do start building more sales as it finds more audience for you. Which is why it’s hard for new stores because they desperately need that jumpstart and it’s a long wait for the payoff. And then what happens if something changes? Sellers that were kicked off Etsy lost their algorithm feeding their sales Tik Tok has disappeared due to government regulations. What happened to your algorithm, what happened to your followers? You have to start over. What am I trying to say here? I'm saying that we are all dancing around in a bubble of promised success with very low results and a whole lot of fluff. We have defined our success from numbers of people who have no real intent of ever being a customer. Some of us are defined by those numbers as how popular our businesses are and who is an influencer. There are real influencers out there, yes but there are lots of wizards behind the curtain as well that are just putting on a good show but actually don't have any power at all. Many businesses are thriving without social media at all - which seems like a crazy thing. Algorithm based traffic can disappear if you lose the platform or the algorithm changes and you find your business on shaky ground if that’s all you depend on. It’s a very real and eye opening experience when you’ve spent long hours and creating content and getting the platform’s algorithm to work for you and then poof it’s gone. If that’s how anyone knows you ie your screen name on social media, your whole fame is gone when those people can’t find you or you suddenly don’t show up in any feeds. Maybe they notice, maybe they don’t because 1,000 other people are ready to fill up the feed without skipping a breath. But what is actually crazy is the day we gave up other types of marketing and interaction with real people for a world full of superficial ones. I find it super sad that I can spend all day on social posting and interacting and maybe get 1-2 sales from it or be at an in person doll event and walk home with 3 new network connections and 5 new customers. Social media should not be the only thing on the agenda and it shouldn't be deserving of all your hours in the work week even though you can do it all from home. Explore other types of marketing and measure the success vs social media. Take into account how much time you have to put in to get your results as that is eye opening. Say to yourself, if something happened to my social media would my business be devastated? You need the answer to be no, and doing that means you need to make real world connections to ground your business to real foundations. • Radio • Google Search • Doll Events and Conventions • Doll Clubs • Teaching a Class in person or online • Magazines for doll collectors • Physical mailers and catalogs • Networking events • Kid events • Craft Faires Everyone's business and customer base is different, but a mix of different methods and figuring out what gets the best results is key, and it may surprise you if social media is not #1.

Surprisingly this comes up a lot especially with doll companies that have gone out of business or have been bought out. So the simple answer is no, but let's explore some of the reasons behind the no. Companies that go out of business sometimes may shut their doors but transfer their trademarks to a relative or successor who may choose to renew it. Brand names can be valuable especially if they are licensing others to make products and charge a license fee, or sometimes it's to preserve the brand in case they want to resume operations at any time. So in essence, as long as an active trademark exists and it's being renewed, you have to contact the owner of the trademark to use it in making any product. They may be willing to issue you a license to create products with it for a fee or they may decide they don't want you to make anything at all. The age of the company is not necessarily the factor either, as we've seen older companies who are not operating continue to have their trademarks renewed. Companies that are bought out by a larger corporation often transfer all their trademarks to the new company. This is very apparent for American Girl/Mattel who bought out the Pleasant Company brand and continues registration on all the old logos, doll names, and toys previously made by the old company. In this case the new company renews the trademarks so they remain current even if they aren't producing any dolls/toys under that brand any more. This also protects them from others trying to make old-branded merchandise and passing it off to collectors i.e. counterfeit logo'd products. Can you make your own custom dress and put a Pleasant Company logo on it? No, it would be illegal because American Girl owns the rights to all the Pleasant Company logos, words, and old product names. Can you make character inspired outfits such as Samantha's plaid in a modern day outfit? It really depends on if they trademarked that specific look but also be careful because characters are trademarked so if you are drumming up sales by leaning on their original character that is also a no no. And here's where it gets murky.... If someone traces a company logo and makes it into a digital file for sale online to use with an embroidery machine, Cricut, craft making machines, etc. and you pay to download the file, do you then have rights to use it? Very murky waters here. Most of these files are not created legitimately, at least in regards to be able to distribute the file in digital form or to charge for it and they definitely don't come with rights to use it on products. So even if you downloaded a company's logo from a website and paid for it, still doesn't give you any rights to make mugs or sell dolly t-shirts with the logo on it. What good is it then? No idea. Most disclosures say it's for personal use which is just a fancy term for "things available for which you don't sell and just keep in your house for you", but really. Odds are no one is really downloading to make personal items for themselves to look like official branded items. Even if you did and then posted it on your Instagram or social media of choice there's gonna be someone that goes - hey I want one and then you've fallen down the rabbit hole of selling illegal copies. Can I use a superhero logo on a costume for a doll? Sadly no. Most of the cool super heros have their artwork and logos trademark by their Marvel, DC, Disney, etc. Digital files and 3D print files have appeared on the internet for these items as well, especially Spiderman which is notoriously difficult to re-create with it's intricate webbing design. Trademark owners do find these sites and make the users take down the files as they catch up with them because they also aren't legal. In some cases, we've heard of the trademark owners making demands for the monetary amount made from the sale of the file to be handed over as a fine/reprimand and sometimes with interest to whoever created the file in the first place. We've also heard that in some cases where a physical costume was created that trademark owners ordered the return of the costume by each person who purchased one to be destroyed as a counterfeit and they received no refunds for purchasing a counterfeit costume. However these are cases where a great deal of money was involved in making un-authorized products. Although still not legal, it is not likely that dolls will be repossessed by one-off creations however you should be mindful that selling marketplaces and online communities are continuously scanned for copyright infringement. With that said, there have been some special releases by brands that have been in collaboration and have released super hero themed dolls or clothing - but they have all been granted license to do so by the original trademark owner. We can see this like Disney partnering with American Girl, Smart Doll and Marvel and DC, Harry Potter with a number of doll brands, etc. These same brands are also notorious for shutting down businesses who try to create inspired works of dolls or clothing without a license. If a trademark has expired, can you use it? Proceed with caution. I've seen an expired trademark become reactivated, so it's hard to say what the period of time is or if someone is in line to purchase a brand name. Research these instances carefully. Sometimes it can get confusing as well, for instance Patti Playpal by Ideal stopped renewing their trademark in 1989 however Lovee has a current registration of Patti Playpal that has been renewed and kept current and these Patti Playpal dolls were different models and looks. In this case even though the dolls were produced by these companies with different looks and asthetics, it's the words Patti Playpal that have been trademarked. This has been an issue for recreation artists who do replicas of the original outfits because the words Patti Playpal almost always appeared on a tag or ribbon that was large and very visible on the front of outfits. As many collectors consider the Ideal Patti Playpal the original brand in this case, they don't realize that the words were later trademarked and owned by another brand even after 60-70 years. But sellers are always wanting to put those words on their outfits to make them look more authentic. It is certainly tempting, especially if it doesn't exist on the market. Most of these project ideas start out of just desire to either make something really cute or re-create something that has been retired. The logo is that extra push that makes it look more legit than if you just sewed a blank outfit. Many sewers fall into the trap of just looking around on the internet to see if other people have done something similar or identical to what they want to do, because if it exists on the internet it must be ok to do right? Especially if you see a picture that shows up in your social media feed right? That person did their research? That's really not the thinking that gets you down the right path and it doesn't keep you safe from copyright infringement. Your first idea should be to check the trademarks on the logo and/or word combinations. You can search internet trademark databases just as easy as typing in "doll Nike clothing" into Google. In fact most trademark databases have a search bar at the top where you can type in a brand name, company, or logo. I can pretty much guarantee that if it involves another company's logo it's off limit without a license. As annoying as it is to not be able to create mini-stuff from our favorite brands, it also protects us from being scammed as well. Imagine if you were desperately searching for a retired doll outfit to complete your collection. Doll outfits and sets often become worth more when they are hard to find and rare. Now imagine that you found one and paid top dollar, and then later on realized that it was a copy. No matter what, copies are not worth the same as the originals even if they are very very good. But this delves into the next part of what is unethical here. Not every seller gives 100% disclosure on selling things, I wish sometimes the world was honest, but many aren't. Some sellers will try to pass off a copy as an original by using key words we are looking for such as original, vintage, etc. Some sellers will claim to be "not knowing" so that you have to hunt and figure out the authentication on your own so that they are not responsible for giving you mis-information. And some will make it look like they have gotten permission to sell logo'd items by just omitting the subject entirely, again to claim that "they didn't know", and finally some that will disclose it's a copy but not disclose they have no permission to use the logo to make their sales. Why? To make sales of course and for plausible deniability. After all would you purchase that cute doll logo t-shirt if the description said "it is illegal for me to use this logo or sell this item but I'm doing so anyway"? Not likely. Instead it's much easier to simply say, "I didn't know that I wasn't able to use this logo to sell this cute doll logo t-shirt". It's a lot easier because we can forgive the person for breaking the rules when they didn't know but not when they are doing it intentionally. Copyright has a lot of grey areas and it's not always clear cut. Recently we were educating doll lovers and artists in the facelessnotvoiceless campaign which was American Girl vs. the handmade artists on selling clothing using the doll models in photos wearing the clothing. What's at fault here? The American Girl Company has trademarked their doll faces but they don't own copyright to prevent doll sewers from sewing their own clothing (unless someone slapped an AG or Pleasant Company logo on it). So this becomes very grey, and which confused most artists on what they did wrong. And where does it stop, can an owner of a doll be reprimanded for selling a second hand doll because the doll's face appeared in a picture? Can a photographer create doll related merchandise from photos that they themselves took or is it against the rules because the doll's face is copyrighted? When you are down to splitting hairs in a grey area, it is not always clear what you can and cannot do and even in the doll community and the only ones that can spell it out for you would be a lawyer or talking with the company that owns the trademark direct. If you are too scared to do either, there's a rule of thumb or a series of questions you can ask yourself and if you answered yes to any of them, odds are you are on the wrong side of copyright. Questions to ask: 1. If a doll collector came across (this product that you've made) without any descriptions or backstory, would they believe that it was issued by the original company or manufacturer? 2. Is your product giving people the perception that you have been given legal permission to use a company's logo or create products with their brand on it? 3. In order to sell your product, are you needing to lean on the company's original brand or what that company's brand represents? Let's break down these questions. #1 This deals with the perception of the public on your product. Logos, neck stamps, and tags are often ways that a consumer looks for authentication on doll items. Starting out, you might have a full disclosure on your website that you are making a copy of a product, but once that product circulates it could pass through several owners and down the line could be believed it's an authentic piece of merchandise especially if you've used that company's logo in your work. In copyright disputes a common question is if that seller is impersonating a genuine product by the way they've created it. The original company's don't like that because their brand is representative of their own criteria and rules, it covers how their products feel, what they are made of, how they are sewn. If you've used their brand name and that item is not made according to the brand standards, it is looked on as damage to the brand name. However if you are trying to avoid this, since clothing itself is not copyrightable you can create a similar product that looks like a retired outfit or a particular style and put your own logos and tags in it. Then you cannot possibly be accused of misrepresenting someone else's brand and the tags will travel with the garment long after it's left your selling site so that no one could mistake it as an original from the original company. #2 Many companies have been given licenses to create product lines for original brands and likewise the original factories that produce the brands and packaging are given legal permission to product products under the brand's name and logo. People can sometimes assume that because you are offering a product, that you've already cleared the permissions to make it and that you are legally allowed to make it. Even if you omit those words from your selling description you can still give that impression with the public. The correction to this is obvious but no one wants to do it because as we said earlier, a seller who is trying to hide that fact is not going to post on their sales post that they don't actually have permission to sell the item or have use of a trademark. So odds are if it's not mentioned that it's (c) official merchandise anywhere in the description, that it is likely that seller doesn't have permission. Furthermore if the seller has disclosed that they have created a replica using their own brand name, you can be assured that at least they are going out of their way to disclose and be honest about what you are buying and that the seller is being respectful of any original trademark owners. #3 This area was the grey area for the facelessnotvoiceless issue mentioned above. When it came down to it, it wasn't really the doll's faces used as models to show off the clothing that the seller was making as the heart of the issue. And it was clear that the original brand was not making the clothing or that any seller was trying to pass off their clothing as original brand clothing. The issue was using the brand's implications to sell. Brands are more than words and logos, they also convey a consumer's idea of quality or company presence or a history of how products are made. The piggy back question to this issue was - if you removed American Girl from your titles and descriptions, would your item still sell? The question was prompting if the seller needed those words to sell their own product and if they were dependent on using the brand name to sell their product. The counter to this argument has been that the American Girl body size is unique to the other 18" dolls created similarly in this doll's category so the necessity to mention the words American Girl and showcase the clothing on an American Girl branded doll was essential to selling because it conveys the proper fit and is not leveraging off the brand to create sales. So the answer to this was - make sure you've written your description to reference American Girl as words in reference to size and not to insinuate that it is a branded product, and if possible include other doll brands in listings to showcase that you as a seller are not dependent on a single brand to sell your product. This becomes the key standard now - for suppliers of clothing, wigs, and accessories to showcase more than one brand, to refer to the brand as a size reference, and to make wording in a way that it is not piggy backing on the reputation of the brand as a means to sell their own handmade products. I hope this has helped clarify some issues for those of you that research and struggle with compliance. If you have more questions that I haven't addressed, feel free to leave them in the comments. I'm not 100% perfect in these issues either but I make a consicous effort to follow the rules and help spread a little clarity as there is so much mis-information on the internet and a little bit too much assumption on what you can do. As we learned this last year, it is much worse for sellers who wait to get caught rather than taking preventative measures ahead of time.

Last night we watched the Netflix Documentary "Buy Now! The Shopping Conspiracy" which was an inside look at corporations getting it's consumers to buy more and more in order to make larger and larger profits without a thought to what the after effects were. After I watched it, my stomach churned which I'm sure was the goal of the film and I found myself questioning whether any of these terrible practices were something that our little business contributed to. Below I address the rules they sited in the film and reflections on how our business deals with that. Rule #1 Buy More Rule One explored how corporations made intentional decisions to shorten the life of their products such as making a light bulb only last 1/3 of it's potential life in order to get consumers to replace light bulbs more often and therefore buy more lightbulbs. Other examples showed technology saving version upgrades so that you'd want to buy a new phone or new computer before the other one wore out to get the latest technology. I found that we as a company actually do the opposite here. We build our doll clothes, shoes, and wigs to be long lasting with the goal in mind to be able to pass down dolls from generation to generation. If you've shopped around for doll supplies in our industry, there are a lot of cheap products out there. $1.99 shoes and $29.95 dolls and it seems the price keeps driving down. It's not to provide you with a better deal folks it's to get you to buy more. In my mind I always thought it was because some corporations decided to produce quality products and others decided to produce cheap products, but the darker thought here is that they are selling this crap to churn more sales as you are continually replacing products. Rule #2 Waste More When you are producing more to get more people to purchase and replace, there becomes more waste. The example in this case was Amazon where the shopping experience was key in that any thought in your head that you needed something, you could simply go to your computer and purchase anything that you wanted and then it would arrive at your door without ever leaving the house. They showed examples of consumers with boxes upon boxes at their doorstep. Yes you can purchase a can opener one day and then a pair of socks the next and they would come in separate boxes. Packaging waste, peanut waste, plastic waste. The terrible truth of where this waste "goes away" when you put it in the garbage is that it goes to areas where people are already struggling in lesser economies than ours. There were pictures of clothes floating in the oceans and piles on the ground, and people crying out that there was more coming in that could even be handled by the people that lived there. And the most appalling of all, to produce products that are intentionally not fixable so that you have to buy a new one instead of fixing the one you have. We are small, but we really try our best to re-use everything possible as we are conscious of waste in the world. We re-use packaging, boxes, ribbons, fabric, clothing, and of course dolls to try to give new life and minimize what ends up in the garbage. Our doll hospital transforms old dolls into ones that can be loved by a new child or collector. We run a doll donation center to re-home dolls to be loved once again. Most of our signature art dolls are made from dolls that were ordinary or mass produced and then made special. Our goals of "Save a Doll" are to keep dolls from the trash, even if they aren't trendy or the next "it" thing. Most importantly, we are actively making services available to fix toys rather than encouraging them to be replaced. I was quite angry when I saw in the film that they were gluing laptops together so they couldn't be opened and shorting battery life on headphones to make you buy a whole new set when they gave out. It's incredibly wasteful and with the purpose of making a consumer purchase another one. Reminded me of Robots movie when they made the decision to not make spare parts any longer to push the older robots to spend their money on an upgraded body. I see that decision when I'm trying desperately to find parts to fix dolls. It's another reason why people move on from one type of doll to another is that you simply can't find the parts to fix the doll or no one is selling clothing or shoes or whatever you need to keep your doll collection going. We as a company, hate this concept and do everything we can to bring back parts and clothes to make it possible to keep your older dolls in better shape and in good repair. If that wasn't all, there were examples shown of corporations destroying merchandise that didn't sell or that had been returned because they had calculated that it was cheaper to burn it than to go through the system again and sell again. That definitely does not happen in our company. We do not burn unwanted merchandise and we don't add it or donate it to landfills. Perhaps I have been lucky, but I always find a way to repurpose something that wasn't successful and thankfully it is not many instances. Rule #3 Lie More Incredibly disheartening that larger corporations make you feel like they are addressing any of the problems when actually they are just running feel good campaigns to make you think that they are. I always believe that you should be upfront about what you are capable of doing and what you are not. As a small business, we have smaller goals. Oftentimes there is more that I want to do but am not capable of at the moment. For example, sometimes I get a doll that gets donated and I just can't find any solutions to fix her and I think, what I need is "this part" or something that is unavailable. It is not possible for me to start manufacturing missing needs for all the dolls, there are many and I don't have the financial capacity to do so, but I would never promise that I can fix every doll under the sun, or that I have parts for every doll under the sun. But I will give every doll the opportunity to find a new owner and be adopted and loved again. I'm happy when I can add options to our website that meet a need, and that has always been our goal. We don't just produce a bunch of stuff for kicks. In fact many times a customer will come to us and say, how about you add this to your website and I tell them 5 other sellers already have that, I don't need to add it just because everyone else has it. I want to add things that make a difference for collectors. Rule #4 Hide More I really didn't like seeing this one where they show you things that are supposed to be recycled or donated to a thrift store or donation center and it's ending up being dismantled into tiny pieces in a third world country that is drowning in garbage. I did even see a clip of dolls and reference to making products better for the environment. I really enjoy seeing people that upcycle with their art because I think it is an important thing in most industries. Making something new and interesting around something that has been discarded is one of my favorites for most things. I am not one of those people who over buy. You might probably laugh, but I will use things until they absolutely cannot be used any longer. Being a crafter at heart and never particularly wealthy, I like things that last. I've repaired broken necklaces, hats, clothing, shoes, dolls, blankets, belts, you name it. If it could be glued back together or sewn back together odds are that I repaired it. My fabric scraps that are too small for making doll outfits from are given to schools to do art projects with. Components left over from projects are saved and re-used in something else down the line. And if you think I'm accumulating stuff in a giant hoard, I'm not because I have a rule never to purchase something unless it is for a current project and I always look at what I have before I purchase more. This is not easy as many things call out to me when I'm shopping for fabric and such, but if I know I won't be able to sew the idea right away then I make myself walk past. Storing fabric is never my objective. I once had a friend that would always tell me that she had boxes upon boxes of fabric in a storage unit that she could sew things from and always quoted thousands of dollars worth. One day we went to that storage unit, the fabric was covered in dust, smelled wet or musty, and had been eaten away by rats. Thousands and thousands down the drain. Instead of "Hide More", this will be a "Use what you have more" as the correct response. I hope we are all looking towards the future and do what ever we can to minimize waste and excessiveness. Purchase dolls and clothes because you love them and can care for them and want them to continue on. Keep dolls out of the trash and stop purchasing things that are made to break or be discarded. Use your items until they wear out, not because something new and flashy is out. Better world tomorrow.

When you are checking out there are actually two checkout steps. The first page allows you to enter a promo code - this is if you received a special coupon code via email or on a special sale code. It will show you a subtotal and shipping cost. Note that the shipping cost is a drop down menu. It doesn't always default to the cheapest amount so make sure you select Free shipping if you are in the USA and spent over $75 or if you are under $75 that you select USA Ground which will usually be the cheapest rate. If you are international you must select one of the international rate options, selecting a USA rate will mean that a customer service representative will contact you to let you know you selected the incorrect rate and your order will be on hold until you pay for the correct rate. Once you have selected these options there will be buttons at the bottom, "Checkout", Checkout with Apple Pay, Paypal Checkout, Paypal Pay Later, Venmo Checkout, and Google Pay. You must select one of these buttons to get to the second Checkout screen. On the second checkout screen it will ask you for all your details such as email, name, phone, address, etc. This info will be pre-filled in if you have purchased with us before or if you have logged in with one of the payment services with saved information. On a mobile device scrolling to the very bottom you will see "Enter a promo code" again if you didn't enter one on the previous checkout page, if you have a coupon code. There is also an option that says "Redeem a gift card" if you have received a gift card from someone for our shop. Below that it will tell you the amount of points you will receive for placing the order and it will say log in to collect or redeem points. Note that you must be logged in to your account to redeem points. If this is your first order you will not accummulate any points until you set up your account and place your first order. Then points will be able to be redeemed on your next order. If you are logged in there will be a blank where you can type in the number of points you wish to redeem. You do not have to redeem your full balance on a single order, you can save them for larger purchases or sale dates. If you are on a desktop computer the information above will be on the right hand side of your screen. Once you have filled out everything you can click "Continue" to finish checkout and you will be charged for your order.