Decisions, decisions...

I have decided that it would be silly to open my online boutique before I go down to Long Beach where I can do some serious PR about 3D as I schmooze with my fellow doll people and also see if any of my wares are of interest there. I don't know what I will have left—everything, nothing or the infinite in between—after Swap Night so it just seems much more logical to wait till I come back to open up shop.

I am so busy right now with the planning and preparing PR for Broad Spectrum, my October 10 recital, that I am not putting the time in on the shop that it requires to do the opening right. Didn't I say here just yesterday that making a good impression on possible future clientele is very important? Well, I am basing my decisions on a lot of things on that very premise—at least from now on!

The new date for our grand opening will be November 1, 2009. Watch for it!

To enter or not to enter...

that is the question. I'm searching for the answer. So what am I talking about? The Couture Doll Design Challenge. There are certain entrance requirements to meet in order to be selected as a contestant: pictures of designs one has made previously for one's dolls must be submitted. Hence the dilemma above which now I am forced to debate with myself.

Say I decide to enter this contest. Do I take pictures of old outfits I made some time ago? Do I try to throw something together now? Yes, to the first question because the answer to the second is a resounding NO! I learned a big lesson in the first audition I ever did: "Go with what you KNOW." Don't break out something for the first time in an unknown environment when you want to impress an audience of judges particularly vividly. You might do just that—but not in the way you had hoped!

Therefore, it would be best for me to take a picture of the peignoir I put together from scraps of lace and pink batiste years ago modelled by one of my first 16" fashion dolls, and/or to photograph the teen-aged Maggie doll (which I rewigged with a Gina Lollobrigida poodle cut—only shorter—and made up with painted india ink Cleopatra eyeliner) in the red wool trapeze dress and pill box to match I made when that style was actually in current fashion rather than struggle to design and make something in a week or so. Good design and good work(wo)manship are timeless, are they not?

But the real question is should I be thinking about entering a doll couture contest in the first place at this particular moment.

"If we are trying to: 1) put together a little online doll couture boutique; 2) get ready to go to the Hollywood Ahoy! convention in Long Beach by August 13; 3) design and make a concert dress, or two, while learning an inordinate amount of music and writing a script for our October 10 concert; with all of this involving an attempt not to lose our mind in the process," admonishes the stern and sensible Me, "don't even think about it—especially if our intent to make some sort of useful impression in the already-committed-to three projects above!"

As usual these days, I am able by gathering my many selves together for a meeting to come to an answer to any question posed by my particularly active idea machine. I couldn't always count on those selves to see eye to eye as I more or less can now. They constantly took on projects individually without considering what their sister selves had already committed to or were likely to commit to in the immediate future. It was mostly manageable in those early times because I, who housed, fed and cleaned up after them all and actually did the work they so blythely committed me to, was young enough to work 24 to 36 hours at a stretch and live to work another such stretch after a mere eight or so hours of recovery time.

No more. Now I need a week to recover from such a work-a-thon. Oh yes, these multi-selves still get me into trouble occasionally—we're just on the brink of the abyss now with the three projects outlined above. However, these days I have a husband who is retired, as well as willing and able to do much of the support work needed to make it all possible, at least in theory. Given my DH's loving support, let's see if I can realize these projects and live to tell the tale...or if I want to admit I was even there at the time!

Conventional Dolls...

I'm going to the Hollywood Ahoy! doll convention aboard the Queen Mary in Long Beach CA. I'm going to have a Dolly Diva Designs table for Swap Night on Thursday, 8/13, where I will have for sale the clothes many of my dolls came in (see my first post) and many accessory items received at the Gene Marshall Doll conventions—2003, 2004, and 2006. I'll also have stuff that I got by being an absentee for the 2005 10th Anniversary Convention—the last for Ashton-Drake.

But the real reason for going? I'm not sure. It is no longer an exclusively Gene convention. The convention doll is to be the Tonner Joan Crawford. I'm not even going to the Gene event. A–It doesn't fit into my convention budget. B–I don't really like or want the J. Wu Gene even though he is now famous as the designer of an inauguration ballgown for Michelle Obama. I've always liked Ashton-Drake Madra Lord best of all anyway, because she has attitude! All the Genes, while very pretty, still remain so much vanilla pudding. My first 16" fashion doll was the A-D Madra Lord in Unsung Melody.

This convention will be my bellwether. Will I maintain an interest in my project? Will I find the whole doll world thing too far removed from current reality even to serve as an escape from it? If I find this to be so, will I put ALL the dolls I have on sale, clear out the sewing room and get serious about writing? Or perhaps, will I sell all but a few dolls for which I would make the copies of concert gowns and costumes for my own amusement and perhaps to illustrate my memoir, forgetting about any such thing as a business?

There are doubts out and about this evening, are there not? Well, I expect that my long-time dream of playing with dolls and mixing that with my love of fashion history and the stage will not let go of me so easily. I will probably try to do everything! Just as I always have.

Singing, sewing/designing, scribbling... Music, Art and Literature, my three long-pursued passions. The singing took over for a long time and still has it's hooks in me, hence the plans for a concert on October 10 (what will I be making to wear for THAT?). But the sewing/designing stuck around too because of the concert gowns and "diva" clothes I had to have. And the writing? How about the zillion journals I've filled up since I started my first one in February 1961? And the many writing classes I've taken? And the boxes full of first paragraphs of stories and outlines of novels? And now this blog?

Well, we will see what we will see. I am full of plans. I expect that some of them will come to fruition. I also expect that I will not stop planning and working out those plans until they carry me out feet first!