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Book Signing at the Land of Nod store, Oakbrook, Nov 13!

Want to come hang out with me at the mall? I’ll be at the Land of Nod store in Oakbrook, IL on Tuesday November 13th from 11-1. They’ll have books to buy there or bring your copy and I’ll write you a note in it. I’d love to finallly, after 9 (?!) years of blogging, get a chance to meet some of you guys who read my blog. If you’ve made anything from the book you could bring it and we could have show and tell. Or if you have questions I could do my best to answer them. You can bring your doxie necklaces and curse me out for how hard they are to turn out, wink. And we can play with the new dolls. The Land of Nod is just a fun store to hang out in. They have the super cute kids rooms set ups and lots of great toys to play with. We could play air hockey! Ok, I’ll see you there!

It’s been dark and rainy these past few days so I’ve held off on taking pictures of the dolls to show, but these two off my phone aren’t so bad. Look at how handsome Skip is. I just can’t get over how well they did the hair on these dolls. All the dolls were made in India and many of the details were sewn by hand, like the hair and the faces.

Another thing about these dolls that I’m so excited about is how well they matched my original prototypes. They even reproduced or matched many of the vintage fabrics I used like this, Bertie’s purple ditsy body fabric. I just love it! And her little floral accent turned out so cute. It’s really fun for me to see these actualized.

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Yes, you can buy a Wee Wonderfuls doll! at The Land of Nod!

It has been a long time in coming but I can finally say to people, “Yes!”, when they ask if they can just buy a doll instead of make one. Last year I began a collaboration with one of my favorite stores, The Land of Nod. After years of carrying the cutest things around and working with so many amazing artists to design their bedding and artwork, the Land of Nod was planning to delve into more product development and making exactly what they wanted to offer in their stores. I was so excited and flattered that Wee Wonderfuls dolls caught their eye. They picked one of my favorite doll designs to start with, the Elise/Elsa Elf pattern.  Oh man, I have so much more to say about all of this but today how about just introductions. Here are five little friends…Winx, Fern, Charlie, Bertie and Skip.

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khaki scout uniform

Have you seen Moonrise Kingdom yet? Not my favorite Wes Anderson movie but amazingly gorgeous and perfect nonetheless. And one of my favorite themes, camping/scouting. And did you know that Kit, Chloe and Louise‘s free pajama pattern can be easily made into a khaki scout uniform? I was pretty excited when that dawned on me. All I had to do to modify was make some shirt pockets, fold up cuffs and tie a kerchief around her neck. I was going to sew up a bunch of tiny badges and then realized I had enough oddball buttons to do the trick. Now she’s quite the accomplished khaki scout!

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Juliet

Now that she has a new frock, Juliet is not embarassed to turn around. I like this dress much better, mostly because it took me 10 minutes to sew but also because it's made from a super soft vintage sheet that I think is really dreamy and looks like something Juliet would don.

I was torn on her hair. I wanted to do a huge elaborated braided up do with lots of ribbons woven through. When i was searching ballet photos many of the ballerinas performing Juliet had hair like that. But the long, free flowing hair is so what I think of when I think of Juliet so I compromized with a braided crown with pink woven in. 

I'm not working on these dolls for patterns, they're actually all the same pattern… Elise/Elsa Elf. I've been wanting to sell one of a kind dolls for always but never seem to have the time, and I'm perfectionist, and I can think of a thousand reasons not to, but I really do enjoy it so I'm plunging in! I've listed Juliet on ebay here

I love having a character as inspiration. I want to continue on this theme and make another ballerina. I think a trip to library to brush up on my ballets is in order.