Since last Saturday was World Doll Day, it got me thinking.
If I’m “known” for anything at all around social media, it’s most likely my collection of Halloween art dolls. Photographing and sharing my dolls is a huge part of my life, and honestly, one of the biggest factors that I believe makes me, me.
Since I get a lot of questions and compliments about my collection and hobbies relating to it, I thought it would be fun to give a bit of backstory, and also share some of my favorite artists.
I’ve really always been a doll person. As a child who was often alone with my imagination, I spent a lot of my time creating stories for my Barbies and other dolls. Sometimes they acted as friends, other times they acted as characters, but no doll was ever without a name and some sort of backstory. I didn’t understand girls who didn’t play with dolls. The idea was simply unthinkable to me.
My love for dolls didn’t go away when it was “supposed” to. In fact, my father would get annoyed when we’d go out on weekends and, at eleven or twelve years of age, I’d sometimes still proudly be carrying a doll in my arms. He claimed people “looked at me weird”, but I was mostly unbothered. What finally stopped me from carrying dolls around in public was the worry that I’d be spotted by someone from school, and I had enough trouble with bullies without being caught with a doll in my arms at the mall. I tried to tell myself that I’d reached the end of my doll/toy days, but it always felt like a lie. Even if I wasn’t physically playing with or buying/receiving dolls anymore, the interest in them always remained. In fact, if you were to read the diary I kept as a teenager, you’d find an entry, buried deep within all my insecurities about graduating from high school, in which I was arguing with myself about wanting to spend the money I’d received for my seventeenth birthday on a new American Girl doll named Nellie, best friend to Samantha, the American Girl doll I had and treasured in childhood. I told myself it was a ridiculous idea, but I never really thought so.
Some time later that year, I discovered a TV series called Winx Club. It was aimed at kids, but the fairy characters caught my eye, as I was very into celestial and fairy type art at the time. I had some fairy decorations around my room (obviously before I started decorating for Halloween year-round...it was still always Halloween in my heart, but you know teenagers, always desperately trying to be “normal”...) and when I discovered the show had a doll line, I felt as though I finally had an excuse to buy some dolls again. I could justify it if they were décor pieces, right?
I started researching the dolls online a bit, as the ones I was interested in buying were a bit harder to find in stores. And somewhere within all this research, I ran across a couple of LiveJournal communities for adults who still liked to collect, and also photograph, dolls! I was beside myself. Thanks to the wonders of peer pressure, I’d been convinced that there was something wrong with me for still having such an interest in dolls after a certain age. But here I saw whole communities of people, my own age and even much older, still having fun with their dolls. I went on to spend significant amounts of time poring over these communities, and discovering different types of dolls I didn’t even know existed. I was fascinated by the photography and the “pic fics”, short stories that were made by posing dolls in a photo and writing bits of dialogue underneath.
Long story short, once I started really earning my own money, most of what I could afford to spend starting going toward amassing a decent doll collection for myself, and creating my own little “worlds” as I had seen others do in these communities. It was basically like playing with dolls, but recording the fun frame by frame. I have had two different doll journals where I shared these things: one on Livejournal (it’s mostly friends-locked but many pictures from my former yearly Halloween photo challenges are still public) and one on Dreamwidth after LJ went under, that was pretty short-lived. My collection of dolls and toys was massive and on some level, probably quite impressive. However, there came a time where I started to realize it wasn’t fulfilling me anymore, and I started buying dolls and photographing them out of habit rather than desire. I would set deadlines for myself, such as having a pic fic done for this or that holiday, and after several years, it started to feel more like a chore and an obligation than a hobby. When I was forced to start a major life transition two years ago, I figured that was it. It was time to be done with the doll hobby once and for all. I was going through such serious changes, and I saw no need to continue on with something that was taking up so much of my time, energy, and money but was failing to make me genuinely happy anymore.
I didn’t see myself ever getting back into the doll hobby in any way, shape, or form once things started to change in my life. It took time to figure out which parts of me were really me and which parts were things I no longer needed/never were me in the first place, and doll collecting, as it related to play line or expensive, mass produced collectible dolls, just stopped feeling like me. The inspiration was gone. I missed photography and writing, but I didn’t know how to make it work anymore when my outlet for that was no longer inspiring me. However, what did pull me out of my slump, as it always had before, was Halloween. As I started decorating and shopping again, I realized, once and for all, just now essential
Halloween is to me and knew that, no matter what I did with my life from here on out, Halloween would have to be part of it.
The beauty of no longer feeling obligated to spend all the money I could afford to on “normal” dolls was that I was suddenly now free to pursue other things. I never realized, while in the doll hobby for all those years, just how much it was preventing me from having money to spend on anything else. Yes, I had a Halloween collection, but it was mostly knickknacks bought from physical stores. If there was something a bit pricier that interested me, I tried to put it out of my mind because I felt I “needed” the money for my doll habit.
As I started to follow more Halloween accounts on Instagram, which had become my primary source of inspiration as I worked toward finding my true self again, I started discovering many talented artists, and really taking notice of their work. I have always, always been a fan of handmade art, most likely the result of going to craft fair after craft fair with my mother and aunts as a child, and of course, Halloween art pieces, particularly dolls, have always been my favorite. Browsing Etsy has been a favorite pastime of mine since discovering it, and finally, one day last summer, I made my first Etsy purchase in ages, a pumpkin girl named Julietta, from an artist called PetitesFripouilles .
Julietta instantly became a major source of inspiration for me. I saw a story and personality in her right away, and felt compelled to expand on her world and backstory. Much like when I collected “normal” dolls, I started seeing other dolls from the same artist, along with some items I already owned, as pieces of her little “world”, and suddenly my interest in creating that sort of fictional universe started to return, but in a different form this time.
Shortly after unknowingly waking up my doll-loving self through PetitesFripouilles, I wound up adopting two “Pumpkids” from The Beast Peddler, an artist I’d actually found through Tumblr years ago but never got around to purchasing from. These two would become particularly pivotal in restarting my hobbies. As you’ve probably noticed, Lauretta has become my “mini me” in a way, as we tend to share the same daydreams and perceptions of things (along with a burning desire to return to our hearts’ home, Sleepy Hollow!) and Abe, well...on a day when I was feeling particularly inspired by him, he inadvertently started a “Thirteen Days of Halloween” photo challenge on Instagram.
I had a tradition in my old doll journals called the “October Pic of the Day Challenge”, but found myself completely devoid of inspiration in 2018 and 2019 and declared the challenge over with for good. But it felt so right taking these pictures of Abe, during the most wonderful time of the year, on a day that just happened to fall thirteen days before Halloween, that I decided to challenge myself as sort of a way to test my feelings about things, and I was truly happy with the results.
Above is one of my favorite photos of that challenge, starring Little Harper, who was made by the unbelievably amazing Mim’s Victims. Doing this photo challenge truly gave me so much clarity in my mind. With my old doll collection, I had been doing so much out of habit, and forcing myself to do things just for the sake of having something to post. After a certain point in time, the dolls became about filling an emptiness, while the Halloween characters that I’d begun to photograph were actually enhancing the part of my life that makes me feel anything but empty. At the end of the challenge, it was like a lightbulb went on in my head and I realized that I didn’t have to stop sharing Halloween pictures if I didn’t want to. This is what makes me happy, this is what fulfills me. I found a way to combine my love for collecting, photography, writing, and, of course, above all else, Halloween, and I am truly a better, happier person for it.
Another wonderful upside to indulging in the hobby through handmade art dolls is that I’m supporting artists/small business owners. I would much rather give my money to real people trying to live their own dreams through their art than greedy corporations with quality control issues, purposely making their products hard to find to create more hype. (Anyone who ever collected Monster High could tell you what an issue that was...) I have met some truly wonderful people, and thanks to Instagram, I am able to interact with these artists on a personal level as well.
One of the first post-Halloween photos I took last year was this one of Abraham and Horus, made by SpookyCutes. This is pretty much exactly when I knew I wanted to just carry on like it was still October in everything I did.
Here’s Estella, made by Rambling Violet. She may not be as blatantly Halloween as some of my other dolls, but ever since seeing her as a potential prize in a giveaway on Instagram, I got the sense that she truly belonged with me. Thankfully, the winner of the giveaway chose a different doll as their prize, so Estella made it home after all.
This is Peter, made by Original Sin Design. His motto is “rotten pumpkins need love too”. I think he looks like he walked (or maybe stumbled a bit) out of one of my best dreams.
Samantha here is made by Moody Voodies. They make amazing dolls, particularly their female takes on horror icons. (Fun fact, I missed out on this doll several times and literally cried about it, before finally being able to get my hands on one! Part of me is still in disbelief whenever I look at her.)
One of my favorite artists, who actually have a few older dolls from that I desperately need to dig out of storage, is EsmeMade. Her dolls sell out in seconds, and with good reason! The fact that I have been fast enough to successfully snag four of her dolls over the past year is truly mind blowing to me. There are times they’re gone so fast, you don’t even see the listings. The lovely little lady pictured here is Mina, a pumpkin bat.
I have always loved plague doctor masks, and was delighted to find this little doll from NightlyMade. He was once jokingly referred to as “Dr. Hugh R. Coffin”, and the name seems to be sticking.
These two little cuties are from MysticalMorg. They have yet to fully reveal their names, which is something I no longer try to rush. That was another frustrating thing with my former collection; I often would rush the naming process for the sake of being able to use a new doll in a pic fic, and oftentimes it didn’t feel right in the end. With my spooky little friends, I allow them to take their time with telling me their names, though most tend to keep the names given to them by their creators if they have one. Funny story about this little pumpkin guy: He was also a potential giveaway prize, but I jumped at the chance to buy him when the winner of the giveaway chose a different prize!
I have managed to meet some amazing people through Instagram, and one of them is the woman who made this doll, Sandee of Smile & Stitches. I’ve been following her progress in the doll making business, and I’ve very impressed with what I’ve seen so far. I own three of her dolls now and they’re some of the most expressive in my collection. She is also a wonderful friend!
Dude here is from TheMagicalBat, a super fun artist who creates so many different types of interesting dolls and characters, many of them pumpkins. I definitely see more like him in my future. I have a special place in my heart for felt dolls as that was what I used in my own attempts to make dolls and plushies in my childhood. None of these attempts were successful, sadly. I was born without a crafty bone in my body.
This pumpkin spider, who will one day soon probably be starring in a blog post all his own about beating arachnophobia, is incredibly special. He came all the way from Russia, from Little Fishy Things. My love for both pumpkins and spiders is immeasurable, and finding something that combined the two was such a dream. This was also an amazing international buying experience with great communication throughout his journey, which was also much faster than expected!
This little ghost is made by ScruffleCrochet. Crocheted pieces also have a special sentiment for me, as my maternal grandmother was very into crocheting. I barely knew her, as she passed away when I was two years old, but my mother and her sisters kept a few of her creations, and I grew up feeling Nana’s spirit within them.
I suppose that’s a perfect segue into this last little doll and artist that I’ll share in this post, a “Basic Witch” by RoseAndAlder. I normally take genuine offense to “basic” jokes (Honestly? I find summer lovers to be way more basic than lovers of fall/Halloween, but I digress.) but there is no denying that this little witch is so simple yet so the epitome of fall. If I can smell burning leaves and cinnamon (and, yes, the PSL) when I look at something, that’s when I know it’s right for me!
I have many other dolls and pieces of art besides just what’s pictured here, but I wanted to take this time to just talk about the backstory of my doll collecting in general and share many of my favorite shops and artists. I am planning to feature all of my spooky little friends here at some point soon, and start doing profiles and pic fics again, this time with a constant element of October and Halloween. In the meantime, you can find all of my photography surrounding my collection on Instagram. I do hope this was a somewhat enjoyable read. I just felt like it needed to be done, for anyone who’s ever wondered about my collection, and where such a hobby originated from.
Stay spooky, my friends,
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