Monday 9/5

Good Morning everyone!

I hope those of you in the US are having a fun, relaxing holiday weekend with your friends and families.

I wanted to take a moment to let you all know of some things we have been working on implementing behind the scenes here at DFH.

First up...

Hair

Earlier in the year, we started making Familiars.  Their hair was different than our usual dolls, it was made in a wig style.  It's crocheted as one piece with each hair strand pulled out stitch by stitch while its being made.  This is a fairly complicated stitch to learn, not one that a novice can pick up and perfect easily.  It takes some time to learn but the end result is positively stunning. The technique creates a full head of hair without being bulky.  It allows the hair to truly be styled every way imaginable.  

Over time, we changed over our Littles to have this same type of hair.  We call it All-Over-Hair  because we simply cannot find a better way to describe it :o)

For the first half of this year, I was the only person who was able to make these wigs so we reserved this style of hair for only a small grouping of dolls.  I wanted to do more with this.  So over the past couple months, Kristen has been working away behind the scenes learning this technique and perfecting it.  I am thrilled to say she got it down perfectly :o)

It is impossible to describe it to you clearly enough.  Here is a picture of the back of the head 

These strands are not latch hooked into a cap.  They are the cap :o) 

Here is a picture of it all styled up in pig tails

Crafting these little creatures is a learning and growing experience.  Over time, your style evolves naturally.  You improve things to make them better, and as you perfect new techniques, you add those in.  

This is one of those techniques.  

I am thrilled to say that from here on out,  all of our dolls will have this type of hair.  

Now,  a note about stocking...

"Pop In The Shop"

We have decided to start uploading a random group of RTG dolls (about 4)  every Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.  These will be random and no advance notification will take place on FB.  However, a watchful eye would be able to spot them on our flickr page the night before they are to be uploaded....just saying. 

The time of their upload will be random.  They will be posted in our Etsy shop that is linked directly from our website.  These dolls are available for purchase for whoever happens to pop by when they are up.

How will you know when there are some up?  Well,  you pop by the shop and see :o)  This little sweetie is one of the gals up today

Now, we have lots of customers.

Many who love the super fast RTG uploads one night a week so let's address that issue.

"Rapid Style RTG"

For those of you who love the super fast style uploads, we will still be doing our regular Thursday night RTG uploads.  Preview pics and all.  We will always set aside at least half of the weekly upload dolls for this style.  This week we will have 11 dolls for you. Preview pics for them will be posted on Thursday morning.

OK,  that's it for this morning.  I think I covered everything I needed to.  Thanks for reading :o)  have a great day everyone!

A Week at DFH - Thursday

Thursday

Well, we made it to Thursday, and I have been able to keep updating the blog each day :o)

Today is of course upload day which means lots of little behind the scenes things to do like prepping pics and prepping the upload listings themselves so they are all ready to go tonight.  

We also have a ton of other things going on with the dolls for next week...of course.

Today is head making day :o)  sounds weird, I know. 

 As many of you know,  Mr DFH has been making each and every one of the heads for our dolls for the past 2 years.  

He has the stronger hands for pulling that string really hard to get it all tied up nice and super tight.  He stepped in a couple years ago to help me out.  Making the heads is probably the most important aspect of making the dolls.  They have to be firm and well formed.  

Robert is pretty good at it.

In December of last year, he began training our son Hunter on how to do this task.  

Some of you guys will remember Hunter used to make all our wooden buttons :o) 

He wanted to do something else so he could earn some more money for a programming laptop as well as a set of new drum heads for his drum set and various other equipment related to music (he's a pretty awesome drummer and guitarist)  We had plenty of little things to do so Robert got him involved working with him.  

The two of them have been working together all year :o)  

Connor has recently decided he wanted to learn how to do this too so he sits and hangs out with them while they are working...training :o) 

He spends the time making everyone laugh (sometimes almost to tears).  

I guess you could say Connor adds the comic relief to our day :o)  

Yep all our heads are made by the McLaughlin guys right now :o) 

Next, of course is the making of those noses.  

That job is all mine :o)  I put each and every nose on each and every head.

Sometime today I will also start sewing on faces to the doll for next week.  

We also have all the various other day to day tasks around the house...schooling, driver's ed etc, etc, etc...the movement never stops around here.

This particular Thursday is also a pretty momentous day for all of us.  

Today is the initial launch of our new ad campaign with Mothering.com.  Yep, if you go on over there, our ads will be running in the forums area.

Here is one of them...

We're pretty excited about this new stage for us...I still cannot figure out how we got here, but here we are :o) 

OK...so I am off to make some breakfast for all of us before our day officially begins. 

 Have a great day everyone!  

We will see you all later tonight for the upload.