“Jingle Bells. Jingle Bells.” It’s getting closer to Christmas, and the catalogs have started arriving in the mail on Islandshire! Pause. Huh? Well, that’s what the dolls think, anyway. Making doll-sized mini versions of the old Sears Roebuck catalogs has been one of the most fun projects I’ve worked on in quite awhile, though it’s hard not to get caught up in just browsing through the images.What a lot of fun we’ve had! It’s a funny thing, really. Having grown up with a mother who has always surrounded herself with “old” things, it was amazing to see just how many of these items we own and/or have owned over the years.
(Marie-Simone agreed to stand in for a “Claudie shot”. AG should have used this Truly Me #123 with Claudie’s wig for their 1920s doll, in my opinion. Doesn’t get more beautiful than this, eh?!) Claudie’s browsing through her new 1922 Spring Sears Roebuck Catalog, and she’s having a great time! You should see her wish list! We had to choose our favorite 82 pages from more than 1,000 original pages. Talk about a hard job. It wasn’t easy, but we finally made it. So, Claudie doesn’t even know that she could have ordered a new cream separator or innertube for the family car . . . bet she doesn’t even notice . . .
(Brighton dressed up as Molly for us. For those of you with enquiring minds, she’s a Tenney with repainted mouth and wearing a TM #13 wig with the later small bangs. And don’t forget that this is only three years after the beginning of Nanea’s stories.) For Molly’s mini 1944 Sears Christmas catalog, we had to choose our favorite 82 pages from the more than 250 original ones. Another very hard job (I’ll take just about one of everything, please), but we finally made it. And just in time! Molly’s busy making her wish list, and I can’t imagine if she’d had another 170 pages to look at . . . (As a side note, I was shocked to realize that Brighton is the only dewigged Classic-mold doll on Islandshire!)
Plans are well under way to continue adding other decades to our mini-catalog shelf, hoping to finish with one for each Historical Doll from Samantha on through Courtney. We’ve added these to the Islandshire Etsy shop, in case anyone else has a doll who’d like to start making their Christmas list! (These take a while to make, so quantities on hand will always be limited. I’m sorry for the inconvenience.)
Some of the dolls I see a bit of in Molly’s catalog appear to be early Vogue dolls when the inventor was still buying undressed dolls and dressing them. No Ginny yet though.
Do you have a tutorial on how you make your books? Thanks!
Sorry, but no tutorial on this one. (Spoiler–It’s veeeeeeery expensive and time-consuming!) You can, though, buy them in our Etsy store. Just search for “Islandshire” on Etsy.