Fashion Doll Quarterly SPRING 2012: Crafts
The CRAFTS issue (Spring 2012) shipped January 1st, and is just about sold out, so be sure to order a single issue!
Oh, to be crafty. I cannot sew or knit, no matter how often I have tried. I accumulate wood and styrofoam, claiming that I will some day make doll furniture, but it just piles up in the garage.
And yet, I want to be crafty. So it seemed to me, perhaps some of you do, too. Hence the Crafts issue. There are knitting patterns, photography how-tos, dioramas and easy furniture projects in this issue, all within the abilities of most beginners. For the more advanced, perhaps we will come back to this topic or even do a stand-alone with more intel, depending on how much you like it.
If you would rather read and shop, we still have eye candy. There is coverage of the Jason Wu event, Metrodolls, Tonner's Halloween Convention and the Sybarite weekend in Paris, as well as a local BJD meetup with my fellow collectors in the tri-state area.
There is the amazing collection of art from the Strychinin Gallery (right), as well as vintage craft doll, POPI, and a photo contest with prizes modeled by another Poppy (on the cover).
Terri Gold gives us a jump start on the contest with how-tos in photography and sets, so you, too, can craft yourself a prize-winning photo. And even though my crafting is limited, I was able to put together a tiny purple suite for one of my new favorite dolls, Wilde Imagination's Amelia Thimble. Long live stock photos and illustrations, is all I have to say!
Denise Jefferson stylesPoppy in sixties remixes from Integrity and Mattel, while Paul Bruce and James Kirwan celebrate give us simple and fun ways to use household items as the base for charming doll furniture.
Shannon Craven has a great article on repurposing your existing doll fashions into fun new costumes or familiar looks from your favorite characters from film and television. It's clever re-imagining, but it's great recycling, too!
In the midst of doll magazines folding in on each other and the internet taking so much of our attention, FDQ is moving forward into 2012 with new projects and plans we think you will enjoy. We will have more special issues, and soon we will launch digital content, so you can download your FDQ wherever you are. This will make it particularly easy and affordable for our International collectors, as well as making sold out issues available once again.
As many of you know, we are also the publishers of In Focus: Digital Photography for The Doll Collector. Our book has done very well and we are always happy to hear that it has helped collectors take better photos of their dolls, whether it if for eBay, doll forums or personal enjoyment. Of course, there is only so much space on your shelves for books when there are so many dolls. However, may we suggest just one more?
Robert Tonner: Two Decades of Fashion and Design is the latest book published by FDQ Media. Robert has come to be one of the defining artists of fashion doll collecting, with a successful company, numerous doll and character figure lines, the owner of his eponymous company as well as Effanbee Toys, and the creative force behind Wilde Imagination. There is a lot to cover here, and it could have taken twenty more years to document it all but we have given it our best to present to you the highlights of a highly regarded career in fashion both full-and small-scale size. We will be premiering the book at the Tonner Halloween Convention, but you can also order it on our site starting this month. We hope you like it, after all, we believe in the power of play, too!
Don't forget to order our special convention issue in honor of Ken's 50th birthday- REUNION. It's all Barbie and Ken, with features on early prototype Ken sculpts, inside the Mattel studios, haute wheels, the great romantic reunion, events like the Italian Fashion Doll Convention and sneek peeks at designer's offerings at convention. It's a limited edition issue (64-pages, $6.99 US) so get one while it's available! We now have all five of the special Barbie issues as virtual PDFs, which you can buy on our USB bracelet, too!