I wish I also had time to join this #DollMaker jam

https://itch.io/jam/dollmaker-jam

#GameJams #ItchJams

i love using online dollmakers/avatar creators. it's been one of my enduring hobbies since early childhood.

i made myself at https://www.dolldivine.com/classic-games/winter-avatar-creator

I've started crafting this new weird doll, and she is talking about how everything is connected, that no mind is separate from the others, all thoughts born in the ocean of collective consciousness, everything and everyone connected with invisible strings... Her eyes breaks and reflects the light. Her face is decorated with dots, lines and spirals. Her colorful hair is kind of messy, but two neat braids are hanging down. She has no body, just kind of tentacles so far, I'm not sure she will get a body, but she will definitely get some kind of a crown. I struggle to comprehend what kind of entity I'm dealing with. Any ideas? Any mythological creature, deity, entity comes to your mind reading and seeing all this?

#dollmaker #weirdart #doll #artist #dollcrafter #entity

When I started to make (and sell) dolls and people started to tell me that my dolls help them I was wondering - how? is it true? is it placebo? I never offered them as magical solutions. Of course, I can't deny there is my thought, intention and inner conversation happening while I craft my dolls - it's a personal practice. I know about traditional uses of dolls in folk magick and witchcraft, but not all who own my dolls call themselves witches or use them for ritualistic or magical purposes. When "The Healing Doll Way" - a visually stunning book about creating dolls as part of art therapy by Barb Kobe reached me, I finally dared to look for the answer - how can a doll help? In this book the author offers a guided process of creating dolls for self-discovery, awareness and transformation, but if you are not the one creating a doll, is there still any benefit of engaging with dolls as an adult? Turns out, the idea that dolls can help isn’t just a weird thought of a few "crazy" witches. The power and potential of dolls as valuable tools for personal development, self-reflection and regulation, transformation, growth, healing and overcoming problems is well recognized, accepted and used in modern psychology and psychotherapy.

This doll right here was created channelling confidence and self-acceptance. Kind of affirmation doll, a reminder and symbolic companion. That's what most of my dolls are. I still don't know if my dolls are art or delusional madness, but do we know where to draw the line? Is it even possible to draw a clear line and is it even needed? You tell me... The fact that my dolls help is something buyers of my dolls told me, I had no clue it could happen, just a hope they would bring joy and the sense of companionship. To my own surprise they do a lot more, and I've heard a few times: "Kristine, you don't know what you are doing with those dolls." And I agree. To be honest, I needed 7 years of crafting dolls to understand that a doll is a powerful vessel.

If you are interested in exploring this topic, you can find my full article about this here: Through The Lens of Psychology: How Can a Doll Help?

https://www.silticrafts.com/dolls-and-inspirations/through-the-lens-of-psychology-how-can-a-doll-help

(The link takes you to my SiltiCrafts home page)

#witches #pagan #rituals #paganart #witchart #occultart #artdoll #artist #dollmaker #dollartist #crafter #folkmagic #witchcraft #psychology

She waves her comfrey root stick to transport herself safely from a place to place, one state of mind to another. She is a Wild Flower. Playful, imaginative, vivacious witch, inhibiting this time and space as unapologetically wild creature.

I struggle to call myself a doll maker lately. It's April, it's a very busy season in the garden and in my mind, and I'm learning to drive a car as a toddler mom close to 40 - it's damn expensive and not coming easily, but I can barely get out of this remote place without driving a car, so I have to. My mental space lately is constantly overloaded, so I carry, lift and dig in my garden to get some sunshine through the thick clouds in my brain. Doll crafting is an essential part of my self-reflection, rest and self-care all in one, almost a spiritual practice, it's also my micro-business and I havent given enough of time to that lately. From who knows where this little lady found the way to my Witch Town, she didn't even knock as an idea begging to be made into a doll, she just arrived with ease and confidence I haven't seen in me for a while. She arrived as a reminder.

P.s. The doll is available in my shop.

#wildflower #dollmaker #storyteller #witchcrafter #witchdoll #artdoll #dollcrafter #doll

If I post a picture of a doll I've made, the one where the doll stares at you, is that eye-contact and should be marked as sensitive content?

This is my interpretation of Veļu Māte - the Mother of the Dead from Latvian mythology. One of the most feared deities because nobody comes back from her realm. She mostly visits in the shape of an old woman.

#mythology #baltic #latvian #dollmaker #doll #crafter #dollcrafter

I'm a maker and also a seller of my dolls, and here is what I want to share about the selling part of my crafts. It's a quite sensitive topic for me I've wrapped my head around just recently despite of selling for years.

Would I make dolls if I didn't sell them? Definitely not as many as I've produced already. Where would I put over 600 dolls if nobody wanted them? I shared making of my first ever dolls on social media and sold to strangers right away, that set me on this path. Birds sing, dogs bark, I craft weird dolls. It's just my thing. I have no goal to "get my doll in every house" or "save the world with my dolls".

Would I choose making and selling dolls if it was purely about income? Hell no! 😆 But it's been 7 years and I'm not looking for what I should do with my life and how I should make money anymore. I don't see myself as a business owner. I am someone answering the calling and paying taxes from every sale. Long story, but a few keys to being able to do so isn't in being stellar seller, but having poor employment options where I live, growing food for the family, working on self-sufficiency, having no rent to pay, having a supportive partner, lack of social life, constantly working on keeping down the volume of advertising from every corner trying to convince me that I need what I don't need, not going on vacations etc.

There have been people who walked into my craft room (not a public space, but I sometimes accept visitors through friends) expecting that I will present my dolls to them trying to sell. I hate direct selling. I answer questions in person, but I want the dolls do the talking. I still feel quite uncomfortable always announcing about new and old available dolls on my social media and sharing links to where to get them. But that's a part of my job and I will do that here too. If I didn't sell, I probably wouldn't keep doing it or grow and develop in this craft. I've been trained well by Instagram algorithms to sell, seek attention, pretend to be authentic without telling the whole story... Sorry, I hope to leave that behind. I've left Instagram. I don't belong there.

In one of my too-low-sales-and-income periods (those happen, naturally) a friend asked why don't I use more shameless marketing. I could tell about my dolls as magical items. Many people who buy my dolls repeatedly swear they are alive, and special and truly help them, and they share these views on their social media, why can't I make it a part of my marketing? This is tricky. I hate consumerism, but I'm a seller of non-essential things. I hate seeing magical solutions sold to naïve people, but I talk about magic when I talk about my dolls because I draw inspiration from folklore, witchcraft, mythology, esoteric and occult world. All that together puts me in a quite uncomfortable position. I don't want to sell promises. I don't want to convince you that you need a doll. I don't sell magic. These dolls are NOT enchanted and I don't put spells on them. There is definitely a thought in each of them. In that sense, every piece of art made by a real human being is a spell that has received focussed energy, isn't it?

I also don't see people as walking wallets. I want to be clear about what you are getting from me. I'm over the Moon every time when someone has received my doll and sees in it more than I saw, feels more than I perceived and breathes life into it turning the doll into active participant in their lives.

Also, I don't think you should walk away if you don't like my price, but want my work. I don't subscribe to the idea that I can actually calculate the value of my work and I don't see it as an insult if someone wants my work but doesn't have a budget for it and offers less. I understand it. I'm always open for finding the price point where we can meet. I give discounts, I do barters, I organize giveaways on my Patreon for all members not just those, who can afford to pay. But doll sales is my main source of income and a source of joy. I still need money. I have expenses too.

I sell through my website SiltiCrafts.com and on Etsy. The prices in my Etsy shop are a bit higher than on my website because that's additional work and additional fees.

I don't want you to buy from me what you don't need. I don't want to lure anyone in. But if you feel it, I might have a doll for you or craft a custom-made one for you.

Poured my heart out. Thank you for reading it all!

Doll from my archive. She has found home long ago.

#dollmaker #etsyseller #seller #crafter #patreon #witch #witchcraft #esoteric #artists #witchart #artist #stopmotion #paganart #introductions

I'm a messy crafter. In my Witch Town destruction is the mother of creation and chaos is a fertile ground.

My favourite part of doll crafting is this. Not styling or dressing up, but discovering the character, finding its' essence through colours, stiffness, lightness, roughness, flow and I dare to say vibration of the fabric and shiny trinkets. I use pre-loved, unwanted, outworn, broken etc materials to make my dolls. Those materials are donated and sometimes sent to me from across 7 seas. Sometimes the choice is between landfills and my craftroom, between announcing something a trash or it becoming a treasure again. I work with former belongings of those alive and deceased, giving them second life in my dolls. And I think it just adds value to them. It makes them special.

Sometimes it's the materials that lead the way to the finished doll, not my ideas. In that sense I myself as an artist feel more like a door, like gate for these creatures to enter the world, not the god that creates them. It's my job to serve them and find what they need, not make them exactly how I've seen them with my minds' eye. The process of making a doll doesn't happen with empty mental space, this is where inner conversation happen and I dare to call them conversations with dolls. I don't literally hear them talking (I've been asked this, so to be clear...), but that inner conversation happening while I craft helps me to find new perspectives, reminds me of my values, shows me the way, so I dare to say that dolls talk to me, materials reveal secrets and I have a lot of teachers right at my fingers. My only teachers in doll making have been dolls that I make.

Does this make any sense to you or I sound like the lady who has lost her sanity long ago?

#dollmaker #crafter #artist #artdoll #paganart #witchart #innerconversations #innerworld #recycled #upcycled #preloved #weirdworld #dolls