2019 Wrap Up and Review

Happy 2020! I hope everyone rang in a happy new year.  We spend New Year's with good friends every year.  This year, the four adults played board games while the three boys (10, 8, and 7) played video games & an epic game of hide and seek. Needless to say, it was fun!


Today I'm wrapping up unfinished projects and putting together a little year-in-review.  First up, I finished the last two pages of the 2019 collaboration project.

The first sheet is for November. The theme was "My Heritage".  Well, I can't say I have much of a heritage!  My family has been in New England for so long that any heritage disappeared ages ago.  On top of that, I'm English, Irish, and Scottish (mostly) and none of that was terribly exciting to me.  So I made two colonial style outfits to represent my old New England roots. The first is based on the reproductions worn at Plimouth Plantation. If you're in Massachusetts, I highly recommend going! It's great! The second outfit is more of an upper class English lady of about the same time. Remember, the colonists thought of themselves as English so this would have been totally appropriate.

This second sheet is for the theme "Snow Queen".  I tried really hard to avoid Elsa/Disney tropes.  They're fine, just not for me. So this is a vaguely Russian inspired snow queen. My goal for this was finished-not-perfect.  That's a tough concept: how do you complete something without making it perfect?! The way I understand it, "perfection" is constant nit-picking and really, that doesn't do anyone any good.  Sure, there are things I'd change but overall, it's ok. And it's done.

That's all of the old business.  If you only look at my blog, it looks like 2019 was a pretty dull year. I only managed 34 posts - my smallest number of posts ever. All of them black and white, oddly enough.  And I felt it in my visitor statistics! Fewer people visited the blog BUT I gained followers on both Instagram and Pinterest so that lower stat here is a little dubious.  Blogs in general are less popular than they once were. I enjoy mine and I'll keep at it til I don't.  The projects I did complete were big ones: the 100 Days of Paper Dolls (split into two sets of 50) and the 2019 Collaboration project.

And that's all the virtual stuff.  The reason why there were fewer posts here is because I did A LOT more real-world paper doll stuff. Here's the list of all that I can remember:

• Attended my local paper doll party, spring & fall. Always a blast! Really fantastic people. If there's a paper doll group near you, join. It's wonderful. And if there isn't, start one! You might be surprised at what happens!
• Attended Morgantown for the first time. I plan on going again this year and probably every year that I can. You can read about it here.
• Because of Morgantown, I met the delightful, wonderful, amazing Jenny Taliadoros. I've been working on LOADS of fun stuff with her including issues 123, 124, and 125 of Paper Studio Magazine as well as issues 73, 74, and the upcoming issue 75 of Paperdoll Review Magazine.  Sometimes it's cleaning up art, sometimes it's creating title headers & graphics.  I'm a bit of a digital Jill-of-all-trades.  And, sometimes I help with editing and layout for other books, too. I could not be happier. It's a thrill to make already lovely art really shine.  
• I also helped Jenny with two reproduction projects: Sugar N Spice and Mother Goose. Both are really adorable and I highly recommend them! 
• On top of all of that, I released three books with Paper Studio Press!  

 

Jospehine's Wardrobe is a labor of love that was entirely reworked for this edition.  It's the absolute best version of this project and I'm so happy to have it available! 

 

Victorian Mix & Match is another rework.  And I'm glad I did! This needed a bit of work to get it into ideal shape. These two books are just so beautiful! Having a great editor can really make all of the difference and my art has improved immensely working with Jenny!

Finally, the best project of the year (in my opinion!) is Stripes! It's such a terrific concept and being able to work with David Wolfe is just beyond words. We both loved the project and we're hoping to work together again soon.

I guess I was busy in 2019! 

Moving forward, I have a few vague goals.  First, I want to revisit my Etsy shop. I haven't given it as much attention as I should.  I want to expand the download offerings as well as sell physical items including my books, prints, and anything else I can think of.  Secondly, I want to choose another project for the ol' blog. I'm kicking around some ideas so we'll see what happens.  Also, I plan on editing & coloring the 100 days set. AND if that isn't enough, I'm planning on going to Morgantown in May and the national Paper Doll Convention in July. I need to send that check over ASAP! There's also a book with Paper Studio Press in the works.

Wow! Is that it?! I think it is for today! Time to go percolate some blog ideas...