Meet Ainsley
As a kid, Ainsley loved to play with fairytale-inspired Barbie and Disney Dolls, and would eventually grow into Monster High and Ever After High Dolls as she got older. In middle school, she discovered doll collecting through the online American Girl Doll community. During her time collecting American Girl Dolls, she found a love for creating and designing doll outfits and accessories. She even sold custom made doll flower crowns on Etsy. She realized that dolls were a place where she could express her creativity and would explore photography through taking pictures of her dolls. Later in high school, Ainsley did not have as much time to collect dolls, but would occasionally paint or draw to express her creative side. In 2022 during her Freshman year of college Ainsley was brought back into the doll collecting community when her Ever After High Swapped at Birth Theory went viral on TikTok. After realizing that people enjoyed engaging with her and talking about dolls Ainsley would get back into doll collecting and creating. Now Ainsley dreams of designing her own doll line and is making progress towards this with her Etsy shop.
Doll Creating Journey
One of the first things that Ainsley learned how to sew was a skirt for her Barbie dolls. This evolved into designing and sewing custom outfits for her American Girl dolls. From the American Girl doll community Ainsley would learn about the world of doll customization. Ainsley found herself consuming videos about all types of doll customization including American Girl. In 2016, Ainsley found her self rewigging her first American Girl doll in an effort to fix the dolls hair as it had deteriorated over the many years of owning this doll. Then in 2017 Ainsley would commit to her first full doll customization when she rewigged and eyeswapped her American Girl Doll Ember. Ainsley continued customizing American Girl Dolls for a while experimenting with giving them makeup, but wished she could customize other dolls like Barbie, Monster High, and Ever After High, The reason Ainsley stuck to American Girl dolls was because typically when you customize a smaller doll with facepaint you wipe off their old facepaint to draw a new face paint. The problem is that the sealant used for these types of custom faceup can be toxic when sprayed and Ainsley did not have a safe place to spray it. After getting back into doll collecting Ainsley learned that there is an alternative sealant that can be used that does not need to be sprayed. Before jumping into a custom Ainsley decided to practice designing and creating doll clothes by giving two Rainbow High Dolls fantasy inspired makeovers. Now Ainsley has moved onto making her first Barbie sized custom doll which is currently in the process of completion.
Outfit made by Ainsley
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