Things have been a little busy lately, with not a lot of energy or time for dolls. But I stepped into the doll room today after remembering that I owned a 35mm lens. Let me explain: it's apparently been so long since I took photos that I forgot all about this lens, and spent an hour researching possible options to buy, before I remembered I already owned one. Anyway, after that slight lapse in sanity/memory, I decided to compare the 35mm lens with the 50mm that's usually on the camera - and obviously that called for a small photoshoot.
I bought Chloe (a Volks SD13 Chloe) back in March, directly from Volks. Since then, I've kept her on the table of the doll room (which is protected with blackout curtains) so I can pop in from time to time to look at her cheerful little face. I'm keeping her in her stock outfit for now while I work on a more elaborate Edwardian-style dress for her, but I gave her this hat for a bit more visual interest. I need more props - maybe a few doll-scale books, a basket, flowers...
This was taken with my 50mm lens, because after all that, I preferred it over the 35mm.
And now I realise I really should update my blog more often, so I don't end up introducing two dolls in one post, as is about to happen.
I welcomed Volks Mai (also known as F-81) after a very long time of admiring her. The sculpt has some of my favourite qualities: sweet, sad, and maybe a little concerned.
I tried to actually create a backdrop for these photos and put in a bit more effort there. Usually the level of effort is: open the curtains, put doll on desk in front of sewing machine, take photo. This time I also hung some fabric over some empty doll boxes, and tried draping some tulle around Mai for a soft/romantic look.
The results aren't exactly what I pictured in my head, but I learned a few things and have some ideas for the next attempt - for instance, maybe I'll make a couple of small books as props? I made some books with hand-sewn bindings years ago, and I reckon I could do it again (given enough time...). All in all, it was a very relaxing and calming moment in my day.
In my last post I extolled the virtues of having a personal (doll) site or blog. But what if you don't know where to start? I have some suggestions!
You mostly want to blog
You can write a blog on any site that lets you publish HTML. A blog is, at its core, a series of posts. However, there are some conventions to blogs, like having an RSS feed. This lets people add your blog to an RSS reader, so they can see the latest posts from blogs they follow in one place. Blogging services make all of this easy for you.
The services I'm recommending all allow you to export your data easily and support the idea of the IndieWeb. This is important to me. Also, they have no ads or tracking.
Side note: I personally wouldn't recommend Wordpress or Blogger these days. I think there are better offerings out there for hobbyist bloggers. However, using a less established platform does mean that you run the risk of that platform going away in future.
A privacy-first, no-nonsense, super-fast blogging platform. No trackers, no javascript, no stylesheets. Just your words.
I've personally used Bear Blog and found it to be a thoughtfully-created, simple but powerful blogging service. I love the ethos of the creator; he wrote a manifesto and some thoughts on building for longevity. If you like, you can make your posts appear on the discover page, for a bit of added community.
Mataroa's mission is to provide a space for people to write without distractions and to help them publish in a minimal fashion.
Mataroa is extremely minimal, but that might be okay if you just want to get started. It has a very similar ethos to Bear blog.
You write in Markdown. Image hosting is included for free (with some reasonable limits). It includes comments, but each comment must be manually approved by the blog owner to prevent spam.
It doesn't include:
post tags or categories
any visual customisation or themes - this is probably the deal breaker for most doll hobbyists.
pagination of blog pages (all blog post titles appear in a single list)
You'll need to pay for: a custom domain. It's extremely affordable at $9/year.
We build Pika for the blogging masses Who want to write on their own site Without writing code Without worrying about servers
The blogs built on Pika look really great - I think they did a great job with the design, and the interface and post/page editor seems very easy to use.
A user-friendly interface and rich text editor for writing posts (you can also use Markdown if you prefer)
You can make pages as well as posts
Includes a guestbook
Has post tags
Themes and customisation. including custom CSS
You'll need to pay for: more than 50 posts, more than 3 pages, a newsletter, more than 50 guestbook entries, using your own domain name and some other advanced features.
Create your home page and blog in seconds. Then just write. A powerful editor when you need it, post by email when you don't. Pagecord is independent, open source, and built to last. Own your corner of the web.
User-friendly rich text editor in case you don't want to write Markdown (but you can use Markdown as well)
Or you can write by email
Create pages as well as blog posts
Has post tags
Themes
You'll need to pay for: image hosting, page view analytics, a contact form, custom CSS, your own domain name, post likes and some other advanced features.
Honourable mentions
Dreamwidth has been around for eons which shares many of the same features as the options above. Pillowfort is a similar offering which I've personally used, though I have some doubts about its stability/longevity. Both feel a lot more old-school, but that's nice sometimes. The vibe is definitely "a Dreamwidth blog" or "a Pillowfort blog" rather than your own thing.
Both have community blogs built-in, plus features like reblogging and likes. Also, if privacy is important to you, these are very good options - there are more privacy controls than on a more traditional blog, like just sharing posts with friends.
You want to tinker and build your own site
The most accessible options here are neocities.org (very established) or nekoweb.org (a newer option). Both services include a generous free tier and image hosting. You can use in-browser editors to change the code, or you can upload HTML, CSS and JS files directly (or via API).
But if you can write your own HTML and CSS (maybe with a bit of JavaScript), the world is your oyster. You might try a static site generator to make things easier (e.g. to help with generating an RSS feed, if you want to make a blog) and after that you can upload your files to any hosting provider. Some hosting providers will have a way for you to automate this.
What I use
Making websites is my day job, so unfortunately I could not resist the siren call of getting the chance to waste a whole lot of time and customise the entire experience exactly to my liking. As of today, I use 11ty as a static site generator with Sanity Studio as a headless CMS, hosted on Netlify's free tier. I only pay for the domain name.
Disclaimer: I would not necessarily recommend this stack to others, for a number of reasons (complexity and the likelihood of better alternatives, to name two). I also chose them a few years ago, and I might make different choices now.
In conclusion
I hope this is useful and at least a little interesting. I also know that for many, using social media is just more appealing and easier - and honestly, that's true. There's a built-in community on social media, and there's a reason people use it. (Partly because it's designed to be addictive.)
But I don't like being the product. I would actually happily pay to not be the product and not see ads, and have posts in chronological order, and not have influencers and celebrities and short-form video pushed at me (some short-form video is genuinely charming; it gets less charming when it's the fastest route to making money). So, I will keep championing personal sites, and hope to spread the word to at least one other human.
If you've been active in the western doll community lately, you've probably heard the news that Den of Angels, the oldest ball-jointed doll forum, will likely be closing in August. I haven't been very active there for a while, but it was a hugely formative part of my time in this hobby. I joined when it was still a Yahoo! Group over 20 years ago, and spent a lot of time on it in the early years. I still use the Marketplace and love the crafting sub-forum.
If Den of Angels closes, as seems likely, a lot of information will be lost, and one of the non-social-media doll communities will close. I've seen the internet fundamentally change in my lifetime, and this feels like another blow. Social media, as a doll community (or as any community) seems more fragile than ever, where we just have to adapt to whatever new hellish way big tech companies would like to make their profit this week. It's also designed to be highly addictive and so not always a very enjoyable experience, even when you just use it to try and look at pictures of pretty dolls. There are ball-jointed doll Discords, which I'm a member of and which are useful, but it's a very different pace - and the larger Discord groups are too big for me to meaningfully keep up with.
With all this, it makes me think about the part of the internet I remember and still love: quirky personal sites made by real people who just want to share things they find interesting. Inspired by this love, earlier this year I made a webring for ball-jointed doll websites: ball-jointed.club. (I actually had the idea in 2022 and started building it then, but it took me a while...)
The idea is to collect personal doll sites (not social media profiles) and have a way for people to find new doll hobbyists to follow and enjoy.
There are already quite a few members, and if you read this blog then I encourage you to check them out. When I started this hobby I remember the joy of discovering new doll sites I'd never seen before (even more exciting when they were in Japanese and I couldn't understand anything, because there were no translation tools back then...). I hope that if you browse the sites in the webring you'll feel a little bit of that joy too.
And if you have your own doll website or are thinking of making one, then please consider joining the webring. I only store the URL and name of your site, and there's no analytics, cookies, or anything invasive on the page. You can always get in touch with me via the contact form to get your site removed, changed, to to ask any questions.
With that, I wanted to share a few blog posts I enjoyed recently:
Vega wrote about an exciting new (rare!) doll purchase, and how that came to be. I really enjoy Vega's style of writing and thought process, also around buying (or not buying) dolls. I hope that your Shinydoll is a good fit when they arrive, Vega!
In conclusion: personal doll sites and blogs are great. Taking the time to make or write something yourself is great. Stepping further away from social media also feels pretty great, to me. The internet I knew is irrevocably changed, but that doesn't mean all of it is bad. Blogs aren't dead, and making your own personal site is easier than ever. So if you've been on the fence, maybe 2026 is the year to give it a try?
