Sue's Tiny Costumes

My daughter turns 6 and my website turns 3 officially so I have posted a Buy one Get one FREE sale on my Special Sales page. The sale is November 30th and December 1st! Check it out! Sue Darby ~ www.suestinycostumes.com View My Blog ~ www.suestinycostumes.blogspot .com Want to learn more about SEO for your Website free? http://www.gnc-web-creations .com/seo-optimization.htm

This year I decided it was time to start entering the Alaska State Fair . I've entered multiple County and local fairs for handcrafted items over the years growing up but not at the state level. It was time and my hard work paid off this year in the form of a first place ribbon on one of my nicest items I've done yet... Little Bo Peep and her Sheep otherwise known as Kitty Collier and Tiny Betsy. When I find some time I'll post the photos of them at the fair with their ribbon. The judge's comment on my form was "cute sheep girl" and I do have to admit Betsy is pretty cute! Both patterns will appear in the Halloween Issue of International Doll Magazine as well as being available for download (purchase) on my site .

News Well once again it's time I posted on this blog. I've accomplished a lot in the last few weeks. New patterns are nearing completion, my items are all automatically downloaded now through www.payloadz.com combined with www.paypal.com and I'm working on taking new photos of everything using the full size tripod and the lovely weather we're having this summer in Alaska . Some of the new patterns are for Kitty Collier , Skipper , Harry Potter who shares a body with Kevin & a couple new miniature patterns (not shown yet). Well that's it for now. Sue Darby www.suestinycostumes.com

I'm playing around with settings and things I can do with blogger as I plan on publishing some informative articles shortly. I've also been writing up a list of goals for the rest of the summer in hopes that I can get everything accomplished before the fall and my college classes start. Among these goals are: Taking photos outdoors Updating all my patterns with my new address (done with patterns need to do books, lines and kits still) Setting up Payloadz to do the delivery of my patterns (once the books, lines & kits are in the database this will be nearly ready!) New patterns for Doll Magazine New patterns for the site Writing up at least an outline of the Computerized Drafting book & class series that has been playing around in my mind for a couple years now Figuring out how I can afford some new dolls to play with (justifing it since some of the dolls I have still need patterns!) Generating a new photo gallery of my work with better linki

As I work here in my little studio I've discovered a few things.... testing in 'real fabric' vs muslin is an OK thing to do at least for larger dolls. My reasoning behind this is that if a pattern doesn't turn out just right for say Kitty the same pattern with minor modifications manages nicely to fit a smaller doll like Brenda Starr. Besides that the 'goofs' are perfect to give to my daughter to play with as she doesn't mind imperfections in my work that usually go with a first run through a pattern as I draft and redraft and sew and resew a project. It's funny I start with a design for one doll and eventually I have the same design or a variation of it for 2 or more others as well. I just love designing and sewing for my dolls.

One of the focuses of my business is dollhouse miniatures.... to answer the questions on scale you have several scales that are popular or gaining popularity. 1" or 1/12 scale is the most common with tons of Yahoogroups for it and other online forums including Small Stuff Digest which is where I got my start... large international list for nothing but miniatures (not just 1" scale tho) 1/2" or 1/24 scale is smaller and has gained popularity in the last couple years as the 1" scale people run out of space for minis This is a niche market that has a growing base... not saying 1" scale is on it's way out just that 1/2" is growing in popularity due to the main body of crafters being retired or *my* elders (I'm not yet 30) and on space and money budgets that are shrinking. 1/4 scale is also popular but I'm not up on it much but I can say it is extremely tiny ... if you've ever seen the original 80's Poly Pockets those co