Don't be fooled — they're dolls
July 01, 2008
By ED MERRIMAN
Baker City Herald
When Wendy Dickison walks into a room everyone
who loves babies oohs and aahs over the beautiful
infant nestled in her arms.
A woman asks, "Oh, can I hold her?" followed with a comment about the baby's precious little toes and feet.
Then comes the exclamation: "Oh, my God."
The woman notices that the baby's a little too old and slightly stiff.
Dickison giggles in delight as she tells the baby's admirer not to worry. It's not a real baby.
It's just one of the lifelike dolls she makes by hand and has been selling over the Internet to collectors around the world.
Dickison sold her first doll, named Victoria, on eBay for $400 in November of 2005, and since then prices have risen to $1,350 each.
"It's funny. When I made my first doll, my family said I'd be lucky to get $5 for it," Dickison said. "That made me want to prove them wrong, so I put it on eBay for $400 and it sold right away."
That's when she knew she was on to a product with great potential.Ever since Dickison left her hometown of Union eight years ago right out of high school, she has been painting and sculpting at home, as well as doing some doll painting with her mother, to bring in extra money.
But with gas and food prices soaring, it never seemed to be enough, said Dickison, whose husband, Dennis, is a cashier at Albertson's.
When the opportunity arose to paint murals on buildings, walls and billboards, Dickison gave it a try, but that didn't work out because she wound up traveling too often.
The 26-year-old mother of three wracked her brain trying to come up with a more lucrative venture that would allow her to stay at home with the couple's three young children — Kortney, 8; Lyndsey, 5; and Carter, 3.
Her next thought was to start a daycare.
"Money was tight. I was looking for something to do at home to make money. I lovebabies, and I was thinking about starting a daycare," Dickison said.
That vision popped like a balloon, however, when she looked into it and learned about the government red tape.
Then in the fall of 2005, while visiting a friend and her baby in the maternity ward, Dickison said it was like a light came on, and she envisioned putting the art and sculpting skills she'd been honing since she was 10 into making lifelike baby dolls.
It was a dream that took her back to her roots.
"My mom gave me some clay when I was 10 years old. I sculpted little clay animals," Dickison said.
Her mother, Cindy Musgrove, who lives in Caldwell, Idaho, has been sculpting, painting dolls and doing other art and craft projects as gifts and to sell at flea markets and craft fairs all her life, so Dickison said her idea of making lifelike baby dolls seemed a natural extension of what she'd learned from her mother, as well as from art and sculpting classes in school and from Internet research.
From that experience, Dickison knew the first thing she needed was a brick of clay, from which she forms a mold of a doll's body parts.
"It's comical when I tell people I use wadded up aluminum foil, masking tape and toothpicks to make the dolls," Dickison said.
Of course that's the simple explanation for a very complex and creative process.
The first step involves downloading pictures of newborn children, including her own and those of family and friends, to use as models on the sculpting table, which is along one wall in the living room of the Dickison home.
Next she wads up a ball of aluminum foil until it's roughly the size and shape of a newborn's head. The foil is wrapped with masking tape, and then Dickison begins to spread clay over the foil and sculpt the baby's eyes, eyebrows, lips and mouth, ears and other features, using her fingernails, a toothpick and occasionally a plastic knife.
Once the doll head looks like the picture, Dickison moves on to sculpt the other body parts until she has completed clay molds of the baby, which is then sent to a company that pours a silicone mixture into the mold, and sends back a silicone doll.
When the silicone doll arrives, Dickinson begins the first painting phase, which involves mixing colors from permanent ink markers on a paper plate at a table at the end of the living room couch, which Dickison calls her silicone table. Ink from the permanent markers is used to paint the under layer of blood veins.
"I look at my veins and try to copy where they would be on a baby," Dickison said.
The second painting phase involves using an air brush and special oil paints — which cost $30 per 1/23 ounce — to add blushing and detail to the skin color. Dickison uses a sponge to add texture to the doll's "skin."
Next she wets down the silicone doll and bakes it in the kitchen oven to seal it before she finishes the doll by attaching angora mohair, which serves as the baby's hair.
Dickison has sold 10 dolls to eBay buyers, and No. 11 is done and ready for shipment to a customer in Germany.
It's taken three years of trial and error for Dickison to advance her doll-making business to this point where she's selling her original dolls as fast as she can make them for a minimum of $1,350.
Ashton Drake, one of the world's largest doll manufacturing companies, has commissioned her to create a clay sculpture of a monkey for their primate collection of life-size dolls. The company markets dolls through direct mail and in magazines, including Parade magazine, which Dickison said recently featured an ad with a picture of the monkey doll she sculpted for more than $3,000.
"It was really shocking when two doll companies were interested in the first clay sculptures I did," Dickison said.
A vinyl doll made from the clay mold she sculpted for a doll named Madison was sold on the Home Shopping Europe television network, Dickison said.
"Madison was the first doll I sold to a doll company," she said.
"I've seen the ad run before on T.V. in Germany, but I couldn't understand what they were saying when I saw them holding them up," Dickison said.
After selling two of her early molds to doll companies — one for $1,000 and one for more than $3,000 — Dickison said she decided not to do that again because that wasn't enough money for the work involved. Now she's keeping her molds and using them to make her own limited edition of 15 silicone collector dolls.
"I just started in January going out on my own," Dickison said. "Now I see why the doll companies were so anxious to buy my dolls."
When she sells her silicone dolls, they come with certificates listing their names, date of birth and birth weights.
At the June 26 economic development PubTalk meeting at Mad Matilda's in downtown Baker City, Dickison said she received an "overwhelming" response from potential local investors and angel investors who traveled from Portland, Hood River and Boise to hear pitches made by Dickison and other aspiring Baker City entrepreneurs.
The 5-pound, 12-ounce silicone doll named Kayla that Dickison brought to the PubTalk meeting seemed to impress the angel investors who listened to her pitch seeking $200,000 to help her expand into production of vinyl dolls, which she said could be mass-produced and marketed to the general public for around $30 each.
However, she said the angel investors and some local investors attending the PubTalk encouraged her to keep her focus as an artist on making limited edition silicone collector dolls, which they encouraged her to sell for two or three times her current asking price of $1,350.
"Our goal at this point is to get enough money so we can get into a bigger house, with room for a studio, so I won't have to do the sculpting and painting in the living room," Dickison said.
Her next step, based on recommendations she received at the PubTalk, may involve making lifelike portrait baby dolls, similar to the one made recently of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie's baby, which Dickison said could be a golden opportunity.
Dennis Dickison said that if the doll business keeps growing, they'll make it more of a family business, where everyone contributes to the business in some way, from helping Wendy sculpt and paint the dolls to distributing and marketing them.
Baker City Herald
A woman asks, "Oh, can I hold her?" followed with a comment about the baby's precious little toes and feet.
Then comes the exclamation: "Oh, my God."
The woman notices that the baby's a little too old and slightly stiff.
Dickison giggles in delight as she tells the baby's admirer not to worry. It's not a real baby.
It's just one of the lifelike dolls she makes by hand and has been selling over the Internet to collectors around the world.
Dickison sold her first doll, named Victoria, on eBay for $400 in November of 2005, and since then prices have risen to $1,350 each.
"It's funny. When I made my first doll, my family said I'd be lucky to get $5 for it," Dickison said. "That made me want to prove them wrong, so I put it on eBay for $400 and it sold right away."
That's when she knew she was on to a product with great potential.Ever since Dickison left her hometown of Union eight years ago right out of high school, she has been painting and sculpting at home, as well as doing some doll painting with her mother, to bring in extra money.
But with gas and food prices soaring, it never seemed to be enough, said Dickison, whose husband, Dennis, is a cashier at Albertson's.
When the opportunity arose to paint murals on buildings, walls and billboards, Dickison gave it a try, but that didn't work out because she wound up traveling too often.
The 26-year-old mother of three wracked her brain trying to come up with a more lucrative venture that would allow her to stay at home with the couple's three young children — Kortney, 8; Lyndsey, 5; and Carter, 3.
Her next thought was to start a daycare.
"Money was tight. I was looking for something to do at home to make money. I lovebabies, and I was thinking about starting a daycare," Dickison said.
That vision popped like a balloon, however, when she looked into it and learned about the government red tape.
Then in the fall of 2005, while visiting a friend and her baby in the maternity ward, Dickison said it was like a light came on, and she envisioned putting the art and sculpting skills she'd been honing since she was 10 into making lifelike baby dolls.
It was a dream that took her back to her roots.
"My mom gave me some clay when I was 10 years old. I sculpted little clay animals," Dickison said.
Her mother, Cindy Musgrove, who lives in Caldwell, Idaho, has been sculpting, painting dolls and doing other art and craft projects as gifts and to sell at flea markets and craft fairs all her life, so Dickison said her idea of making lifelike baby dolls seemed a natural extension of what she'd learned from her mother, as well as from art and sculpting classes in school and from Internet research.
From that experience, Dickison knew the first thing she needed was a brick of clay, from which she forms a mold of a doll's body parts.
"It's comical when I tell people I use wadded up aluminum foil, masking tape and toothpicks to make the dolls," Dickison said.
Of course that's the simple explanation for a very complex and creative process.
The first step involves downloading pictures of newborn children, including her own and those of family and friends, to use as models on the sculpting table, which is along one wall in the living room of the Dickison home.
Next she wads up a ball of aluminum foil until it's roughly the size and shape of a newborn's head. The foil is wrapped with masking tape, and then Dickison begins to spread clay over the foil and sculpt the baby's eyes, eyebrows, lips and mouth, ears and other features, using her fingernails, a toothpick and occasionally a plastic knife.
Once the doll head looks like the picture, Dickison moves on to sculpt the other body parts until she has completed clay molds of the baby, which is then sent to a company that pours a silicone mixture into the mold, and sends back a silicone doll.
When the silicone doll arrives, Dickinson begins the first painting phase, which involves mixing colors from permanent ink markers on a paper plate at a table at the end of the living room couch, which Dickison calls her silicone table. Ink from the permanent markers is used to paint the under layer of blood veins.
"I look at my veins and try to copy where they would be on a baby," Dickison said.
The second painting phase involves using an air brush and special oil paints — which cost $30 per 1/23 ounce — to add blushing and detail to the skin color. Dickison uses a sponge to add texture to the doll's "skin."
Next she wets down the silicone doll and bakes it in the kitchen oven to seal it before she finishes the doll by attaching angora mohair, which serves as the baby's hair.
Dickison has sold 10 dolls to eBay buyers, and No. 11 is done and ready for shipment to a customer in Germany.
It's taken three years of trial and error for Dickison to advance her doll-making business to this point where she's selling her original dolls as fast as she can make them for a minimum of $1,350.
Ashton Drake, one of the world's largest doll manufacturing companies, has commissioned her to create a clay sculpture of a monkey for their primate collection of life-size dolls. The company markets dolls through direct mail and in magazines, including Parade magazine, which Dickison said recently featured an ad with a picture of the monkey doll she sculpted for more than $3,000.
"It was really shocking when two doll companies were interested in the first clay sculptures I did," Dickison said.
A vinyl doll made from the clay mold she sculpted for a doll named Madison was sold on the Home Shopping Europe television network, Dickison said.
"Madison was the first doll I sold to a doll company," she said.
"I've seen the ad run before on T.V. in Germany, but I couldn't understand what they were saying when I saw them holding them up," Dickison said.
After selling two of her early molds to doll companies — one for $1,000 and one for more than $3,000 — Dickison said she decided not to do that again because that wasn't enough money for the work involved. Now she's keeping her molds and using them to make her own limited edition of 15 silicone collector dolls.
"I just started in January going out on my own," Dickison said. "Now I see why the doll companies were so anxious to buy my dolls."
When she sells her silicone dolls, they come with certificates listing their names, date of birth and birth weights.
At the June 26 economic development PubTalk meeting at Mad Matilda's in downtown Baker City, Dickison said she received an "overwhelming" response from potential local investors and angel investors who traveled from Portland, Hood River and Boise to hear pitches made by Dickison and other aspiring Baker City entrepreneurs.
The 5-pound, 12-ounce silicone doll named Kayla that Dickison brought to the PubTalk meeting seemed to impress the angel investors who listened to her pitch seeking $200,000 to help her expand into production of vinyl dolls, which she said could be mass-produced and marketed to the general public for around $30 each.
However, she said the angel investors and some local investors attending the PubTalk encouraged her to keep her focus as an artist on making limited edition silicone collector dolls, which they encouraged her to sell for two or three times her current asking price of $1,350.
"Our goal at this point is to get enough money so we can get into a bigger house, with room for a studio, so I won't have to do the sculpting and painting in the living room," Dickison said.
Her next step, based on recommendations she received at the PubTalk, may involve making lifelike portrait baby dolls, similar to the one made recently of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie's baby, which Dickison said could be a golden opportunity.
Dennis Dickison said that if the doll business keeps growing, they'll make it more of a family business, where everyone contributes to the business in some way, from helping Wendy sculpt and paint the dolls to distributing and marketing them.
