Introduction Post

    My name is Jade! I am 18 years old and a freshman here at Linn Benton Community College. I’m majoring in business administration because I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do after high school. I chose this major because I enjoyed my high school business classes and wanted a flexible path for the future. I figured business covered many bases. For now, my goal is to pass all of my classes while balancing work and relationships at the same time. I’m especially interested in learning about how to effectively market my art online. 

One of my main interests is collecting and customizing dolls, especially Monster High dolls, though I do have a few from other brands and lines too. If you’re not familiar with it, customizing dolls involves removing the factory paint and repainting them, taking out their original hair and adding new hair with a needle, and/or making new clothes for them. I’ve loved dolls and art ever since I was little, but I could never find a medium I really stuck with. When I was about 10 years old, I watched Dollightful videos on YouTube and thought her dolls always looked so amazing, but I never imagined I’d actually be able to try it myself. Now I get to work on dolls, which makes me happy, even though it takes a lot of time. I have far more unfinished dolls than finished ones and many doll ideas that are still just sketches, but I’d love to make them all someday. Some people who don’t know about doll customizing think it’s a strange or random hobby, and it is a bit unusual, but there’s actually a big online community for it.

    Despite my love for doll customizing and art as a whole, I don’t want it as a full-time career path. I find art classes very stressful and it drains the fun out of art for me. This past May, I accepted an unexpected commission request and it’s pretty ambitious and taking much longer than I thought it would. The person buying it just requested it to be finished before 2026 but my goal for myself was to finish it before school started, which I didn’t meet. I’ve decided after this doll I’m only going to make dolls I want to make for a little while. I want to find a long-term career path I enjoy, separate from art, and work on dolls for fun. I’d also be very happy to be able to sell some of my art! I want to be able to make whatever I want to without worrying about the space it may take up or the money I may spend working on it. However, another little issue is that because this hobby can be so extremely time consuming, customized dolls can be hundreds of dollars. While Monster High has a pretty big fanbase, customized dolls have a slightly smaller fanbase, and people who like Monster High, want a customized doll, and have a few hundred dollars laying around is an even smaller demographic. As I create more dolls, I want to post them as much as I can and I often forget to record or even just take process picture
s. Currently, I should focus on growing my audience more than making sales. I’m really looking forward to this class and other future business classes I’ll be taking. I'm excited to learn how to market myself and to see where the future takes me!