PostPoems Be Artistic. Be Creative. Be Inspired!

My mother started her own doll collection since my biggest sister was born. These dolls are kept on rectangular glass and wood shelves, which are hung on the white walls of her craft room. At first she began collecting small dolls as a souvenir from our family vacations, this ones are typically dressed from those places, they have different facial features depending on their ethnicity, such as Asians, African-American, Caucasian, Hispanics etc. Later, there were not only small dolls; new limited edition 24-32 inches vinyl/cloth dolls with natural hair continued her collection. She has had this collection for more than 25 years and so far her collection is conformed by approximately 288 dolls. This collection includes porcelain, resin and vinyl material dolls. They come with blue, hazel, green, brown and even black eyes.  Also, they have blonde, brown or black hair color and of course with extremely different hair type and length. Her favorite doll is a 48 inches tall, which is around the height of a seven-year-old girl, this doll has beautiful blue crystal eyes with long, blonde and straight hair. Sometimes she even takes them out of the shelves and uses them as decoration. On Christmas time, some of these dolls can be found under the Christmas tree with elegant dresses like if they were opening some presents. They are also found with cute pumpkin costumes in Halloween and even with fluffy pastel colored dresses and bunny ears during Easter Season. During the independence holiday, my mother dresses them up for the occasion with Mexican blouses and skirts and she also combs their hair with braids. While collecting she got inspired to start making dolls herself, so she started to make hand-sculpted dolls made out of polymer clay, which is soft moldable clay that turns hard when cured at high temperatures. This one of a kind dolls are also kept on the glass shelves. I´ve seen this doll collection grow since I was born, this dolls were always available for me and my sisters when we wanted to play with them, we just needed to be very careful and put them back in place. Furthermore, people around the world asked her to handcraft dolls from her big collection in order to use them as therapy. Some of them were shipped to the other side of the world, like Athens, Greece as part of psychotherapy with abandoned kids. This doll collection has become a tradition for my family, which will pass on from generation to generation.