New How-to video on YouTube: Faded and Distressed Denim Shorts (Part 1 - Assembly)

Hey hey, dolls! I hope everything's doing great over there at your side of the globe! As with me and the atelierniSHASHA dolls, we're pretty busy over at our little work area (as you can tell I haven't been blogging lately...), but nonetheless, feeling awesome!

A post shared by Shasha 🌞 Ravacio (@ateliernishasha) on Dec 1, 2017 at 3:44am PST

Hmmm, there's actually a lot of reasons why it's exciting over at my little corner lately. I will be sharing with you everything, but for now, we will focus on just one. I am happy with what's going on because I was again able to record my doll garment process. It has always been my goal to share how I make my stuff. However, I had quite a few challenges in doing so. The primary one being equipment. Although I have a very nice DSLR camera (courtesy of my hubs), which is perfect for taking photos of my little ladies, it wasn't designed for taking long videos. And the way I set it up, which I tried a variety of over the few years, is making my work harder. I can't move my hands freely while sewing or cutting, because the tripod sits close to me. But finally, I decided to record my video using my trusty little phone, and I'm happy I tried this method. I realized that since I work on tiny details, the phone actually has good enough focus features for it. And it doesn't take so much space, and time to set up. I just put my phone on top of a few books and leaned it on an acrylic phone stand I got from my local Daiso. Nothing fancy ;)

So, finally, dollies - my latest how-to process video for making the Faded and Distressed Denim Shorts. I decided to share how I make this bestselling piece in my Etsy shop because I truly believe in its versatility, styling-wise. A lot of collectors in our doll community can attest to that. A little backstory - I had this piece inspired from what I loved to wear over and over again during my college years. It was a pair of faded and distressed denim shorts that I bought from what we call an "ukay-ukay" shop, which basically is a second-hand clothing shop. I bought it for only 10 Philippines pesos at that time (around 1998), so it was dirt-cheap, but well-loved. I wore it to death that time and I was sad that finally after years of use, it fell apart, literally. But that's fine, eventually over the years, I have been collecting and wearing distressed denim shorts because they're my favorite. They look worn, distressed, faded, but very functional and stylish. I wear it with tees, tank tops, girly tops and tunics and anything in between. How my tiny girls dress those denim shorts with was the way I do it in my everyday, human-sized life ;)

Please bear with my editing and off-focus clips, I'm still learning this new skill and I would love to receive feedback from you guys. I may have not mentioned all the materials that I used in the process but you can easily figure them out. I had some parts super speedy because they're very self-explanatory anyways, but I had those that are detail-ey, made slow-paced enough. My left hand keeps covering the camera/view several times because I probably got too absorbed in what I was doing at the moment that I forgot to move the phone/camera around. I loved it that I had the recording in portrait so that I have that black space on the sides of the video perfect for my captions. The white font is so much easier to read on the black background.

This process I'm following here is my latest one. I have tried all sorts of ways to make my shorts look great and my process less challenging over the years. I'm sure those who have purchased my shorts from years ago can tell the improvements.

The fabric I used was called soft denim by the lady at the fabric shop. Try to find the softest, thinnest denim fabric for this project so that it's easier to assemble/sew together.

If you liked my pattern, I will soon be listing it on my Etsy shop, hopefully before the end of year but I won't make promises. I still haven't gotten to picking up the scanner I needed to scan all my precious patterns with, which I have developed over the years. They should all be available at my shop by 2018. I will then continue to create new patterns so anyone who likes to re-make my designs can make them for their dolls, too.

So, yeah... I hope you will like my latest video, which is only part one of two. I will edit the remaining process (embellishing) within the next few days and let you know when I finish and have it ready in youtube. By the way, if you are a regular youtube watcher/tuner/consumer, I invite you to subscribe to my channel as I intend to fill it with as much process as I can share. My goal is for everyone to become a much more creative, happier doll collector!

That's it for now, lovelies. I'm gonna get back to finishing the trousers I recently made, take pics then list on Etsy. I will also need to package a few more orders and ship them tomorrow.

See? There's so much energy over here, you can easily tell ;)  Chat with you soon!

xoxo,
shasha