Apparently, I Make Dolls Now

A month ago, I couldn’t make a doll.

Actually, that’s probably being generous.

A month ago, if you’d told me I would soon be sitting in my caravan surrounded by fabric, crochet, Mod Podge, tiny shoes, bloomers, glasses and a 20-inch handmade Nana, I probably would have laughed.

Yet here we are.

Her arms and legs are sewn on.

Her hair is in.

Her eyes are in place.

Her glasses are on.

Her little jacket has been crocheted.

Her dress is finished.

Her bloomers are up.

Her shoes are on — although I managed to spill glue on one of them, because apparently no project in this household can reach the finish line without one final act of chaos.

Her apron needs another attempt.

And beside me are little gold Founder Collection pins waiting to be finished.

She’s about 85% done.

Which, now that I think about it, describes most of my life.

Welcome to the 85% Club

I have so many projects sitting somewhere around 85%.

Not abandoned.

Not forgotten.

Just… nearly there.

There’s Cooper Delivered, our sustainable shampoo bar business, sending bars around Australia while quietly funding a much bigger dream.

One day, we’d love to build our own manufacturing facility.

For now, every little shampoo bar sold helps us move another tiny step towards it.

Then there’s the land.

My husband and I live off-grid on rural acreage in Western Australia, and somewhere between building businesses, making things and figuring out where the next bit of power is coming from, I fell even more in love with gardening.

So naturally, instead of simply gardening like a normal person, I built an app.

The Garden Needed an App

Cooper Delivered Earth started because I wanted somewhere to actually organise a garden.

Not just a list of pretty plants.

I wanted to plan what went where.

Remember what I’d planted.

Check which plants shouldn’t be beside each other.

Save things I wanted to grow.

Explore recipes using plants for hair, beauty and everyday life.

Keep a proper plant library.

Basically, I wanted the gardening tool I needed while building our own garden.

So I made it.

Then something funny happened.

Living off-grid teaches you to appreciate technology.

But it also teaches you when to shut it off.

There are days when power matters.

There are days when you don’t want another screen.

And there are days when you’re standing in the garden with dirty hands and you just want a bloody book.

So I made one of those too.

Books Are Supposed to Get Messy

I wanted a garden book I could actually use.

Write in it.

Stick photographs into it.

Tape things onto pages.

Record plants someone gifted me.

Write down what worked.

Write down what absolutely did not work.

Keep track of seeds.

Plan the months ahead.

Scribble something in the margin because I remembered it while making dinner.

And when it’s full?

Put it on the shelf and start another one.

Because I don’t think a garden journal should remain pristine.

Books like that are meant to get dirty.

They’re meant to end up with bent corners, little bits of soil, sticky notes and handwriting you can barely decipher three years later.

They’re records of a life being lived.

The Earth book takes much of what I loved about the app and gives it a physical home: garden logs, seed planning, room for plant information, notes, recipes, seed packet records and plenty of blank space to make it yours.

That book is now working its way towards bookstores.

And apparently I hadn’t learnt my lesson.

Because another app needed a book.

Then I Watched Too Many Crime Shows

Nana’s Quest and Cooper Delivered are a little like sisters.

They’re different businesses, but they grew up in the same house.

One is rooted in sustainable haircare.

The other is rooted in making.

Both exist because I keep finding things I wish existed and then making the questionable decision to build them myself.

One of those things was The Board.

The Board is a marketing app for small businesses.

But I didn’t want another beige business tool filled with words that make ordinary business owners feel like they need a marketing degree just to advertise a candle.

I watch far too much Criminal Minds, CSI and basically anything involving an investigation.

So I thought:

What if marketing felt like solving a case?

And suddenly Nana was wearing a detective outfit.

Marketing became an investigation.

Ideas became evidence.

And The Board became this slightly ridiculous but very useful little world where you investigate your own business.

Then I realised exactly what I’d realised in the garden.

Sometimes you don’t want the app.

Sometimes you want paper.

So The Board became a physical planner too.

That one is also making its way towards bookstores.

This probably would have been a sensible place to stop.

I did not stop.

Somewhere in All of This, There Was Nana’s Quest

Nana’s Quest began with makers.

My mum.

My nana.

People creating things with their hands.

And the idea that perhaps we could build a different kind of marketplace around them.

A place where handmade doesn’t get swallowed by everything else.

A place where the person behind the thing matters.

A place that feels more like walking into Nana’s house than walking into another enormous online shopping centre.

Today, Australian makers can open a shop through Nana’s Quest and sell their handcrafted work.

But I don’t want Nana’s Quest to end at the checkout.

I want you to enter her world.

And apparently that required me to learn doll making.

I Had Absolutely No Idea How to Make Her

The Founder Nana dolls are big.

About 20 inches big.

I haven’t even decided whether there will be 25 or 50 because, having now made one, I am becoming increasingly aware that 20 inches is a lot of Nana.

But she needed to exist.

Not as a mass-produced mascot ordered from somewhere and put in a box.

I wanted to make her.

So I started.

I learnt as I went.

I made mistakes.

I remade things.

I crocheted her jacket.

I made her dress.

I made an apron that I don’t love and will probably make again.

I stiffened fabric.

I put in her hair.

I attached her limbs.

I gave her glasses.

I made bloomers.

I glued her shoes.

I accidentally glued something I shouldn’t have.

And then came embroidery.

I can’t embroider.

Or, more accurately:

I couldn’t embroider.

When I realised the doll needed embroidery, I had a complete meltdown.

I was convinced this was the bit I couldn’t do.

My husband looked at me and said something that stopped me.

A month ago, you couldn’t make a doll either.

Fair point.

Annoyingly good point, actually.

Maybe That’s the Whole Story

I think about that sentence a lot.

Because there are so many things in my life today that I once didn’t know how to do.

I didn’t know how to build an app.

I built one.

Then another.

And now I’m building MyQuest, which will become my fourth.

I didn’t know how to make a doll.

There’s currently a giant Nana sitting nearby wearing bloomers.

I didn’t know how to turn the garden in my head into something I could organise.

So I built Earth.

I wanted a physical version.

So I made a book.

I wanted marketing to make sense for people like me.

So I built The Board.

Then I made that a book too.

We published Soil to Roots and Rise Goddess.

We’re still developing the AllWays Bag — our waxed canvas reusable shipping bag that I hope, one day, can carry Cooper Delivered orders and Nana’s Quest vendor orders instead of becoming another piece of packaging destined for the bin.

And now I’m building MyQuest.

Come Into Nana’s World

MyQuest is probably the project that best explains where Nana’s Quest is heading.

It’s a crafting world.

There will be quests.

A board game.

Patterns.

Books.

Crochet.

Little challenges.

And snail mail letters from Nana.

You aren’t just opening an app.

You’re being invited further into her universe.

Eventually, I’d love our own crochet Nana dolls too. I’m working on that pattern now because apparently learning one kind of doll making wasn’t enough.

There are still apps waiting for approvals.

There are Apple releases to organise.

There’s the Nana’s Quest marketplace app to finish.

There are books coming.

There are dolls to finish.

There are vendors to find.

There are gardens to grow.

There are shampoo bars to pack.

There are probably 47 tabs open on my computer.

And there is almost certainly a cold coffee somewhere that I’ve forgotten about.

Why Do So Many Things?

People could probably look at all of this in two ways.

Maybe I’m an overachiever.

Maybe I take on too much.

Maybe it’s one too many coffees, not enough sleep and a healthy amount of delusion.

Maybe it’s all three.

But I get to live in a world where I craft.

I garden.

I do hair.

I build.

I write.

I learn.

I make ridiculous things simply because I think they should exist.

And I get to do it from our little off-grid life in rural Australia with my husband beside me — the person who reminds me, whenever imposter syndrome turns up, that I’ve already learnt things I once thought I couldn’t do.

We haven’t reached every goal we set ourselves.

Not even close.

Some of them are sitting at 85%.

Some are probably sitting at 42%.

A few are still scribbles on bits of paper.

But we’ll keep going.

That’s something I know about the two of us.

We don’t give up very easily.

So, Apparently, I Make Dolls Now

That’s the funny thing about creativity.

You don’t always know what you’re capable of before you begin.

Sometimes you begin because you’re qualified.

Sometimes you begin because you’ve spent years mastering something.

And sometimes you begin because you look at a little old lady with glasses sketched on a page and think:

I wonder if I could make her.

Then a month later you’re learning embroidery.

Maybe that’s what Nana’s Quest really is.

Not perfection.

Not knowing everything before you start.

Not waiting until somebody decides you’re qualified enough.

It’s giving things a go.

It’s learning from people who came before us.

It’s passing skills along.

It’s making things with our hands.

It’s making mistakes.

It’s pulling stitches out and starting again.

It’s keeping the wonky first attempt somewhere because one day you’ll want to remember how far you’ve come.

And it’s understanding that 85% doesn’t mean you’ve failed to finish.

Sometimes it means you’re building something.

So if you’ve been sitting on an idea because you don’t know how to do it yet, perhaps that’s not a reason not to begin.

A month ago, I couldn’t make a doll.

Apparently, I make dolls now.

And she’s almost finished.

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Apparently, I Make Dolls Now | Learning to Make a Handmade Doll