For anyone who’s new to this website, I’m Chelly Wood, a soon-to-be-published author, high school English teacher, and seamstress. Together with my two teenage daughters, I am in the process of creating a stop-motion version of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet for YouTube, starring re-designed dolls like Barbie, Ken, Momoko, and Tammy Doll.

Today’s post will introduce you to my oldest daughter, Ardie, who goes by Emily Teapot on Instagram and Pinterest. She is a phenomenal painter at age 14, and she has designed and painted many of the sets we’ll be using in our upcoming production. (She also makes saddles and blankets for Breyer Horses, just in case you wondered about her horse obsession on her Pinterest page and Instagram.)

Ardie, AKA Emily, has stripped our Barbie dolls (and others) of their Vegas showgirl cosmetics, giving them new, more wholesome looks.

This brings me to the plastic “thespian” who will be playing Benvolio in our Theater of Yore stop-motion version of Romeo and Juliet. It was tough to decide who would play Benvolio. We imagined him as younger than Romeo, but we wanted him dressed in similar attire. He would need to have a somewhat serious facial expression as well, to carry out the lines Benvolio is most famous for, like, “What sadness lengthens Romeo’s hours?” (I, 1, 187)

After much deliberation, we decided to cast one of my collectible World of Love dolls as Benvolio. She’s actually a female doll, but we agreed that the expression on her face was right for this character. Ardie thought she could easily adapt the doll’s natural facial features to create a contemplative, worried expression on the doll’s face. I think she did great!

The image you see in the upper right-hand corner of this post is our Benvolio. He is played by the World of Love doll called Soul. She was my very favorite doll when I was a child, but this photo shows Ardie’s face-up changes to the doll.

I’d also like to let people know that we’ve made an interesting discovery. A couple of weeks ago, I designed some doll clothes for Ardie’s Breyer dolls (yes, I plan to post those patterns very soon), and when we tried the clothes on my World of Love dolls, we found the two dolls’ bodies were about the same size.

So to honor all those Breyer doll fans out there, this week I’ll be posting the pattern for Benvolio’s clothes, and I’ll also post my tutorials which show you how to make them. Please remember, if you collect Breyer dolls, these clothes will fit Breyer dolls as well as the World of Love dolls from the 1970’s.