Hi! My name is Ellen Hyde and I like to make dolls :-)I started customizing dolls my freshman year of high school after seeing some beautiful renditions of Wheel of Time characters and being given some 20g magenta wire, being in the process of learning to make chainmail. I thought that of course pink chainmail belonged on a Barbie doll, so I started working on Svetlana. Well, I ran out if wire and used beads instead, but that's how I got started. I didn't start to really make a lot of dolls until 2005.
Svetlana was sort of a joke, with a stereotypical Barbie personality. My dolls after her have a bit more character to them—and most of them have weapons! There’s sort of a fun story about that. One time I was babysitting my neighbor Joe. He was about eight, and he loved to play with toy guns. But he surprised me that day by wanting to play with my dolls. An eight-year-old boy playing with Barbies? Unheard of! So Svetlana and Nausicaä teamed up and ripped Octavia's head off. I felt bad for her, really—she's not actually an evil villain.
I am currently a freshman at Cornell University studying apparel and costume design. Eventually I hope to make costumes for theatre or film. You can see some of my full-size costumes on this site as well. Aside from dolls and costumes, I'm a member of The Ring of Steel, a stage combat performance group, and I like to write. I have participated in National Novel Writing Month for three years now, and some of my shorter stories are here if you would like to read them.
And yes, seaweed like this was the inspiration for Ren the Kelp Dryad ...