GetMeStarted

As a kid, I dearly loved my Barbies and I played with them for hours on end. During those years, I also enjoyed watching my mom's "stories" (soap operas) with her, and I grew to love the soap genre. Now I’m a grown woman in my 50’s. In 2012, I began collecting and photographing Barbie dolls and other 6th scale dolls and action figures and I have fallen in love with making dioramas and using my dolls to tell my own "stories". See more about me.

Port Sebastian: Season One, Episode One Plans

Behind The Scenes & Outtakes, The Making Of

Even after years of stops and starts and “life getting in the way”, I still haven’t given up. My goal is to try (again) to debut Season One next year. Watch this spot for the first episode, hopefully to appear sometime in 2021!

Please let me know, either in comments below or on Social Media (find me on Divisible By Six on Facebook or  Follow @PortSebastian on Instagram or See GetMeStarted's photos on Flickr), if you would be interested in seeing any “progress” photos as I complete sets and work toward getting episodes ready for posting.

In the meantime, here is a tiny glimpse into Episode 1:

Nicci’s 12-week ultrasound during her pregnancy with Taylor

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Jenna Mitchell’s bathroom

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Kimberly and her ex-husband, Jerry

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Sydney and Channing Build Sebastian the Snowman

Friends, Misc. & Fun Stuff

When taking pictures of Arthur and Phyllis Landry in the snow recently, I remembered that I’d taken pictures of Sydney and Channing playing in the snow a couple years ago, almost to the day. (Of course, in Port Sebastian time, let’s pretend they were all taken during the same winter, which is the winter just before Season One begins.)

Snow Angels!

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Meet Sebastian the Snowman!

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Snowball fight . . .but Sydney isn’t playing fair!

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Phyllis Saw Our Dress on TV!

Misc. & Fun Stuff

Back in March of 2015, I was watching Dancing With The Stars and I was surprised to see a dress that looked a lot like one in the Port Sebastian wardrobe department. Phyllis was happy to model the dress and attempted to pose like Charlotte McKinney.

The dance is here. It also made me laugh that Carrie Ann Inaba said to watch the articulation of her feet (right around 3:41) and then Erin Andrews said she looks like a Barbie doll (around 5:40). Too funny!

 

How Peter Got His Name

Misc. & Fun Stuff
2016-07-10 20.05.42

Where is it?

2016-07-10 20.06.04

WTF, man?

I pre-ordered my Phicen M31 body early this year and waited with bated breath for him to ship in May. I received him and excitedly opened the box and…well…something was missing.

I went back and looked at the photos on the web site where I ordered him and they had blurred out something, but the body I received had nothing that would have to be blurred out!

I checked out the Phicen group I  belong to on Facebook and there was a post about it. I wasn’t the only one who was wondering why my guy didn’t have his…extra parts…that the Phicen males all seem to have.

I can’t believe this…

2016-07-10 13.23.20.

It’s French, dammit!

I emailed the company I ordered him from and they explained that the manufacturer hadn’t sent them the “accessories” yet, but that they would send them in July when they were due to receive them.

In the mean time, I took a few pictures of him in his dismay.

In a moment of giggling like a grade-school kid, I decided to name him Peter. No, even better: Peter DeVoid.

“It’s French,” he insisted, “It’s pronounced Dev-Wah.”

He later changed the spelling to DeVois. I’m ok with that.

Well, time went by and one day last week, I received an ordinary-looking #10 size envelope in the mail. For a minute, I wasn’t sure what it was. I tried to remember anything I might have ordered that would fit into that envelope, but it didn’t occur to me what it was until I opened the envelope and Peter’s junk fell out!

He’s a happy man, indeed.

 

About Me

Uncategorized
WhoIsGMS

This is me in around 1973-ish (age 8 or 9) and again in 2012

Port Sebastian is my way of combining two things I have dearly loved for years: Barbie and other dolls/figures her size, and soap operas.

As a kid, I dearly loved my Barbies and I played with them for hours on end.

Now I’m a grown woman in my 50’s. In 2012, I began collecting and photographing Barbie dolls and other 6th scale dolls and action figures and I have fallen in love with making dioramas and using my dolls to tell stories.

I chose the screen name “GetMeStarted” because when I was a kid, I used to ask my older sister to “get me started” when I was playing Barbies. That simply meant that she would help me think up a story to play out with my dolls. I’m also a novelist, and my sister is my brainstorming buddy for character development, story line, and plot twists, both for my novels and for my doll stories!

I began sharing my doll photos and videos on Flickr in early 2012, and made friends (both online and in person) who share the hobby. My vision for Port Sebastian as an ongoing story formed gradually since early 2012 and I’m excited to be getting closer to making it a reality.

What led to the creation of Port Sebastian?

Photos from an All My Children soap event in Philadelphia in February of 2013:

This is me with Debbi Morgan (Dr. Angie Hubbard) 

With Darnell Williams (Jesse Hubbard) 

With Vincent Irizarry (Dr. David Hayward)

With Alicia Minshew (Kendall Hart Slater)

With Jacob Young (JR Chandler)

Soap operas have been a part of my life for as long as I can remember. At one point or another during my childhood, though not simultaneously, my mom watched As The World Turns, The Guiding Light, and The Young and the Restless. My sister loved Dark Shadows, and she and I began watching Ryan’s Hope  when it debuted in 1975 and we got Mom into it as well. My sister also watched All My Children for several years, and when I was in high school I watched General Hospital (this was in the early 80’s, when Luke and Laura were the Super Couple to watch!).

The stories my sister helped me create with my dolls often wound up being my own variations of Mom’s “stories” (soap operas). My characters had their own names and back stories, but basically, my stories were about love and life and family and community, with some drama thrown in for good measure. I didn’t play out stories that involved typical “soap opera” twists like affairs, or dead people not really being dead, or characters discovering adult children they never knew they had. I think somehow, in my youthful innocence, those aspects of Mom’s “stories” went over my head. Stuffing a Barbie doll’s shirt with Kleenex and pretending she was pregnant was about as risqué as I got, at that age.

As an adult, I watched All My Children faithfully from 1991 until it went off the air in September of 2011. I was so sad to see the show end . . . then excited to hear the news that it was going to continue online . . . disappointed when that fell through . . . then elated when it finally did happen . . . and finally, crushed when it ended after only one season.

I decided I wanted to make my own soap opera, but I knew it wouldn’t be easy.

And Port Sebastian was born.

Also see:

 

Abbey’s Second Style

Second Styles Photos

I’ve been collecting “second style” versions of some of my dolls – extras of the same doll so I can style their hair differently and switch them out whenever I need them to have a different look. I do this with either the “Swappin’ Styles Fashionista” dolls, where I may have one or more other “heads” with different hair styles and makeup, or duplicate dolls that play the same character with different looks.

These are my two styles of Abbey:

Fun with Motion Portrait! :-)

Misc. & Fun Stuff

Ever wanted to animate one of your dolls? It’s addictive!

How I made and edited this video:

image

1. I took a picture with my phone
2. I used Photo Resizer to make the file smaller
3. I used Motion Portrait to make the video, but I couldn’t preview it without sharing it
4. I shared it to Facebook, but made it private so I could preview it before anyone else saw it
5. I used AZ Screen Recorder to record the video playback on my phone
6  I used In Shot to crop and trim the video I made with AZ Screen Recorder

(Then I used InstaMag to make this collage, and Add Text To Photo to add the numbers.)

 

#MotionPortrait #PortSebastian #theydontknowtheyredolls #GetMeStarted #DivisibleBySix #fashiondolls #Barbie #BarbieMadeToMove #dolls #toomuchhairspray #hairspray

Yes, Mattel, Yes, Yes!

Misc. & Fun Stuff

This is very exciting. Where do I start?

When Mattel came out with the Style dolls with ankle articulation, I was thrilled! I bought several to use for rebodying and planned to eventually buy more, as my “Rebody Wait List” is never empty. (I even [with the help of my awesome wife] switched out the legs from one of the Style dolls with the legs from a Swappin’ Styles Fashionista, which wasn’t easy as they are not made to be interchangeable. I’ll blog about that soon, with pictures. 🙂 )

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And then one morning last month, I was looking at new photos added by my contacts on Flickr, and I saw them: (Cue “angels-singing-ta-dah” music) . . . the 2016 Made To Move Barbie dolls! This body is super-poseable and (as many other people have pointed out also, so I’m not the only one excited about this) can hold a phone up to her ear! She can also touch her face, to wipe away a tear or show emotion in any number of additional ways.

To illustrate why it’s so exciting to be able to pose a doll with her hand up to her face or her ear, here are some photos of my character, Jenna (on a Swappin’ Styles Fashionista body), with her daughter, Sydney, that I took in 2013. (Click any image to see the slideshow.)

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I’ve really been enjoying posing these dolls. Their joints are tighter than on my Fashionista bodies, too, so they hold their poses nicely.

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_08I happened to find this Disney Lady Tremaine doll on sale recently, and I rebodied her with one of the Made To Move bodies. The skin tone isn’t a perfect match, but I’m beyond thrilled with all the posing possibilities!

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_05_06The only drawback I’ve found with the Made To Move bodies (and it’s minor, really) is that their arms can’t hang straight down at their sides. I tend to pose my dolls with at least one arm straight down fairly often, but there are other natural-looking poses I can use, so I’m ok with that, and it actually adds to her overall fit/muscular look that she can’t hold her arms right up against her torso. (Jamie, on the left, is on a Fashionista body – from before Mattel stopped making articulated Fashionista bodies.)

 

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Thank you, Mattel, for making these dolls! You have made me and many other adult fashion doll collectors / photographers / storytellers / grown-ups-who-aren’t-ashamed-to-admit-we-play-with-dolls-and-we-love-it very happy! I’m sure some children out there will be very happy as well; when I was a kid, playing with my early-1970’s era Barbies, I always wished they could bend their elbows and pose in more natural ways.

There are some awesome, creative, and entertaining photos of the Made To Move dolls cropping up in the doll-blog-sphere. Check out City Circlez Blog’s post, Roville’s Blog post, Doll-lightful’s post, and a great review by The Toy Box Philosopher, for starters!

I’ve been hearing and reading that these dolls will be officially released in early 2016, however I did recently purchase some at Toys R Us. (I got my first few on Amazon, but they quickly sold out and are now [as of the last time I checked] for sale by other sellers at a much increased price.) I still haven’t seen the AA doll for purchase yet, but as soon as I do, she will join my cast of characters, along with a few extras for rebodying! I’m guessing she must be the doll that will be exclusive to Target, as mentioned by City Circlez Blog.

Oh, and the Made To Move dolls can also imitate Tina Fey doing . . . whatever it was she was doing . . . on SNL the weekend before last:

Barbie Made to Move doll imitates Tina Fey

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Chance To Participate: Can you help me name some characters?

Misc. & Fun Stuff

If there are any photos below, they belong to new characters who need names. Want to help me name them? Just put your suggestion in the comments for this post. (Please let me know which character you are suggesting the name for, i.e. “Unnamed Man 1”, “Unnamed Woman 3”, etc, since the group of characters that show in this post will change over time as I give them names or add new unnamed characters.

Please don’t be offended if you suggest a name and I don’t use it. There are all sorts of reasons I may not use a name:

-I may already have a character with that name or a similar name

-I may have plans to introduce a character with that name that no one knows about yet (dun-dun-dun…)

-I may know someone with that name in my real life (I try not to use names of people in my real life, with a few rare exceptions)

-I may have a character in one of my novels who has that name (yep, I write novels too)

-etc.

But please, suggest away! I’m looking forward to seeing your suggestions!

(If there are no photos below, that means all my characters currently have names. If that’s the case, please check back because there will most likely be new ones added in the future!)

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Port Sebastian: The Story

Uncategorized

collage2Post Sebastian, the story, is a photo-story soap opera featuring 1/6 scale fashion dolls and action figures. The story focuses on the lives and loves of the characters and their connections within their community.

Also see:

A few important things to know:

  • It truly is a small world. The residents of Port Sebastian are all 1:6 scale dolls and action figures, but they don’t know it. In their world, they’re living their lives and are not really aware that we’re watching, although some of them do know we exist. They call us the Giants.
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  • Time passes differently in Port Sebastian. There is a term used in discussions of soap operas, “SORAS“, which means “Soap Opera Rapid Aging Syndrome”. It’s just a humorous way of acknowledging the practice that many soap operas have used over the years, of aging the children in a way that doesn’t match the passage of time. The viewer may remember that one child was, let’s say, five years old when another child was born, yet ten years later, the older child, instead of being 15, may be 25, and the baby, who should now be ten, may be 16, or 18, or even older than the 25-year-old. You get the idea.
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    In Port Sebastian, because I may not have enough available babies or kid-sized dolls that resemble one another closely enough to represent the same child aging as time goes, I will make use of “IAPIDS” (my own made-up term), which stands for “Inconsistent Aging Phenomenon In Doll Stories”. We may find that some of the children in Port Sebastian will age and others won’t, or they will take a long time to do so. If you notice that one character gives birth to a baby around the same time another character discovers that she is pregnant, yet the first baby is still the same age and size by the time the second baby is born, that’s ok. It’s just the way things go in Port Sebastian. We don’t question it. It makes sense to the residents who live there.
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    Also, please keep this in mind: Even if you think it’s been . . . oh, let’s just say . . .  seven years between the time when you first saw photos of Leah and James discussing moving in together and the first episode of Season One, when Janice mentions to Leah that it’s been almost two  years that Leah and James have been living together, it’s ok. In Port Sebastian, it really has been whatever length of time the characters believe. Please just go along with what they say. The story will make more sense that way. 🙂
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  • In Port Sebastian, good fashion remains good fashion even if it isn’t recent. You may notice that some of the fashions span a few decades. That’s perfectly fine in Port Sebastian. If a character who would be expected to dress in a very current, fashion-forward way, based on his or her job or personality, should show up in a scene wearing an outfit that originated on a 1990’s Barbie doll before making its way into Port Sebastian’s wardrobe department, it’s okay. Of course, that being said, one will find lots of dated fashions that are clearly from the 1950’s through 1980’s at Monica’s vintage shop, So Yesterday.
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  • There are only so many face molds. In real life, members of the same family may or may not resemble one another physically. On TV and in movies, they’re even less likely to resemble one another, since they are played by actors who are not actually related. In Port Sebastian, however, family members are much more likely to share a resemblance. Sometimes, they even look strikingly like other people in town who they aren’t even related to! That’s okay. There are only so many face molds out there for dolls. They may be painted differently, which can alter their appearance considerably (some of the artists who repaint doll faces are absolutely amazing and I’m completely in awe of them), but the number of molds, while always increasing, is still more limited than the various combinations of human facial features in real life. I try to create families based on similar face molds and features, and on combinations that seem likely (to me) based on parents, grandparents, etc. From time to time, though, I may just throw in a sibling who doesn’t particularly resemble the rest of the family, just to keep things interesting.
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  • There are only so many body styles – and a character’s body style may suddenly change without warning. I strive for variety in the body types, sizes, and skin tone variances of my characters. Just like in any human-sized town, we’re not all the same. As I obtain more types of doll bodies, I like to update my dolls with better articulation and different styles. For this reason, you may notice that a particular character is unexpectedly taller, shorter, curvier, or thinner. That, too, is ok. The characters don’t mind the sudden changes.
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Port Sebastian: The Town

Uncategorized

Walk or drive down any residential street in any town. For each house or apartment you see, a different story is playing out behind those windows and inside those walls.

Each of us has our own story, and when our stories touch, we have family, and community.

Port Sebastian is a fictional town in the northeast United States. Its founding family, the Sebastians, were wine makers, known for their award-winning Port wines. Although Port Sebastian is on a river, there is no river port there, a fact that confuses some newcomers.

Just like any other town, Port Sebastian is home to many residents, each with his or her own unique story.

You can familiarize yourself a little more with the town here:

Also see:

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Test Shots With Shirts

Couples and Families

I recently had some fun taking test shots with a couple new shirts that I added to the men’s wardrobe department. Here are Jamie and Wil, River and Zane, and Piper and Ted.

(Click any image for larger view or to start slideshow.)

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Characters By Last Name

Uncategorized

Follow which characters are related by checking out the Surnames of Port Sebastian residents. (See the entire cast of characters here.)

Characters By Last Names

AA Chicago Police Action Figure

Misc. & Fun Stuff

This guy is awesome. I found him on eBay while I was searching for a Police uniform for a member of the Port Sebastian PD. I’m always on the lookout for AA male action figures or dolls, as they are much more difficult to find than Caucasian male figures/dolls.

I was surprised and happy to see that he came with an extra set of hands, which came in extremely . . .  well, “handy”, despite the bad pun, when I needed them for another figure just a few weeks later!

He is now my character, Shep.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Behind the Scenes: How I got Blaize to stay in her chair

Behind The Scenes & Outtakes

As I took the photos of Kendra, Blaize, and Dennis for Port Sebastian: The Backstory 1B, I had a bit of a problem keeping Blaize in her chair, and keeping Dennis in her lap.

(Click any image for larger view or to start slideshow.)

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Callia’s Second Style

Second Styles Photos

I’ve been collecting “second style” versions of some of my dolls – extras of the same doll so I can style their hair differently and switch them out whenever I need them to have a different look. I do this with either the “Swappin’ Styles Fashionista” dolls, where I may have one or more other “heads” with different hair styles and makeup, or duplicate dolls that play the same character with different looks.

These are my two styles of Callia:

SS-Callia-1

 

SS-Callia-2

Lindsay’s Second Style

Second Styles Photos

I’ve been collecting “second style” versions of some of my dolls – extras of the same doll so I can style their hair differently and switch them out whenever I need them to have a different look. I do this with either the “Swappin’ Styles Fashionista” dolls, where I may have one or more other “heads” with different hair styles and makeup, or duplicate dolls that play the same character with different looks.

These are two looks for Lindsay:

SS-Lindsay-1

 

SS-Lindsay-2

Jewel’s Second Style

Second Styles Photos

I’ve been collecting “second style” versions of some of my dolls – extras of the same doll so I can style their hair differently and switch them out whenever I need them to have a different look. I do this with either the “Swappin’ Styles Fashionista” dolls, where I may have one or more other “heads” with different hair styles and makeup, or duplicate dolls that play the same character with different looks.

This is the two styles of Jewel:

Jewels-1

 

Jewels-2

 

Jewels-3

Character Ages

Uncategorized

This makes it easier for me to see the bios of my characters by their age or their age-range and is helpful in planning who is related to whom. (See the entire cast of characters.)

Character Ages

 

Raelyn’s Other Styles

Second Styles Photos

I’ve been collecting “second style” versions of some of my dolls – extras of the same doll so I can style their hair differently and switch them out whenever I need them to have a different look. I do this with either the “Swappin’ Styles Fashionista” dolls, where I may have one or more other “heads” with different hair styles and makeup, or duplicate dolls that play the same character with different looks.

I have three Raelyn dolls. The one with the messiest hair is the one whose hair I’m going to curl. She’ll end up with a plain-hair look, a straight style with the pink streaks, and a curly style with the pink streaks. I also love the fact that her lipstick and eye makeup are different on each version.

SS-Raelyn-2

 

SS-Raelyn-3

Nora’s Second Style

Second Styles Photos

I’ve been collecting “second style” versions of some of my dolls – extras of the same doll so I can style their hair differently and switch them out whenever I need them to have a different look. I do this with either the “Swappin’ Styles Fashionista” dolls, where I may have one or more other “heads” with different hair styles and makeup, or duplicate dolls that play the same character with different looks.

These two dolls will both play Nora. The one on the left had shorter hair when I bought her at a thrift store. I’m not sure if she came that way or if someone gave her a haircut. The one on the right came from another thrift store or flea market (I forgot) with long hair. I’ll cut her hair to about the same length as the first, and I’ll curl it so Nora can have two different styles.

SS-Nora

Phyllis and Arthur Landry

Couples and Families

This is Phyllis and Arthur Landry on their wedding day. (They married in the 80’s. That’s why she had such big hair.)

 

I like this photo of them, too:

See more Characters: Couples and Families posts.

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Characters By First Name

Uncategorized

Click your favorite character’s name below to see all content with that character. See the entire cast of characters here.

Characters By First Name

Jenna’s New Dress

Misc. & Fun Stuff

Just to explain what’s going on in the photos: Jenna is a model, and one of the companies she models for is One6thWonders, which is my sister’s and my real-life miniatures store on Etsy. In this scene, she was trying on a new dress that had been added to the Port Sebastian Wardrobe Department. (At the time when I originally took the photos, I was calling the story “Stillframe”, but I later changed the title to “Port Sebastian”.)

(Click any image to see the slideshow.)

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