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:
