Unite! Unite!
Put up a fight!

We’re tired of the jokes
The punches, the slaps and the nasty eye pokes

We simply just want the freedom you see
To live and to thrive, nerdy and free

But until we reach our new level of life
We will fight, we will scream, we will rage against strife

So take your footballs, your beer and your racing machines
We’ll settle for fortran, c-sharp, comics and zines

Because we are rising from the ashes like that bird-I think it’s a stork
To proclaim a new age, yes the time of the dork!

It’s not easy growing up in the lakes of Southside Philadelphia. You have to have smarts-Philly lake smarts to keep your head above water so to speak. Ronnie James is just such a jellyfish. He was born in the harshest of conditions and learned from a young age that a clear head and quick mind are the keys to keeping yourself straight in a tough situation.

when he was old enough he leveraged his love of music into a position as tour support for the powerhouse rock group Dio. It was his key to a better life. Once off the streets, Ronnie James was able to parlay his experiences into several self-published, self-help novels. His breakthrough work, "When Trouble Strikes, Keep Your Legs About You" sold nearly 2,500 copies and landed him an AM radio spot.

After a few years of radio time, RJ came to us hoping for a change an a simpler, less hectic lifestyle (of course we’re not quite sure how you can get much less hectic than AM radio), which we were happy to oblige him with.

RJ swears like a sailor, appreciates a good cheese steak and loves to filter feed in the bathtub.

Duuuuuuuuuuude.

Hi, my name is Geranium Rainbow. I was born in an organic kelp patch in the cold waters of Northern Cali, I thrived in an environment built on honesty, faith and freedom of expression. I believe in spiritual exploration that allows one to grow into the true color they were born to become, you know? I totally don’t get harshness, right? I am looking to be united in a family that believes in the code of color and love, you know?

peace

While we are optimistic about this year, we have come to the realization that the lovable, children friendly Dolls for Friends that we have worked so hard to create is more than likely coming to an end. The CPSIA is knocking at our doors and we have decided not to answer. We have spent the last few months pondering our future in the plush arena, and while we have made the decision to carry on where so many others have not, we are faced with the sad realization that we are being governmentally (we can still use made up words) forced to grow up.

With the start of 2010 we have officially moved into a new arena. We will be expanding our focus to work more on illustration and film projects, while at the same time, taking our plush goodness and enhancing those skills and marketing to grown up kids. We will elaborate a bit more on this in the coming weeks, but suffice it to say, we are evolving. We will remain the Dolls for Friends that we have come to know and love, but we’ve officially applied for the installation of chest hair. Here’s to a wonderful and exciting decade.

It’s been just over a month and half since we decided to join the Twitter brigade and peep portions of our work and personal lives on the interbew. During that time we’ve seen the number of followers grow from just a few hardcore DFF lovers to a mob 160 strong. While we have a long way to go to catch up to some of rockstars tweeters, we have really enjoyed sharing little snippets of our lives with everyone.

Twitter has provided us a great opportunity to open up and share our ideas, thoughts and work. We have so many new things planned for the rest of the year and some great new giveaways that we are looking forward to sharing with all our friends. So, thanks to all our followers for taking an interest in us and the work we do. Without all of you we would just be a couple of weirdos sitting in a room making dolls for each other.

Not to use too many (or two many) quotes, but… “I love it when a plan comes together!”

This being our first ever Dolls for Friends giveaway (and something that we have wanted to do for quite awhile), we were not quite sure how to proceed, what piece to make and how best to reach our peeps with this special little giftie. But, about 3o seconds after signing up for Twitter, I think we knew the vehicle. Twitter is an amazing tool (as I’ve shouted from my soapbox in other posts), and we are so happy to do a giveaway for the people who find us important enough to include in their daily lives. So without further adieu, here is our new (or perhaps your new) friend, Lucias.

Lucias is our newest friend, and let’s just say he has a way of “seeing” past the issues and into the heart of a matter. This “eye”deal quality has made him a valuable assett to dozens of fortune 500 companies over the past two decades. He is a whiz of wall street and has been called by Young Entrepreneur magazine, “…a cash machine”. Although, never confirmed, it has been said that Lucias is so good at his job that he is number two on Alan Greenspan’s speed dial (again, this has never been confirmed). What we do know about our new friend Lucias is that he is a wealth of information and is quite a bit of fun to play Monopoly with (because money is at the center of the game, I imagine). There really is nothing bad to report on little Lucias, with the exception that he goes through quite a bit of disposable contact lenses, which he kind of leaves all over the place. At any rate, he is sure to be the “apple of your eye.”

Now, here is a quick rundown on how to get your hands on this little loverly:

1. Be an existing follower, or follow us on Twitter by Friday (@dollsforfriends)
2. Tweet about the doll or express your interest in participating this coming friday (June 19).
3. Make sure your tweet uses the special hash mark (#dffgive1). This will let us know that you are participating.

On Friday at 3 p.m. (PST), we will randomly draw one winner from the list and announce and DM the winner to get addy information for shipping the piece out. This will become a regular event for us, so if you don’t win, don’t worry, there will be plenty more chances to get in on this sweet, sweet candy (thank you Mr. Zap Brannigan). Thank you again for letting our weird little lives entertain you.

We love the opportunities that Twitter provides as an outlet for feeding the need for immediacy, harmless voyerism (who’s working on what project and what’s going on in their lives at the moment), and the general thirst for information overload.

We are still nailing down the details, but our current plan is to post next week with final details on how to participate and photos of the piece we’ll be shipping out.

In the meantime, you can follow us on Twitter by looking up our username (dollsforfriends) and you can track comments and updates on the giveaway by searching on the phrase #dffgive1.

We’ve been looking forward to doing a giveaway for a longtime and are excited about finally getting around to it.

Three new friends: Opal, Gladys and Elliott. You can see the photos and read their stories on our Flickr page, and you can check them out on our Etsy shop.

Our new little friend Pico came to us from just south of the border. He made his way North after he was downsized from the entourage of the feared, mythic creature- El Chupacabra.

It seems that with all of the stress and strain on the global economy of late, people are not spending quite as much time in leisure activities and pursuits. This decline means that it’s become fairly lean, income wise, for creatures like El Chupacabra, Bigfoot, The Strawman and UFOs as more and more people are focused on dollar retention. And sadly, less vacations translates to less sightings-translates to less income-translates to Pico being on the streets.

So, what is a 6″ out of work monster to do? Well apparently, Pico caught one of our TV ads at 2:00am advertising our placement services and decided to see if we could help. After hiring a coyote to get him across the border, riding several box-car trains and hitchhiking his way through the West Coast, he ended up on our door step looking fairly disheveled.

It has been a couple weeks now, and we are happy to say he has his wonderful orange glow back. He has started working on his memoirs, “Mi Chupacabra es su Chupacabra”, and is looking for a safe, quite environment to add the last chapters to his seminal work.