By Wil Peterson

Connie Bees’ path to sweet, doll-de­sign success is littered with failed attempts and repeated retooling, but ultimately, she has produced charac­ters that come close to her idea of “pretty sweet” creations. She wouldn’t have it any other way, because every step documents her evolution as an artist.

“Oh, I definitely am not a master at dollmaking. I am still very much learning and figuring out things for myself on mul­tiple fronts,” Bees said. “I don’t think I’ve ever made a doll that has fully met my standards. The only reason why I make my dolls available to the public for adoption is because so many people see what I’m working on and ask me to do so, and I don’t like to disappoint people. But if it were up to just me and me alone, I wouldn’t have sold any of my dolls.”

Still, collectors clamber to get their hands on Bees’ creative offerings. Her line of 1:4-scale ball-jointed dolls debuted in 2020. Ranging in height from approximately 15.4 to 19.7 inches (39 to 50 centimeters), these resin beauties have about 20 articulation points and various facial sculpts, physiques, and skin tones. Each doll is essen­tially an original because the artist takes an organic approach to designing new muses.

“My process is like organized chaos. I re­ally have no idea what I’m doing, and I tend to work on something until it ‘looks right,’” she said. “Inspiration can come from anywhere, but mostly it comes from my talented best friends — Gloom Doll, Bonelace, and Aishavoya — who are also dollmakers! They inspire me to do my best work every day, and I am eternally thankful for them.”

Life is a perpetual balancing act for Bees, who lives in Rich­mond, Virginia, with her husband, young son, and three pets. Her full-time job as a senior design strategist and product de­signer taps into both right and left brain hemispheres. Dur­ing off-hours, she goes all in on pursuing creative interests — dollmaking in her home studio, painting, crocheting, journaling, and cosplay activities.

Bees’ passion for dolls surfaced during her formative years growing up in San Jose, California. She said, “My fam­ily was very poor, so I only had a couple of Barbies with no accessories, and neither of the Barbies looked like me — chubby, Asian. That didn’t stop me from playing pretend with them with my younger cousin all day, dressing them up with what little clothes we had and designing our own outfit ideas for them on paper! I’m not entirely sure why I love dolls so much, to be honest. I guess they scratch an itch in my brain just right — the itch that compels me to be creative, imaginative, and playful.”

After earning a bachelor’s degree in industrial de­sign and landing a job in that field, Bees turned her remaining attention back to dolls, this time with a vengeance and laser-like focus. She started out customizing Pullips in 2015 and selling them through a busi­ness she named Yummy Sweets Dolls, based on sweets themes that she found appealing.

“I would interpret the themes, paint their faces accordingly, make their eye chips, source their wigs, commission their out­fits, and then release them to the wild to find their own homes when I was done with them,” Bees said. She chose Pullips be­cause they were affordable when she was a financially chal­lenged college student.

The desire to explore BJD design in 2018 altered Bees’ art­ist trajectory. “I wanted to make Ume and Anzu as a challenge to myself, creatively,” she said of her debut BJDs. “It was very daunting to start hand-sculpting a doll. At the time, there weren’t very many resources on how to sculpt your own BJD, and the ones that existed, I don’t think they really clicked with how my brain worked. So, I wanted to figure out things for my­self, which is always so much fun for me.”

That trial-and-error learning curve resulted in the preorder release of Ume and Anzu in 2020, with an edition size of about 60 dolls. Bees said, “The doll community was so exceedingly supportive of me when I first started out, for which I am forever grateful, because it made sharing my art with the world that much easier and less stressful.”

Bees’ current design process involves selecting a particular body type to explore, making a preliminary sketch, and blocking out forms in 3D. Then she does a first draft of joints, adds sculpt­ing details, and tests the doll in a computer program. A printed test form is produced, followed by at least eight different func­tional prototypes that precede a finished version. “That whole process can take around 6 months to a year, depending on how much time I have to work on the doll after work,” she said.

Yummy Sweets Dolls generally offers one preorder for one doll each year, Bees said. She utilizes a Hong Kong cast­ing service for the dolls, which receive specialized face-ups at her studio. She noted that the caster’s artists have painted some past face-ups as well. Clothing, wigs, and accessories used for her Instagram photos are sourced from various artists in the doll community.