This is not usually a hard post for me to write. I am a very goal oriented person. I like making goals. I like setting goals and working towards them. It brings me a lot of satisfaction. However, this year I’ve struggled a little with my goal setting.

Primary Goal

Develop a workflow for my paper doll creations that both maintains my momentum and is sustainable within the confines of my other hobbies and obligations.

However, this isn’t a goal that’s easy to measure or on that I really know how to start with, so here’s a few concrete goals I’m working towards-

1. Post to the Blog Weekly- Except when I take vacations

I really like having a simply goal regarding consistency and I think planning for a minimum of a one post a week works well for me. I particularly want to balance pre-scheduling posts and not losing the motivation that a regular schedule gives me.

2. Restart Monthly Newsletters

After a lot of debate, I’ve decided to keep the Newsletter (I almost killed it) and focus on it being a slightly longer monthly format. I want to bring back a newsletter paper doll and I think it will go out either the first or the last Friday of the month. If you haven’t signed up yet, you can do that here.

3. Exclusive Monthly Paper Dolls for my Patrons

My plan is to continue a having exclusive paper doll series for my patrons. In February, I’ll have a poll for my patrons to vote on what you’d like to see for this year. Also, there will be occasional exclusive WIP posts and polls and things. If you want to join, it will officially reopen on the 1st of February.

4. Create More Prints

One big development in my artistic life is that I ended up with an art printer, specifically an Epson 3800, which was destined for donation to a recycling center before my husband adopted it. We didn’t know if it would work and it took a bit of work on his part to make it work, but now it does work. We’ve named it Brunhilda. The prints Brunhilda creates are so beautiful. Really really beautiful- like professional art print beautiful.

I never in a million years would have paid to get one of these (because wowzer, these are not cheap), but now that I own one, it seems a pity not to use it. In fact, you have to use it at least once a month, or you can have issues with the nozzles clogging.

Stretch Goals

These are goals that I really don’t think I’ll successfully do, but I think dreaming big is important.

Complete a 100 Day Project

I keep telling myself that one day I will complete a 100 day project. I never have, but maybe someday I could? Or would? I think rather than focusing on doing something for 100 days, I think I want to focus on doing 100 of something over the course of the year. No idea what yet, mind you, but something.

I think I just love the idea of a paper doll with 100 outfits. So, that probably has something (everything) to do with it.

Sell Prints on Etsy

To be totally honest, I don’t know if I want to do this, but again- I have the printer to do it- I just don’t know if I’d like the extra work of trying to mail things to people or if that logistical challenge is one that I would end up absolutely hating. I’ve never done it, so it’s tough to say for sure.

Anyway, those are my goals for 2024. I don’t know where I’ll do with all of them, but I am going to see. I have to keep reminding myself that changing a goal isn’t failure.

This December has been a little tough. I got walking pneumonia, but am on the mend. I spent a lot of the month resting and recovering. However, as 2024 begins, I have had sometime to reflect and gather some stats. It dawned on me that I used to regularly share year-end posts, a practice I somehow drifted away from. But I missed crafting these reflections on the passing year, so here we are and I hope you find it interesting.

This is not my goals for 2024 post, because I haven’t got those sorted quite yet. Until then, I hope you find some facts, figures and reflections interesting.

Paper Thin Personas in 2023 in Numbers

Let’s start with some numbers… Paper Thin Personas (PTP) had about 60K unique visitors in 2023. I created 87 blog posts of which 62 were paper doll post. I published 28 newsletters. As you may recall, I had planned on transforming PTP into a newsletter in 2023 and that did not work.

So, I do plan to continue the newsletter, but I think I’ll migrate it to a monthly little paper doll update for everyone’s email inbox.

• The most popular new post of 2023 (because this post remains the post popular post of all time, by a wide margin), was my Citrus Summer Paper Doll. (No idea why, but there you go.)
• Other than Google, I get most of my visitors from Pinterest.
• The majority of my visitors are from the United States with Canada, the Philippines, and the United Kingdom as other common spots.
• My busiest month was November 2023 (no idea why) and my least busy month was April 2023 (again, no idea why)
• On average, visitors to the site stick around about 2.3 minutes and look at 3 different pages. Of course, this is a little messy of a stat, because of how Google counts people.

All in all, I am really very happy with how the blog is doing in the numbers game. Paper dolls are a niche hobby (to say the least) and I don’t expect they are suddenly going to become as popular as K-pop or something.

Achievements of 2023

My book came out! Paper Doll Review agreed to publish a project I’d been drawing for a while and they did just a really fantastic job. Julie Matthews colored the line-work I created so beautifully. Jenny Taliadoros held my hand through the whole thing.

Also, I went to a paper doll party! I’ve been talking about going for so long. I thought about going last year, but decided to get married instead. I met so many amazing people and it was the push I needed to really commit to moving to digital art.

Anyway, I don’t know how I could have topped either of those two events, but I did also want to share my favorite paper dolls that I posted onto PTP in 2023, each one for a different reason.

The three posts I am super proud of are the first night of Hanukkah set, Stardust Styles, and my 1894 suit.

My Favorite Paper Dolls of 2023

My 1894 suit is a favorite, because it was the first set that I drew where I feel like I really embraced the possibilities of digital art. I learned so much during its creation process and I used so many tools. It felt like a moment where my art shifted in some real way.

Stardust Styles is a favorite, because it surprised me. Sometimes I come up with ideas and then I don’t really like how they end up. Stardust Styles was the opposite. I came up with the idea and I wasn’t sure about it. However, once I drew it and colored it, it came together so much better than I hoped it would.

The first night of Hanukkah set was a favorite, because it came out exactly as I imagined it. Sometimes art is easy (not often for me!) and this was one of those times. It feels timeless. I can imagine my nephew or niece giving this set to their kids. That makes me happy.

Do you have a favorite from 2023? Let me know in a comment and have an amazing start to 2024. I’m taking a little blog break until the 22nd (one of my goals for 2024 is to try not to just disappear for weeks at a time… we’ll see how that goes) while I deal with some behind the scenes stuff and I plan to return on the 22nd.