Making her trade show debut today (June 5) at PG Live is Gail Grisham, the feisty, outspoken ‘dollybird spokesperson’ of Doll Truths.
Celia Law, founder of the greeting card company assures that “Gail is planning on not throwing up from nerves- other than that…erm…pending.” Meanwhile, as for Celia’s own thoughts, she confesses that one of her big worries about the happenings at the two day show are “needing a wee when someone important (who I won’t recognise) is lurking nearby!”
Here Celia shares the unlikely, but true story of how Gail came into her life which led to Doll Truths…
“The Youngest was on the cusp of achieving a life long ambition of becoming a Brownie. She had the trial evening and loved it. So, I promptly bought the uniform only to be told the following week that unless another adult volunteered each week that Brownies would have to close. The little shiny face looked up at me, I totted up the £pounds I’d spent on the uniform and about two weeks later found myself on a paediatric first aid course and answering to the name ‘Reluctant Owl’.
To allow The Youngest’s best friend to also attend Brownies I offered to have her after school each week and take her with us to the church hall while her parents were at work. Within my Owl duties at the end of each meeting I was in charge of distributing a line of Brownies back to the queue of waiting parents, my friend [mother of said Youngest’s chum] included. I’d give her my car key so she could gather her daughter’s belongings while I tried to remember which Brownie belonged to who, like a real life game of snap.
Each week my friend would leave me a little thank you gift: a bunch of flowers, a magazine or a box of chocolates, but as the weeks went on her originality was tested and the gifts became more and more curious, until …I returned to my car one dark evening to find a vintage doll cello-taped to my steering wheel. Instead of texting her a sarky message like I usually did I felt this doll had more to offer so I put her on Facebook and gave her an identity. My friend is called Gail and she’s a scientist so naturally the doll had also to be named Gail who I gave the surname of Grisham because of the character in CSI. After my first Facebook post that I thought only the two of us would like I was surprised to have 14 likes in the morning. Aside from us no one else knew who was behind Gail Grisham – and it was great fun hearing mums in the playground talking about her. I came out from under the cloak of secrecy just a few months ago to no one’s great surprise.”
Meet Gail Grisham…
“Gail is a good wife and mother but some days her family take liberties that give her the hump. Gail has a sharp sense of humour and even sharper tongue. Gail posts her unique observations on family life on social media for fun (dolltruths) and she sells cards for wine tokens.
I found that I really enjoy Gail’s observations on life, and so it would seem do others. With her following steadily growing it came as a natural progression to take her onto greeting cards. Gail is quite ‘sweary’ on her blog (but if you lived with The Husband, The Teenager and The Youngest so would you be) but only uses occasional mild swearing on her cards, after all she wants to be on display not chuckled at and then hidden away.
Saying that, Gail has a range of Special Moments cards that are like baby milestone cards, but for adults that take the p***. There are 13 cards in a pack including ‘WTF’ and ‘Feral’.
Card recipients have been taking snaps of the cards in situ which they post on Gail’s wall so we can all enjoy the merriment together. I think ‘FFS’ is the card most commonly used card and covers a multitude of situations from a shrunken jumper, a tissue bomb (tissue in a pocket in the washing machine) to a traffic jam. Gail’s Special Moments Cards have her suggestions for use on the reverse and a relevant blog post. It’s really exciting to be involved in such an interactive use of cards with social media, and not to mention more than a little bit funny.”
As Gail would say;
“If life is a blank canvas, use lots of paint, make a mess then throw on some glitter.”
Gail is looking forward to her PG Live debut…she has come a long way since her life began on a steering wheel!
Doll Truths will be exhibiting on Stand 721 at PG Live today and tomorrow (June 5 and June 6)
