Once upon a time around 5 years ago I bought a house. It was lovely, except for the gigantic exposed foundation in the yard that was once planned to be a garage that never happened. Well, we got that ripped out, and then we had to have the yard landscaped because of, y’know, the giant hole, and then we had to enrich the soil so things would actually grow there, and then began the great task of growing things. It’s harder than you’d think. Many plants died those first few years, and other plants took their sweet ass time growing in. But now, I think I finally have a yard that I can take doll pictures in!

Since I need more pictures of these girls, they got the honor first. Blanca is my not-sickly Leprotto inspired doll, and Zsa Zsa has a carved mouth, reshaped eyes, and a working acrylic eye mech. And she’s one of my few dolls with more realistic vs stylized makeup.

That’s it for today, hope you enjoyed this return to the regularly scheduled doll-graming!

When I was a little kid, I had baby dolls.  They were piled in a crib, which was then put at the back of my closet and never ever played with because I didn’t see the point of babydolls and found them creepy.  Changing diapers, even ones only filled with imaginary poo, was never my idea of fun.

When I was slightly older, I had Barbie dolls.  I liked them well enough.  I sewed for them and made furniture for them, mostly. I had a dollhouse that was the coolest thing ever, and would arrange and re-arrange all of the furniture to get each room perfect.  I didn’t really play dolls with friends.  They wanted Barbie to go on dates and shop, which I found terribly, terribly boring.  But then they didn’t appreciate my kidnapping, murder, and alien invasion storylines either.

I didn’t touch a doll again until after college, and that was Pullip.  Pullips didn’t appeal to me as a doll, more as a vehicle through which I can do everything else I like.  Pullips combine my interests in customizing, painting, sewing, storytelling, carpentry, interior decorating, photography, web design, and more.  I’ve stuck with Pullips for a long time because to get tired of them wouldn’t be getting tired of dolls, it would be getting tired of all those other things.

But!  Pullips don’t combine everything I like to do, and not everything I like to that could involve Pullips does involve Pullips.  In fact, unless someone went into my workroom, no one who visits would have any idea I liked dolls as there isn’t a single doll-centric thing around the entire house.   Madness!  So the next few posts I think will be about some of the other things I enjoy…

When pullips first came out they had huge feet. This was great for balancing (they could stand on their own) but not so good for finding shoes! The shoes they came with were often so rigid and tight, one would have to cut them open to get them off the feet. People lamented, and eventually when the type 3 body was released, pullip fans rejoiced as they could now put cheap fashion doll shoes on their dolls!

…Fast forward to 2012. Now the coolest doll shoes anywhere are made for Monster High, and newcomer Barbie brand Stardolls have shoes that are also made for oversized feet. And the pullip collectors lament, if only the awesome shoes fit my dolls!

Well, most of them. Me, I’m psyched! I adore the type 1 body, still have some dolls on type 2, and now I can have all the shoes I want *mad cackle*

There is relevance here. See, doll shoes are traditionally made kinda rubbery to make it easier to get on/off doll feet. Unfortunately, resin is not so rubbery. Shoes made for Monster High dolls, when cast in resin, often will no longer fit Monster High feet anymore. This is the case with the current shoes that I’ve cast, unfortunately. After 2-3 days of curing, the resin loses all residual flexibility and shoes that fit monster high dolls straight from the mold, no longer fit. But they still fit pullips. As I primarily made these casts to add to my pullips’ horde of shoes, no biggie.

However, I am displeased, because I would really like to be able to cast things that are SLIGHTLY flexible. It opens up more possibilities. My eventual plan is to be able to make things like shoes off of my own designs, after all. Therefore, I bought 2-part clearcasting vinyl (I had previously been using resin) and have some opaque casting plastic coming in the mail. If anything I am thorough…

So for now, please enjoy my pullips’ new shoes. And a couple of sets of eyechips made from the excess resin:

I will confess that I bought the Draculaura/Clawd set for those shoes.  I didn’t really need Draculaura, and I’m assuming that sooner or later another Clawd would have been released who didn’t have such a terrible, terrible outfit.  But… those shoes…

Clearly I have something of a shoe problem.  It’s ok.  I admit it.  But if I basically spent $30 to get them, why would I be doing…whatever that is to them?

Craft stuff is messy. Very. Knowing this, even I shy away from molding. It’s not that it’s especially messy, it’s just especially hard to clean up. One DROP of this stuff on the carpet and it will never come out. No matter how much you scrub, or what cleaner you use. Get it on your skin, and it will take some serious repeated scrubbing to get it off…and it feels so SLIMY! Eew.

….Buuuuuuut my husband is on business travel. Teenagers throw wild parties. I pull out my messiest craft supplies. It’s not like he doesn’t know what I’m up to, he just doesn’t see it. And I don’t hear the screams of horror. So it works out all around, really.

I got a few modeling books the Christmas before last on modeling, as well as some rubber/resin/etc. I find it interesting, but I don’t have much need for it. I debated making some specialty eye chips, possibly doll masks. Nothing especially pressing. I tried molding eyechips and the 1-part mold worked wonderfully, but the mold-release agent didn’t work on the two-part mold, so I just got a fused block of silicone.

The most interesting thing I could think of was shoes. Doll shoes, of course. I have a dream to make retro platform shoes with tiny goldfish ‘swimming’ in the platforms. It will be awesome. But I am totally not up to that point yet.

The problem is shoes are hard! Lots of tutorials for casting out there (and books!) and none of them have explained to me how to go about accounting for a shoe with a foot cavity or, horror of horrors, straps! So I’ve been experimenting, all week. Mostly failures, but as of writing this I have half a dozen tiny resin shoes that have come out and fit on doll feet! I believe I have no mastered the basic high-heel. Next stop: Mary-Janes!

Eventually, when I’m done I will make a tutorial for how to cast shoes. After I finish figuring out out myself ^^;

While I have chronicled the various extreme customization projects I’ve done, I am not as good at chronicling the mundane.  Sand a face off, slap some paint on there, add eyes… done!   Eventually.  Several hours (or days) later.  And after much swearing and occasionally bleeding.  But that’s the gist.  There are MANY pictures from this series, so if you want to see the full set, go here.

Step 1: Decide what I want to do.  Lots of people do this different ways.  Some people sketch out their ideas.  I don’t usually need to sketch things out, but sometimes I do (like when I did Puddles, after my first failed attempt at making a ‘cute’ clown) and when I do, it’s usually nothing flashy, just some basic MS paint type stuff to help me decide what I want to do.

Step 2: Pick my base.  This is an important part!  You can’t make any doll from any doll. Well, you can, but it probably won’t won’t come out as well as if you just did a little planning ahead of time.  For example: what type of body will this character have?  If I plan on rebodying, I either have to pick a head that will match the body I plan to put it on, or I will have to pick a body I can match to the head.  Soft-busts can’t be spray painted.   When I made the Bleach custom of Nelliel, I had to use a giant-busted Volks body, and therefore I needed to use a head that matched the volks natural giant-bust, as it only came in one color.   There are about 3 heads that match that body.  Two of them are sold out and sell for >$200.

Step 3: Sand that motherf*cker down.  I don’t know why, but some dolls (mostly early ones) sand easily while other dolls don’t. You can’t just sand the parts with makeup or you might end up with an uneven finish, even after you seal it.  Between the sanding and the razorblades to get at the nooks and crannies, this is where I end up with the most blisters/cuts.

Step 4: Begin!  I always do the hardest parts first.  It’s not because of my customizing-masochistic tendencies, it’s common sense.  The only part of the makeup that is not interconnected to other parts is the lips.  Blush often runs into eyeshadow, eyeshadow runs into eyelashes and eyebrows.  To remove messed up eyebrows, I would likely have to remove a lot more.  So I start with eyebrows.  They are the hardest things to do because there are no reference points for their symmetry.  Therefore, I make some

I try to take as straight on a picture as possible, stick it in the computer, use eye tops of the eyes as a reference point to rotate the head until it’s level, and then use a straight line drawing function to make a grid of the face.  Symmetry=beauty.

As you can see, my first draft was not perfect.  Nor was my second, third, or fourth.  I went through around 5 stages of revisions and tweaking before I got the eyebrows right.

Step 5: The lips.  The lips are not always the hardest part.  Often, they’re the easiest.  In this particular custom, though, I had to match a transparent tint though, and that means I had to match both the color and the color concentration.  It took a bit, but unlike the eyebrows, it was more a matter of getting the color right and then experimenting with ratios of transparent base to paint.  I didn’t have to paint the full lips to test it, just put a dot on the bottom lip, compare to Paja, and then go back and tweak it more.

Step 6: Eyeshadow! What color eyeshadow does Paja have? Green, of course!

Wrong. It’s more of a golden-orange-yellow. And that took several mixes, applications, removals, and re-tries to get. Color can be a tricky thing. Ever had an argument with someone over what color something is? Sometimes I’ve done a part on a doll and had it be perfect and then had to erase it when I saw it in different lighting.

Even after I got the mix right, I had to redo it because on one try I concentrated the color too much and in another I ended up with a blotchy spot.

Step 7: Swear. Often (I sure do!) By this point, I’m roughly 2-3 hours in, and I’ve only done the eyebrows and lips. Now the dal customs are a lot more exacting than other dolls because I am making them to match their pullip counterparts, so I am at the extreme end of my obsessive-compulsive perfectionism. But it is rare that a faceup takes less than 5 hours, which works out to what… 1 hour per eyebrow, one hour per eye, and another hour for the lips/blush? It’s kinda insane, really. And that’s just a normal doll, no modding or airbrushing or anything.

Step 8: Try, try again:

What’s wrong? Most people would say ‘nothing’. The transparency of the eyelids is too concentrated! GAH! Remove all eyelid paint and eyeshadow. Return to go. Plz start over. Again.

Step 9: Do not lose your cool

Not much difference. It looks maybe a shade lighter? Same paint, I just added more transparent base to compensate for the thickness of the layer on the eyelids vs the thickness of the test spot.

Step 10: Remember thy law of symmetry

There’s this thing called ‘paint tupperware’. They’re like .2 oz tiny containers that you can put paint in after you’ve mixed it to keep it from drying out. I recommend them. Even if you’re not insane like me, it is handy to be able to do touch-ups without having to try and color match, or worry about how long you’re taking since paint that dries out and becomes gloopy leaves gloopy brushmarks on your dolls’ face.

Step 11: Eyelashes. Uuuuugh.

Eyelashes are deadly. You don’t have to worry about them as much on ‘natural’ bjd-type faces because hey, look in a mirror: are your eyelashes in the exact same place/lengh on both sides? Hell no! Stylized faces though? Symmetry. It all comes down to symmetry. I do them two at a time, frequently switching between a super-tiny paintbrush and a fresh razorblade to LIGHTLY scrape away any uneven spots until both eyelashes are perfect, then move on to the next pair. And the next pair. And the next pair.

Step 12: Faceup complete!

Now seal it, and hope nothing goes wrong with the sealant or you may have to sand it all off! No, I’m not being sarcastic. It’s happened to me before many times. Aerosol sealants especially can be tricky. You have to spray at just the right distance, not too much, not too little, and within the right temperature range. And it can still go wrong. Nothing to do but swear, walk away, eat some cookies, and start over. Or you could not seal it–but I wouldn’t recommend it, not unless you plan on sticking it in a glass case and never handling it or having to worry about cleaning off dust.

Step 13+ Assemble the bits!
Putting everything together doesn’t take very long. For a naked doll.

Clothes take longer. There aren’t many doll clothing patterns out there, and even for the ones that are, they take tailoring to fit a pullip/dal/taeyang/whatever. Often, if I’m creating an outfit that is not something along standard skirt/pants blouse, it will take longer to put together than the whole doll. The biggest problem is when you are dealing with dolls, 1/2cm can make the difference between ‘perfect’ and too big/small. 1/2 cm is less than most seam allowances! But that’s another story for another time

I hope if you have gotten this far, you now have a greater understanding for the amount of work that goes into a custom. It is not easy to do a good job, but getting a doll ‘just so’ is always worth the frustration of creation!

I mention this because I’m not especially talkative, especially online.  If I have something useful to add, I will.  If I don’t think I have anything to say that is either a) useful or b) interesting I tend to spare my fingers the typing and everyone else’s eyes the reading.  If I were a comedian, I would definitely be one of those “Don’t think I’m nearly as funny as I am” people.

I’m sure there are dozens of topics I could talk about that people would find interesting, just as there are dozens of topics I could talk abut that I don’t generally because I think most people would find it terribly boring.  Like my fascination with nail polish.  See?  I bet your eyes are already glazing over.

(suffer the sparkles!)

And yet there are blogs on nailpolish.  I’ve visited them.  To me, they are interesting because they are things I don’t already know.  However, this is not a website about nailpolish, it’s a website about customizing.  Therefore, to most people reading this, the nailpolish is not so interesting.

See the problem? I don’t blog for myself, because I already know everything I put in the articles and tutorials.  To me, most of the things I could write about are less interesting than reading an article on how to wet-marble nailpolish, because I don’t know how to do that and I already figured out how to do whatever it is I would be blogging about.

What’s the point of all this?  Feedback.  Specifically, if you all want to see more posts in the future, tell me what you want to see more of. Pictures of customs?  Random dissertations of the evolution of the pullip bust line?  The story of the time I accidentally shrunk a doll head?  Leave a comment here (or in whatever blogpost is most recent if that’s easier)or shoot me an email.

OH NO! Yes, I hear the protests. I understand. Mind you, I’m not planning huge changes, mostly here and there I look at a doll and go “since I figured out how to do ______, I could do that so much better now…”

The first doll on this list is one of my first customs, Saturn. She was made from an Arietta, and I kind of liked her lips so I kept them, but over time they started to annoy me. I also did her faceup before I found her perfect wig, and I always thought her eyebrows could be a little lighter and maybe a touch more purple to go with her wig. Small things, mostly.

“Oh no you don’t…”

Normally when I redo a doll, I just redo the doll. But because I wasn’t quite sure what I wanted to change on Saturn, I mostly redid her face on a second doll so that I could fiddle around and compare without risking damaging her. This is a picture of early-on in the process, before I decided on the new lips:

And here’s the finished product:

Not so different, really, except for the lips! Mostly she’s just been refined. The original Saturn had glittery purple eyelids, Saturn 2.0 also has glittery eyelids, but also a slender line of glitter on the inside eyelids to bring it all together and make her pop a little more. The chips are different, but the original Saturn had sanded down blythe chips which just aren’t as shiny as for-pullip chips. (I have a color match for the original chips coming in the mail)

Who else is on the list? Himemiya. Ravish. Who’s already had work done? Eric, Ash, Valentine.

I haven’t made a banner yet, because I’m really no good at that kind of thing, but the following items can now be found in my Etsy Shop:

Eventually I’ll get some pullips up there, but so far I’m testing the waters with some of my Monster High experiments. Don’t worry, I’m not leaving Pullips!

To celebrate the new shop opening and give a discount to website visitors, use the coupon code NEWSHOPSPECIAL for 20% off everything all month!

The Animadness folks asked me to make them another custom, though this one is neither anime nor store mascot related.  This time it’s pin-up icon Bettie Page. 

There were a couple of slight complications in translating Bettie to doll form.  First off, Bettie does not have any kind of Pullip type body.  She has a mature figure, and the closest you’re going to get to ‘hips’ in the doll world is Volks.  So: Volks it was!  The second problem was face shape.  Bettie has an oval face.  Pullip has a heart shaped face.  All you can really do in that situation is get the features right, so I went and watched video tutorials on how to do Bettie Page look makeup.

(Yes, really)

See, if you’re going to do a doll off of anyone iconic, there’s bound to be some makeup artist out there who has gone through and dissected it from a makeup/look perspective.  And what is eyeshadow but pastel and lipstick but paint?  So I watched a few tutorials and took a good hard look at Pullip and figured out what I had to do to alter pullip’s lip shape to be more like Bettie’s lip shape, and the tactic I’d take to make her big round eyes look more like almond-shaped eyes liquid cat-eye liner.

The final thing I couldn’t really change was skin color.  Bettie looks moderately tan, while Pullips seem to get whiter and whiter.  Well.  Nothing to do there, unfortunately.  The skin tones go Most pullips made recently->most pullips made in the first couple of years->Papin/Nina/Mitzi (and have you seen the prices on those girls lately?)->Nahh-ato.  I gave her a little skin-toned blush to give her a slight bronzer effect, but I’m leery of covering a lot of a doll’s face with pastel as even sealed, any scratches or rubs will show up and be much harder to repair.  “Bettie Page: Winter Edition”

Sometime in the near future I’ll put together an outfit for her.  Until then, she’s wearing a Barbie silkstone lingerie set, and posing on my shoe as I did find an old photoshoot where she was posed on a giant shoe.

(And, seeing one of my shoes, you will understand why I <3 the monster high shoes so much)

Unfortunately, to get the shoes, I have to get the dolls. And then I have all these monster high dolls lying around, and I’m trying really, really hard to only have one of each doll. Therefore: CUSTOMIZING TIME!

Stylistically, I don’t really know what I want to do with Monster High dolls yet, so I’ve mostly just been experimenting.  My wrists aren’t up to a full reroot, so I have to get creative with hair.  Mohair wigs?  why not!  Sculpted snakes?  Sure, I’ll try that.  But for now, I have successfully mohair-ed out Clawdeen (who really looks better with a natural fiber wig that’s all untamed) and Frankie:

I didn’t mess around with Frankie’s face like I did with Clawdeen. Clawdeen hasn’t really had a face that I’ve loved yet, and I really like most of frankie’s faces. Which I why I keep buying more Frankies (that, and she consistently gets the best shoes.)

Both dolls are now for sale on Ebay, along with my partially-rerooted Cleo.  …and yes, I noticed that I have 75% positive feedback.  Remember last year, when I sold a bunch of dolls and had to file a NPB for every single one of them?  One of the “buyers” waited until the last day to leave feedback and gave me a negative so I couldn’t leave them one.  I didn’t even think you COULD leave feedback after you get a NPB filed against you.  And the way Ebay currently does feedback, since it was in the last year and I don’t ebay much, 1 negative out of 432 means 75% positive. THIS IS WHY I ALMOST NEVER SELL ON EBAY!