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!

Ash Nero (the doll type being Nero) was my first doll.  I did order her at the same time as Panda, but I had been staring at Pullips for around 6 months before I could convince myself that I, an adult, wanted a doll when I was never a doll person even when I was a kid. The doll I knew I wanted the moment I saw her was Nero.  My second choice was Moon, but she was incredibly hard to find and as expensive as a Noir at that time, so I settled on my third choice, Panda–and then managed to get my hands on a Moon from a shop in Korea a week later!  EMS got her there the day after Ash and Panda arrived, and so those three have been my top girls ever since.

She’s been through 4 bodies, one of the screws in her head was stripped so I had to take a drill to it and I was so horrified that I might have broken her that I ordered a backup Nero immediately.  Which I still have, just in case anything catastrophic were to happen to her so that I’d have a backup for spare parts.  She’s the only doll I do that with.  She doesn’t get a lot of photoshoots because she isn’t very flashy and is extremely hard to dress in the land of Barbie, but that doesn’t mean she isn’t my #1.

Unfortunately, she shows it.  Or did.  Early matte-faced dolls went shiny very easily with handling, and Ash was no exception.  The only customization to her face was the removal of her interior painted eyelashes, and I’ve had to re-fill in the void with pastel every couple of years.  But most recently when I compared her to ‘backup Ash’ I noticed that her makeup had begun to fade too.  Her usual cleaning/retouching wasn’t going to do it.

Therefore, Ash has gotten a more heavy-duty makeover.  I didn’t change much.  She got a cleaning, then got a new coat of matte UV protecting sealant applied, got her eyeshadow and blush retouched to bring her back to her original vibrancy, new lip gloss, and was sealed a second time.  Hopefully this will keep Ash in tip-top shape longer than her usual beauty treatments.

Being favorite has its perks.

Since I finished up my last customs in late spring, I’ve been spending very little time working on dolls and a lot of time working in my yard. We dug 5 new plant beds and filled them with flowers and shrubs. Not done yet, either, I want to put in one more gigantic one with either a fountain or a small fish pond. I’ve also developed a new love:

Topiary. Topiary are bushes you shape into…whatever. You can’t see the whole bush, but the one Zsa Zsa’s on is a collection of artistic pom poms. It makes a very nice pullip seat. My husband joked that I was going to make everything in the yard miniature in scale with the dolls (Penjing is the art of miniature gardening, originating in China. Think bonsai, only entire landscapes instead of single trees) but I’m not THAT crazy about my dolls, and I don’t want to feel like a giant every time I walk through my yard. I would be too tempted to laugh evilly and stomp.

Everything needs to grow in a bit more, of course. I expect next year the dolls will have lots of lovely lush corners to have their pictures taken out of doors even if it’s not in the company of miniature trees and bushes

In case you were looking for a pullip-kid option, like me, here is the pullip mini head on an 11cm obitsu with two other potential pullip kid scale options, the pukipuki bjd and pukifee bjd from Fairyland:

Pukipuki has the same sized body as a mini pullip, just kid-proportioned. They can steal Kelly doll clothes, but not mini bratz, like mini pullip and dal. Pukifee is a little bit bigger, and doesn’t have any ready-steal clothing options, though moxie dresses work all right. The obitsu doesn’t look as nice, but it is roughly 1/5 the cost of a pukipuki, and 1/9 the cost of a pukifee.

Side views

The pukis can reasonably cross their arms, but the obitsu can hug itself. It also has better leg crossing range.

Obitsu can lean forward more. Pukis can be pushed further forward because their joints will pop out due to the strings, but this is as far forward as they can be convinced to go without being held.

The less realistic curve of the legs gives the obitsu more knee range, but all three dolls can convincingly kneel.

I am going to put together a tutorial for the 11cm obitsu/pullip or dal head hybridizing next!