( Click on the "About" Label for more of my characters and info about the dolls that portray them! )
This is Copernica.
I did her aesthetic design, but she kind of made herself. It all just... happened.
It all started with a Doll In Mind Secret head I was keeping around for some reason. I received it for free, if I recall correctly, because the "Secret" head was a free gift given as part of an event done by Doll In Mind, a doll company in Korea. I liked the sculpt, but all my bigger "SD"- sized dolls have made themselves a realistic group, and the Secret head was just too childlike and stylized... but the perfect, heavy white resin and beautiful sculpture was so lovely I couldn't bring myself to sell her.
Then I was dyeing another doll, and sanding his head to re-dye for even tones, and I looked at the way the dye appeared, half sanded off, as if it were worn away, like antique pottery or ivory or bone...
I set him down, ran upstairs, seized the DIM head and dunked it into the dye, then sanded like a mad thing. I knew all of a sudden what she had to become, exactly how she should be.
Here she is in her beginning.
I went to a local yarn shop and hunted for a good hour to find the perfect thing to make her wig from. I knew it had to be soft, huggable, touchable, and preferably resemble hair or dredlocks. I knew this stuff would be perfect:
I sewed a wig cap out of felt and stitched locks of the yarn to the wig cap.
Some are stitched on the inside so that her wigcap won't show when the hair is pulled back from her face.
Here she is wearing the wig; little moonface. I thought Copernica would be a whimsical name, and now I can't think of her as anything else.
Next: her faceup, or lack thereof, placing her very special eyes, and modding her hands and body.
***
I gave her glass cabochons in 16mm for eyes. I got them from a jewelry supplier.
***
We have a body! A kind soul sold me a body for a great price, and it was in great condition, though being a Domuya Flexi body it needed some work on the stringing channels, some tightening and some sueding. She was comically floppy, which was nice to hug but tricky to pose.
I also made her a little smock to wear until I had finished her mods and could make her more fitted clothing. She liked the embroidery, I think. Here she is finally looking like a proper doll!
She hopes you'll pardon her showing up in her nightie.
Nude shot! Dolly Nudity, nothing explicit.
.
.
.
.
This body was obviously much too mature for her, and there are things about the shapes of the torso I wasn't too fond of, so I reshaped her, and her neck was juuuuuust a touch too short, so she got some Apoxie on the neck top to help how her head sits.
Here's how she looked after those mods-
I took the body apart, reshaped the breasts to be smaller and higher, recut all the stringing channels to be wider, replaced the hand wire bits posing as s-hooks with actual hooks, replaced the failing lanyard hooks inside her feet with new twisted wire parts, and sanded some of her larger sharper seams.
Then, with her still in pieces, I dyed the entire body in Rit dye on my kitchen stovetop. She's uneven, but I wanted her to look a little rough, and somewhat wooden. The colors I mixed gave me a nice rich mahogany or cherrywood color. It photographs very orange but is more wooden looking in person. The thing about her legs is a doll stand to help her remain upright, since she gets played with and moved about so often that her elastic doesn't stay very tight for long.
I got her some White Skinned hands. I ordered them from LUTS. They're Delf boy hands but I've always loved their sculpting and the female hands were too small and delicate for her.
I dyed these hands as close as I could get to the colors I've used on the rest of her, then strapped on my respirator and went into the garage for some sanding work.
Here's before and after shots of the hands, dyed and sanded.
Here's both hands sanded and on her wrists!
And here is the result!
This body is insanely posable and natural, able to sink into poses my other dolls can't even try.
She's one of my favorites in the collection, even if she doesn't "match" with any of them. She's her own little creature.
