New duds.

Shade, one of the Art Doll Crew, has finally gotten clothes to suit him. He's a bit of a clothes-horse or fashionista so he requires glamorous or interesting outfits. These were made by Nezumitoo on Etsy.

These are just phone pics, so they're not very good, but at least I now have a skylight in my hallway to add some natural light I can shoot quick snaps in.  (it used to be the shaft for a swamp cooler but I got central air so my Dad built it into a skylight for me)

Fayeth, one of my MSDs, also got into the Nezumitoo order and has appropriated this coat for herself even though it's SD sized.

Making Aspen the Dryad, part 2

This is a kind of post-dated post. A lot's been happening in my life and I've gone Pro as an artist so things have been rather hectic for 2017! But I did finish Aspen and she's such fun to play with!
Here's how it went.

After my thumb healed I was able to finally do her blushing. I went for a very simple and dramatic faceup, with greys and browns. He skin has been painted and blushed, with those little marks on it that birches and aspens get. I made those dimensional by using a little grainy acrylic texturing gel.

Then it was just a question of popping her wig on... and she was done! She's a ton of fun to photograph and her body takes some getting used to in the posing department but I love her expression.

I probably won't bother making clothes for her. Trees don't wear clothes! With Autumn coming up, I will need to finish her other wig- the golden Aspen in full glory!

Native Pair Project

Okay so I bought new dolls... but they're not for me! Not really anyway. I may end up long-term loaning them as an exhibit to our tribal culture museum.

This is a project I've meant to do for a long time but I've put off because I couldn't find anything realistic enough at a nice price and a small size. I've put down money on an AncientTales pair of male and female 1/6 scale mature dolls. I am going to modify and use them for diorama photos of my native tribe's history.

I am very excited to finally do this, later this year. I can make photos into illustrations for books if they're good enough.

Making Aspen the Dryad, part I

So I've wanted for ages to make one of the weird super-slim alien jointed bodies sold by Doll Chateau into a Dryad. I found the perfect body for this, the K-08 male, and while it is 52cm with a head on, in scale it counts as Mini sized. She'll just be awfully tall for a 1/4 doll.

I chose the boy version of that body for this project because the girl body has huge hips and almost no ribcage ....and i know it's weird but just looking at its frail and tiny torso makes it hard for me to breathe- it's a personal anatomy nitpick/phobia/involuntary reaction I can't get around. So I bought a boy doll and will be making it into a girl who could plausibly have organs and inhale or exhale.

Then I just needed to find a head. I wanted it to be more than just another pretty face. The right face for my dryad would need to be something special, striking, otherworldly. Armeleia of Seed Doll/Seed Arts made this little bird faced head called Wol, and I knew she'd be perfect. I snagged one as soon as the order went up.

In the months before Wol arrived, I spent a lot of time working out how I would make her into a dryad. I knew I wanted a very special kind of wig, not just a green hair wig. I wanted to give her leaves, and do four or more wigs that I could change seasonally to take her outside for photoshoots. I settled on hand dyeing a LOT of fringey lace.

So much lace. So much hand dyeing. Partly I used Dye-Na-Flow by Jacquard, and partly just fabric markers for the brown twiggy bits. Each piece of lace was laid out flat, then painted and marker'ed one.
strand.
 at a time.  ....Yikes. Sometimes I wonder about myself and my idea of fun.

 Then it was time to work on the body mods. I shaved off the boy bits on the hip piece, which was easy, but the chest was a little trickier. I wanted her to have some small breasts, so I had to sculpt some in. Luckily this body has wide, low, long pecs so there's plenty of room. Here's the first few cuts with the ceramic scraper knife, and you can see my pencil guidelines. Nothing too extreme, just an A-cup size.

 Making things symmetrical before I refine the shapes. A certain amount of symmetry is desired here.

 Then a LOT of sanding! So often the key to a good mod vs a kind of shoddy one is the amount of time you're willing to put in with the sandpaper and descending fineness of grits to get a good smooth finish.

 

 Even at this stage she's not quite done. I hurt my thumb with an S-Hook at this point, (you do NOT want to know, it was pretty bad) so sanding had to stop while my poor digit recovered. 

Luckily Wol arrived to distract me!

 

 Here she is! And with her genius little s-hook holder made in the shape of a cluster of crystals! It's super sparkly in person. Armeleia hand cast it herself to include the glittery bits, so unless a bigger company wants to go to that kind of trouble they might not steal the concept. (fingers crossed. it's such a nice detail) Wol herself was in a cute little printed cloth bag I will be keeping.

I spent some time with my bandaged thumb and engaged in an evening of wigmaking. I'm pretty pleased with the results.

 Here she is, starting to come together! I am so excited! Her eyes are some I'd already owned and used on a doll I had sold on, and I was hoping they'd work for her. I love her look!


What you're seeing here on the blog is the Summer Wig, but she'll have other seasons too. From similar lace I've made her an Autumn wig in full Aspen Gold. I want to make a Spring wig with budding leaves and flowers, and a Winter wig full of ice crystals and dusted with snow.

I plan to blush her like an Aspen Tree, with lots of little black bark texture marks, and greyish brown shading and faceup.

Dolly GOALS for 2017

- Launch the Shop!

- Finish making Aspen, my Wol dryad on a Doll Chateau body, and Shade, my dark starry art doll.

- Do lots more photoshoots. The Shop may kind of force me to do that.

-whip up a batch of petal pink dye and finally just gradient dye the tips of most of my dolls' fingers so their darn blushing will quit just wearing off the hands.

- Finish  "Project Noggin" and get resin duplicates made. Probably by Haru Casting, they seem to be wonderful.  It's a secret, you will see... Stay tuned!

-Give Lir, Donovan and Kitso the Hob their makeovers. Kevya too. My dolls have been neglected and I want to give them better faceups and new hardcap wigs. Lir hasn't had work done since 2009!

-keep making tunics and shoes. lots and lots of shoes. Possibly dabble is a few fancy fullsets, props and furniture pieces, but the demand is for fantasy basics and shoes!