Here's an insane thought: what if I reshell Caillen as a Volks Olivia?
Here's why it's insane:
1. I have a Volks Olivia as a girl aka Freddie.
2. Freddie, Caillen and Zeke are in a polyamorous relationship. Which means if Caillen is a Volks Olivia boy, and Freddie is a Volks Olivia girl, I don't know how close to each other they might still look. Which bothers me.
Here's why I'm even considering it (not to mention I'm broke, at a time when I see a good deal for an Olivia):
1. I wanted Caillen to be a Volks Olivia boy way before I considered Freddie as a Volks Olivia girl. (Back then she was supposed to be a Migidoll Cho, but now I don't think that sculpt fits her. I like her as an Olivia girl, hands down.)
2. I still think the smirk of Olivia would suit Caillen really well.
3. I just really like the sculpt? I guess? (Oh no.)
June 30, 2015
June 29, 2015
June 26, 2015
Doll video
^ I made a video of me changing Zeke's clothes. Haha.
I've always liked seeing the owner's interactions with their dolls, and after seeing jointedlove's video of her unoa's dressing/undressing, and liking it, I thought I'll do my own version.
Also, here are some of my photos (new and old) of what I mean by seeing the owner's interaction with their dolls:
And, I really love this set by tetradoodles on tumblr, which was what really started and inspired me to want to take photos like these, I mean, I've always liked seeing such photos, but I didn't really feel like taking these photos myself, haha.
June 24, 2015
Wig making: Hard wig cap Part 2
I would suggest reading Part 1 first if you've haven't. Otherwise, this is the update on the hard wig cap. :)
Part 1 here.
After the 2 layers of glue dried, this is what the wig cap looks like.
I pulled off the rubber bands for both the stocking and cling wrap before I managed to wiggle the wig cap out. I had to be careful not to change the wig cap's shape too much when pulling it out, but I did eventually managed to get it off.
Then I just roughly trimmed off the excess stocking cloth that didn't have glue, and it looks like some strange helmet. Haha.
Using a white watercolour pencil, I then drew in the outline of the wig cap. I just used a watercolour pencil since I already have it from doing faceups, but I imagine any white pencils would work.
Then I followed what most wig cap tutorials say, about doing another rough trim, leaving some space between the outline I already drew, and where I cut, in case I wanted to change up stuff. And it's a good thing I did, because I realise his wig cap sits unevenly, so I had to slightly modify the outline to make it more even, which I wouldn't have been able to do if I didn't have some excess when cutting. Phew.
And this is after trimming it properly. It's back on a cling wrap because the way I did the back, there were a lot of scrunched up fabric, which after cutting, didn't adhere to each other as well, so I ended up having to paint another layer of glue.
Yep, here you can see the back, which is coming a bit loose.
And the new layer of glue.
I actually did this a few days back, but I'm still contemplating what hairstyle to do for him, and haven't gotten to glueing the hair fibres onto the wig cap. But I'll definitely glue them on, at some point, haha...
Part 1 here.
After the 2 layers of glue dried, this is what the wig cap looks like.
I pulled off the rubber bands for both the stocking and cling wrap before I managed to wiggle the wig cap out. I had to be careful not to change the wig cap's shape too much when pulling it out, but I did eventually managed to get it off.
Then I just roughly trimmed off the excess stocking cloth that didn't have glue, and it looks like some strange helmet. Haha.
Using a white watercolour pencil, I then drew in the outline of the wig cap. I just used a watercolour pencil since I already have it from doing faceups, but I imagine any white pencils would work.
Then I followed what most wig cap tutorials say, about doing another rough trim, leaving some space between the outline I already drew, and where I cut, in case I wanted to change up stuff. And it's a good thing I did, because I realise his wig cap sits unevenly, so I had to slightly modify the outline to make it more even, which I wouldn't have been able to do if I didn't have some excess when cutting. Phew.
And this is after trimming it properly. It's back on a cling wrap because the way I did the back, there were a lot of scrunched up fabric, which after cutting, didn't adhere to each other as well, so I ended up having to paint another layer of glue.
Yep, here you can see the back, which is coming a bit loose.
And the new layer of glue.
I actually did this a few days back, but I'm still contemplating what hairstyle to do for him, and haven't gotten to glueing the hair fibres onto the wig cap. But I'll definitely glue them on, at some point, haha...
June 18, 2015
Wig making: Hard wig cap Part 1
So given how the new doll's hair is likely to be hard to find in a colour I want (a dark blue), I thought I'll try making a wig with leftover fibre from when I cut the twin's wigs, to see if it's worth it for me to order some nicer fibres (alpaca maybe?) to make a wig for her.
Although, that's gotta wait until she actually gets here for me to make a hard wig cap on her, so I decided to start by trying it on Cypher first. Also, side note, I decided to go ahead and order her a fibre wig anyway. I mean, more wigs, yay! And I'm still undecided on her hair colour to be honest, like what shade of blue, so yeah.
Yesterday I went on to find some stocking material, and just started doing this with what materials I have at home. Didn't really want to spend on buying things since this is somewhat of a trial anyway. So here we have Cypher wearing cling wrap. I might have squished his eyelashes a bit. Kinda forgot he has them since most of my dolls don't, haha.
And adjusting the stocking material on his head. I didn't really cut enough, so there was a bit not secured under the plastic, forming what looks like Bert's nose (Sesame Street, haha). Oh yeah, I undressed him in case I got any glue on him, so that's the stuff in the background.
I don't know if the material is kinda thin or if I might have stretched it, but it looks ...very thin at the top. And this is after me moving the fabric around to make sure none of it is too stretched. I don't know. Guess I have to wait and see when I take it off him.
And then I painted glue onto the fabric. Just some white craft glue I had around, which can be used for fabric.
And the side.
This morning, I checked and found that layer dry, but it still felt kind of thin, so I applied a new layer of glue. I squeezed too much out tho, so he ended up with a much whiter helmet than yesterday.
Oh yeah. It does start to flow off the areas painted into the lower areas after a while. But all in all the glue stays where it is pretty well.
That's all I have so far. Hopefully the wig cap is dry and sufficiently stiff for me to take it out to cut tomorrow. :) Will update the progress, haha.
Edit: Part 2 here.
Although, that's gotta wait until she actually gets here for me to make a hard wig cap on her, so I decided to start by trying it on Cypher first. Also, side note, I decided to go ahead and order her a fibre wig anyway. I mean, more wigs, yay! And I'm still undecided on her hair colour to be honest, like what shade of blue, so yeah.
Yesterday I went on to find some stocking material, and just started doing this with what materials I have at home. Didn't really want to spend on buying things since this is somewhat of a trial anyway. So here we have Cypher wearing cling wrap. I might have squished his eyelashes a bit. Kinda forgot he has them since most of my dolls don't, haha.
And adjusting the stocking material on his head. I didn't really cut enough, so there was a bit not secured under the plastic, forming what looks like Bert's nose (Sesame Street, haha). Oh yeah, I undressed him in case I got any glue on him, so that's the stuff in the background.
I don't know if the material is kinda thin or if I might have stretched it, but it looks ...very thin at the top. And this is after me moving the fabric around to make sure none of it is too stretched. I don't know. Guess I have to wait and see when I take it off him.
And then I painted glue onto the fabric. Just some white craft glue I had around, which can be used for fabric.
And the side.
This morning, I checked and found that layer dry, but it still felt kind of thin, so I applied a new layer of glue. I squeezed too much out tho, so he ended up with a much whiter helmet than yesterday.
Oh yeah. It does start to flow off the areas painted into the lower areas after a while. But all in all the glue stays where it is pretty well.
That's all I have so far. Hopefully the wig cap is dry and sufficiently stiff for me to take it out to cut tomorrow. :) Will update the progress, haha.
Edit: Part 2 here.
June 16, 2015
Cleaning and sanding Jack's body plus slight modifications
Can't remember if I've wrote about it but for the last month or so, I had unstrung Jack's body (a old Fdoll body) with the intention to sand it to reduce the yellowing it has. I'm all done with it now, though I didn't take any "after" photos of Jack. Haha. Nowadays I don't really take photos when I'm done dressing them, to be honest.
Anyway, here's what little photos I took, and some things I learnt when sanding the body.
Here he's unstrung
And you can see how dirty he is. This was probably the more obviously dirty one, but generally he was dusty in the joints. I got the body secondhand and this is the first time I saw the insides, and damn, he could use some cleaning. Haha.
You can see Jack's body is really yellow, compared to his head (which by the way, has already been colour matched to Volks NS by his previous owner, so it's not the original pinkish Dollmore resin colour). For a long time I didn't really bother about how yellow his body is relative to his face, figuring that since his head is colour matched anyway...but recently I thought I might as well give him a sand since the body itself is pretty old. And give myself something to do in the meantime. So, yes, moving on...
Putting his parts in a tub to wash. I also used a damp magic sponge to scrub him.
Parts in water.
Just after washing. He was slightly cleaner, haha, which is good. But I wanted to sand him to see if he could be lighter, so I continued. If not I could have just waited for him to dry and string him back up.
I only used 2 types of sandpaper. I don't know what grade they are, but one was much finer, and I had another which was coarser, but I stopped using that coarse one halfway, which I'll explain later. My initial idea was to do wet sanding, since that was how I modified my Ryu's nose. I had a N95 dustmask on though, because it's always good to wear a mask when sanding resin.
Started with his upper toros. Since I figured I want the neck to be much lighter than it currently is, I wanted to quickly see results (haha). And I also decided to do something about his button nipples while I was at it, since I never did modify them even though I wanted to when I just got this body. The left one (right of photo) is modified, and the right one isn't. It's not terribly obvious, at least, not when I look at these photos, but I think it looks much better in real life. I can't do it incredibly well, so there is that. (Not like the delf body, or the Granado Nuevo body. They have such nicely sculpted nipples, haha)
So after the nipple modification, I went at the torso piece with the fine sandpaper. Just did wet sanding. Which isn't a good idea, because I learnt that you can't really see the difference in colour between the sanded parts and the non-sanded parts when the resin is wet. I only realised that later when doing the arms.
But anyway, when I've not to realise that, I thought I wasn't reaching the lighter parts of the resin, so I decided to switch to the coarser grade sandpaper, and then the finer one after a once over with the coarser one. I'm still not sure what's the best way to sand with the coarse sandpaper, since it seem to still leave marks (I only noticed after the piece dried), but the finer one works best when I sanded in circular motions. Straight motions tend to gouge...as did erratic ones. Haha. I think I might have done that with the coarse sandpaper cos I was getting impatient.
Anyway, after the initial torso piece, I started to realise that I actually did sand the topmost yellower layer off with the fine sandpaper, but I didn't see it when the resin was wet. So I decided to do dry sanding for all the pieces after that.
Lesson of the day: don't experiment with a big piece like the torso. Do something simpler like the limbs (maybe the legs, since it's not that noticeable compared to the arms) because they have less grooves and are much much easier to sand. And the fine sandpaper works fine to take off the topmost layer. I realise the sanded parts aren't really that much lighter, but I didn't want to work at taking off too much so I left it as that. In the photo below you can see the sanded upper torso and sanded both arms, with the lower torso unsanded.
The arms weren't sanded as much as the upper torso, which you can see is just a tad lighter in some places, but the arms were much more even. Haha. Because I didn't use the coarser sandpaper, and did sanding dry.
In between I sanded the torso pieces, the hands and the upper legs. The photo below was right after the last sanding, which was for the lower legs and feet. They're in the water because I use the tub of water to wash off the resin dust from sanding.
The hands and feet are the most troublesome to sand, because of the grooves, and I didn't sand the whole hand evenly, to be honest. I left the fingers a bit less sanded compared to the upper part of the hand, since it needed to match the arm, but the fingers can kind of fade out (and since they were more tedious to sand as well.).
Ah yea, and you can see the many pieces of sandpaper I ended up with each time I sand. Those were jsut for the 4 pieces in the tub. I cut the sandpaper in smaller pieces to use since I found that it works easier. Also, side story, I used to think one used the WHOLE piece of sandpaper at once. Haha. Such strange ideas. Anyway, I found out from my dad at some point that you can cut it up to use. But I've not found if there's a better way to cut the sandpaper to make them easier to use to sand the hands. >_<
Yeah, and that's basically what I did to sand the whole of Jack's body. I don't have a photo but he still doesn't match his body (Hahaha, after sanding, but ah well), but it was something to do, I guess. I've been feeling rather inactive with my dolls, and besides giving them faceups, I don't really do much with them. So I thought this would be a good project.
But alas, I'm still not really doing much with them, haha. I think I like the initial genesis of the character/doll the most, and once that's done, I don't have as much drive to keep doing things with the dolls. I still play with them and buy them clothes and stuff, but I don't take photos that much, and it's just quite different from how I used to approach this hobby when I first got into it. Anyway, that's a longer post for another time, perhaps.
Anyway, here's what little photos I took, and some things I learnt when sanding the body.
Here he's unstrung
And you can see how dirty he is. This was probably the more obviously dirty one, but generally he was dusty in the joints. I got the body secondhand and this is the first time I saw the insides, and damn, he could use some cleaning. Haha.
You can see Jack's body is really yellow, compared to his head (which by the way, has already been colour matched to Volks NS by his previous owner, so it's not the original pinkish Dollmore resin colour). For a long time I didn't really bother about how yellow his body is relative to his face, figuring that since his head is colour matched anyway...but recently I thought I might as well give him a sand since the body itself is pretty old. And give myself something to do in the meantime. So, yes, moving on...
Putting his parts in a tub to wash. I also used a damp magic sponge to scrub him.
Parts in water.
Just after washing. He was slightly cleaner, haha, which is good. But I wanted to sand him to see if he could be lighter, so I continued. If not I could have just waited for him to dry and string him back up.
I only used 2 types of sandpaper. I don't know what grade they are, but one was much finer, and I had another which was coarser, but I stopped using that coarse one halfway, which I'll explain later. My initial idea was to do wet sanding, since that was how I modified my Ryu's nose. I had a N95 dustmask on though, because it's always good to wear a mask when sanding resin.
Started with his upper toros. Since I figured I want the neck to be much lighter than it currently is, I wanted to quickly see results (haha). And I also decided to do something about his button nipples while I was at it, since I never did modify them even though I wanted to when I just got this body. The left one (right of photo) is modified, and the right one isn't. It's not terribly obvious, at least, not when I look at these photos, but I think it looks much better in real life. I can't do it incredibly well, so there is that. (Not like the delf body, or the Granado Nuevo body. They have such nicely sculpted nipples, haha)
So after the nipple modification, I went at the torso piece with the fine sandpaper. Just did wet sanding. Which isn't a good idea, because I learnt that you can't really see the difference in colour between the sanded parts and the non-sanded parts when the resin is wet. I only realised that later when doing the arms.
But anyway, when I've not to realise that, I thought I wasn't reaching the lighter parts of the resin, so I decided to switch to the coarser grade sandpaper, and then the finer one after a once over with the coarser one. I'm still not sure what's the best way to sand with the coarse sandpaper, since it seem to still leave marks (I only noticed after the piece dried), but the finer one works best when I sanded in circular motions. Straight motions tend to gouge...as did erratic ones. Haha. I think I might have done that with the coarse sandpaper cos I was getting impatient.
Anyway, after the initial torso piece, I started to realise that I actually did sand the topmost yellower layer off with the fine sandpaper, but I didn't see it when the resin was wet. So I decided to do dry sanding for all the pieces after that.
Lesson of the day: don't experiment with a big piece like the torso. Do something simpler like the limbs (maybe the legs, since it's not that noticeable compared to the arms) because they have less grooves and are much much easier to sand. And the fine sandpaper works fine to take off the topmost layer. I realise the sanded parts aren't really that much lighter, but I didn't want to work at taking off too much so I left it as that. In the photo below you can see the sanded upper torso and sanded both arms, with the lower torso unsanded.
The arms weren't sanded as much as the upper torso, which you can see is just a tad lighter in some places, but the arms were much more even. Haha. Because I didn't use the coarser sandpaper, and did sanding dry.
In between I sanded the torso pieces, the hands and the upper legs. The photo below was right after the last sanding, which was for the lower legs and feet. They're in the water because I use the tub of water to wash off the resin dust from sanding.
The hands and feet are the most troublesome to sand, because of the grooves, and I didn't sand the whole hand evenly, to be honest. I left the fingers a bit less sanded compared to the upper part of the hand, since it needed to match the arm, but the fingers can kind of fade out (and since they were more tedious to sand as well.).
Ah yea, and you can see the many pieces of sandpaper I ended up with each time I sand. Those were jsut for the 4 pieces in the tub. I cut the sandpaper in smaller pieces to use since I found that it works easier. Also, side story, I used to think one used the WHOLE piece of sandpaper at once. Haha. Such strange ideas. Anyway, I found out from my dad at some point that you can cut it up to use. But I've not found if there's a better way to cut the sandpaper to make them easier to use to sand the hands. >_<
Yeah, and that's basically what I did to sand the whole of Jack's body. I don't have a photo but he still doesn't match his body (Hahaha, after sanding, but ah well), but it was something to do, I guess. I've been feeling rather inactive with my dolls, and besides giving them faceups, I don't really do much with them. So I thought this would be a good project.
But alas, I'm still not really doing much with them, haha. I think I like the initial genesis of the character/doll the most, and once that's done, I don't have as much drive to keep doing things with the dolls. I still play with them and buy them clothes and stuff, but I don't take photos that much, and it's just quite different from how I used to approach this hobby when I first got into it. Anyway, that's a longer post for another time, perhaps.
June 15, 2015
I made a beanie for Cypher today. But it's rather hard to put on so it's not currently on his head (I took it off to sew it better after this photo). I realise he only has 2 main types of clothing: stuff made by me, or Volks items. Hahaha. I don't know what's with this disparity, seeing as how the stuff I sew are just okay, and I hand sew so it's usually not the prettiest thing, especially in the areas not commonly visible (and I get to be lazy).
I also made a simple dress today to slowly prepare for the new doll (weehee~), but it looks rather ridiculous on Cypher. Hopefully I'll make more stuff, and with a bit more effort (the dress is rather sloppily cut and sewn...whoops) for her because, damn she's cute. Haha.
June 11, 2015
I'm being ultra paranoid today. I've not been so paranoid over buying a doll since a very very long time. And the funny thing is, technically, monetary value wise, this isn't the most expensive online transaction I've made. But you know. Strange things.
Gahhh, I'm excited. :D Keeping it hush for now, what I've ordered. Heehee.
Gahhh, I'm excited. :D Keeping it hush for now, what I've ordered. Heehee.
June 5, 2015
Elly's faceup. I did take photos of her with her wig but I'm trying to decide photos to submit to the SG doll carnival event photo competition, so I'm still holding those photos hahaha. Anyway, that aside, She looks much cuter now. I really liked the default faceup BUT not the shape of the eyebrows. So I guess it's good that the colours are pretty similar. :) Eyes wise, at least. The blush was rather normal when I was doing it but seems to be rather faint right now, which I only sort of just realise, haha. I mean, human makeup wise, it's a pretty good amount, but dolls tend to have darker blush, haha. Oh well. Quite happy with this faceup, overall.
June 1, 2015
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