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Rejuvenation and Redesign Planned. :)

I’ve decided I’d like to try to be a little more serious about my little doll and toys blog here. I’m not sure if I will be able to manage it with all of my comic and illustration work, but I literally am looking at, enjoying, or doing something related to dolls and toys every week so I don’t see how I should fall short of material!

With all of this said, I will start with a re-design to make this place look a little more attractive and I’m probably going to try to suss out the categories and make them more organized. So please excuse any mid re-design ugliness and construction dust while I work on the new design (^_^;). I am also still considering a name change for this blog. Originally this started as a craft blog idea back when I made my own handmade paper and such, but now the name “Paper Stars” I feel just isn’t reflecting the content of the blog any more. ^^;;

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The Dolly Wishlist – Dollmore Mio

mio

I’ve had my eye on Dollmore’s Youth Eve Mio for quite a while. I love her sweet face and distinctly Asian look. I’m also a bit of a sucker for dolls with open mouths and teeth parts as well. What has prevented me from buying her in the past has been the fact that she is a 60cm doll, and as much as I love my MuDoll Ash, the big dolls are a bit too large for my tastes. This being said however I have always wanted to have a male and female pair of that size, sounds crazy right? XD

Another doll I had taken an interest in on the Dollmore site is Zaoll Luv as I find their body sculpt fantastic and there has always been something about the dreaming love sculpt with the purple eyeshadow and pink hair that has drawn me to it. Also interesting about the Zaoll is the size of the doll. They don’t have the impossibly long legs and have more human proportions. This got me to scheming then of possibly creating a hybrid of Mio on a Zaoll body. I’ve researched the topic and was pleasantly surprised to find that there are others who have already done the very same thing I want to do but with various other Dollmore heads and non Dollmore heads. The only roadblock is that apparently Zaoll’s resin is supposed to be a little pinkier than the Eve heads, but that seems easily remedied by a good face-up.

All this being said, I am strongly considering a Zaoll/Mio hybrid for what will probably be my one and only SD13 sized girl. This will probably also be the first doll that I order blank without face-up since I have a specific style of make-up in mind. This probably won’t be happening for a while though as I just bought my first DSLR (yay!) and there are a few other things I want to get squared away first. So for now Mio is just high on my wishlist. 🙂

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A Dolly Rant.

So, I’ve seen a few things that have irritated me lately related to dolls, and I figure this is probably the best place, my personal blog, to rant about it. Rest assured though this has nothing to do with fandom.

I’ve noticed this for a while now since I’ve spent some time on TaoBao, but it’s only recently come to really bother me, and that is the fact that sellers on TaoBao jack up their prices in their English language shops. Take for example this skirt and top set in a Taobao shop (whose name I am witholding for search reasons but you can find out easily enough on your own). The list price is 88 Chinese yuan as you can see below.

swprice

88 yuan is roughly $14.19 based on the last check of the exchange rate, which you can easily find out by just googling “_insert number_ yuan to USD”. Google actually has a built in exchange rate calculator that pops up that will even show you the exchange rate trends from the past few years.

swpricejack

Now above we have the exact same item in this particular seller’s English language store and it’s listed as being $39. ( ಠ ಠ ) Yeaaaaah….Now I will give them the benefit that they offer “free shipping” on all their goods. Usually this just means they have calculated the price of shipping into the goods, and this is fine, I have no problem with that, but we all know that a small mailer packet for two pieces of doll clothes is not going to be $25.

Now I am willing to pay good money for quality goods, but I am going to have to say that I had purchased from the above seller in the past and for the quality of item I would have been better off to have bought from an independent crafter on etsy who had a better quality product at a better price.

So now that I’ve had it out, I hope you will be a smart shopper and stop patronizing stores who jack up the prices for Western customers because they think they can get away with it. Go buy instead from independent crafters or doll companies with with good customer service and fair and equitable pricing globally.

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More Progress on my BJD sculpting project.

So, I’ve got the lips looking more natural now, and I brought down the nose a little and gave it some more shaping. I also started rounding out the cranium in the hopes that I can get wigs to fit better on her since her head shape was a little off. My only concern with rounding out the cranium is that her head is getting a bit larger and I worry that her head may be coming more MSD size and perhaps a bit too large for her body. I won’t really know until I get a chance to lay out the doll again though which won’t happen until after I get the last of my comic work done for the week (probably Sunday night or Monday). Still have a lot to do with this head, but I am still happy with the direction it is taking.

Shot this pic right before I had to clean up my drawing table. I made some joint progress, as you can see the torso joint is coming along and all the joints are in place for the whole left leg. The right leg still needs it’s knee and ankle joint fitted though. The hip joints are giving me grief of course, but I won’t mess with them too much more until I am able to get the legs strung so I can see the balance issues and make corrections. The right knee joint is going to be a bear though because the foam core got twisted so the leg walls are thick in places they shouldn’t be among other problems. XP Just writing about it makes me anxious to be able to get her back out and get to work on those leg joints. I really want to see if she will stand at all, and as soon as I test that it will give me insight into better hip joints.

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More Progress on my Artist BJD

So, she has ears now, yay! But one is a tick higher than the other, boooo~. So I’ll have to do some careful sanding and add itty bitty bits of clay here and there to even it out. I tried to work on the shape of her lips a little as well. I’m hoping I was able to refine it just a bit more…I really hope I’m not overworking it! ^^;;; The other thing on my to-do list for the head is to even out the eyes, since one is just a tick lower. I think I might save the eye adjustment for when I have the headcap off, this way I can carve the wells for the eyes and then sculpt with the eyes in place.

The rest of my progress has been in cutting up the different part to prepare them for jointing. I also started work on the balls for the hip joint and have molds done for the ankle and knee joints. Now comes the long tedious work of creating all of the ball joints and then waiting for them to dry so I can tool them and graft them onto their respective body parts.

My next goal is to get the hip joints grafted onto the thighs and get the hip socket properly set to accept the joint. After that I plan to begin work on the torso joint, then probably work on the knee and ankle joints..or perhaps the other way around, ha ha ha.