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Window Shopping – Mature MSD

yernI decided I might start collecting a list of dolls that I’ve been interested in purchasing. I think it will still be another month or so before I can get one though, so sad. Hehe…..Anyhow as far as mature bodied MSD dolls go, I find that I really like the LatiBlue Yern sculpt. I like her gentle looking eyes and her general neutral to pouty look. I also really like the LatiBlue body in general and she has measurements like my AE Yara, so they can share clothes and wigs too I believe. Yern is also in my price range, especially if I decide to do my own face-up. I read on the website that Lati is planning on restocking a lot of their dolls on July 5th. I would love to get in on that order, but I’m not sure I would have the money for the shipping by then. I imagine being involved in a GO would help, but most GOs don’t allow resin purchases, and also I have never run a GO and it’s probably a little late to try to get one started for their restock anyway.

I also really like the Minifee mature MSD bodies quite a lot, perhaps even better than I like the LatiBlue body sculpt, especially the cutie bust and cutie leg version. However, I’m not really drawn to many of the face sculpts that are offered. I imagine I could always find another head sculpt I like that would be a good resin match for the Minifee body, but I have no experience in resin matching so I’d be reluctant to do that. I suppose I could go scour DoA for some FAQs though.

wrybcqzlfile_28_7 Another doll I saw during my window shopping was 5star Doll’s Yoka. She has a delightfully melancholy look, and 5star’s body sculpt is pretty nice as well. It’s not as pretty of a body sculpt as the Latiblue or Minifee, but still quite attractive, and for the price at only $190 for a blank doll, I’d say it appears to be a pretty good deal. 5star seems to be pretty new though, so I know not of their overall quality, however, Mint on Card is offering them for sale in the US, and having ordered from them before I feel that they wouldn’t be selling anything that wasn’t quality…..Then again they do carry Dollzone, which some people have issues with…something about a ceramic filler? I dunno. XD Anyway I’m not fond of the pink eyes and red hair, but I am imagining that Yoka would look pretty good with dark hair and eyes, no? 🙂

kzcpbriqrebecca31 The next doll that intrigued me was Ringdoll’s Rebecca. I think it’s all about the little round dark eyes here and the dark colored hair. I am also fond of the slightly open mouth she has as well….I think I’m a sucker for those kinds of dolls, because I really love the classic Narae face too, which has the slightly open mouth, and I love Narae’s gentle partially closed eyes. Of course at this time though, Narae is totally out of my price range, but hopefully one day after I find a decent teaching job I can afford to get to get both a Narae and Narin. Anyway back to Ringdoll, who really has a lot of nice head sculpt, but really their bodies leave a little bit to be desired…at least in appearance anyway. I can’t speak for pose-ability in any of these dolls I’m talking about since I don’t own one yet. 😉 Anyhow I have seen numerous other dolls in my window shopping who are very cute, but I’m going to leave off with just one more before this post gets to long.

idollamyfullset4This next doll is an Island Doll named Amy, who actually has my own namesake, lol. I think SoulDoll also has an Amy doll, but I don’t care much for the soulkid body. Anyhow I had never heard of Island Doll until I saw one on ebay yesterday. Anyway again we have another doll with a slightly open mouth and small round dark eyes. She certainly is a cutie, and Island Doll’s body sculpt is as nice as 5star’s body sculpt, though at least to my eye, not as impressive as Latiblue or Minifee bodies. A blank doll starts at $210 though, so it’s a little lower than a blank Latiblue.

In the end I like all of these dolls, they are all very pretty, but I do have some reservations about purchasing dolls from companies I have never heard of before. However I did buy an Asleep Eidolon and was really quite pleased, so maybe I shouldn’t feel that way about these new young companies with fresh new sculpts. I imagine when purchasing a doll from a lesser known maker you can be somewhat guaranteed to have a more unique doll. I kind of get tired of seeing all the same Luts sculpts for example. Lati’s dolls though seem to retain their value well, and since they have my favorite body sculpt out of these I am leaning towards trying to get a Yern during their next sale period. Of course I haven’t 100% decided to get an MSD. I’ve been seeing a lot of adorable tinies too! Anyway at this point though I’ll be ending this long long post. lol.

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Mature Body 20cm BJD, Doll Values and Other Musings.

Recently I’ve been kind of…er…”pre-shopping” for a new doll. I know I want one, and money-wise I’ve saved and I am close to being able to get a new BJD, or if I wanted, I could already get any Pullip, Dal, Taeyang or Blythe I wanted….well maybe not so much “any” Blythe. Anyhow I’ve been leaning towards just getting another BJD because Pullip and Dal offerings as of late haven’t interested me, plus I have to admit I am a little disenchanted with Pullip since I’ve been having so much body troubles with her. I ended up taking her off of her 25cm SBH because despite all of my efforts her neck was still flopping and since her new wig it became even worse. In the end, I am far more pleased with my Dal, and would probably buy another Dal again in the future, but as of right now, not another Pullip unless a to die for design came out.

Anyhow I digress on my Pullip misgivings…..So I’ve been looking at the possibility of getting a new BJD, and I know that I no longer want anything beyond MSD size. With all of the mature bodied MSDs out there, why would I possibly need a giant 60cm+ doll just to get a more mature body shape? Besides that, I prefer smaller dolls as they are just easier to handle and you have more miniature options available to you, especially since the advent of the American Girl Dolls, and now those larger size Dora dolls. Anyway I am interested now in the even smaller BJD, especially any size that would be a nice fit for my current Pullip house or I would even go so tiny as to get a doll that would work in my 1:12 scale dollhouse that my grandfather built for me. As I got to thinking about it even more, I thought to myself, “I wonder if there are any mature bodied 20cm dolls out there” so I searched and lo and behold there were!

20061211124945_mLimhwa makes a barbie size BJD called ToYou. For a while though they stopped making them, but recently a new ToYou was offered called Sara, and she is quite a beauty. However Limhwa dolls only have certain ordering periods and seem a little difficult to get in that regard, but I will still keep them in mind. I also came across Soom’s Mini Gem series, which again are mature bodied 20cm dolls. I absolutely love their doll called Aren, which you can see in the pic I posted. So I’ve started seriously considering a “barbie sized” BJD because they would work my my new dollhouse and would be easy to clothe. I need to figure out though how easy it is to find tiny wigs and eyes though before I jump into that, and I also have to wonder how difficult doing a face-up on a tiny doll would be….there are these type of factors to consider. Plus I love all those itty bitty tinies out there too. Heh, I know I probably mull over things way too much but when you don’t have a lot of disposable income you tend to really ponder large purchases more. In the end though I probably have a bit of dolly overload from looking at waaaaay too many dolls.

Anyway after looking around for BJDs I also decided to see what people were selling secondhand on DoA and eBay and such and I seem to be noticing a trend in doll values, and that is that they seem to devalue as soon as you buy them. I saw a few people for example selling brand new dollies that were still mostly boxed that they just couldn’t “bond with”. These dollies were being offered at a lower price than what you could buy new at the maker and were seriously comparable in newness. If you have an older dollie before double jointing became commonplace, there is no way you could get full value for your dollie again…or so it seems. You see, as of late I’ve been considering selling my DIM Danbi as I have fallen out of love with the larger dolls and he spends a good deal of time in his box. However I have been reluctant to sell him because he was my first BJD, that and the fact that it looks like perhaps at best I could sell him for $125 less than his purchase price.

Of course dolls like Unoa and such seem to retain their value well, but I find it really funny that Pullip dolls can double or triple in price in 5 years whereas a BJD will most likely devalue. Blythe is another dollie that seems to keep her value too, as dolls that are only a couple years old may already be double their original value or more depending on edition.

Well, I think I’ve probably rambled on enough about dolls, so I think I shall sign off for now….and keep on musing over the possibility of purchasing another doll.

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First Face-up Complete!

yaranewfacesmI finally finished my AE Yara’s new face-up. It’s not perfect, but I am satisfied enough with it to seal her up and apply gloss. There are a couple hidden areas that I think turned out a little blotchy because of my overworking it. Going through this I’ve learned that for next time, I won’t fuss so much, and I will use a larger brush for the overall blushing. In the end though I like her so much more now! I think she looks much less innocent, a little more spacey, and I love the new lip color. I am also thinking that she looks better with these darker eyes, though I think I need to re-adjust them again, lol.

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A Sorta Face-up Removal Tutorial from a Newbie’s Perspective

yaranoface So for a while now I had been dissatisfied with my Yara’s face-up, as her eyebrows seemed too close to her eyes and her lip color was a little too bland for my tastes. Being an artist I already knew I had all of the pastels and watercolor pencils to do those nice natural face-ups you see online, so after reading some more tutorials I finally decided to take the plunge and I went out to grab a fresh can of Testors and some acrylic gloss.

So, first things first, on every tutorial you start with washing off the existing face-up. I remember that a couple of the tutorials I had seen said to just wash the face with warm water and soap, using a toothbrush for scrubbing. Well I did that and the face-up didn’t budge, not an inch! Though the eyelashes fell right out nicely after the soaking, so I picked them up and saved them for later. I remember thinking to myself that Asleep Eidolon then must seal their face-ups really well, but instead of congratulating myself on the quality of my own doll, I was instead vexed and decided to head over to DoA to find out more about removing face-ups.

On DoA the first thread I come to is recommending using Acetone to remove the face-up, but I’m like, wait a minute won’t the Acetone eat the resin? Curious though, and really wanting to remove this face-up now that I was committed, I read on. Apparently you can use Acetone or nail polish remover to remove the face-up, BUT you need to be sure to thoroughly wash off any residue, because leaving Acetone sitting on your resin will indeed ruin it. I guess there are two different camps on this issue though, those who feel you should not use Acetone, and those who think it’s ok as long as exposure is minimal and you are sure to thoroughly wash it afterwards. Desperate to get the face-up off I decided I would try some nail polish remover that had acetone in it. I did so, and slowly the face-up started deteriorating and I was able to begin to scrub it off. However there are problems with nail polish remover. First of all, if your nail polish remover has any tinting in it, it can stain your resin, and secondly it is still going to take a while and be smelly. I knew from experience with image transfers that pure Acetone would probably work better, so throwing caution to the wind I finally took some pure acetone to my dolls face and within seconds the face came clean and she is not horribly disfigured from contact with Acetone.

So in the end my advice is to screw trying to scrub a face-up off with soap and water. If you have a factory sealed face-up, it is so not coming off with soap and water, not even if you scrub it with a toothbrush or nail brush. This is good news though because it means your face-up is really resilient! Previously before I tried this I thought face-ups were much more delicate than they are. In the end, just use straight acetone which you can get cheaply at any hardware store, just be sure to wash and rinse thoroughly afterwards.

Next I’ll write about my adventures with sealer and whatnot. Right now my Yara’s face has a fresh coat of Testors on it that looks like it’s ready to take pastel. Adventure! XD

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Kid Dollmore Cecile

0820430002282I’ve been mooning over this adorable little guy ever since I visited Dollmore’s website again. He’s the boy version of their kid Dollmore sculpt called Cecile, and he looks absolutely precocious! What’s more is that he is also only $216 without face-up, and compared to other doll companies, that is a little on the less expensive side. I’ve been thinking lately that I’d like to try to save up for him. I thought he might be a cute companion for my AE Yara, though my Yara has the old style body, which means she has more of a Unoa’s proportions. Cecile is more “traditional” MSD sized. Maybe I’ll look on flickr for MSD/Unoa comparisons for a guide.

Anyway I’m going to let myself think on it a while though, because until I saw Cecile, I had been wanting the Pullip Kaela, so we’ll see if I cool a little bit to the sculpt over time. Also I have absolutely nothing in Boys MSD size, so if I don’t want a nude hobo doll I’d need to be able to afford a decent pair of shoes and some starter clothes as well. XP