Dolls n' Crafts
So, yep, as the title states, I finally finished blushing her and she’s all restrung now. Unfortunately despite being careful I already chipped the body blushing while taking these photos. :p However it’ll be in an area that’s clothed so I’m not feeling broken up about it. Really I’m just so glad to have her back together and looking fantastic. The wigs still need to be styled in these shots, but she is really coming together towards the look I want. :3
So, here she is finally with a new face! It seems like it took me forever, and I still wasn’t able to accomplish everything I wanted, but it’s a learning process and I am very happy with her. 🙂 I think she looks pretty awesome in the dark brown wig, but I also tried the red wig on her as well and she also looks good as a redhead. I’m not sure which wig she will get in the end. I figure I’ll decide that after I finish the body blushing. As it turns out, I botched the feet blushing twice due to sealant problems, and then I botched the face-up on the second face-plate due to my own error. :p Because of all this I am now out of sealer, so I will have to get a new can of sealer before I am able to finish the body blushing. Now that her face is done I’m super excited to put her back together and dress her up! Unfortunately it will rain tomorrow or I’d plow right through everything, but I’ll have a chance to work on her again this weekend. Anyway I’ll end by re-posting the pics I took of her when she first arrived to me so you can see the difference!
I finally cleaned off my drawing table today so I could start working on customizing my Lusis. I decided to start with her secondary faceplate, the one that has it’s mouth open a little wider. As you can see from the pic above, her open mouth is asymetrical with the right side being more open than the left. I decided I would do some carefully carving of the left corner of her mouth to give her more symmetry. To do this I decided I would use one of my clay carving tools that has a curved bladed edge that whereas it is sharp enough to carve, it isn’t as sharp as a exacto blade. You can see the tool I was working with in the picture.
I ordered a handful of Kemper’s mohair doll wigs last week and they arrived today, so I had some fun trying the different colors and styles on my MSD gals. The wigs I purchased were the Giselle mohair in medium brown in both sizes 6-7 and 2-3, the 2-3 being for my Brownie which I will get to later, and lastly I ordered the Raven mohair in medium brown and carrot colors, both size 6-7. Above, Sona is wearing the Raven medium brown, and I love how it looks on her, though I was tinkering with the levels of the image in photoshop so it appears a bit darker in the pic than it does in person. Yara is wearing the same shade, but in the Giselle style, and lastly my Unoa Lusis is wearing the Raven wig in carrot, though again the adjusted colors make the wig appear more red.
So, here are my overall impressions of these wigs. First of all the 6-7 Raven wigs fit both Unoa and my Dollmore Kid Sona very well with no problems, but I was really kind of sad to find that it was difficult to get this style of wig to fit on my AE Yara. 🙁 It seemed like the room was there in the headcap, but perhaps because of the shape of the cap or the shape of my Yara’s head, the wig just kept popping right off. I really wanted Yara to be able to wear the Raven carrot mohair, because she was really the doll I had in mind when I ordered it. I am however going to maybe play around with the wig and perhaps add some velcro to Yara’s headcap to see if perhaps it might help any. What’s weird is that the Giselle style wig is just a scootch bigger in the wig cap and therefore can be worn by all 3 dolls, however I just wasn’t as fond of that one. The chocolate color, or medium brown shade as listed on the site is a really gorgeous dark brown. I don’t think anyone would be disappointed by the shade of dark brown, and the Raven wigs are especially soft. Both Sona and Lusis look really good in the medium brown Raven wig, so it’s going to be difficult to choose which gets to wear it. ^^; As for the carrot color…I guess I was hoping for something a little more red like in the picture I took, but in actuality the carrot mohair from kemper is more of a natural redhead, copper sort of tone. I may consider experimenting with dying the wig, but that will have to wait for later.
Last but not least my little Brownie Haha got a new wig too, and oh I just find it super adorable. The wig she is wearing the the Giselle mohair, medium brown in size 2-3. When I first saw this wig in it’s package I had a squee moment because I could already tell it didn’t have that odd bulk that a lot of tiny wigs can have, but then when I tried to fit it on her I realized that it was going to be problematic. ^^;; I’m not sure if the size 2-3 in this style is just a skootch small or whether it’s just a matter of headcap shape and dealing with such a tiny head, but the wig wanted to pop off. Because I really loved the wig I spent some time gently stretching it, and I added a small piece of double sided tape to my Brownie’s headcap to help the wig stay on. Just doing this apparently worked because the wig fits her fine now. I’m so in love with this wig because I feel that finally I have something that looks natural for a tiny doll her size. It’s not overly bulky, and the hair is fine enough to be passable scale wise. I’m still curious how the 3-4 might fit a Brownie, but I’m so pleased with this wig that I don’t foresee buying any new wigs for her for a long time. 🙂
So, there’s my adventures with Kemper wigs for what it’s worth. I do love their mohair, and their acrylic eyes also surprised me with how nice of quality they are, especially for the price!! So yay! Another good order fulfilled by Kemper. 🙂
I started removing the two face-ups from My Lusis faceplates last night, which turned out to be quite a lot of hard work, though it did provide amusement. You can see from the pic above that I was literally peeling the lip paint off of this doll, this is how thick the paint was applied. ^^; For the most part though, after a swipe with isopropyl alcohol and a soak in warm water I was able to peel a lot of the paint off with my fingernail. However the corners proved to be stubborn and I had to carefully use my clay-working needle tool to carefully prick and pull out the paint that was crammed into tiny corners. The eyes also had a lot of dried glue around them which required a lot of soaking in warm water to get the glue pliable enough so it could be removed. There were a couple spots of paint in the eye wells that didn’t want to come off for me despite resorting to using acetone on them, but I chalk it up to being the rough surface that needs a gentle sanding. Anyway I have to say that if you can peel off your face-up like in my pic above, “UR DOIN IT WRONG!” XD (the face-up that is).
Here they are all cleaned up and ready for customization. As you can tell from the photo, Lusis R (right) has her mouth opened a tiny bit more than Lusis L (left). Also Lusis R’s mouth is a tad asymmetrical. I think I should be able to fix this easily enough with gentle sanding. For Lusis L, she’s in great shape except the seam line around the edge of her plate is rough and needs a little sanding. Both of these girls just need a little gentle finishing sanding really, but overall they are in excellent shape. I suppose I should also record that both of them have had their eyebrows sanded, however there is a very slight, faint sort of smooth ridge where they used to be. I’m not sure if I will sand them any further or not. I guess we’ll see when I decide to start working on their face-ups.