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Zaoll Luv Face-up!

I finally had the time to give my Zaoll Luve a face-up, and I must say that it’s the best face-up I’ve done so far! It’s always nice to have a breakthrough art-wise and also I am very much smitten with my Luv now. X3 Actually this wasn’t the first time I attempted to give my Zaoll girl a face-up. I attempted it when she first arrived, but my liner decided to smear and frustrated I wiped her and put her away for a little bit. Then when I came back to try again I had another goof that I had to completely wipe her face again. After two failures I started to wonder if maybe the Zaoll sculpt and I weren’t going to get along, but then the third time worked perfectly, so I guess it was a “third times a charm” moment.

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Anyhow I think she’s just s pretty as can be now, and I am so very happy to have her. :3 Next up I still plan to make her a custom wig, but I do really like her in the monique wig I just bought, so who knows what her hair will be like in the future. I am thinking I also want to change her eyes. I really love the blue glass eyes, but I think they may be a bit large for her. I’m probably going to go get a consensus about good eye sizes on DoA. Well that’s it for now, but I will have a small photoshoot to share later!

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New School Uniforms!

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I had been meaning for a while to get matching school uniforms for Sona and Lulu, but I hadn’t until recently found a uniform that fit what I had envisioned for them and was not cheaply made or overpriced. Then I stumbled upon this little site called Promise of the World. They had previously been on etsy and moved to their own website within the past year. They are also on taobao, and what first impressed me first about them is that they don’t inflate their prices for the western market and their stuff is adorable and well made!

I ordered the two sets of uniforms last week on Monday and they just arrived to me today (the next Monday). They had listed on their website that everything was in stock, and apparently it was! The quality of the items I received also was very good and just like the images on the website. The outfits are super cute and very well sewn, though nothing is lined which I know isn’t typical, but the more expensive brands are often lined so I thought I’d mention it. My Sona’s bright pink camisole showed through the white fabric, but what can you expect when it’s bright pink, lol. Either way the problem was easily solved by just removing her cami. A particularly nice touch was the fact that each bow is threaded onto a silken ribbon with a slip knot in the back, so you can easily attach it to your girl’s clothing under the sailor sash. What’s also really nice is you can kind of mix and match your sailor uniform parts to make something a little more unique for you. Aside from the red ribbons, I also purchased two of the pale blue scarves so I could switch out if I wanted.

Overall I am very pleased with my purchase, it shipped fast and is quite lovely. That being said though I didn’t get a shipping notice and I was actually prepared to contact them today about when my order might ship, but then lo and behold I got a text from DHL telling me my package was going to be delivered. So in the end I would recommend them and I would probably buy from them again if they had some things I liked, for the price it can’t be beat!

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Dollstown Elf Body Arrived!

Kyaaa-h! I’m so excited that my Dollstown elf girl body arrived today! It was actually a little bit torturous because I had to go out to get my hair cut this afternoon right after the package arrived so I had to wait until late this afternoon to open the package and then I was interrupted by the need to fix dinner. Anyhow enough preamble, lets just get on with the pictures!

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I didn’t actually take too many box opening pics and what I did take are with my cellphone camera. I was really wowed though after taking the bubble pack off the first hand how delicate the fingers are and then I immediately went to open the second packet of bubble pack encasing the second hand and I had a sigh of relief that nothing was broke, lol. The hands of the elf body are slender and each finger is separate, but despite their delicate look, they are not tiny, in fact later when you see the comparison with the Zaoll body you will see they are close in size to the Zaoll hands.

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Here is a resin comparison between Dollmore’s normal skin and Dollstown freshskin. They are actually very close, but Dollmore’s resin has a slightly warmer pinkier cast, however this difference is not horribly noticeable which hopefully you will be able to tell by all of the comparison and hybrid photos I took. In the end if I blush the dollstown body with some pink I think that the difference will be imperceptible, so if you were thinking to make a Dollstown/Dollmore hybrid, this is a very viable option for you.

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And I thought I’d throw this in here, but it’s a Zaoll / Dollstown freskin comparison. As you can see, Zaoll is very pinky, so if you wanted to do a hybrid with a normal skin Zaoll, you would have a lot of blushwork ahead of you. ^^;

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Ok, so here’s my Dollmore Mio head on the Dollstown elf body. The first shot is me just popping the head on the body…unfortunately the elf neck is a bit short so I added some cool temp hotglue to the inside of Mio’s neckhole. The after shot is after about 1/4inch-ish of hotglue applied to Mio’s neckhole. I think it’s a pretty big improvement, but I think in the end I may order one of those neck ring things coolcat sells after I get back from vacation. The hot glue essentially suedes the neck joint and I feel it makes it a little more difficult to move her head and takes away a little bit of mobility, at least in my opinion. Size wise I’m happy with the size of the head on the body. Zaoll and the Dollstown elf body have just about the same shoulder width measurements of a little over 4 inches or between 10 and 11cm, so it’s not much different than she used to look. I know a lot of people have their own preferences for body to head ratios, and some people may consider her “bobble headed”. but to me she is fine. 🙂

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Here is a quick comparison shot of Mio on the elf body next to Zaoll. My apologies that my Zaoll has no eyes or face-up. ^^; I need to wait for a warmer day to give her a face, and at this point it probably won’t happen until after my vacation. So in comparing these two bodies, the elf body is a little bit taller than Zaoll and that height comes from her legs. The torso’s of both dolls are about the same length. Zaoll of course has curvier hips and a bit larger bust, her legs are also a bit thicker.

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Clothing wise, the elf body can swap clothes with Zaoll, BUT, because Zaoll has more width in her hips, clothing like underwear and pants will be a bit loose.

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And she can still wear the Dollmore SD girl top I bought for her when she was on the Zaoll body. Oh and I should also mention that Zaoll shoes also work for the elf body as well. 🙂 Though I only have the white mary janes from their website. Well, I think that’s about it for the info. Overall I’m super happy with this hybrid, though on occasion when I glance in her direction I think her neck may still be a smidge too short, but overall I’m just super smitten with Mio in general. X3 I can’t wait now for the weather to stop being quite so bitter cold so I can blush the new body and I think I also need to re-do Mio’s face-up since she was blushed to match the Zaoll body. For the time being though she is fine.

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New CIG Eyes for Mio and Customs Update.

I was surprised today by two things. One was that my Captured in Glass Eyes I ordered earlier in the month showed up and the second thing was that my Dollstown elf body has made it out of customs! I am hoping since Chicago is close that I might receive the package tomorrow, but if not tomorrow I feel confident that it should definitely show up by the end of the week. I can’t wait to get my hands on the new body and I am crossing my fingers and hoping that a hybrid with my Mio head will go well. Then my Zaoll can get her body back, lol. Anyhow enough about that, on with the eyes. 🙂

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I ended up ordering two different sizes to give them a try in Mio as you can see from the pic above. Even though all the info is in the photo, I will reiterate it here, but I ordered Y03 low dome glass eyes from Captured in Glass (CIG). The lighting isn’t the best in this photo, but for the most part the Y03 color photographs black, which is what I wanted so I am totally cool with it. In person the eyes are a very dark gray with a slight blue tinge to them when you look at them up close. They are very similar to Dollmore’s Y03 glass eyes…so similar in fact you might suspect them as being the same eyes. When Mio is wearing the 14mm eyes, she looks more relaxed, and the 12mm eyes make her look more alert. In my opinion I think the 12mm are a bit small for the Mio headsculpt, especially if you want a light colored eye, because I fear she would look startled rather than just alert. In the end I decided to use the 14mm for Mio and I gave the 12mm eyes for my Withdoll Taren to try.

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And here she is looking all proper with matching eyes. XD Oh, I also wanted to mention….Dollmore lists Mio’s eye size as being 16mm and this is far too big!! So please save yourself some grief and buy 14mm eyes for Mio!

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Here is what happened to Mio’s old eyes. These were the acrylic Dollmore eyes that came with my Zaoll. As you can see they are all cracked and starting to get a hazy look under the plastic. :p I’m not quite sure what happened here. I don’t know if perhaps the sculpey they put the eyes in with caused the eyes to go bad, or…..well I think I mentioned this before, but the very edge of my Zaoll faceplate (behind the ear and hidden) has a chip out of it. D: I think this happened because it was dropped at the factory/store because there was no resin chip in the packaging anywhere. So it could be that when the faceplate fell it jarred the eyes enough to start a crack, and once an acrylic eye gets a crack, more cracks start blooming all around. In the end I plan to save the wrecked eyes and use them when I am sculpting so I don’t jack-up any of my good eyes. May as well I figure.

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And somehow while I was changing out her eyes, she wound up grabbing her skirt and I thought it looked cute so I took an extra shot. XD I played around with photoshop a little and did some post processing. I usually use PS for illustration, not photo processing, so this is another thing to learn for me! Well, hopefully I will have more news to tell later this week when I hopefully get my Dollstown elf body, so I’ll blog at you later. 😉

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Ermagerd, SD roombox is DONE! O:

I finally finished the roombox today!!! Yay!! I thought I was finished yesterday and then I realized I totally forgot to add the back wall’s baseboards and I was like (⌣_⌣”) *sigh*, but I quickly cut and painted them last night so they would be ready to be glued on today. Anyway without further ado, here are a couple shots…(yeah I need to get better at photography, that is the next goal along with making props).

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Here is a shot of the whole room with Mio sitting in it. The chair is a little doll chair I found at an antique store. It’s a bit shabby and probably needs a bit of washing, but it’s cute and the perfect color for the room! Actually Mio sits on that very chair on my nightstand in my room. 🙂

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And here’s a zoomed out shot that better shows the scale of the room. Please ignore some of the junk in the background. I still have a few things to clean up now that construction is done.

Well, I’m really happy overall with how it turned out and I hope I get a chance soon to take more photos with it and improve my photography skill. I also want to make a little fake backdrop for behind the window so it looks like there is some nature out the window. I was thinking I could make a large print and pin it to foam core board or alternately I have some inkjet transparency paper left so I could experiment with printing greenery on that and then shine a light through it to see how that looks….Definitely got to get better with lighting overall though.