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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!

boxopening01

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.

dollmoredollstownresincompare01

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.

zaolldollstownresincomparison

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. ^^;

miodollstownelfBA

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. 🙂

zaolldollstowncomparison

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. 🙂

mioeyesinfo

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.

mioneweyesfin

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!

wreckedeyes

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.

mioskirt

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).

mio'shouse01

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. 🙂

mio'shouse02

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.

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Hybrid Fever.

After putting Mio’s head on a Zaoll body I’ve become A LOT more open to hybrids, especially since I’ve become a lot more fussy in terms of body sculpt both in aesthetics and functionality of joints. Also I’ve surprised myself and I’m finding out I really do enjoy owning the big dolls, though Mio is a shorty, but still. So in a flush of new found love for 60cm dolls my brain decided to hatch a plan as to what sort of companions she needed. XD

I think I have wholly decided on Supia’s Zion sculpt for one of her new companions, but Zion is also a 65cm doll, which means Mio will look very tiny next to him. Then I thought perhaps I could find a slightly shorter body to put his head on so the size difference won’t be so great. This was when I discovered both Spiritdoll and Dollstown, who both have extremely lovely body sculpts with nice jointing systems. Unfortunately it’s been difficult trying to find information as to whether any of the Dollstown or Spiritdoll resins will match, but overall it’s not looking good sadly. However I am not letting it deter me because……

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

I ordered Mio the Dollstown Elf girl body in freshkin! You may wonder how I arrived at this since I was all about Zion a moment ago, and it was a long chain of events let me tell you. So to begin with I knew I wanted the elf body when I saw it, because the sculpt is just really beautiful, not to mention it has double jointed knees and arms, AND it’s another shorty girl coming in at the same height as Zaoll at 52cm. 🙂 After researching potential resin matches with Dollmore resin, and double checking measurements, I came to the conclusion that I could upgrade Mio’s body and then I would be able to give my Zaoll Luv back her body. So then I can have two girls instead of one now. 😉 On top of this I will then have a sample of dollstown freshskin resin to do comparisons with for future hybrids. I just have to hope now that since the elf body is in stock that it ships soon and arrives before my vacation in late January. I probably should have waited to order until I returned, but then that would mean I would have had to force myself to wait for nearly two months before ordering and then knowing my luck it wouldn’t be in stock anymore and I’d have to wait another 2 months production time XP. So I’ll be keeping my fingers and toes crossed that she ships within 2 weeks and arrives here in early January. Annnnd I’ll be keeping some extra fingers and toes crossed that Mio’s head will fit well on the new body. The Dollmore Eve neck circumference is around 7.5 and the elf body’s is 7.8 so it should work in theory. I also hope the resin match is close….it does look close from the comparison shots I found and that people shared with me, but it is still probably going to require some blushing.

As for Zion….well I had remembered my original idea that the size difference between a tall boy and a short girl is part of what makes it interesting, so I am considering ordering him as a whole doll with the supia body. However, the boys are out of stock on the Supia site and I read where they won’t be available until early 2014, because their bodies are being re-worked. It was also added that when the new boy bodies are ready they will be having another event as well, so my plans for ordering Zion will wait. To be honest, at this point I hope it will be a spring event this way I can stockpile my money until then, lol.

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Finally, Mio is here.

It was a long wait, but finally I got my Mio head. I was so excited to finally have her that I set about doing a face-up as soon as I could. I ended up staying up waaaay too late in the end, but I just had to finish her and get her put together. I am super pleased with my Mio/Zaoll hybrid. I love the Zaoll body and I was able to fit the Mio head right on the body without any trouble. Zaoll’s skintone is a little more pinky than the current Dollmore resin, but really it’s not by much. The first thing I did was do an all over pinky blushing to match her head with the body, and then I just started on the face-up. Really this hybrid was super easy to do and required no modding. Anyway here are a couple shots I got today

mioclean

I wanted to give her a really natural almost no-makeup face-up. I’m still really happy with how she turned out, but I’m thinking that perhaps I like her better with her brows showing rather than covered up. It’s easy enough to slide the wig back a bit. Unfortunately I don’t have any photos with her brows showing, but I’m sure I will in the future because I think she’s super adorable! I may have to tweak the face-up a bit though in the future because somehow one of the corners of her mouth that I penciled in, the pencil wiped off a bit after I applied the gloss. I don’t even know how that would happen since I sealed before I glossed. I also really like the For My Doll wig I bought for her, I think it’s a very good quality wig and I didn’t feel there were too many stray hairs I had to trim. It’s also a nice smooth fine fiber and really just excellent quality overall. Despite liking the wig though I think I still want to experiment with other wigs lol…I have an old red k-starr wig I’m going to try on her and I may order a mohair wig to see what that would look like.

Unfortunately the 16mm eyes I bought for her just look too big to me in her head. I ended up stealing Zaoll luv’s 14mm acrylic eyes to borrow for now. However when I removed those eyes I realized that somehow they had become cracked and broken. I am hiding the cracks the best I can, but the acrylic is pulling away from the printed iris which causes her to have a milky eyed look depending on the angle. I have never had a pair of acrylic eyes crack and break so badly. I have no idea what caused it since Luv was sitting in her box for the past month. In any case I probably won’t be trusting Dollmore’s acryclic eyes from now on. Their glass eyes are great, but I don’t want to run the risk of more broken acrylic eyes, even if they are cheap.

group

And here’s a quickie group shot of Mio on her Zaoll body with my two MSD girls. I like how Sona’s proportions lend her to looking like she could be a little sister. Luli’s proportions though don’t suit her for that, so I guess she a “friend” doll, lol….

Well, that’s it for now. I actually have other dolly news and dolly finds to share, but sadly I just haven’t been able to find the time to blog much this fall…been super busy! D: It’s ok though, I’m kinda happy to be busy, especially where it involves incoming dolls. 😉