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More Customs Fodder!

Over the last weekend when my cousin was in town I picked up a couple more Monster High dolls to do some repainting and rerooting on. Clawdeen hs been waiting to be customized for a while, but Draculaura and Catrine are the new dolls. I was actually so excited to see Catrine. I feel like I never see the “special” dolls that much. For example it’s rare for me to find Nefertari. It may be because I live in a large suburb of a city so product moves fast. Anyhow, speaking of fast I intend to try to start customizing this weekend as….wait for it….my doll hair order arrived!! I’ll talk more about that later, but for now, the girls.

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You know, I’ve never been really fond of any of the outfits of the Monster High girls, but Catrine’s outfit is not bad, and her little art belt with pastels and brushes is novel. I know a lot of people really like the crazy shoes on these dolls, but I guess I’m a little too much of a plain jane to really get into them. One day I’m going to have to try my hand at making some custom shoes, because right now all of my MH dolls are shoeless, lol

So, on to the important part, the saran doll hair order. This time I decided I was going to try RestoreDoll as I’ve always heard good things about them and they had a couple special colors that I really wanted. So, let’s take a look at the first set of colors shall we. 😉

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I took these shots in just natural light from the window and I did minimal color balancing on them to try to get them to look as close to what they look like in real life. If there are any differences, I will be sure to tell you about them. So in this first set there is Cognac #36 on the left and Bronze #22 on the right which I think is one of RestoreDoll’s own custom blends if I am not mistaken. Both are very very close to what they look like in real life. I had seen some pictures of cognac on flickr that looked more red, and to be honest it’s what I was expecting, so I was a little surprised it was more on the orange side. Still though it is a lovely color and it will get used eventually!

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These two colors are Purple Passion #27 and Brownette #2. Both colors are also very close to what they look like in real life. I was really extra happy with Brownette actually, because it looks darker than I had seen on flickr, but it does have a golden sheen about it, which I think is what is caught when people use flash photography or take photos in the sun. Anyway overall it’s a nice solid medium brown and no red tones.

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Ok, so lastly we have Cupcake Pink #37 and Turquoise #51. These colors are close to real life, but I consider the cupcake pink to be a little more on the pink side, though it is a warm pink, so it does have a bit of a peachy cast. The Turquoise was the hardest to try to get right in the photo. XP As it is Turquoise is a bit lighter than this photograph and has a very minty look. Either way they are both really pretty colors. Heh, to be honest I wouldn’t mind owning ALL THE COLORS!! XD lol

So I feel I need to say a few bits on quality and service since this was my first order with RestoreDoll, and I have to say they pass with flying colors. 🙂 I am really happy with my order and they ship SUPER FAST! Which is kind of a change from dollyhair, since they are kinda slow. ^^;; Quality wise I’m perfectly happy with everything, I only wish I maybe had ordered a little more, lol. Lastly I wanted to mention size and quantity, because dollyhair always knocks RestoreDoll on their website and I find it unfair, so I want to clear up a few things. The RD dollyhair hanks they sell ARE NOT equal to the real RD small skeins. 2 RD small skeins look comparable to what you’d get if you ordered one of the 38in dollyhair hanks. Moral of the story, don’t believe what competitors say about each other, because they are in competition for your business, you are better off to trust disinterested 3rd party information.

Well that’s it for now, I’ll be sure to share my customizing progress in the future. I’m really hoping to be able to get a start on it this weekend! So excited! X3

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“De-greasing” Saran Doll Hair

For those of you who may not have been aware like I was, saran doll hair usually has this slight filmy feeling to it, or as others have said it is “greasy” or “oily”. It truly is oily and has the unfortunate side effect of making your doll look like she has nappy no-shower in a week hair if you don’t wash it properly. You can see in the picture above that the doll hair on the left has this oily problem, whereas my freshly washed sample piece on the right does not. I spent quite some time google searching methods to degrease hair with no luck, so finally I just started experimenting with things until thank heavens I found something that works!

So here’s what you need to do to get that greasy, oily feeling out of your saran hair…..wash it with a dish soap that has a degreaser in it. It’s as simple as that. Most dish soaps on the market have some sort of degreaser in it, for me, we had Palmolive in the house so I just used that, but I’m sure any other quality dish soap on the market will work. After I gently washed the fibers in the dish soap I made certain to rinse the hair thoroughly, because obviously you don’t want to leave soap film in the hair. Here’s my tip though, don’t blow dry the hair afterwards. I found that with my test sample of washed hair that blow drying the hair caused it to get a static build-up with flyaway hairs. Letting the hair naturally air dry solves this problem, however it will take all day. 🙁 I even set my dolls head out in our 103 degree summer heat outside and it took her hair all the way until the evening to be mostly dry!

Well, that’s it for now, hopefully if you were struggling with this problem I was able to help you out! Look for more progress on my custom Draculaura soon now that I’ve “de-greased” her hair, lol.

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Monster High Re-root Progress

So the above pic is a series of progression shots through my reroot. I’m not going to go into an in-depth reroot tutorial because I already posted a list to reroot tutorials in a previous post here. Basically I started in the back using the reroot tool and filled up each hole. I saved the bangs until the end so it would be easier to keep them separate from the rest of the hair. Also, naturally you save the part thatching for the very last. Part thatching is probably the hardest part of a reroot, but there is also a great tutorial for that in the post I previously mentioned. 🙂 So, after you get all the hair in, you need to smooth it down how you like and set it with boiling water. You can also use steam to set the hair as you work on your part thatch, which helps to discover any weak areas that may need more hair.

So, if your hair is already washed and the hair is exactly as you want it, you can wrap the head gently in saran wrap and pour boiling water over the head. You can see the before and after in the shots above. Keep in mind this technique is for SARAN FIBER!! Saran fiber has different temperature requirements from nylon or kanekalon. Saran can easily handle boiling water and in fact you pretty much need the heat of the boiling water to style it.

Anyway because I didn’t wash my saran fiber before rerooting the doll I decided I should go ahead and pour the boiling water directly on the fiber so it not only removes the film that is often on saran, but also sets the hair as well. One thing to keep in mind when pouring boiling water on unsecured hair though is you must be gentle and slow otherwise you could get some hairs out of place and that would be no good. In the future I plan to wash my saran so I can use the previous saran wrap method. Another thing you want to keep in mind is you shouldn’t expose the plastics to boiling water for too long. 20 seconds or so should suffice without worry of melting any fibers or causing frizzing.

I also found this nice little tutorial site for styling doll hair which helped me suss out some of these methods for setting the hair. I will leave you with that link here: http://www.dolls-n-daggers.com/Dolls/OOAKtipshair.php These tutorials also cover cutting dolly hair as well as how to style hair to be curly. Lots of great info!

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Dollyhair Comparisons

So my dollyhair order finally arrived and I went ahead and shot some fiber comparison pics in the hopes that it might be helpful for other people who are trying to match colors and whatnot. Above is the Kohl Brown Kanekalon hair from dollyhair.com next to my Liv wig. It is a very very close match and will do nicely for patching up the bald spots in the wig. The fiber of the Liv with though is a little smoother and softer, but it is definitely not saran, and has that “dry feeling” like the Kanekalon, and is too fine a fiber to be the nylon. So I’d say it’s up in the air as to what kind of fiber this wig is made out of.

These are the two shades I am waffling between for my Draculaura re-root. On the left is Bitter Chocolate Brown, and on the right is Raven Black. Raven Black is of course a true match for Draculaura’s factory hair, but it’s not hard to match blacks usually. :B The Bitter Chocolate Brown is actually a bit darker than in the photo. It is as advertised as being the closest brown you can get to black and it does not have any red tones.

Next up is the Sherbert Pink comparison. As you can see from the pic that Draculaura’s hot pink streaks are a scootch bit darker than Sherbert Pink. It is very close though, so probably if you wanted to just add a few extra strands of pink in her factory hair, you could probably get away with using this color depending on how fussy you are. I actually bought this hair for a custom Twilight Sparkle I plan to work on after I finish Rainbow Dash who is coming along nicely by the way!

Lastly I bought some Hematite (on the left) and Pacific Ocean (on the right) nylon hair. This pic is fairly close to the true color, though in person I feel you can see the hint of plum in the Hematite more and Pacific Ocean has a touch more teal in it. I purchased these two colors with the intention of rerooting my Twilight Sparkle with them. Seeing Pacific Ocean in person though makes me feel that straight Hematite may work best for her reroot though. Originally I thought to mix the two colors, but now I’m not so sure. Anyhow all of those color comparisons are for another day as I am nowhere near starting that project yet.