Helena has pants!

My room is a wreck and I'd like you to excuse that.

For those of you who don't know BJDs, its pretty common to sculpt them more anatomically correctly than, say, a Barbie.
This was a problem for Helena, because

• Things Helena has: a crotch with defined labia
• Things Helena did not have: pants.

And that was a bit difficult to explain to people, so here's her skirt.

The scale's off, which matches her oversize hat, so I like it. It kind of reminds me of arm knitting, that big craze we've got going.
The waistband's a sort of 4x4 rib. It's really 4x4x8x4, repeated twice. I wanted smoother hips.
The body's got a bit of expansion to get a bit more flare, and then there's a bubblestitch hem because why not.

I haven't woven in the ends yet, and I may never do that.

You might also notice that Helena poses very strangely. She was literally the cheapest doll that I could find that wasn't a recast. Her joints are more hinges than true ball joints. They don't even have a peanut joint. They look like they have a floating peanut, but the joint is attached to one part of the arm.

Her hands and feet don't have balls on them, either, so they move laterally but can't go up and down.

All in all, Maddie and Gooliope are a lot more fun to pose than her. I'm considering buying a resinsoul body and putting her face on it, because her face is quite pretty.

Maybe tomorrow I'll write about the Duffys I'm working on.

Finally working on Helena

I'm not dead!

So, Helena has a wig, finally. Sort of.

It's 100% athletic tape and yarn, but that's not the point.

I'm not sure I've introduced Helena before, but she's a Bobobie Lotus BJD, light tan, stock faceup. They're about $130, so they're as cheap as you get. 

Polly, 2010-2015: Really want a BJD to sew clothes for.
Polly, 2016: Have a BJD and never sew clothes for her.

I think my main problem with Helena is that she's just not very poseable. Her hinge elbows and knees just don't move as much as I want them to.
This, obviously, is because I bought the cheapest possible BJD that I could find.
I love her face, and I keep considering buying a 5stardoll body (about $200) and putting her head on it.
Of course, this is what I'm going to do with the massive amount of money that I just have hanging around.
Haha.

I actually bought a wig for her a couple days ago, because she really needs one.

<stock image>

I'm getting the feeling that she has blue hair. I got her to sew lolita dresses for, and I'm sure I will soon, but for now, blue hair.

Anyway, the girl needed some hair, and I needed a project that'd take a couple hours and that I could watch TV during.

I started making the wig a while ago. I bought some plied wool yarn and took it apart, to get some chunky curls. The wefts are made of two layers of tape, and the cap's tape.

I pretty quickly realized that I couldn't get enough fiber to make a full wig, so I'd originally stuck the heel of a sock onto the cap. A couple days ago, I finally decided to knit her a real hat. 
The hat's attached to the wig, and it really makes the wig fit better.
She's got a skirt in progress, too. It's on the needles and I work on it before bed.

I've been having trouble finding the motivation to actually sew anything except class work recently.
I've been having trouble finding the motivation to sew for classes, too.
I dropped out of school again.

That's not what this blog is for. This blog is for doll things. Here are more pictures of the doll wig.

Helena's dress that I made her in about 8 minutes doesn't actually cover her butt all the way. Being a BJD, she had a defined vulva. This is why she really needs a skirt or something.

Over on the other side of the cleaning supplies is Maddie, who looks fantastic and makes Helena look like a hack job.

Anyway, I'm back. Doll updates are going to be coming as they do. I think Helena is a bit into being a pirate cosplayer, so prep for some of that.
Poor girl really needs shoes.

Registration: Miss Bunny Blanc

When something's $18.99 instead of $19.99, that's a sale, right?

So I bought her on sale.

Yeah.

She's going to be my last impulse buy for a while. I made a pretty big Bodyline order the day I got her, so no more spending money on things for a while.

She's just so pretty, though.

I don't really have that much in the way of plans for her.

I'm going to paint her shoes (again with the detail but none of the painting!) and probably wash her hair. It's completely stiff with product.

Other than that, this girl needs some bloomers and a petticoat and that's it!

After poor Kitty's incident, I'm thinking I might want to stay away from faceups for a while.

Bonus outtakes:

Spackle, I...

I mustache you to stay out of my shot

Bipolar: Monster High Edition (formerly picture hosting post)

I originally made this post so I could use the image hosting on Monster High Arena, but I might as well put my captions in there.


My bipolar disorder is not:

What my extended family thinks it is

What my coworkers think it is

What my roommate thinks it is.

What is is:
hella confusing

It made more sense in context. (original post 2/29/16, updated 5/7/17)

Ghoulia's pants:

 Drafted the pattern a couple days ago, and have been tweaking it.

Problem with working with flippable fabric is that it's easy to mess up and make two of the same leg

This is just entirely to show off my grandma's Featherweight machine. It's a great machine.

 Here she is on her dresser,

And the whole top of the bookshelf, filling up surprisingly fast ^^;

Kitty in the Garden

There's these flowers in the garden outside my door. Some of them are purple, but most of them are white.

 They went perfectly with Kitty's color scheme.

Then she went tree climbing.

The more I work with her, and have fun dipping a round photographing her, the more I realize what work needs to be done.

For example, she needs a longer skirt on that dress, so she isn't always stuck holding her skirt down with her hands.


And an update on the top of the bookshelf drama:

Maddie says one girl can hold another's hand without it being a big deal, but it looks like it might have meant a bit more than that to Kitty.

Registration: Lorna McNessie

You guys know what a weeaboo is?
And you know how a tea-aboo is a weeaboo for England and a freeaboo is a weeaboo for America and the like?
What's a weeaboo for Scotland? Because that's my family.
My grandma one time kidnapped the author of Outlander.

So, even though I said I'd put buying dolls on hold:

 Lorna McNessie, folks. (Also, I googled the origins of if Mc really means Irish and Mac really means Scottish and that's not true, she can be McNessie and still be Scottish. Rottish? She's from Rotland, which is their pun for Scotland. Costa Shreika is my favorite of their puns.

I was looking at her in the box and her scales and fins would be so much fun to texture.
Also there's an issue with her belt that makes it so you can't have the belt and the tail and the stand at the same time.
I don't think I'll get too elaborate with her, because I like how she is and I have so much to work on anyway.

And I know it's a bit insensitive to canon to take pictures of her at the beach, because of the whole freshwater/saltwater subplot. But unfortunately, I don't live three blocks away from a lake.

I don't have a picture of it, but her stomach isn't scaled, it's just got a celtic knot on it. It's weird.

Things Ghoulia Now Has

A dresser with a bookshelf, three drawers with chalkboard notes and doodles, five books, five issues of Dead Fast (bagged, boarded, and buttoned like a true nerd), and a Dead Fast action figure/bobble head.

As previously mentioned, all the girls are getting a piece of furniture each (Frankie will have the little dress form that's floating around. Kitty has the floor lamp, and Maddie's getting a glass bottle with a Drink Me tag). Ghoulia's is the first to be done. I might put a little fabric runner on the top to make it look a bit more complete, but so far I'm happy with what she's got.

Here we've got a couple of the doodles, Dead Fast (who is a repainted Deadpool), and her books. You can't see the titles, but I'm pretty proud of them. They are:
~Her Home Eek textbook
~Add Another Nought: Quantum Physics
~SUDO-ku: Making Your First Linux OS--The cover of this one was the sudoku puzzle from the newspaper. I'm so proud of this title
~Perl and Lisp: A Love Story--This is the cocker spaniel book. I was winging it.
~STAY--There was a very interesting advertisement, and I cut out part of it and stuck it on a little book for the hell of it

And on the other side, Dead Fast.
They're all just newspaper clippings, folded in half and doodled on. The boards are a piece of watercolor paper that got destroyed. The buttons are post-it notes and the bags are taped together ziplock bags.
Personal pet peeve is when you can't find actual comic bag buttons or yard sale stickers, so you have to use tape, and then when you reread them you rip the bag trying to get the damn tape off. To save Ghoulia that pretend struggle, she has pretend buttons on her pretend comic bags.
My friend is sending me clippings from an actual comic preview catalog, so Ghoulia's definitely going to have more comics in her future.

Converting the drawer shelf to a bookshelf was actually pretty easy. I spraypainted a piece of watercolor paper (I recently had a whole pad of it ruined) with the same paint the housing got, and then Super Surface sealed it until it got stiffer. Then it was just some glue, and bam, bookshelf.

Speaking of bookshelves, it seems there's some drama on the top of The Bookshelf where The Collection lives:

A lot of the time, I just shove them into place, and then adjust the heads and hands to look more natural. Today, this was the scene that was formed.

It's like two friends can't even hold hands without getting some judgmental stares from the nearby girls. I mean, I know one of them's tiny, but maybe they're just sharing a special friend bond.

We shall see how this develops.


Things Ghoulia does not have: pants.

Spoiling Myself

I had to spend a lot of money on my car today, so I also decided that meant I could spend a bit of cash on myself. So here's a haul picture and a picture of some nice dinner I got.

These pan pastels were 75% off. I was dipping a round with them and I really like them. They're very highly pigmented, and blend well, but stay where I put them. I could even paint them onto Gooliope after she's been Super Surface'd.
They have been hit with the Prop 65 warning, but if you check out that first picture you can see my lovely disposable respirator I got for working with pastels and sanding. Nothing saying I need it for sure (haven't checked the MSDS), but it was $2. As a bonus, the mask means when I breathe out, it's diffused. This means I don't accidentally blow any powder away before I set it.

This little dresser is going to become Ghoulia's (Gooliope's getting the wooden chest). This paint job's been switched around. I'm going to do chalkboard drawers, and take out one of the drawers to make a shelf for books and Dead Fast figurines. I just need to figure out what to draw on the drawers. Obviously Ghoulia doodles and notes, but her friends have to draw every time they come over too. You know you had that friend with the chalkboard paint on her wall that you drew on every time.

I also picked up two paint on varnishes, to see if they'd be useful in terms of modding. They're much safer than sprays, but if they don't work as well, there's no use in them being safer.
Polly V MSC is going strong.

Tomorrow, I promise I'll at least get started on making Ghoulia her poor pants.

Gooliope Progress: Shower Time.

Here she is, with all her curlers in her hair.

Yes, I can curl a Monster High doll's hair in my shower.
Last time I thermapenned it, the water out of my tap was 140 degrees. That ain't code but I'm okay with it.

And here she is, goo drops looking nice, too.  Her eyebrows look awfully light in these pictures.
The satin finish on the sealer spray's definitely the right choice here. I know it's not perfect for all dolls, but it makes her look gooier.

 When I was customizing Maddie, it was weird because I felt awkward having a naked doll floating around. Somehow, I've gotten over it, or it's not as weird having Gooliope naked.


Instead of curing her hair, I did a combination of curls, little braids, and twists. It ended up exactly how I want it, except a little shorter. Somehow, either in my combing or in the factory curling, the ends of a lot of the hair got really frayed and damaged, and I decided to trim that off.
She's still rocking it, though. It still looks like the art, and it looks like the design elements I have in my head.

Started adding some shading onto the shoes, too. Those shoes have so much detail molded in that isn't painted. I'm doing a lot more shading than I am actual painting, but I think these shoes are going to look fabulous when they're done.

And then it'll just be onto that dress.

That and finishing all my other projects. Ghoulia's waiting patiently for some pants.

Registration: Kitty Cheshire, Book Party

The weather was nice, so I decided to take Kitty out into the garden for pictures.

Other Kitty.

This Kitty.

This is Book Party Kitty Cheshire. Book Party's a line of budget dolls, so each doll has somewhere between zero and two accessories, and no stand. The Book Party line contains Kitty Cheshire, Lizzie Hearts, and Ginger Breadhouse.
From a costume design standpoint, it's interesting how they dressed three dolls in what are effectively tube dresses, and used plastic necklaces to give the dresses details, making intricate designs cheaply. I paid $15 for Kitty, which is about $5 less than a signature line doll, and twice the price of the basic line doll. The basic line comes with stands, too. I might pick one up to give Kitty their stand. Also maybe to have another victim friend model experiment doll to work on. The basic line of dolls don't have articulated wrists or elbows, and have molded on shirts. I don't like them so much, but I do need a stand. And maybe a faceup victim.
Then again, Kitty's pretty hard to pose with her single joints, and I think getting good pictures with one of the basic line girls would be more frustrating than fun.

For Kitty, my plans are to take her necklace and remake it into her dress, give her a better skirt, and just make her match the box art more. I'll paint her little book purse (I love her book purse) and make little things to put into it so she's not carrying an empty book around. I'll see if I can add some details to her shoes. I'll definitely be repainting her little ears.

And I think her eyes aren't level? If I decide they aren't, I'm going to redo her face, but faceups are haaarrd.

Hard to say.

Break's over, time to go back to work, but here's a little picture of what Gooliope's doing:

You know. Hanging out.