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 ^^;

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.

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: Gooliope Jellington

Look at this lovely girl. She's so pretty, I just had to get some pictures before I messed her up.

There's no way I'm touching this faceup. It's so detailed and so pretty, and absolutely centered onto her eye bulges. The little radioactive hilights kill me. All this is going to be getting is a coat of Super Surface to protect it, and Sculpey Gloss on her eyes and lids.

I'm going to detangle and recurl her hair, because that's easy and makes it so much better.

Her body has these adorable goo drops molded in that I'm going to blush to give them a bit more contrast and a bit more jelly of a look.

With the exception of the horses on her shoes (I'm not saying I bought her for the shoes, but saying that I didn't buy her for the shoes is definitely not a completely correct statement), none of her accessories are painted, but they are all molded with a lot of detail. I think I'm going to go in there with a tiny paint brush and some wet paper towels to add contrast. If it works really well, I'll post a tutorial.
My default to things like this is to do the shoe polish trick, but the plastic they use for the accessories won't hold the polish, as I found out on Maddie.

I'm not sure what I'm going to do with her dress just yet. I definitely like the idea and wish it had more texture, but damn is that going to be a tricky pattern to replicate. I might have to take a couple liberties with it.


So, I took off all her clothes and accessories and sprayed her down with Krylon Chalky Finish Matte Spray.
I've got a review of some MSC alternatives coming up (not that MSC doesn't work really well, but, well, you need a half-face respirator when you're using it, and I left mine in my other pants. I've been looking like mad for an alternative that isn't as bad for you). In that review, I discovered that Krylon Chalky Finish and Krylon UV Resist Matte perform pretty closely, but the Chalky Finish has a shorter trying time and isn't carcinogenic in large exposures. The UV Resist is suspected to be carcinogenic in long exposures, but it does resist UV, which Chalky Finish doesn't. Super Surface is an excellent, no respirator needed, satin finish that is very resistant to scratches, so I like it as a top coat. It was the only spray I used on Goulia's faceup, but the Krylon does grab pencils and pastel better.



Turns out if you wrap the head in plastic bags and shove it in a Big Gulp cup from 7-11, you can spray the whole body at once without waiting for a side to dry.

And there goes my timer, drying time is up, time to get to blushing

Two new additions

A crappy webcam picture of my two newest additions:

That would be Miss Cheshire and Miss Jellington.

I was only going to collect the big dolls, but Book Party Kitty has so much potential, and she's a budget doll so I grabbed her.

And Gooliope is just so beautiful that I had to get her. Those shoes. That faceup. I'll probably paint her accessories and remake the dress.

Found some Monster High accessory packs at the Dollar Tree of all places. So, full collection pictures coming tomorrow.

Complete: Madeline Hatter

17" Madeline Hatter
Ever After High
Clothing Remake.

Remade the dress skirt, reused the bodice. Remade the lace glove cuffs. Painted the necklace, teacup hat, and shoes. Hot-water curled her hair.

Before and After:

This doll's strange because all of her accessories have molded details, but none of them are painted.

Remade the skirt to give it more volume. Replaces her glove's plastic lace cuffs with actual lace.

The gold border on her skirt is the inside of the brocade, turned to the outside. It's held in place with bullion tacks, which give it the look of the little patterned edge, but in texture instead of print. Bottom is the pattern on the original skirt, which I think looks quite a bit like this brocade.

And here's the whole ensemble. Except the wrist cuffs, none of it's sewn on. All removable. The petticoat has an elastic waist, and the black glitter tulle edging is trimmed with a green and a purple ribbon. The dress has the striped ruffle attached. and closes with four snaps in the back.
All the paint that I added to the accessories was done in the form of a paint pen and a bottle of nail polish. And I made her a quick little cover-up top, because sewing while she was there topless was a bit weird. That's made out of bleached muslin that I had hanging around, with ribbon straps and some fabric marker edging. She doesn't wear it under the dress.

While I was taking these pictures, I was thinking I should probably make her some bloomers. Oh well. Tomorrow is another day.