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.

Gooliope: Progress #1

Without and with flash.

After dipping a round or two with pastels and watercolor pencils, I took it all off and started over, using straight acrylic paint. 

Gooliope's body painting has been tricky for me. I started out messing around with the watercolor pencils and pastels that are sort of the standard everyone's using on their blogs, and it just wasn't doing it for me. Maybe I don't have the hang of pastels, maybe my pastels are too cheap, maybe my sealant's are off, blah blah.

So I got to thinking.

Why is the standard in the Monster High mod community the same pastel, pencil, and MSC cocktail that we use for BJD's?
There's a lot of reasons I can think of. Those materials are easy to make changes on. They're soft and blendable and they're flexible and they layer well. They don't contain oil, which can eat into the plastic and make it unstable.
But I think a lot of it is that those are the materials you need for BJD faceups.

And ball jointed dolls are just inherently very different from Monster High girls. One is resin. One is vinyl and hard plastic.
And more importantly, one is $30 and one is $700.

Pastels and watercolor pencils and layer upon layer of Mr Super Clear are completely removable. You can take a doll that's been faceup'd and wipe it down to nothing.
This is very important if you want to sell the doll again, or if you change your mind about the character you built, or you really messed up.
If I really mess up on Gooliope, and I can't change it or fix it, I'm going to go buy a new Gooliope. Sorry, girl.

So all that shading (which looks better in person) is just one color of 97 cent acrylic paint and a 18/0 round brush, and a bit of shading with a #2 shader.

I'm definitely a fan of sealing the body and sealing it again whenever you're really happy with what you're working on. Working in layers is really helpful.

But again, with my sealer problems. See, the fact is, both BJD and Monster High customs have this love of this sealer called Mr Super Clear. You have to buy it from Japan and have it shipped. It has no equal. It is amazing.

And carcinogenic.

See, I think I mentioned earlier that two of my family members were diagnosed with cancer this year (and it's only February! Plenty more family members to go~! *sigh*). One of them has lung cancer, and since he lives where I live, I'm going to get to watch him fight it. He got lung cancer from smoking pretty much his whole life.

Now, I hadn't really thought about cancer, and I had always figured since I've never smoked, don't smoke, and never will smoke, I didn't have a lot to worry about. And then I thought about the times I've done things like spray paint in a dorm room that only had a tiny window that only opened part way. Or use my hand as a pallette for paint without checking the contents of the paint. I was constantly putting my hands in messes and cleaning chemicals that I didn't know what was in, for the past three years at my job. I've always And I started thinking, maybe I should check out what's in the things I'm using.

And, while I was reading up on if the sprays I had bought at Michael's needed respirators to use them, or something, I found out something interesting.

If something is confirmed to be carcinogenic, there are serious labeling laws that fall into effect. Where it can be sold, to whom it can be sold, all that. But if it's a "suspected carcinogen," all it needs is a footnote in it's MSDS.

I'm rambling now.

Now, I live in California, and the one thing you get very good at, living in California, is ignoring Prop 65 Warnings. Some point, a long time ago, a law was passed in California that anything or any place with "chemicals know to the State of California to cause cancer, birth defects, or other reproductive harm," had to be labeled. However, the amount that requires that warning is so small that it's on things like coffee, listed in every gas station, and just in general everywhere that you need to go to get by with your daily life. The threshold for what requires the label is so low that it's impossible to tell the difference between anything really dangerous and coffee. The end result is that I'm always skeptical of anything or anyone who says, "This causes cancer."

However, if I'm going to be using something more than once, and I have options that might be carcinogenic and options that definitely aren't carcinogenic, that's now a factor in my choosing. After all, MSDSs are available online and spell out pretty easily if you need a respirator and all the other bad things that can happen with this stuff.

I'm also interested in finding an alternative to Mr Super Clear that I don't need to buy online. I've now spent about twice as much on sealer than just buying a can of MSC, but god damn it I'm a girl on a mission now. So, I tested Krylon's Matte Finish UV-Resistant Acrylic Coating against Krylon's Matte Sealer from their Chalky Finish line. They performed identically, except for drying time. Really, they were identical. Scratch resistance, pencil and paint adhesion, dust collection, identical. The UV-Resistant blocks UV, the Chalky doesn't. The Chalky dries faster. The difference that mattered to me is that on the MSDS, the UV Resistant said it was suspected to cause cancer, and the Chalky didn't say that. Both of them have a Prop 65 warning on the can. As a side note, Design Master's Super Surface Spray doesn't need a Prop 65 warning, which I find interesting. A look at their matte clear finish says it doesn't need respiratory protection, which means I'm going to seek that out to test.

If I say I don't use Mr Super Clear for danger reasons, I feel like I need to seek out the safest spray for the sake of not being hypocritical.

That being said, I'm not selling my dolls. I'm painting and prettying them up so I can take pictures of them, and for the fun of prettying them and making something. I'm not trying to be the best out there. All I want is to have materials that are good enough that I don't want to stab them while I'm working, and that do what I want them to do well enough that I have fun and not frustration. I want a collection that I'm proud of, not a collection that blows everyone's minds. This isn't a hobby I feel like I should put myself at unnecessary risk for. If I can find two products that perform comparably, I'm willing to choose the safer one over one that performs marginally better.

Now, as I get more into this, I might change that view, but right now that's where I stand.

So, tomorrow I finish painting her legs, give her a coat of chalky finish*, do some highlighting with watercolor pencil, and go in for the finer body blushing with loose pastel powder**. Then a coat of Super Surface, which is a great final seal, and call the body good. Then the hair, another coat of eye gloss, and painting all her accessories.

I might stop there for a while, while I design and plan out how I'm going to make that monster of a dress.


And somewhere in that process I'll make Ghoulia some pants.

____
*Super Surface is safer than Chalky Finish. Requires no respiratory protection, has safer ingredients. However, it really doesn't perform like the other two sealers I've tried. The pencils can't get a grip, and the doll gets shiny look after a while. I can't use it as my main sealer in the same way I can't use a tampon to put on eyeliner. It's a different product.
**I also need to get a disposable respirator for pastel work, I know. I'll pick one up the next time I go out.

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