Yesterday I plugged away. I’ve trying to finish ongoing doll products but am quickly figuring out what small supplies I need…and don’t have.
Beast Boy needs some EVA craft foam to make his belt. I don’t have it.
17″ Starfire needs more “Grapeberry Saran…just a tiny bit..Don’t have it.
I started to thing about the next steps for a lot of my unfinished dolls and many of them require a fabric store trip.
And that’s how “I won’t start new projects” became “This is a pandemic…does trying to plan my dolls really matter? If I’m working on my Japanese study and content for online dance lessons while stuck at home…does not starting new dolls matter? Because I have a CRATE and more of raw dolls and that’s stuff I can do without more supplies.”
And THAT is when I took a hacksaw to two dolls.
Hormone Monstress from Big Mouth it is.
She’s not doll shaped. Her face is probably going to be “interpreted” a good deal She’s REALLY not monster high shaped…but I have a container of Monster High dolls.
It took me some trial and error to find a leg length I liked. The hot glue is just there to bulk her up before adding Apoxie Sculpt.
Why did I add hot glue before I was REALLY finished? Because, remember me NOT planning this and winging it? This is what winging it with wire/tools/glue looks like.
Damn, I feel like those…calves? need to be shorter still. just a smidge.
Well. I can wait for this Apoxie layer to dry and then saw those calves down a bit.
And…yes..I did say I hacksawed two dolls…but then I realized I was out of the tinfoil I’d need to create an armature for three tails…so that’s on pause.
As an elementary school English teacher employed by a dispatch company in Japan, March always involves a dip in work and pay for me.
This year has been a whole ‘nother experience.
My contract year and the days I had to show up to school ended March 10th, although my actual classes ended in February 28 due to Covid19. A few days before the contract ended I learned that the company I work for had lost the contract for the city I worked in..and didn’t have any cities near me they could shift me into.
Next school year starts April 1st. Japan is still planning on it starting…but then again in Japan people are still going to cherry blossom parties and Prime Minister Abe is JUUUST starting to admit that maaaaaaaybe the Olympics won’t happen this year…but the Gov. of Tokyo wants to declare a lock down. It’s all complicated. I think Japan is in denial.
I’ve had the insanity of being an asthmatic social distancing myself when it feels like so few other in this country are people are… while also making sure I’m employed the next coming school year…even though I think that the school year maybe shouldn’t start.
All while trying to get more organized through the filter of knowing I have ADHD and need new skills, at a time my days and nights all blend together in mostly emptiness.
My family back home is taking precautions. I would often travel to see them this time of year but..well..I can’t do that during a job hunt and the end of the world. I worry about them. I really do.
In the last 48 hours I’ve turned down a job, thought I had another job, lost that job, applied for different jobs, and accepted a job offer from my previous company now that they’ve had an opening that’s…not near me but not worse than last year?
And there have been tears.
My friend Ebony works in a preschool. Her school isn’t public so she’s been at work this whole time. Things have been rough on her. We have texted dailyl
One thing I’ve been able to feel great about is that I finished a surprise gift for Ebony and sent it to her home..and she got it and cried.
This is what we do now, we cry. We all cry a lot because there’s just so much to be overwhelmed by.
This is what she opened:
I didn’t take enough in progress photos, sorry.
That’s a Frankie Stien Monster High doll as Sally from The Nightmare Before Christmas…but I think you knew that.
The process started before I had an airbrush so I had to sand and build up the color of the doll (Frankie is more light greenish blue than blue) with chalk pastels and layers of fixative. And then I had to pencil in her seams.
You can see the color difference clearing in this shot of the finished body and the head (uncolored) after I’d rooted it with brushed acrylic yarn.
But this time I had an airbrush to get the base color down for the face before painting.
With the dress, this was my first time using acrylic paints, thinned with a textile medium, to create the whole dress pattern.
I made a base dress from white cotton. Then I painted in the color patches. Once dried I used a permanent fine-line marker for details. Finally I over-stitched sections with black thread and added a stitched on patch for depth.
For all the turmoil…and stillness…the last few weeks have contained…I have brought some joy to someone.
I have also been making progress in organizing my projects, tasks, life and daily needs in a bullet journal….figuring that a system developed by a designer with ADHD might be a good fit for me, and so far it is.
Tonight, I get to rest. Knowing that I do have a job come April…I really do..so long as school is a thing. If school isn’t a thing for a while, I have a safety net.
There is much to worry about…but I’m getting out of bed everyday and doing…somethings. I hope you are too.
Welcome to my continued adventures in assuming I’d already shared something because I finished it a while ago but when I looked I’d never posted a final product.
Back story short:
I got a Monster High doll at Dollyterria in Ikebukuro. This was before my haul of MH dolls. This is the doll and I wrote about being inspired by cherry blossom season here. Click through if you want more info on how this started.
I then started using Apoxie Sculpt…and started sculpting all the things.
And then I never posted about it again, even though I finished it in May of 2019.
I painted and painted.
The doll’s previous hair looked sad when contrasted with her new body so, inspired by Dollightful’s Sakura Pink creation, I rerooted with fake hair and so much pink 100¥ shop yarn!
FACE! Now, a half a year later, there are things I’d change. I may go back in some time to add a pure black to the eyes…but I’m trying to present without insulting myself so that’s all I’ll say.
Before and After
My issue with the eyes wasn’t until I took these photos and few days ago, outside a small bar near me that has a lot of flowers….an old man came out, saw me, giggled, and said “nice photos?’
I’m sure I’ll find more items I have spaced on presenting.
My childhood room was not edged with realistic horse replicas nor did My Little Pony (the first 80’s round which was square aimed at girls my age) ping my interest. Nor did the new wave of My Little Pony Friendship is Magic capture my attention.
I’ve seen an episode, while obsesively brushing out tangled pony hair, at my friend’s house in Madison…because her son is a fan…but I didn’t go back to Japan and watch any more.
Then, at the end of 2018 a My Little Pony Equestria Girl Rainbow Dash 11 inch fashion doll came into my home via a box of random gifts.
Do I understand what is going on with this doll? No, I don’t.
I don’t know how the horses became horse/girls on two legs other than the fact that fashion dolls sell. Or maybe horse dolls got tired of carrying passengers (because that’s NOT the kinda pony My Little are) and decided “I AM THE ONE WHO RIDES. ”
Then came muse Caty. Last seen as a Byul.
Her instagram looks are a place I cruise when I’m looking for doll inspiration because she’s talented and ‘effing adorbs. She usually does a series of LGBTQ inspired looks for gay pride and that’s when I knew.
Bi-Little Pony.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. First there was the “reroot or fix up” question. Rainbow Dash has rainbow hair. Pride. Keep. Boil perm.
Boil perms are still hit or miss for me. Each one gets a little better…I hope.
Inspiration.
At this point I took Bi-Little Pony off my media posts. It’s common for my work in progress to vanish at times…but this time it wasn’t just my inability to focus.
Caty’s family suffered a terrible loss.
I wanted this doll to go to Caty as a small “Hey, people are thinking about you and you are loved” but I didn’t want her to have any hint of what I might be sending from Japan.
I knit a dress using crochet thread, size 0 needles and this on-line pattern. You drop a stitch on these and it’s nearly impossible to recover. Kinda hellish. That’s why I ended with a fluffy yarn skirt with leftover yarn from…oh, I never updated that project here so I guess I’ll do that next.
Then I finished the face, embellished the dress, found a tiny jacket in my stash and painted her boots.
And now Bi-Little Pony lives with Bi-MUA-Caty in America.
Let us now sing praise for 100¥ acrylic yarn…here for me at my time of need.
Without too many details, it’s been an unwelcome revisiting of the end of May 2019.
Vague story vague: within days two distinct circles of friends in different locations were revealed to contain two different types of horrible predators…and a lot of nasty information poured out of each. This week one of those two cases came to a settlement that involves only probation, no jail time, for a person who has torn through lives.
Cue the unwelcome few days of time travel none of us asked for.
And this brings me to the acrylic yarn. It’s not ALL the self-care but it is some of it.
I’m not the first woman in my family to find comfort in acrylic yarn.
My paternal Grandma Leah used to use the cheapest, squeekiest, most eye-hurtingest colors of acrylic yarn to knit and crochet hand scrubbers, sturdy foot “booties” and hard to explain dolls and toys…for cash or family.
Preferably craft-stall cash.
She lived with my father and step-family for years. We, family, all had these booties in inexplicable colors. Well, semi-explicable; they were the cheapest yarns for the best return on her investment of supplies. I also used to have a yellow and blue clown down with two distinctly different length legs where she’d just run out of yarn and ended.
Grandma Leah had a huge stash of different sources of patterns but it seems like the booties came from a hand-written letter from a neighbor. I have some of the letter but no more of the booties.
Dear Leah;
Once before I had to show someone how to make the slippers. It takes a long time to do it. I can’t read a pattern. I’ve never had one for the slipper. Thelma showed me how. I only know one way to show you.
I start with each step. I just hope your friend can follow the directions. They go fast. 1 3 1/2 oz of yarn will make a pair. They sell real fast at x-mas time. You can make a pair in an evening and more if you’re fast. They get $5.00$ a pair….
What I do to cheap acrylic yarn is a transformation in the opposite direction. Knitting builds up form. I take acrylic yarn and attack until it is broken down into thin synthetic fibers. This is time consuming.
What am I looking at?
Upper left hand corner: Acrylic yarn.
Upper right hand corner: Acrylic yarn that has been tethered to something and then brushed with a wire pet brush until it gives up hope. After this step comes using a flat-iron for hair set at 140.
Lower left hand corner: the yarn fuzz after ironing, being cut free, lined up, and attached at one end with glue to create hair wefts.
Lower right hand corner: building a wig from this insanity.
What doll is that and when did you make it?
Oh, yeah, I’ve been away from the blog. This is where I show you some of what I’ve been working on.
Googling tells me this Monster High doll is Twyla. She is a freshman student at Monster High and is a boogeyman, daughter of the Boogey Man, she lives in the Boogey Mansion. This specific Twyla is the “Coffin Bean” coffee shop release.
But to me, she’s one of the many used dolls I bought off a girl in America using a charity shop go-between.
Let’s check out what I did with her.
She’s loosely inspired by the aesthetics of Disney’s Haunted mansion.
I used the Rococo Hime Lolita dress pattern to create this outfit. If you’re thinking of using easy fraying fabric like I did….don’t. headaches.
I sanded off the “spirit swirls” or whatnot on her legs and used chalk pastels and acrylic to create a bat motif.
I created this wig with exhausted acrylic fiber, a syrofoam egg, a homemade wigcap, and a handful of things from the 100¥ shop.
Then it was time to repaint her face.
I repainted her shoes and added accents. Again, solid nod to 100¥ shops.
And finally, some earrings:
As for me, tonight I’ll be brushing, brushing, and brushing yarn and slowly creating wefts…allowing the feelings to come and they must…and focusing on what is really a low-stakes unessential and beautifully absurd addition to the strange world of things I make.
One of my finished projects this summer was Little Dead Riding Wolf.
You may have noticed that I never show concept sketches. It’s not how I work. It’s never been. With dolls as with creating dance costumes I start with a very hazy concept, maybe gather some inspiration, and let the tools take me where they will.
I’m not proud of this. It’s just what I’m comfortable with.
In art school I’d just tackle large sheets of paper and see where the drawings took me. I think in my fine arts classes, because I drew (worked in dry and thus relatively fast materials) and i wasn’t majoring in illustration with need to think of a client, it was encouraged.
When I started dancing I was more comfortable soloing improvisationally than I was confident in making choreography…but in grappling with how to learn AND create choreography I’ve become a better dancer overall. In this new-to-me art I think some pre-planing and concept sketches would save time AND help me be more productive overall. I just need to figure out how to start that journey.
I’m getting that out here so I can think on it.
Little Dead Riding Wolf started out hazy.
The concept was part of the original doll’s name…I had one from the 20 doll haul.
And I knew that I wanted to do 1). more experimentation with Goth/Fantasy concepts on darker skinned dolls 2). unraveled yarn to create kinkier textured hair.
I bought red and brown acrylic yarn at the 100¥ shop. I unraveled it and re-rooted her head.
I covered her hair to spray her with a few priming layers of Mr. Superclear and got to coloring with chalk pastels, water color pencils and acrylics.
Next came how to redress her. I decided that Little Dead Wolf would want to warn possible grandchildren she met in the forest NOT to mess with her. I set to making a skull from Apoxie Sculpt. Nothing says “nope” like the skull of your vanquished enemies.
I drafted the cape myself. The red/black velvet is left over from a dance costume I made for myself.
The making of that and the lace beading can be found on my costume page.
For the rest of the outfit I turned to Requiem Art Designs. Etsy: DGRequiem is THE source to turn to when you wanna make doll outfits but don’t want to make your own pattern AND are willing to pay another artist. I went with her Rococo Lolita pattern.
And I took a trip to Nippori (our fabric street) for remnant scraps.
Let me tell you, it took me two tries to get the brocade to behave. I have a less than perfect version I’ll find a use for.
Then I made a short skirt using her pattern AND a longer skirt by free-styling it.
The awesome belt came off one of the other MH dolls from my haul.
I layered those two skirts. I’m a huge fan of the idea that you just layer fabrics until they look expensive and fabulous.
For a final touch I painted those horrible purple boots to match her new outfit.
I’ll need to make her a basket soon but for now I love her.
The most awesome doll in the doll haul from the American consignment shop:
MONSTER HIGH INNER MONSTER SHIVERING SAD, EEK EXCITED, & HAUNTINGLY HAPPY DELUXE PACK
So great. So great. Mine was without a box but I don’t care about boxes. I had everything but the notebook/diary. I don’t need that diary. I have this here blog.
Oh, and mine had one other issue.
A head detached from her body. I had yet to really understand how awesome she was. But her head alone had an exposed brain that, when pressed, changed her eye colors.
With much rattling and tweezers I finally got the broken neck-part out of her head. This allowed me to figure out how the neck and head were supposed to attach.
Oh, did I not mention that her body plates come off to expose her SPINE and such? When I bought the lot I DIDN’T KNOW. Even when I got it I hadn’t googled for more info. I only figured it out when I saw how the seams of the body moved a bit when I manipulated the head.
I opened her up!
I then drilled a screw partway into her neck and used Apoxie Sculpt to make a new head node.
Here’s the copy for this amazing product in bold.
Monsters have feelings too!
Yes, we do.
And now they can express their monster moods – or yours!
Awesome! I am a sucker for toys and stories about how our emotions are a natural part of who we are…thus my Inside Out love.
This Monster High ghoul has creepy cool transformative features and killer ways of emoting!
Me too!
With three of options, this monster can run the gamut of emotions from Shivering Sad to Eek Excited to Hauntingly Happy.
I have more emotions than that. That’s not technically running the gamut.
Fun fact about “Eek Excited.” I will respond to Eek. If I see it typed out I will identify with it as possibly meaning me. This comes from my misspent youth being a 14 year old with a 2400 baud modem who learned about local chat lines. I quickly chose the handle Eclipse and from ages 14-19 that was generally shortened to Eek.
Press on her scary cool neon brain to change the look in her eyes – the eye-changing feature even works with the wig on!
Three different eyes!
Swap out the three faceplates to change her facial expression from gore-geous to gaga.
This is something I’ve wanted with a MH doll AND IN LIFE. Extra faces.
This is another thing that dates back to my childhood love of the Oz books and the brief appearance of Princess Langwidere.
“Langwidere is a different person every time I see her. For the only way her maids and subjects can recognize her at all is by means of a pretty little key made out of solid ruby; which she always wears on a dainty chain attached to her left wrist. So when we see the key we know we are beholding the Princess.” ―Ozma of Oz (1907)
That key was to her hall of HEADS.
Back to dolls.
Plug emoticons (emotion-based peggable pieces) into her inner skeleton to make a literal statement and get even more “in touch” with your emotions.
Ok. So you can put a clear chest plate on her and see her spine/pelvis AND put little mood pegs into that skeleton.
I’m just keeping the thunderstorm in her pelvis. I feel it. There are three more places to plug in emotions on the rib cage. All extra emotions can be stored in her purse. I generally done have emotions in my purse but I usually carry around emergency nuts in case my blood sugar drops and I get Radically Raged.
And of course, fabulous feeling fashions and clawesome corresponding accessories can match the mood on the outside.
Clawed omelette is what my autocorrect made of Clawesome.
Throw on the enchanting wings, the creepy cool genie tail or both! Choose a hair-raising purple ponytail or a colorful wig. Swap the chest plates and the fashions to complete the look. When the right mood is captured, record the monster’s story in the fill-in-the-blank diary to take personalization to new scary heights.
Ok. The creepy cool genie tail. I had questions.
In the pictures of the lot I was going to get I kept wondering, “What is that hungry penis plant thing? Will it make more sense when it arrives? ”
It DIDN’T.
Turns out, that’s for her Eek Excited look. You pull out her legs and shove her pelvis in that. That’s ok and not disturbing at all! Probably less disturbing than the uncanny valley that Will Smith often inhabits in the live action Aladin.
This video from Surprise Egg and Toy Collector on You Tube shows each of the three looks.
Eek Excited:
The whole video goes over every aspect I mention in better detail and each of the looks It’s late and I’d rather not set up to take photos.
The set includes one full doll with eye-changing/brain feature, three interchangeable face plates, two peggable/interchangeable skeletons, one additional chest plate, three monsterrific accessories (wings, tail, furry peplum), multiple inner emotion-based pieces (that snap into the doll), two over-the-top fashions, one pair of shoes, doll stand, brush and fill-in-the-blank diary. It’s a brand new way to play! Collect other dolls and expansion Add-On Packs for even more frightful options (sold separately). Ages 6 and older.
I would have gone insane for monster high dolls if they’d launched at the right time of my childhood…or in my childhood AT ALL.
I’m not changing this one.
She’s currently wearing another doll’s outfit and being a Sad rocker.
And doing Sadness a great concern.
But, most things do Sadness a great concern. It’s her thing, really.
A dooooozy of a month…but not as bad as last year. It was the one year anniversary of the horrible reveal that one of my friends is an international con artist and another friend is so much worse (the legal case on the second still drags on). So while things have sucked…last year around this time I was only getting 3-4 hours a sleep and had a few breakdowns.
This May…not great. It was physically busy as I continued to grow into my new job and new commute, in that uneasy valley between full paychecks, and while still substitute teaching an extra night of dance lessons for the second month in a row. Then the last week hit HARD.
In October of last year, my shrink had to move to Hokkaido. She set me up with a decent doctor. That second doctor is now hospitalized and it’s not clear when or if he’ll return to practice.
After 9 months of waiting, my application for permanent residency was rejected. I’m waiting on an official reason.
And then there’s this…
The baffling absence of The Professor. That’s a “have you seen my pointy antisocial pet” sign. It’s been almost a week with no signs of him.
My good friend Ebony went through health hell here on her Scammer-versary. ..so we’ve been using LINE to check back and forth in a “Hey, I think I”m doing better for these last two hours than you…how can I help?” way.
Mercury isn’t in retrograde, the universe is just an asshole.
But…life goes on and there’s much to doll up on so I figured I’d use some of my Sunday to start figuring out where to begin on updating this.
I do have a whole HAUL of dolls. A friend in America works at a consignment shop and sent me some photos. I promptly made a 9-year old girl (who was supper nice to her dolls in a way I never was) very happy by buying her whole collection.
The Pics.
One doll isn’t featured because I’ll get to fixing her later.
AND props and extra shoes!
Which brings me to the first thing I did. I primed and repainted that furniture!
My Dolls now have the fainting couch of my dreams.
And I have another new shelf.
So, one foot ahead of the other and one hank of hair at a time.
It’s common to find Monster High/ EAH dolls without hands. This is only going to get worse as the line is discontinued.
Now I’m trying to find a way to deal with that when I don’t live in a country with much in the way of replacement parts.
I think I’ll eventually have to learn how to cast resin but until then:
Try 1 for a hand-less EAH doll:
Obitsu four hand set for 21/23 (about 800¥)
Right off the bat the peg that needs to be inserted into the arm is way too long and thick.
Left: EAH Hands Right: Obitsu
The Obitsu hands don’t have the lovely long fingers of a fashion doll, the wrist is thick, and the colors are limited.
This color is actually close to the body I’m using so I probably won’t blush them right away.
I set about cutting and sanding/dremelling away the excess peg.
And testing the fit.
Until it fit!
It’s not the most elegant solution. The rubbery hands aren’t easy to sand or shape. It works though. They can always serve as placeholders until spare hands are found, if ever.
Up Soon:
I’ll be trying the Pure Nemo hands, which come in a wider selection of hand poses and might be easier to sand and shape. These will also require whittling down.
I’m also drying to airdry polymer clay and apoxie Sculpt to see if I can make my own forearms in the future.
And I knew that I wanted to do 1). more experimentation with Goth/Fantasy concepts on darker skinned dolls 2). unraveled yarn to create kinkier textured hair.
Do It Yourself: WFU 