Unsticking Bubbles.

It was on Bubbles that my series languished. I’d chosen one of the two Auroa dolls I have. It’s not a face sculpt I much like. The eyes feel too large and wide apart but I thought it might work for Bubbles.

Alas, her hair parted on the side and I found no way that I could make her hairstyle work. I chopped off her hair and thought I’d make a wig….but I never did.

Last week, in surveying projects to finish up, I knew in my heart it was time to move on…and try making Cinderella into Bubbles instead.

When I first got Cinderalla she was sporting some facial stains that I finally bleached off with 10% Benxoyl Peroxide acne cream this summer.

I figured that she had a middle-part hair and would work…but it was difficult to really make out the full part because of how matted her hair was.

I conditioned and brushed and conditioned and brushed. At first I did so without gloves and then realized that if I’m going to increase doll work I’ll also need to increase protection to my skin and body. Gloved up.

It was only once it was fully dry that I realized the top part was great for pigtails….but the hair becomes too sparse in back to support that style.

I’m never going to fully reroot a Disney Animator doll again, that was a special hell, but her hair seems easy to match and I’m fine with just adding a part and longer bangs in front.

Which is how Bubbles came to get the back of her head removed so I can more easily glue and access skull bits without removing her head.

I’m not going to have time this week to get more hair, so I don’t expect to get any further on her until after the dance studio has it’s show. The rest of my night tonight is for cleaning and costume alterations.

craft, Doll, monster high, Uncategorized

Bi-Little Pony, for Caty.

I wasn’t a pony girl.

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.

craft, Disney, Doll, sewing, Uncategorized

Melody, complete!

I HAVE FINISHED IT!

Last I updated about Melody, as far as my searches show me, I’d given up on dying her synthetic hair. I’d pried her head off and started rooting.

MY GOD, that was arduous. The heads of Disney Animators are about the size of softballs.

Towards the end I realized that the the neck hole was so small, and the area I’d need to secure inside with glue was so large…it was near impossible to do cleanly so I…CUT INTO HER HEAD.

Desperate times.

I finished rerooting the head and the skull flap and secured the hair with Aleene’s Clear Gel Tacky Glue. Then I used Liquid Fusion and swearing to fit the head back into place.

I later, after building up enough layed of liquid fusion, painted the seams black. And took photos.

Then onto painting!

I didn’t take in progress photos. This is the final result all at once, with a little outfit I sewed her because I don’t like the idea of sending a naked doll to a friend.

This week I’ll find a box and send her off to Gina and her daughter. And never ever reroot a Disney Animator Doll again.

craft, Doll, monster high, Uncategorized

JINX!

I just can’t stop making Teen Titans Go dolls.

This should be no surprise to anyone who knew me shortly after college when I started to amass a collection of female action figures. It seemed like a hobby that had limits because action figures were even worse back then about not producing or short packing female figures.

I moved away from my collection and, behold, 16 years later realized I COULD MAKE MY ARMY MYSELF.

JINX in the works!

I mean, Starfire and Raven need to have a (woot woot) GIRLS NIGHT OUT.

I found this used, bagged, Monster High Doll, Operetta, at Dollyteria when I went in last week to cash in my point card before it expired. She was stuck into one of the bins as I was browsing.

And her previous owner had melted some of her hair, so I knew I’d be rerooting her.

I wrote about her hair rerooting in “Hair Meditation”

Does Jinx have pink skin? Not really. It’s kind of a dusty gray/purple but when you put SHOCKING PINK hair on her it bumps the skin tone down a notch.

Does Jinx have swirls carved into part of her face and arms? Not to my knowledge but it didn’t seem it’d be that odd for her to have some sort of “jinxing” marks. Jinx in animation like Teen Titans and Teen Titans Go is WORLDS away from her original character…who was a cancer-bald badass Indian super villain in a loin cloth…and serves more as a naughty super powered teen who has moments of just fun.

She’s generally Perky Goth to Raven’s more classic goth…but you know when Dead or Alive’s ‘You Spin Me Round’ drops they both can’t resist dancing…and that’s what I’m going for.

Again I used photoshop express to mirror flip images to get symmetry close.

I still struggle working on this scale. I used to draw on huge rolls of paper and work much looser.

Close to finished.

I also noticed the neck peg was showing signs of wear so I put a layer of Tamiya Epoxy Putty on it. Don’t want the peg to snap after I’ve worked hard.

And this brings us to the hair. How was I going to shape Jinx’s hair? Well, I decided to make soft horns out of felt and stuffing. I wrapped and stitched down some of the shed acrylic fuzz left after brushing out her yarn (SO MUCH OF THAT).

I left a patch of scalp un-rooted on both sides of the head.

I coated the patch, and the felt base of the horns with liquid fusion and allowed to dry. I wanted to build up that glue base on the horn a bit.

This horn will later be attached to the remaining horn-hole, pinned until the bond is formed, and the hair will be shapped around it and joined with elastic. I’m still figuring out if I want to color a band of hair black between the holders or use an elastic black band for the area near her hair point. It’s temporarily elasticed on one side to keep it out of the way but I have bang/trim shaping to tidy up and some last minute face touches to apply.

But now I rest and let things dry.

craft, Doll, monster high, sewing, Uncategorized

Heads up! Finish it February!

I haven’t been around because illness took me DOWN. After two rounds of antibiotics, more nasal steroids, and the joy of three days in a row without kerosene fumes I’m almost better.

Welcome to Finish-it-February, wherein I try to be frugal by focusing on finishing projects instead of starting them.

Of course, as soon as I proclaimed this on February first and my buddy Ebony said hell-yeah! (she’d suggested Frugal Febuary and I added the ‘ffing Finish It)…I came home and started a new project.

Luckily the Hedgehog bonding scarf worked up quickly with items I had and I could count it as ‘Finished’ and decide to be more mindful in the following days. After February I could easily see myself making a second one and doing a tutorial on it.

Right now I have two focuses for the first half of this month:

1.Put faces on smaller dolls.

On my small balcony you can find these heads right now…plus one more.

Top to bottom:

Wednesday Adams via EAH Raven Queen
Teen Titans Go Jinx via Monster High Operetta
Groovy 70’s Diana Prince via DC Superheros Girls Wonder woman.
(not shown) Raven via EAH Royal Faybelle

Rerooting Wednesday

In early December I received an Ever After Doll and learned about glue seepage.

In some dolls there’s some sort of chemical reaction between the hair/head/glue used (often excessively used) and the doll continues to sweat greasy glue runoff out of her hair plugs. This all happens in the manufacturing process. There are online discussions about what dolls seem to be more affected by it, theories about if a specific factory in Indonesia is to blame for a portion of it, and a lot of tips for fixing it…none of which worked for me so I removed all the glue and hair from my doll.

Since then I’ve seen some baggie dolls at Hobby Off in Kashiwa that have stickers warning customers that the hair of the doll within has “styling wax” in its hair. Nope, Hobby Off, them dolls have seepage. Styling wax is something you can wash away. I know the dolls have seepage because I bought one knowing full well I’d be removing all the hair. I was not wrong.

And, hey, Hobby Off, why didn’t you mention that the Living Dead Doll I bought was infused with nicotine stank?

Back to Wednesday, who has taken more time than I anticipated.

My first mistake, as seen above, is that I forgot to paint the area of the doll the hair was being put into. I caught it midway up and painted the rest and then tried to stain the rooted area with permanent marker…more on that later.

My second mistake was to not worry about how tight together the holes on the hair part were. All the squeezing and contorting of the doll to get all the hair and glue out weakened this already vulnerable area. When I started rooting in the area, 5mm of head/part ripped clear in two. Had I taken a few days to fortify the inside and outside of the holes with Liquid Fusion this probably wouldn’t have happened. As it was I had to do that in mid-rooting. I probably didn’t apply enough in thin layers on top…for fear of getting the Liquid Fusion in the rooted hair…so I had some additional rips later I had to stop and tend to.

I thought I was finished so I glued the inside of the head and let it dry…only to learn my third mistake.

Wednesday has two braids.

To get her part correct, the tight partline needs to continue to the nape of her neck. The picture above and on the right sort of shows that the hairline ends at where the paint ends and then the hair beyond that just hangs straight down. That’s fine if your doll has her hair parted up top only.

I had to fix that with more rooting…and permenant marker because ALL gaps in the black near the hair root SHOWED at the partline.

This is where I am right now. I’ll leave it a few days to make sure the glue has fully cured.

I also regret mixing a little bit of dark brown in the black hair. It wasn’t a bad idea but I didn’t work hard enough mixing it to prevent brown streaks. I wanted more color depth and just got…Meh.

However, I was looking for a deep purple/black hair for a different project, the sort of hair you see in comics where it’s mostly black but highlighted areas show color. I couldn’t find any in Japan and Etsy shipping is costly so I hand mixed pre-existing black/ the leftover purple/red from Starfire 1, and some newly purchased blue.

And that’s the hair rooting update. I hope you’ve gained from it.

Goodness knows my Roomba has gained much from the process.

Disney, Doll, Uncategorized

Who is the gaijin in your neighborhood?

Hi, Neighbors!

Don’t mind us! We’re just TEATHERED* to the balcony here and slathered in acne cream.

*we get earthquakes. I figured it’s best to tie them for their protection.

I dressed them because I rationalized that seeing naked dolls would be more upsetting for my neighborhood.

These girls need sunlight to clean their face-stains. Well, sunlight and acne medication with 10% benzoyl peroxide. I’m nearly out so Gina is sending me some. It’s not available in Japan.

Cinderella’s stains are responding, slowly but surely.

Aurora? Not yet.

About Auroa’s hair. This was my first very intense boil perm.

Unfortunately some of the curls on the right hand side of the photo were too loose and I’m redoing those looser curls. They’re drying right now.

I thought about redoing them all because she’s alarmingly curly but…I might just turn her into Claudia when I repaint her.

craft, Disney, Doll, monster high, Uncategorized

Starting Melody

Meet Princess Melody, the daughter of Ariel and Erik.

That there is all I know about Melody.
Gina’s daughter knows more. She loves Melody. This is how I pay for the 15 dolls Gina sent me. Melody gets made.

From Gina, re: which doll gets Melodied and is she planning to wig or reroot:

I was thinking the belle doll. I didn’t know what would be easiest for you it would be fine if she was a brunette for it as Freya (Daughter) is a brunette if her hair is Good enough. What ever floats your creative juices. Most of all, have fun.

I’m a brunette.

Disney faces are so simplified that hair shape and color do a LOT for identifying character ….So, I wanted to get CLOSE. At least a darker brunette if not black.

The dramatic sweep of bangs and the side part make Melody read as Melody…so I set to experimenting.

First I noticed that there aren’t many videos about re-rooting these dolls.This is probably because of what a pain in the ass removing the heads is AND how much time rerooting a giant head takes. Most customizers seem to go with wigs or gluing wefts to the dolls. Kid play made both of these seem like “meh.” ideas.

I have two Belles in my collection, both from Gina. One is from the first generation of Belle dolls (I can tell because she has blue painted on undies to match the blue dress she came with) and MORE hair, and a second generation doll with yellow undies and less hair.

I started experimenting with more hair Belle and figured I could trick her bangs into doing a side-sweep…even if I couldn’t move her hair part. I set to work seeing if I could get her hair any darker.

I know that synthetic strands don’t really take dye well….but I’m not above magical thinking and believing in the power of stains.

Yeah…No. Neither Dylon nor alcohol and arcylic inks worker to get her hair more than a shade darker.

I have a new sink container now.

I turned to Belle with the more sparse hair…and chopped.

Then I dipped her head in boiling water and set to softening her vinyl. Her neck softened first, ball of the head joint.

Unlike Barbie dolls, the ball part in her neck is what rotates and moves. The section inside her head remains connected to the head….but it had to come out so I could glue the hair from inside the head.

It was possible to get my tools in at the front of the neck between the joint and the head vinyl but in the back section the vinyl and joint were fused together. I had to tear some vinyl.

The neck hole is a little jagged but I figure I can bond it all together with liquid fusion after rerooting and repainting.

The

The pencil line shows where the part will be moving to. I’ll also be doubling up on the small holes at the front of the head so hair can be swept forward for bangs and back for her pony tail…no gaps.

Starting the rooting process. I’ve painted the scalp so it doesn’t show through the hair..

Which was when I realized that I hadn’t done the same for my Wednesday doll. The hair is pretty thick but I stopped rooting to paint the top, as that is where the scalp will most likely show through.

And this is how my Monday evening is looking…hairy.

craft, Doll, monster high, Uncategorized

Seepage part 2: Acceptance.

It’s “Forget the year” season here. Forget the Year parties are something Japanese people have to do with their co-workers, their clubs, their friends, their old high school friends, everyone they ride the train with each morning and more. This means December is chock-a-block full of these parties…and they always involve alcohol.

TOKYO IS DRUNK every weekend now.

And as a bellydancer who does restaurant shows at Turkish restaurants, I’m busy.

Saturday night I did two restaurant shows (one in Shinjuku and one in Shibuya, back to back for two restaurants owned by the same man) after three hours of dance lessons… and that’s always crazy, The first show never starts on time, which means I get trapped in the “dressing area”, and then have to RUN to the train to my next gig.

It’s a closet/office/storage space/ dressing room.

But I don’t have any Sunday private lessons this weekend so my Sunday and Monday have been free to…LET THE HEADS ROLL.

Let’s catch up to Queenie.
Last we saw she had GLUE SEEPAGE.
No amount of scraping and oil blotting would work so I cut off her hair and stuffed it into a glass of soapy water.

And then started the NASTY process of scraping and boiling and pulling all the nasty glue-hair clots from her head.

This took more than an hour. It was like pulling hairy slime-snot from the head. It seemed endless….like a magic show you DO NOT WANT.

I figured I’d remove it all, clean it all out, and reroot…because my friend Ebony pointed out the head would make a great Wednesday Addams base.

This isn’t the only doll head floating around my kitchen on these days off….

Sunday I went into Akihabara to buy some more hair/Tamiya putty/tools.

img_2793-1

MegaMan/RockMan was in front of Radio Kaikan. What I loved wasn’t so much all the dudes getting pictures with him…which was awesome…it was how many of these dudes ALSO gleefully wanted hugs.

I also spotted the world’s saddest Pachinko Panda….

And by the evening I was rerooting Wednesday with black and dark brown hair.

I might finish the reroot tonight but even when it’s finished I’ll have a lot of rerooting in my future. One of the Disney Animators dolls is transitioning from Belle to Princess Melody for my friend Gina’s daughter. A GIANT HEAD TO REROOT.

This….this is how I relax?

craft, Doll, Uncategorized

Seeepage.

My Raven Queen from Ever After High is kinda nasty. She’s introduced me to a new doll ailment: glue seepage.

I should probably avoid negative terms like “nasty”. Getting glue seepage isn’t a reflection on a doll’s character, it’s just something that can happen.

The first time I wrote about her I noted that her hair was oily and oddly sticky.

Well, I boil washed it. Greasy. I washed it with dish soap and hot water…and it was still greasy.

I felt like a fool googling “why does my doll has greasy hair?” because my dolls are not…I repeat NOT…alive. They don’t have skin and scalps and oils like we do.

Apparently there can be a build up of glue that starts to breakdown. Maybe something is off in the glue head ratio…I’m wondering if it’s a chemical thing that can happen like plastic melt…and that excess glue breakdown runoff ends up coming out of the scalp holes via the hair. My hot water and boiling water was just telling that breakdown “get excited and do more!”

If you get rid of all the glue inside the head…that’s what’s holding the hair in place…although I fear if other methods don’t work I will eventually have to remove her hair, remove all the glue somehow. Shame, I like her hair.

I removed her head from her neck peg. Indeed, the neck peg was coated in greasy sticky blobs. I tried to scrub the inside of the head with a paste of baking soda/tea tree oil/coconut oil (diy Goo Gone as goo gone isn’t sold here…I also wanted to use up my tea tree oil. Hedgehogs can’t handle tea tree oil so I can never use it for house stuff) to get larger clumps of glue out. Then I washed the inside a few times with a toothbrush and dish detergent.

I hung it to dry.

Now I’m soaking up excess oil by throwing the head in a baggie with some cornstarch and doing a shake/no bake and comb out process.

Doll heads in white baggies is my new kitchen decor. My friends love my random texts now…

But, as I’m combing it out…it still feels greasy.

I may have a solution. I’ve been thinking about what sort of figures these big moon-faced dolls would work for…

Edward. Goddamned. Gorey.

If I just cut the hair off and scrape out her head….His women are fond of short bobs (doll wig) and…turbans.

yeessssssss

Do It Yourself: WFU

The dolls and art of a woman in Japan trying to be better.

Tag Archives: hair

Unsticking Bubbles.

Bi-Little Pony, for Caty.

Melody, complete!

JINX!

Heads up! Finish it February!

Rerooting Wednesday

Who is the gaijin in your neighborhood?

Starting Melody

Seepage part 2: Acceptance.

Seeepage.