dolls, but make it fashion

in which i sew and craft things for dolls (mostly bjd, some rainbow high and other kinds too) + sometimes other hobby stuff (drawing, crochet, cross stitch, jigsaws, gardening, the occasional video gaming post)+

[7xiiij]

well i am finally done with waiting in patience. (i actually like the way Chinese tracking updates get translated to "wait in patience," like a somewhat stern reprimand, a lot better than when American websites are annoyingly chipper and cutesy and tell me stuff like "hang tight!"). regardless of how it's worded, my 9+ month wait for a Miracledoll Zhi Shen head ended today. and the box was the fanciest one i have ever gotten for a head, for sure.

she was bubblewrapped and face protected when i first opened it but i took all that off, put her back in her fancy box, and took it all downstairs to take pics. she has one of the plastic card-type COAs in there with her, and they also sent a nice pair of glass eyes. almost a shame she won't be using them-- she'll be getting red eyes since she's going to be a Dunmer 😅

the light was fluctuating so wildly while i took these, a thunderstorm was on its way in. here's her face tho

and then two seconds later it got DARK but here's her profile

and the neckhole in the bottom of her head is HUGE and will need modded to be a much much smaller diameter. she was made to go on a 68cm muscular body and was very much in line with the trend for big tall dolls with very tiny heads. i got her to go on a 60cm Resinsoul body 😆 i was figuring that she was so incredibly pinheaded on the giant body that she'd probably work okay on a smaller 1/3 size. i compared real quick to the bust piece on my Resinsoul body and the proportions are fine; they should be perfect once i do my planned shoulder-widening mod.

i had to take these pics in the unfinished windowsill in my art room bc especially right now with the storm coming in, it's the only room in my house with enough natural light to get a decent photo. but it is also currently an unusable, gutted mess of a construction zone...

this is just one corner of the mess, the moulding and trim is up but i still have to paint it, and the drywall repairs are patched and sanded but the whole walls still need a second coat of blue, and then the other window where i took the head pics isn't done being trimmed out and there is a little more baseboard to be put up on the other side of the room. it's coming along tho...really want to get it done, trying to work on drawings and do doll crafts at my kitchen counter kinda sucks 😅

[7xiiij]

so normally i am pretty good about waiting for bjds even tho i dislike having an open/unfinished transaction for an indefinite period of time. but this Miracledoll head has me feeling jittery...it took nine months from my order to get a shipping notice, which is absurd when i think about how many companies have sent me a single head within a month of ordering (Elfdoll, Angelsdoll and Impldoll all come to mind) and now it has cleared US customs and the tracking just repeatedly says it's "in transit at US." ok but...it went thru New York customs and...i am in the Northeast. it doesn't have to cross the country...🥺 it's only bothering me/making me nervous bc if anything goes wrong and it gets lost it will take me another frigging year to get another one 😭😭😭 when i got the tracking for my recent Impldoll Eudora, i barely looked at it. i just want this stupid Miracledoll order over with...

also waiting on this beautiful perfect custom eye order for my Red Girl project doll. on the left is the custom order approval pic i got from the eyemaker before they shipped and on the right is one of the reference images i sent. absolutely nailed it. i have no regrets about giving up on trying to cast my own black eyebases and make them myself....four ruined sticky messy attempts was enough. i hate working with resin 🫠

[7xiiij]

Wellington re-enacts the "no take, only throw" meme bc he is still just a baby, still learning to play fetch, and also kind of a meathead:

throw???

*considers returning it so i can throw again*

maybe.....

NOPE. LEAVING

ok bye beefies

[7xiiij]

for @tes-gala --my Vestige, in a dress that represents both the Serpent and the Shadow; alcohol markers/colored pencil/various inks on paper

(i'm posting it now bc i want to have at least something up before the Gala ends, and i am realizing that there is just no way i'm gonna finish the whole set of drawings i had planned between now and tomorrow night, no matter how much i want to! there are not enough hours in the day and i am also getting major hand fatigue 😅)

now for the lore behind my design:

i chose both the Serpent and the Shadow for her bc, as the Vestige, she has little to no memory of her former life before being murdered by Molag Bal, and so has no idea what her original birthsign would have been. the Shadow is an obvious choice for her both as a thief and a nightblade, and bc her past is hidden from her. there's also the fact of her technically being a Daedric entity now instead of the human girl she once was, casting a shadow over all of her experiences: a feeling of not quite belonging to the world again despite being in it. the sheer black overlayers in the skirt of her gown, as well as black being the main color of her look, were meant to represent the Shadow.

the Serpent is obviously represented by the snake that wraps around her body as a sort of belt and necklace. i chose the Serpent because of the way that as a constellation, it attacks and disrupts the other starsigns at random. for the Vestige, this symbolizes the way that her life was disrupted and the nature of her existence changed by Molag Bal and thus her original birthsign being lost to her. i incorporated it into her look by having it wrap around her body and throat to allude to the violence of both the Serpent constellation and her being changed into the Vestige.

the background is meant to be a bit of Fargrave-- as someone who is not quite a Daedra but also no longer a normal human, i imagine that of all the places she travels in her adventures, Fargrave and its sort of liminal nature feels very comfortable to her.

a close up of her face. i REALLY wish i could get better photos of my art! it always looks so much better in person. the best way i have found is to put smaller drawings in my scanner, but this one is 14×17" so doesn't even come close to being able to fit in the scanner 😭 and tumblr makes it look even more like buttcheeks...pls click the images to see them looking a little better at least 😥

i will probably finish the rest of the drawings i had for this event at a much slower pace, amongst my other projects and after i let my wrist have a little break 😅

[7xiiij]

so close to finishing the first of my TES gala drawings...! and reaping the consequences of always overdoing everything! in this moment i want to throw this white gel pen out the window 😅 the only thing keeping me at it is how sick the finished drawing is gonna look and the possibility that i will be able to post these before the whole thing is over 🙃

[7xiiij]

art tip: when you're really behind on a drawing that you need to finish in a specific time frame, a very cool thing to do is come up with a really detailed background concept! 🙄

still working hard on my TES gala art, not only bc i think it's a super fun event that i really want to participate in (altho that is definitely true) but also bc i really love what i came up with and want to make it just for its own sake. i put a lot of my character's lore into the look as well as general TES lore and i love it a lot. sadly, it isn't a very simple drawing. actually to show the full look, i have to do two drawings 😅

last year i had loads of ideas for the theme for different characters-- all of my own TES ocs and quite a few NPCs as well! i managed to finish the looks for 3 of my own characters; there was a fourth that i finished long after the event was over and never posted, and the rest i still have as planning sketches that i would love to actually do finished drawings of someday. i designed a super simple background for all of those, so that all the drawings would look like pictures from the same location/event but it would be easy and quick to replicate in each drawing.

this year, i had less time to draw, so i decided to focus on just trying to come up with a design for one character-- my Vestige, from ESO. and i figured since i was just putting all my effort into one character, i could afford to plan a more detailed background

and now i am sort of regretting my decision but also not 😅 regret bc i would be finished already if i'd gone simple again, but not-regret bc the drawings will be so much cooler when i finally manage to finish...

at least i managed to salvage this version, i thought i was gonna have to start over yesterday when one of my Copics leaked all over the figure's face 😭😭😭

[7xiiij]

working on my art for TES gala...running super late... even tho i have had the concept designed and thumbnail sketches made for over a month, i am now actually executing the drawings the week of the event 😭😭😭

posting a little preview to push myself to finish up as fast as i can...my Vestige may show up at the last minute but she will be at the Gala!

[7xiiij]

Impldoll Eudora showed up today-- i ordered her on March 21, and she arrived on May 22, so that's exactly 2 months 1 day and that's WITH a mistake that held things up a little, otherwise she would have been here a week and a half ago which would have been under 2 months for a whole entire doll in gray resin. impldoll continues to be consistently speedy and every time i order from them it cancels out a little bit more of the leftover sourness towards buying bjd from my absolute fail of a Dollshe order ❤️

her gray resin is very cool/blue-toned, which i love-- it's perfect for what i want to do with her. she stands great straight out of the box, which is nice since for once i don't plan on dyeing or modding her body, so i don't need to take her apart and restring at all. (not that i mind restringing-- i just have more than enough doll projects to do already 😅)

her resin color looks a little weird and greeny in this pic, but it's just the pic-- the other ones where she looks very blue gray are way more true to life. this is the medium bust on the 63cm model body, and i'd actually ordered the small. they cast her with medium by mistake, and they'd offered to redo my whole order if i wanted, or if i was ok with the medium and wanted to keep it they'd send me a free head with the doll. i thought the difference between small and medium was slight enough looking at pics, so i'd said i wanted to keep the accidental medium. seeing it in person, i'm happy with my decision-- she looks fine as she is and i skipped having to wait more!

they sent me a Sylvia head in pink resin, which is very cute and which i did not get any pics of tonight, and also the heel feet and a pair of alternate hands in a different pose! (i had only actually ordered the heel legs, so the hands and feet were extras.) super nice of them to send so many extras for a mistake that really didn't end up bothering me anyway.

one more pic of her head, bc i took it so i might as well show it 😂 i really like her face!

looking forward to painting her, but am not going to work on her at all until i get a couple other of the WIP dolls finished first-- she doesn't get to cut in line just bc she's shiny and new 😂 for now i'm just gonna keep her in her box until a few more already ongoing projects are cleared off the list and the worktables. plus i have half of my art room completely torn apart right now anyway (repairing a wall, putting a second coat of the blue paint up bc some areas turned out a little patchy, putting up some moulding) so there's not room to add yet another WIP to the very little amount of currently available workspace...getting all that done on the room itself is actually my big weekend goal 💪

[7xiiij]

did the hand blushing and manicure on the Supia body that goes with the Impldoll Crystal head i've been working on. i love how the nails turned out, but i don't like how Supia's hands are sculpted with the fingers fused together. i could have messed around with separating them, but i just didn't feel like it 😮‍💨 really trying to move thru my many many doll projects and get all the dolls put together without getting hung up on overcomplicating every single step. which is a weakness of mine with anything creative 😅

speaking of getting more projects done...i'd said awhile back that getting a new puppy had really taken up all my hobby time at the end of last year/beginning of this one. here is my big baby now at 7 months old! his name is Wellington and he does like and answer to his big formal name, but his main nickname is Beef or Beefies 🥩❤️ (he really gets excited if i address him as Mister Beef Wellington 😆) anyway, he is much more settled in now and is a very good boy, so i'm able to actually spend free time doing hobby stuff again! hence the more frequent doll progress updates lately. (@dollsonmain i guess he doesn't look that much like Iggy 😂)

and in another installment of Doll Happenings I Am Annoyed With Myself About....😅😅😅

yesterday i bought a Raccoondoll Lara head direct from Raccoondoll (their company pic on the left; mine is a white resin with no faceup) which is fine and wasn't too expensive but means i have to get yet ANOTHER body at some point; and then on the right is the seller's pic of the Supia 65cm boy i bought from the DoA marketplace bc it is old as fuck and was listed for less than $200. a lot of older collectors seem to be using the last little bit of time that Den of Angels is around to clear out their collections! my last floating head (before i bought the RD Lara 😒) was an Elfdoll K and so i decided to ask the seller if she knew if the Supia bodies she was selling would be a good fit with Elfdoll boys. she actually had K heads to show me with, and said "it would work with a neck mod..." and if there's one thing we know about me and dolls it's that i WILL mod a neck 😆 so now i have ANOTHER doll for the Box of Project Dolls 😭😭😭

[7xiiij]

really, Dollmore.....?

i ordered Dollmore lashes from Denver Doll thinking that they'd be doll-sized...and i got regular human sized false eyelashes but with "DOLLMORE" on the plastic tray. i could have just gotten a pair of human lashes from the drugstore or Walmart for like $3 if that's what i wanted. why would i expect human lashes when ordering lashes marked as "doll accessories" from a DOLL COMPANY

i should have just bought the doll sized lashes i used to get from an Etsy seller in Thailand. every pair i ever got from them was perfect 🥲 the only reason i didn't this time was bc the shipping costs to the US blew up so bad that it wasn't a reasonable price for a pair of doll eyelashes anymore 😭 guess i will be cutting the human size ones up like i did for the last couple dolls i put lashes in. it's not like that's not doable, i just thought i had found another source of actual doll size lashes so i am annoyed to find that i have very much not...

in related doll news i also got an email last night from Alice's Collections. good news: the Impldoll Eudora i ordered at the end of March just got to them and is ready to ship to me! bad news: Impldoll made her with the wrong bust size. i ordered small and they cast her with medium. my options were, just keep the medium bust one and they'll add a free random head, or Alice's can send the medium bust doll back and they'll remake my order.

so this is EVERYTHING TOO BIG month for me and dolls i guess 🙄

after looking at the pictures of small bust vs medium bust on the 63cm model body, i decided the difference wasn't big enough to worry about having the whole doll remade. if it had been a large by mistake that would be too different from what i wanted, but at this point it's not drastic and i would rather just have the order completed-- i really don't enjoy the BJD buying process 😒

[7xiiij]

well that didn't take long to do at all...

having the use of a power detail sander makes modding go a hell of a lot faster and beat the shit out of my hands/wrists way less than when i was doing it by hand with wet sandpaper! the exposed white patch sort of breaks up the visual flow but this neck length looks really good to me. and the head fits on it so well now that i was able to just sit it on top of the neck for these pics and it stayed with no assistance at all.

i do think fixing the neck makes the small Zaoll head look better with the body overall. now i just have to clean up my mess with the color difference 😅

[7xiiij]

still couldn't work up the nerve to do Red Girl's second ear, but i did finish the faceup on my Impldoll Crystal head today. this is the second one of my dolls i have painted since i started trying to learn to do my own faceups last year, but it is not the second faceup i've done-- i started painting her and got to various stages before wiping her in disgust like...3 times i think, this faceup that i was happy with enough to keep was the 4th. i've been working on it on and off for weeks

the lighting in this second one is more accurate and also it shows the crystal earrings i added ✨️

i have a set of lashes that should be in tomorrow's mail, i am halfway thru making a pair of eyes for her, and i have her hands sealed and ready to be blushed and manicured. hopefully she will be done by the end of the month, that would be cool

yesterday i started Red Girl's neck mod by sawing off a small amount of the top. the neck was a bit too long for her Zaoll Ramie head; a slight shortening will make better proportions and help the small head to look natural on the lanky body. i knew i was gonna want to mod the neck a little from the start of this project, but i waffled on when to do it: before dye job, or after. before would mean a big sanded area at the top that would probably not take the dye the same as the rest of the neck. after would be what i have now, where i have to cut and sand into dyed resin and expose the original color underneath. either way i'll end up doing colormatching on the neck with paint, so i just dove in with the dye first. now i have a bunch of sanding and shaping to do...

[7xiiij]

two ongoing bits of doll project i am heavily procrastinating on:

1. Red Girl's ear mods. i got red Apoxie Sculpt so the color matching would be less work. it will still need a little adjustment, but nowhere near what it would take if i'd used white Milliput. i did the first ear last week and haven't been able to bring myself to do the second, bc i was so happy with how the first one came out and now a Precedent has been established and what if i can't duplicate it and she ends up with one good ear and one shitty ear. 🫠

2. alpaca wig for my Dollmore Skylar/AoD girl. this one isn't weird creative stage fright like the ear, it's just i hate working with alpaca 😅 it's an updo/high bun wig, so i wanted to use alpaca bc it is so soft and will easily fold around the edges of the hard wigcap whereas synthetic fibers can be a little less cooperative with that kind of styling. but i dislike the texture so much as a crafting material, it's so flyaway and sticks to my fingers and worst of all there is such an insane amount of waste that pulls out as you comb and style it, i feel like i'm throwing half this expensive stuff away. sorry to alpacas, they're super cute and i love them but i don't like crafting with their hair 🥲

not pictured: two sewing projects that i am struggling with bc apparently i have forgotten how pattern drafting works 🙃

[7xiiij]

Red Girl's Dollpire hands are blushed and manicured!

struggling along with like 4 other bits of doll project, maybe by the end of this weekend i'll have finished aomething else...

[7xiiij]

these are all the doll profiles i have on Den of Angels. i'd had the goal of both updating a couple of these that are out of date bc of new faceups or body swaps, and adding profiles for all the rest of my dolls-- but with DoA closing this summer, i won't get to finish all that.

i've been meaning to make a pinned directory sort of post on here anyway, bc mostly i post BJDs here, but i do also post other creative hobbies like drawing once in awhile, usually TES fanart, and it seems like it would be useful for people who just want to find the Elder Scrolls stuff and don't care about the dolls, or vice versa

and now that Den of Angels is kicking the bucket my plan is to make an individual profile post for each one of my dolls, make a tag for the profiles, and add links to the pinned directory post-- that way i can preserve/carry over a cool feature that i enjoyed on DoA, plus make my blog a little more organized and easy to navigate (especially for anybody that migrates here from DoA!)

bc why not try to reorganize my blog while i'm also trying to overhaul my art room and get my doll collection organized and put together 😅 i guess it's nice that i'm thinking in the same general direction about everything related to hobby stuff right now, anyway...at least it's coherent

[7xiiij]

let's see if my undressed dolls standing in a lineup and not having actual genitals, in a post about assembling their bodies, gets flagged even tho i put their silly non-detailed non-anatomically-correct little "dicks" in boxes

✨️it's a dick in a box 📦 ✨️

ANYWAY

these two both made it out of the "disassembled dolls" box today! on the left, the Arsene/Impl hybrid can actually hold his head in a level position and look forward normally now! and he has eyes! next i need to paint his face and make him a wig and something to wear. plus i need to replace his hands-- the ones that came on the body are too small for my liking.

and on the right, the Dikadoll Floyer/Resinsoul hybrid that i've been procrastinating on finishing the neck mod for forever 😅 it was definitely one of those things that feels like a massive endeavor and then when you finally get to it it's...literally nothing to get it done. like 10 minutes with the power sander and then just blushing the sanded resin to blend it in with his head and the resin that was a bit yellowed and not-sanded. that was it. and then restring, which is a quick process for me. he also needs a new set of clothes, but otherwise he's good to go!

(another pic of Dikadoll Floyer, bc i really like his face and i'm extra happy i have him, after learning today that Floyer is now a discontinued sculpt. i guess all my guy dolls are, now-- i have this Floyer, an ancient Granado Boyd, an equally ancient Elfdoll K, Souldoll Robb who was an unpopular limited, and idk if Dollshe is still saying you can order one but even if he is Dollshe Arsene might as well be discontinued bc you'd never actually get one if you ordered it 🙄)

really happy with both of these hybrids, and even happier that my horrible Box of Disassembled Project Dolls has two less in it 😅

[7xiiij]

today i dyed two sets of hands-- top pair of red ones are the Dollmore Dollpire set that definitely look more fitting for Red Girl than her original old version Impl Star ones (bottom pair of red ones). which is cool bc now i don't feel like i spent money on new hands and did a whole new round of red dye for no real difference!

then in today's mail i got this set of Sadol expression hands that i bought for Janet, my Dikadoll Aqua who has a Sadol body. they're cream white resin, so i needed to dye match them to her body. used one of her heel legs for reference since she isn't wearing them right now (tumblr do not flag my damn post just bc there are vaguely skin-ish colored plastic doll parts 😡)

the color match on these came out perfect, this pic makes it look the tiniest bit off? but in person it's super accurate. i dipped them in dyemore apricot orange for like 20 seconds and then did a second dip of dymore daffodil yellow for about the same. i find it easier when i'm doing a resin match like this to do it in layers like that instead of trying to mix up a dye soup that is just right.

tomorrow some more of the craft supplies for Red Girl should be arriving, so hopefully i'll get to work on her more ☺️