Based on this piece in Utena? (Oh My!) UTENA! [Newtype, November 1997] by T. Takeyuki.
I messed up a little bit-- in tracing, I forgot to mirror the piece (punchneedle is worked from the back). Thankfully the piece works both ways, and I caught the error in time to at least get the signature looking correct from the front!
I also originally intended this as a rug. But due to a variety of factors*, I didn't have enough of the dark purple/blue. To ensure it would last the whole piece, I used an extremely low pile, and in the process of trimming I realized there was no way this thing would survive foot traffic. So a wall hanging it became.
*me falling in love with a 20-year+ discontinued colorway of yarn
Poopsie Sparkly Critters Slime Series 2-1 heads rebodied onto Monster High G3 bodies! Cloud girlie is dressed in a variety of MH G3 clothes, while Star girlie has a custom OOAK look!
More details below the cut!
So I really like some of the heads of the Poopsie Sparkly Critters, but their bodies & gimmick are unappealing. On a temu order I found some factory rejects of them for cheap, and decided to give a go at rebodying them.
I don't know what condition the finished Poopsie Critters come in, but these factory rejects were covered in nasty mold-release gunk-- including their insides. It took a bunch of rinsing and soaking to get them to stop coughing up phlemmy yellowish gunk.
The Poopsie Critter body plastic is hard, and because of the gimmick it also comprises a bunch of the neck joint. I had to saw the heads off the bodies, and then drill around to get an appropriate sized neck hole.
Bodies used are a SS Abbey & Cleo. It's not very visible here, but I sanded off Cleo's bandages. Which took a long time and was awful, and isn't as smooth as I would prefer, but at first glance looks okay.
For various reasons, the heads are fairly loose. I need to add foam or something to give them a little more oomph.
Star girl's shift is a bit of an experiment: it's entirely heat-cut & mostly heat-seamed. Finnicky process, but when done well it looks very clean.
Looking at these again makes me want to do more rebodying experiments, haha!
Hand-drafted shirt, altered pattern for the overalls, and all hand-sewn! I got this American Girl mini 6.5" doll in a lot, and she had marker all over her face. A light touch with acetone was enough to clean her up, and then she sat nude for a while until I figured out what I wanted to do for her. Eventually I decided on a longsleeve shirt with overalls-- I have had the heart-patterned cotton for a long time and it's just so cute and good.
Then I saw @dollsahoy's post here and I was like, a pattern for overalls! And then dollsahoy was kind enough to dig for a more size-appropriate pattern, which ended up being some Tiny Betsy McCall overalls.
Unfortunately I did not in fact do measuring/comparison before I started. That would've been too smart. So now I have an extra small top part of the pattern already hand-sewn that I'm not sure what I will do with. But this turned out cute, even if I ended up remaking some parts. :P
Supplies: used/incomplete J-Doll Friedrichstrasse, stray Anna (Frozen) doll boots, fabric, paint, wire, magnetic whiteboard, black EVA foam, chipboard, glue
This is actually a project I finished apparently last year a little before the move. My photos date from June 2025! Details and more photos below the cut.
Mx. Fumetto is an objecthead OC of mine who runs a little café in a pocket dimension. They're mute, but "talk" through their speech bubble.
So for this doll, I had wanted to nab a doll or figure with an appropriate outfit. Because really I knew the outfit was going to be the most fiddly thing. And finding a detailed, not-specifically-gendered outfit in the style I imagine for Mx. Fumetto was very difficult!
Lucky me when I stumbled across a gently damaged J-Doll Friedrichstrasse for a song, then. Admittedly the outfit was a tad too feminine, but since I had to add gloves and replace the broken shoes anyway, she became the base doll.
The shoes ended up being fiddly, but easy. I sometimes buy doll lots and these damn Anna (Frozen) boots show up everywhere. So I carved & sanded off the motifs and extra line of buttons, carved some leather seam lines, and painted them with a higher gloss. I can't really recommend this solution; the shapes of the motifs are still somewhat visible. But it worked well enough for my purposes!
For the undershirt and gloves, I had some very thin gauzey crinkled hatch patterned light fabric. Good thing, too, because the outfit from Friedrichstrasse has basically no clearance, and pulling at it too hard splits and frays the fabric at the seams!
The J-Dolls have the Type 3 Pullip body, which I hadn't had a chance to see in person before. It's not my favorite, for a variety of reasons even aside from the typical lack of body color options. For one, while it's very posable (++!) it's mechanically jointed, and in such a loose way that cannot possibly support itself nor the normally-giant Pullip heads (-). This is only made worse by the J-Doll stand being the worst stand I own. It's beautiful in theory, but it's telescoping, and it just doesn't stay the fuck up! (--!) Also, it was an incredibly lightweight stand. I had to add quite a bit of weight to the bottom to keep it from tipping over (-). And finally, I just generally find the Pullip body proportions boringly awful (--!). It works for the Pullip dolls, but it's just not my speed, you know? Thankfully, this outfit hides most of what I dislike about the sculpt.
But one other thing about this body is that the hands come out surprisingly easy. Collector's doll only-- a kid would lose those hands within five minutes! (If the original pricepoint of 10,500 ¥ didn't already tell you that, I guess.) So instead of trying to make gloves to fit the hands, I just replaced the hands entirely-- forming a wire base that I hand-sewed the gloves onto. This makes the hands entirely posable, so long as the wire holds!
And finally, the head! I had a little promotional white-board-magnet that I ended up cutting out for the front and back mirrored faces. Between them is chipboard, with a special cutout to accommodate the Pullip body head peg. Then, wrapped around the edges is the black EVA foam, just a little bit wider than the rest of the whole construction, in order to provide that black border no matter the angle. And then I bought some very-fine-line dry erase markers to doodle text with. Admittedly the head is a little loose, but it definitely works well enough for picture posing.
That's about it for details! As a special treat for clicking through, have these empty-text poses for placing your own text on Mx. Fumetto. Would appreciate a link back here if you use them. And as always, any questions or comments are much appreciated!
Catty Noir's G3 design is, in my opinion, simply stunning. But I think a lot of details in the signature release got really cut down because the budget clearly went into Catty's fangtastic mold. That's fine by me-- gives me an incentive to spruce her up some!
Especially fine by me since I realized that my self-made, designed-from-scratch, posable pair of doll wings would be so amazing on her!
Mondays I'll be posting some of my older works-- this is one of the life-size needlefelt Mews I made, originally hosted on dA. Hard to believe it's been around for 14 years!
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