#bjd customisation

[damasquerade]

WIP, Soom Beast

This has been a VERY CHALLENGING airbrushing session. Many mistakes and repairs but happy enough with this. Added his piercings and scars as well and finished off faceup details and gloss. Now all that remains is touching up a couple of things, tattoos, and stringing! His goat eyes are in the mail.

[damasquerade]

The results of my dip dyeing over the weekend! The shoulders and head need a bit of touching up but the hooves and arms are pretty much perfect. (That little spot on the arm was just a bit of fluff.) Next up are scars, tattoo, piercings and airbrushed goat- faceup.

The hooves still have a tiny touch of translucence to them which is nice, like a real hoof. Annoyingly, I forgot to dye his ears so they’ll probably be airbrushed rather than setting up the whole dyeing station again.

[damasquerade]

I uploaded a quick video of me dip-dyeing my Soom Beast’s body over on my public BJD page on FB. Sadly Tumblr refuses to upload the vid here so here are a couple of pics of the dye vat set up in the back yard instead. These are Soom Jethro parts.

[damasquerade]

Hello! Your experiments with Mod Podge have made me think about trying to completely dye a small doll using an airbrush an fully seal it with Mod Podge afterwards. Do you think this would work? Thanks! :3

Hi Anon! It’s definitely worth a try, since you can just remove it with hot water and soap. But personally I’ve found the smaller the doll’s joints, the less successful the Mod Podge will be at protecting joints in particular. 

As I found from working on my Batchix Mini-Machina Eta, she has really tiny elbows and if the joints are quite small you won’t be able to suede them because of the added bulk from the suede lining. Unprotected Mod Podge doesn’t hold up as well. If you’re working on a standard Yo-SD size, most joints should be fine I’d think, but you’d do well to check out any double jointed elbows or knees to make sure a layer of suede doesn’t stop the pieces from fitting back in nicely. 1/8 or smaller would probably be a struggle for this method, but might work without suede because of the smaller amount of tension in the strings.

So yeah - you could do a test run by airbrushing and Mod Podge-ing/sueding just a couple of parts and stringing your doll, and seeing how it goes. ^^ Otherwise, your best bet for durability would be to dye as a base colour, then airbrush away any unevenness, then just apply Mod Podge to any joints that need extra protection for airbrushing. ^^ Good luck experimenting!

[damasquerade]

Sealing blushing with brush-on Mod Podge

In response to a query about how I use Mod Podge, I’ve posted a couple of threads about the process here and here when I first started experimenting to protect airbrushing on joints. I'm still trying to nail down the perfect method, whether to slightly thin the Mod Podge with water, but if you're not on DoA to see the threads, the basic process is: 1. Paint your project and seal with MSC 2. Dilute Mod Podge Matte slightly with a couple of drops of water and apply in long strokes with a wide, flat brush. Let each coat dry before applying next coat. You want three or four coats.

Showing the consistency after slight dilution. If you dilute too much it won’t have any protective effect.

Don’t overload your brush though.

You want to use long, slow strokes of the brush from top to bottom, always in the same direction. You can see some brush strokes in the layer below but they disappear when dry if you’ve diluted the Mod Podge. If you haven’t diluted, you may end up with some texturing. Still experimenting on whether to dilute or not dilute, and which gives best protection.

After applying three or four layers, allow to cure for 1 month minimum before stringing. (Mandatory step! Do not skimp on time!) You can see there are no visible brush strokes on these pieces (the white lines on the petal are watercolour pencil)

Suede the joints fully to protect your work. Don’t allow Mod Podged surfaces to be in contact with each other, as they’ll stick together and chip if left long-term. Protect right to the edge of the joint with suede (not hot glue), even if the suede is slightly visible in the joint.

Strung and done!

I encourage everyone to experiment with the technique and help hammer out exactly what works best! Mileage may vary. Mod Podge is water-based and can be easily removed by scrubbing with a toothbrush in hot soapy water, even years after application.