Omgoodness what did you use to paint on the nui body!? It looks so good! Did you buy a skin cover or make it yourself? Im looking to finally upgrage my custom nui!
Ahhh thank you so much! Let me actually grab some progress pics of Mina there-I'll explain everything I did for her!
Alright first off Mina's base is an Alchemy Class Cater! Picked him because his eyes were already mostly the right green (I've noticed the Nuis tend to have more vibrant/saturated eyes when compared to their refs, Nesoberis by contrast for example which I'm also customizing a Mina have less saturated/more ref accurate eyes-would show but last time I posted that WIP the post got flagged for some reason), and because his outfit relatively matched up. The white collar I could reuse, and also it meant that I had a more blank base.
Once I got him in I used both scissors and a hair dryer to CAREFULLY remove the hair pieces, I also used a seam ripper to remove the diamond (note that it can slightly scar the fabric so BE CAREFUL). Once that was off I used the hair pieces as reference to make the pattern-no full pics however I like to kinda map out shapes with paper-you can see me doing that on her ponytail here. I also embroidered her lashes/mole on before adding hair as well.
Mina's hair front and back are sewn together and were copied in part from how the original hair was sewn, I didn't want to hot glue if I could avoid it so its sewn to her head-think only her ponytail back was hot glued which for that its 2 layers of the fleece I used stuck together with this reallyyyyy strong fabric adhesive sheet I had in my stash. The edges I sealed with fray check, however I've found you can also CAREFULLY singe the edges with a lighter to avoid fraying as well. Only on polyester-based fabrics though! They're plastic based so they melt under flame-natural fibers would just burn into ash.
And for the clothes they're a cheap fabric paint/acrylic paint slightly watered down mix-you MUST slightly thin out the paint/do thin layers to avoid it going on too thick and cracking/making the plush stiff-I actually left Mina's back/sleeve emblem unpainted since she always has her coat on covering it if she's not say, wearing one of her little plushie capes or something to help with that. You can also slightly see through that some of the original print shows up, more paint layers or a white base over that might've covered it up. (also don't do every detail! Just major ones since these guys are tinyyyy-like Mina doesn't have all the details her shoes have for example because you just wouldn't see them.)
Her hair also has a slight blue fade that I got via stamping a sort of gradient with watered down blue paint and a paint sponge! Don't go too watery while painting things though since it'll start to bleed. Mina's eyes got the same treatment to brighten/saturate the lower half.
Outfit-wise her coat is two layers of satin stuck together with that same fabric adhesive sheet to stiffen/seal the edges, and the hat is magnetic! I glued one magnet to the underside of the hat, the other I leave loose tucked under her bangs-that way I can both adjust the position, or using a paper clip fish it out and....
Attach it to her ghost cape I made! :D
You might be able to lift a body pattern off the main plush since the bodies are pretty simple if you want a skin-toned base, it's just two pieces a back and front sewn around, or if you want you can also uh...buy a dono nui and do a body swap. WARNING HOWEVER-not all TWST nuis are in scale with each other! I got a Malleus I jokingly call Mina and Lilia's kid third wheeling their dates since he arrived superrrr tiny.
He's Alchemy Class as well but you can see the size difference. Made him a raincoat bulk him out but even with it he's very small, he might be an earlier or later release or just factory/pattern differences, I'm not sure.
Also a final note is yes Mina can get baths! She's been washed gently in the sink a few times and has had no paint loss-just don't scrub really hard and don't soak for long.
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