Too much blue?

Sindy, all blue.

It was an ordinary calm day and I felt that my energy levels were a bit higher than usual. I was staring at my one and only Sindy doll and felt that her hair was a bit thin. Her scalp was visible and it started to bother me. Before I knew it she had blue hair, a blue skirt and a blue crocheted top. 

Hoppy Easter!

Well, it has been a while and I hope that you are doing well. I am just fine, even if I have been a bit tired and have had pains in my joints. But Spring is here and the sun is shining, so I cannot be down!

At the moment we are at our cottage, enjoying our time and I thought I could blog from my phone. A year ago, during Easter, we had a lot of snow but this year there is no snow at all. At most we have had around +35 degrees celsius during the day and below zero during the nights. Blue skies, flowers, butterflies, birds, baby squirrels and other cute animals fill the forest and nearby places. I have been walking in the forest and even dipped into the lake the other day. This is not so normal for April, because it usually is colder and even snow at some places. Earth is getting hotter and that is no good thing.

During the evenings I have been listening to audio books and sewing, painting and making an new doll out of my monster high doll Howleen Wolf. She is now a blind rabbit. I tried to paint her with acrylics and it turned out rather ok for being my first try, but I still did not like the results. After watching some tutorials and repaints on YouTube, I went all in and made her new from scratch. Mask, clothes, shoes, details and ears. Put her wolf ears to the side on her head, covered her (messy) face with a mask made in clay (fimo) and decorated her shoes with fabrics and fluffy yarn. 

I sketched a outline for the mask and cut out a piece in the same shape from the clay. I put the dolls head in aluminium foil and shaped the clay around it. In the oven for about 8 minutes, then out and take the head from the foil and put the foil and mask back again for 2 minutes. Then, after all parts cooled, it was time to glue the mask on. I did this after making her hair and glueing some fluffy fabric on her head and the yarn wefths. 

And here she is. Her name is Asta and her dæmon is a bunny (a gift from Alasse, thank you) named Pavel. Enjoy the photos and Happy Easter.

Say hello to Aliisa

I am in a progress of giving my Monster High dolls a make over. Going through the bunch I have to see who needs a new repaint and who need a face up in general. I have had this Draculaura that Alasse sent me for a while ago. Had plans for her to look like a walking add for Harajuku Fashion, but it really did not suit her. Then I thought she would be a candy dream (details with candy made from clay and so on), but that sounded too sweet. Well, she is my sleepy head, all in pink. Meet Aliisa.

Project: Doll body

Esther

Gaah, did not really know what I was thinking when the idea of making a jointed body for my Narsha (Esther) head entered my mind. I bought some nice clay and searched for my tools, so that I could work with it. This was a great plan, until it was time to start.

Polly's new you

I know that I said that I will not do this, but I did it anyway. Gave Polly a new face and a new hair.

Did it the usual way - making wefts, gluing, waiting and gluing again. I watched several videos, like this one, for an example. I did not have a hair straightener, but I used a thin towel, put the hair in between and pressed with an iron (medium hot) as I slowly pulled the yarn between the towel. The same result. It is so soft and you can style it just with your fingers, but… This red wig is really red and at times it is hard to take photos, because it reflects and does crazy things in different lights. It has been darker outdoors too, with the heavy rain, thunderstorms and cloudy weather. And hubby's smart phone, that he has at work, is so much better handling all these stuff than my older phone.

She still has her cute dress and she will keep it, but I made her a hat out of paper. The bow she had, just did not work anymore. Her face is really tiny, so it was a bit difficult to keep my hands steady and then I had trouble keeping the pens sharp enough. But I am rather pleased with the results, though. 

She is a tiny little cutie. Here comes some photos.

"So much fluffy hair, love it!"

Chilling a bit.

"Hey, what is in my hair?"

"You listen now! I am a Princess, with a capital P!"

Wish you all a lovely week
and
an even lovelier weekend ahead!

A little throwback

Two dolls from 2015

It is Thursday, so a throwback could be nice. I found two girls sitting on a book shelf in our living room and I started to wonder who long it was since I played with these two. Had to go back to my Instagram too see and I was amazed about the time. It was in April 2015. Three years.

From my Instagram.

Well, these two were my first dolls that I tried my so called skills on re-paint, face up and even material. I remember that I was waiting for the first sealant to arrive and I was so ready to do this. It was fun, I learned a lot.

The first doll is a Bratz, the one to the left. Originally she was a Bratz Yasmin, with those darker features and a beauty mark under her left eye. She was one of the dolls my daughters could give away, as long as she stayed here at home. The other one is Elyon, a character from the W.I.T.C.H comic series. The girls liked the comic serie and had their favourites. They watched the series many times and even had the books and comics to read. Well, it was mostly we as parents who read to them, until they started to learn themselves. We have some of the comics left, at the cottage. Elyon was my favourite, so when the dolls came, I bought one. The girls bought their favourites too.

This is Elyon's story, in the comic series:

"Elyon Brown is a heart-warming, kind, and caring teenager with straw colored hair in two braids. She is friendly and smart, however sometimes socially awkward, withdrawn and shy. Due to her young age, she is quite naive but her intelligence eventually leads her to the truth. is the Queen of Meridian, given the title 'Light of Meridian'. Elyon was born in Meridian, lone daughter to the Queen and King, and sole heir to the throne. However, after the disappearance of her parents, Meridianites named Galgheita (disguised as Mrs. Rudolph the Mathematics teacher on Earth), Miriadel and Alborn took her to Earth to protect her from her older brother, Phobos, who had plans to steal her superior magical powers. Elyon was raised there as a normal girl by Miriadel and Alborn under the aliases of Eleanor and Thomas Brown. She knew nothing of Meridian or her true identity."

I really like this story. And there is more, of course. The doll does not look anything like Elyon in the comic series and I may, some day, do her justice.

***

Well, otherwise it has been good over here. Hot, though and so much sun that everyone is amazed. We had over +30°C (86°F) in May and that is not normal at all. It felt like midst of the summer. The flowers that usually bloom about now, has already bloomed. The grass is not green, it is more light brown and dry. There has not been a drop of rain and the thunder storm that came last week, was just a couple of lightnings and ka-booms. Then suddenly the degrees drop 10-12°C, to just around +20°C. That felt cold, no fan was needed and it was time to get an extra blanket. I wonder how the summer will be, or if this was it?

I hope that you are doing well! Enjoy June!

Gooliope

My first photo of her, in the box.

She came home with me on the 23rd September 2015. I had been in the big city shopping and at the same time I searched for this odd and big Monster High doll. The first time I saw her, I thought that she was too big with her 17 inches and too pink, but with time I started to like her more and more.

And yes, she is pink and tall. Her legs started to bother me and I felt that they were too long for the rest of her body. So I took the saw and fixed that. 

Don't ask. :) Here she is with the model filler on, the gray parts, first layer. 

Some projects!

It has been almost a month since our summer vacation started. So far, so good - it has been a lovely summer. Still have several weeks left to enjoy.

On the hottest day this summer, with +32°C and no breeze I decided to start a little project, that made me all sweaty and frustrated. Needed a little hand fan to keep me cool. And the projects are still going on. One is my Monster High doll Gooliope Jellington and the other one is my Ever After High doll Raven. They have their own stories and one day I will share these. 

Off with her legs!

Meet 真珠 - Shinju

One painting by (c) Juri Ueda
"dia de los muertos in red"

When I search for inspiration I usually take the highway to art - galleries, internet and social media. I have my favorites in Rudy Fig, Kelly Vivanco, Juri Ueda and Jasmine Becket-Griffith, just to mention some. Do you have some artists (painters, musicians, actors and so on) as inspiration?

This time I turned to Juri Ueda, a watercolor painter from Osaka, in Japan, who has been creating these wonderful paintings with a tiny bit of fantasy worlds since 2007. On paper.

First thin lines, just to see if it works.

When it comes to repaints and OOAK-dolls, I am no master at it, but I think it is fun to try new things, new techniques and I see the face of a doll as a tabula rasa, a blank slate. More accurate though, as an erased slate. I looked at my Madeline Hatter, an Ever After High doll and felt that she was rather dull and I wanted to do something about that. 

A little bit closer

So I cleaned her for the second time and stared at her, all naked. I got my inspiration from the painting above. In the beginning I felt that her face was a little bit small for this kind of art project, but the roundness she has made it work. I first tested to have the eyes with white acrylic dots, but that looked rather crazy, so I used my Derwent coloursoft white for that. Do you do repaints? What materials do you use?

Some steps more...

Shinju, in Apple White's sweater

Her white dots in the eyes look like pearls, so I gave her the name Shinju, 真珠, pronounced sheen-joo. It means "Pearl". I need to make her some clothes and in a later entry tell you her story. How do you name your dolls, figures and so on?

Meet Pierrette Fayanna

Confidence. Trust. Belief.

This is Pierrette Fayanna, with a deep inner desire to create and to express herself and she prefer a public role when she does her magic. She is competent and have big dreams. But those dreams come in second hand, because she has to focus on her role in the crazy circus called Circus Lunaire.