Freebies and Sneak Peak

Everyone enjoys a good freebie, especially when my very creative and talented friend Janelle is doing it.  Starting today, she is having 40 days of giveaways to celebrate her birthday. 

Some of her equally creative friends are also supplying items.  Today is day one and Sheree is giving away a gorgeous Bear hat that she has crochet for a Blythe Doll.  Poppy Tree Lane is her new etsy store where she sells cosies for tea cups as well - nice.  They look well made and if I drank a lot of hot drinks I would certainly get one for myself.

Back to Janelle's giveaway.  In the time it has taken for me to write this she has already posted giveaway number two!!!  This time it is one of her creations.  If you are into quilting, this is a gorgeous table runner pattern.  I have added a link on the side of my blog to her giveaways but you can link to her blog in general from here.

As for me, well I got told by my friend at work that I am wasting my life away working where I am and that I should be out there creating and selling my creations.  I have my hand in so many crafts right now that I don't know where I would begin.  I started my Etsy store years ago and it has been sitting empty since.  Back then I only had a few craft skills, now!!!!

Let me see: card making, scrapbooking, sculpting, carving, sewing in general, quilting, photography, jewellery making, mixed media, my doodle artwork, embroidery, poetry, creative writing, doll making, soap, and woodworking but I don't have the tools for that so it probably doesn't count.  If anyone can see how I can make a living off of all of that and not worry about the bank taking my house or where my next meal is coming from, please let me know.

My photos from Tassie are coming along nicely.  I hope to finish sorting them this weekend.  Here is a sneak peak of a couple of them.

Well I was going to give you a sneak peak but I think I will be lucky to show you any.  Apparently I now have to pay to upload my pictures because I have met the free quota!!!  Will have to sort this out another day.

Blythe Customisation Part 5

Wow, wefted hair.  Takes a while to stitch on but I am sure it is far less time than doing each strand by the loop.  It took 3 nights of sitting in front of my favourite TV shows to get the hair stitched.  I followed the basic instructions for the Cool Cat Website. 

To finish off the wefted hair, you need to cut a small hole in the scalp and pus some of the hair through.  Click on the above link to Cool Cat if you are not sure what I mean.  Anyway they suggest a 10-15cm piece.  I think I used double that and I am glad because I think the weft layers underneath would still have shown.  They also suggested sewing the weft layers 1cm apart but I did it a bit narrower than that.

Once all the hair is in, you have to attach it back to the hard section of the scalp.  Oh my.  When I read that this model head (radiant Blythe) was difficult to re-attach, they weren't kidding.  For two nights I tried to get the soft rubber scalp to push back into its hard casing.  In doing so I almost tore off the hair I had stitched on.  Finally, out of desperation and only 1 of 3 phalanges inserted, I went to the bathroom and poured powder onto it.  After much pushing I finally got it in.  YAY!  I was really getting worried there for a second.

Ok so now that is done I have to set the hair.  Remember there is a bit in the centre that is shoved through a hole and is sticking up like a fountain.  The instructions I read said to gather the hair in an elastic band and iron it in place (iron on low with a cloth over top).  That sound easy, NOT!  The fountain section of hair had it's own mind and wouldn't stay where I wanted it to go.  Doing it while holding onto the hair was not easy either.  I needed two hands to hold the hair in place and another to old the scalp.

All of a sudden I had a brain wave, or brain splash as one of my high school teachers used to say.  There in the room with me, was a tall tube of fabric.  It was the perfect width to rest the scalp on.  I was then able to hold the hair in place withe the lacky band so much more easily. 

After I ironed the hair I covered it with the plastic that you find on the new dolls to keep their hair in place.  I am going to keep it like this until the weekend, just to make sure it stays the way I want it.  After that I will finally put her all back together, and then proceed with a hair cut.  oooooh it is so exciting.

I have added some photos below just in case you are going to customise your own doll.  I like to think they are a nice addition to the visual instruction on the Cool Cat website.

I recently purchased a Simply Mango Blythe doll.  She arrived today and I am going to customise her and see how I go at selling it.  I already know what theme I am going with.  Stay tuned.

Good News

I managed to get the eye mechanism of my Blythe doll working.  It helps if you put the back of the head on that way when you pull the string it is being pulled in the right direction.  All I have to do now is

• finish her hair and style it
• put her together
• make her outfit (that is depended on if/when I can get the pattern for the outfit that I love).

More photos will come once the hair is done and she is put together.  I will not be selling this one, but I have ordered another doll to customise and I may sell her. 

Blythe Customisation Part 4

Amelie is coming along nicely.  Yes that is going to be the name of my ice queen.  I named her after a character in a series of books I am reading.  In the book she is the Queen Vampire, sounds nasty but she isn't really.  I perceive her as being a character that will do anything she can to save those close to her.  Sometimes it means sacrifices of the heart and doing things that others disagree with.  In her world, in order to keep safe those that she loves, she has to keep them at arms length and hide her emotions.  Through all her trials, she is calm  and cool.  Hence she has earned the nickname Ice Queen buy those who do not understand her.  Anyway the name is the only thing this Blythe and the books character have in common. 

At the moment I am stitching on the hair.  Even with weft hair it is taking forever.  I am also having issues with her eye mechanism.  At first I put I put the mechanism together incorrectly.  Even referring to my photos that I took during the dismantling stage, I was unable to figure out what was wrong and why her eyes weren't changing.

Finally decided to google the eye mechanism and found the blog Blythelovesme with really good, clear images of the mechanism.  It helped me to realise what I had done wrong.  I do think I may have damaged it a little though as the eyes still don't quite want to work, even though everything is in the correct place.  They work once and then something slips.  Think I stretched the bit I had wrong.

Here she is in broad daylight (see she isn't a Vampire) with her eyes closed.  Her face is completely finished though I am wondering how I could gloss up her lips.

Due to having to pull her apart again I have a little damage to the make up.  I am not too worried about it though.  This one is not going to be for sale.  I am learning to always keep my first.  They are an inspiration and a good learning tool.

Dark blue eye chips

Light blue eye chips.  These were my favourite on their own but they tend to disappear in the amongst the blue makeup.

Purple eye chips

These silver eye chips are now my favourites

A close up of the dominates.

 Back to the hair now.  Oh I hope her eye mechanism works properly.



Blythe Customisation Part 3

Who would have guessed that I would have time to sit and do some more on my Blythe doll today.  I suppose I can thank Transperth for that.  Due to an "incident" when it came time for me to get home, the trains weren't working. 

The train driver told us we were stuck at the platform and it may be quicker to walk.  Our stop was the next stop where we changed trains, so a friend and I decided to take the driver's advice.

Unbeknown to us, there was detours on the foot path which led a lot of us walkers to cross roads that normally don't get crossed by pedestrians let alone at peak hour traffic time.  It was a good 30 minute walk in the fresh air which really only delayed me getting home by 20 minutes - in the meantime, another friend who had elected to stay on the train, got home at her normal time.

All I can say is that with all the "incidences" of trains not working and some walking required, along with escalators not working and therefore needing the stairs, I must remember to thank transperth when I win the biggest weight loss of the year award.

Anyway it meant that when I got home I didn't really need to exercise because I had already done it, so I could sit down and have some fun.

Back to my Blythe doll - tonight I touched up the eye chips and glued them into the eyeballs (so proud of my eye chips).  I also sprayed the scalp with Mr Super Clear and then used a liquid chalk to add the colour I wanted.  I will spray it again once the chalk is dry.

For the eye makeup I have a specific design in mind so you are getting a sneak peak.  I started out with dry chalk and didn't like the density it gave.  It was too light in some areas and too dark in others.  It just wasn't going anywhere.  Eventually I made a stencil out of post it notes, stuck them to her face and then used the same liquid chalk I used on the scalp to add her eye makeup. 

Liquid chalk is supposed to be fast drying but today it was doing anything but.  I had a horrible feeling that it just wasn't going to work and thought I would have to hand paint instead (dreading bush streaks).  I eventually tried drying with the hairdryer and that seems to have worked.  YAY! :)  With the face though, I had sanded it so I didn't use Mr Super Clear on it.  I will spray it on once it is dry to help seal it.  By the way, the makeup looks a lot more shinier in this photo than it does in real life.  It is actually quite matt.

I almost forgot, I have carved a smile into her mouth as well. 

If the scalp has finished drying by tomorrow, I may just have to start stitching the hair.  OMG I am getting sooooo excited about how she will turn out.  It may be a while before I photograph her in full finished beauty as I am waiting for Awsumgal to find the pattern she designed for one of her beauties. 

Blythe Customisation Part 2

When I decided I was going to customise, I had no idea that you could paint your own eyec chips.  In fact I had purchased 4 pairs of eye chips ready to go.  They were the closest I could find to the colours that I wanted. Ignore the dust and flakes - I scanned them.

It wasn't until I did some blog surfing on Blythe customisation that I came across an information regarding Amy.  Amy creates the most gorgeous eyechips and I hope one day that I can get somewhere close to her skill.  Below is my first try.  A bit dodgy but I am proud of how they turned out.  The scanner shows up the imperfections, which is a good thing because I can see now where I need to touch up and clean up.  The first pair are purple; then medium blue; dark blue; and grey/silver.  Really need to do something about the pupils in the greay/silver ones.

I also started on carving the mouth into a smile.  I found another tool today that may work better so I will give it a go.  It is kinda of like a circular point nail file with a sharp point.  Found it in with the screw driver set.

Next step is to colour the scalp.  I am thinking of using liquid chalk followed by a matt spray called Mr Superclear (according to my research this spray is great for anything to do with dolls).  Anyway I can only try.  If it doesn't work then I will try something else.  Might not be able to do any more till the weekend though so stay tuned.  My little ice princess is slowly forming.

Blythe Customisation Part 1

I finally have enough supplies to start on customising my Blythe doll.  I purchased her as she is: naked, pale and really tatty hair (this is the brushed version).  I have no idea what she was originally but I am hoping to make her into a beauty.

Thanks to the lovely inspiration and information from Awusmgal I have finally got my mojo to get started.  You should go check out her blog.  She does so much wonderful stuff with dolls.

Also on surfing the net I found out about Kate.  She also does customisation.  She has the most gorgeous hand painted eye chips.  You can see them at her Estsy Store here.  I had already purchased new eye chips before I found out that you could buy clear ones and paint them.

I have purchased most of my tools and supplies from Cool Cat.  You can also find them on ebay.  Most of the tutorials on how to customise I am getting from the Puchi Collective.  They are very helpful.  They also have free patterns for clothes as well.

 

 

Opening up the head was relatively easy.  There are screw at the back that need to come out and then I used a teeny tiny flat screw driver to open her from the sides.  The head is in three sections: front, back and scalp.  The scalp section is screwed to the front (inside and hidden) but I think this girl had a screw loose, because the scalp section fell off without any help from me.

This view is from the top with the front and back pieces held together.  The eye piece needed to come out which meant using a screwdriver (with tape on it to prevent damaging) to push the entire eye section out.  By this I mean the eyeballs and the eyelids.  The instructions I read said that a lot of force would be necessary and to try and expand the head sides out by squeezing the chin and the forehead.  Well that just didn't work for me.  In the end I got a towed and used it to help push the sharper edges of the sides out, while I manipulate the screwdriver in and under the eye. It kinda of look like something out of a horror movie with the screw driver going through the eye socket.

I eventually got there and ended up with her head finally in pieces.  Unfortunately there was more to come with the eyes.  I had to remove the eyeballs.  Each eyeball has four eye chips that also need removing (I hated the original colours).

This is a different angle of the eye mechanism.  You can see the eyelids.  Between the eyelids is a white clip that needed to be removed.  It took some convincing but I got it there.  Once this was removed I could take all the final pieces apart.

I didn't get photos, but to removed the eye chips, I soaked the eyeballs in warm soapy water for 30 minutes.  I then got the glue stick from my glue gun, heated one end on a candle, and then stuck it to an eye chip.  After five minutes waiting for it to cool, I was able to twist and pull and viol la - one eye chip removed.

Now we come to the scalp.  There are two sections to the scalp: a soft rubber section the hair is stitched on and a hard scull dome.  There are different types of scalps and apparent the one I have is the one the Puchi Collective really haven't given a tutorial on.  Apparently I have a Radiant Blythe scalp.  The soft rubber section of the scalp ans three wide fingers that slip into three grooves on the dome.  In my photo below you can see where I have managed to pull out one of the fingers and half started on another.  These were actually glued in place in small sections so I had to use a fine craft knife to saw it away from the edge.  Consequently there are a few rough edges.  I also had to use the small screw driver to help lever it out.  Even without the glue there was a real hold on the soft scalp.  Unfortunately there was no option for tape on the screw driver this time so there are a few war wounds.  Luckily this section will be hidden.

Finally the soft scalp was removed.  Removal of all that hair came next.  Let me tell you I am itchy all over and I am sure all of it went in the bin.

Next I think I will try and paint some eye chips and see how they go.  I also have to paint the top of the soft scalp to match the colour of the hair I will be adding.  At the moment it is a hideous dark ash blonde colour which will not go well with the light blue/grey hair I have for her.

I am also going to try my hand at carving a smile in her mouth and also angle the eyes a bit.  I wouldn't recommend this for anyone else's first one but I have had experience in carving wood, clay, and soft concrete.

Will post more later.  Right now I need a shower to wash of the invisible doll hair.

Combining interests

What have I got  myself into.  I think making a dreamharp has given me the impression that I can do anything.  At least with the dreamharp I had guidance!

There are two things (ok I have others) in my life that I am currently enjoying: my Blythe Dolls; and my Artistic Doll Swap.  After playing around with altering a Barbie doll for the last swap, I thought, this would be cool to do for real.  I went on line and look at dolls and doll parts like the Ooak Obitsu dolls.  I have purchased the necessary items to create a doll.  The face of this doll however has no eye holes so I will be painting them on.  It also has a wig that fits snugly so I don't need to hand stitch the hair onto a scalp.

You would think that would be enough of a challenge and that I would give it a try first before moving on to something harder.  I probably would have but I am still waiting for parts to arrive, so in my spare time I was looking at more Blythe things on the internet.  I found out bits of information all over the place on how to customise your Blythe doll.  Yep you guessed it, I have gone out and ordered the necessary items for doing this.

At first I thought of making her from scratch but realised it would be easier to work on an already made doll.  I am not so stupid however that I am going to try it on one of my current dolls.  I managed to find someone on ebay who sells the dolls nude, direct from the factory so she is still a genuine Blythe doll.  Though in hindsight, thanks to the cost of postage, it would have been cheaper to buy a Simply Mango Blythe doll with free shipping.

Unlike the Obitsu I will be working on, in order to do new hair, I will be hand stitching it.  The eyes are also movable and I have bought new eye chips.  I am thinking of sanding her face as well to make her less shiny.  At least the makeup can be done using chalks, which luckily I already have.

I am super excited and super scared about customising a Blythe doll.  I want to have all the parts now and get started yesterday.  Hmmm now what to make her.  I am thinking a fairy or an elf.  I may even put a tiny jewel on her eyelid.  Oh the options are endless.

Meowsy Wosy

As a child, I didn't really have many dolls.  I was more the soft toy sort of kid.  Can someone please explain to me why I suddenly have a fascination with dolls?  Especially Blythe dolls. 

I started my collection last year thanks to my friend Janelle and her daughter.  The more I look on the internet for Blythe, the more I realise I am not alone in my adult love of these dolls.

Below is my latest addition.  She arrived today and her doll name is Meowsy Wowsy.  I fell in love with her the first time I saw her on the internet.  I am not a cat person but I love red hair, and her eye colour is slightly different to my other dolls.  (For those not in the know, Blythes have four eye colours).

I am having difficulty coming up with appropriate names for my other Blythes but I know straight away that this one shall be call Kitty.  You see my cousin has red hair and her name is Kitty, and considering the doll is dressed like a cat, then this name fits perfectly for more than one reason.

The photos aren't the best.  I took them with my phone and I think there might be a fingerprint on the lense. 

Well we are at the start of a heat wave right now and I for one am getting hot just looking at her in this outfit.  I also got some beautiful fabrics today so I will have to see what I can make for her.

I am enjoying making the doll clothes.  At uni I learnt to make patterns so I may even start making up my own designs.  One day.  :)

A PS to the previous post

Two very quite items to update my previous post.

Araminta slept on an air bed in my computer room.  The bed is directly behind my chair and the dogs were disgusted that they weren't allowed on it while she was here.  Look at them now.

Napoleon

 Bo

 Tess isn't on it but she is keeping watch at the door like she always does.

Looks like I didn't delete the photos after all.  Here are two styles of Blythe outfits that I am currently making to sell on my etsy store.  Yes I am finally getting myself organised to sell things.  Will let you all know as soon as I get something on there.  Oh and yes this is the debut of my three lovely Blythes.  Still thinking of names for them so any suggestions would be great.

Did pretty good for reading a Chinese Pattern don't you think!?  :)