Blog Archives

Garnier Reddish Brown

1/19/2013

I've never liked the mousy brown colour of the long mohair wig Carina is wearing, so decided to dye it. Managed to go to Walmart last night and picked up some of their least expensive hair colour. I wanted a brown with red undertones, so chose Garnier #55 Reddish Brown. Wow, hair colouring stinks! The fumes made me downright ill, and I didn't even have to hang around for the 20 minutes it takes for the dye to work. I can't imagine having to deal with those fumes on my own head. I guess I'm just going to stay white-haired forever.

The wig was a pain to comb out afterwards since it's 12" long curly mohair. I ended up thinning it down a little from all the pulling with the comb, but it could use a little thinning, so that was fine.

After taking some meds this morning, I went down to the lake to take some "mood shots" of Carina in the "woods". There's a nice "woodsy" spot at the lake which is totally overgrown with periwinkle, which is evergreen, so it gives the impression of spring or summer even though it's mid January.

Her hair isn't quite that red in real life. I'm sure when I take some studio shots the real colour will become more apparent. Same with the greens and browns of her dress.

Making a Hair Wreath

1/18/2013

I'm working on a hair wreath for the EID Spring Goddess costume. It's such fiddly work. First wiring bead leaves, then wrapping them together with some tiny wired oak and maple leaves, then wrapping everything with ribbon. Then gluing in curly tendrils. I have both grape and gourd tendrils. The grape tendrils are larger, and stiff like wood, whereas the gourd tendrils are smaller, tighter, and more flexible. I'm not sure yet which I'll use - probably the grape tendrils.

Carina in the Woods

1/17/2013

I finally have the spring goddess dress finished, so took a photo of Carina in my "winter forest" made up of the cut-off tops of all the neighbour's discarded real Christmas trees and inserted in our upper garden. It's interesting that the photo makes all the different colours of the costume stand out in high contrast to each other. In real all the colours blend together in a much more unified way. I'm hoping studio photos will show the true colours.

I had some issues with the back closure. The bodice was too thick to insert eyelets for lacing, so I tried hooks and eyes. Unfortunately the hooks proved way too difficult to do up, so I removed them all. In the end I decided to sew a row of small rings up both sides so the back could be laced up with ribbon.

The next step is to make the wreath for her hair. I used to make hair wreaths as a solid circle, but if the customer's doll is wearing a less bulky wig than my model, the wreath could be too big. So now wreaths are broken circles, a little smaller than the wig circumference, which get tied at the back with a ribbon. That way the wreath is a bit adjustable size-wise.

Green and Gold

1/15/2013

I'm continuing to work on my next commission, an EID version of "Brygid, Spring Goddess". This will be the very last larger version of this costume as I'm using up most of the fabrics. Some trims already had to be replaced, so in some ways this version will be a One-of-a-Kind as well.

Progress is very slow, as it's taking forever to get my strength back after my recent flu. However, even a tiny bit of progress each day is better than none at all. Today I have to finish sewing the sleeves so I can insert the eyelets and do the decorative beading. One very positive thing, is that the customer's doll has turned out to be the medium chest after-all, so my Carina can model without her aluminum brassiere. That will make for much nicer photos.

A Disney Princess Record Player

1/14/2013

My girls were thrilled when the package that arrived in the mail for them this morning contained a Disney Princess Record Player. They just had to keep playing it over and over again.

The record player was my prize for participating and submitting photos for "Star of the Homepage" on the Iplekids Yahoo group in December.

My Iplehouse Gang

1/10/2013

Took a group photo today of the smaller sized dolls in my Iplehouse collection. Eventually I'll take a big group shot with everyone, and individual "families", but I'm still not recovered from the flu enough to deal with that. Plus Carina is definitely not fit to be photographed at the moment. So maybe at a later date when the current costume I'm working on is done.

Back row: JIDs (Junior Iplehouse Dolls) Asa, Kassia, Kyle and Isar
Front row: BIDs (Baby Iplehouse Dolls) Byuri, Elin, Nami, and KID Lonnie.

My flu bug is taking forever to get over. I am slowly getting better, but it's going at a snail's pace. Which is very frustrating, because I have things I want and need to do. I don't know if it's even fair to say "I'm working on a commission" at the moment, since I do almost nothing on a daily basis. The slightest effort is exhausting. Today I traced the dagged-edged strips onto velour, and between the fumes from the marker and the Fray-Check I got quite some headache. I'm hoping to be able to cut most of them out this evening - or at least tomorrow morning.

I'm also trying to work on my fall trip pictures. Ever since I got into doll costuming trip photos take forever. I haven't even started the photos from the four-week spring trip yet, but am slowly making progress on the fall ones. I actually managed to post two days-worth of photos today. Of course one of the days had hardly any photos, so it went rather fast. I love this photo of Jenny Lake in Grand Teton National Park.

Yellowstone and the Tetons are now done, and I'm officially starting the Southwest...

Aluminum Glamour Bust

1/9/2013

My first commissions for 2013 is for an Iplehouse EID with the large bust. My Carina isn't nearly as well-endowed - she's a medium - so the first step is to build her up to the proper size. It's amazing what a 2.5 cm circumference increase will do - she's HUGE now. Next step is to draft the pattern for the bodice, and sew a test bodice.

Shoes & Stockings

1/9/2013

Some nice black shoes for Hazy arrived yesterday - up until now she'd just been standing barefoot in her lovely gown. One never knows if shoes will stain the resin, so I thought I'd make some stockings to protect her legs, and why not something fun - like a purple stripe?

A Happier Couple

1/7/2013

The doorbell rang this morning, and I saw it was the mail truck, but I wasn't expecting anything, so what could it be? Narae and Narin from D-Storic!! I had ordered them both during the big "Goodbye Bimong" Sale back in November. I'd been watching the D-Storic shipping notices but they weren't up to my order number yet - so the dolls came as a total surprise. Narae is the N412 "Butterfly" sculpt with her cute little smile, and I chose the slightly smiling N411 Narin sculpt to go with her. They are both the beautiful French Resin Real skin. Such a great colour! Naraes are such beautiful dolls, and I'd always wanted one of the Butterfly sculpts. They have very nice bodies too - with real ball joints, and not those funky IH joints - although they are both rather loosely strung at the moment. And did I mention they are both smiling?

Just for modesty for a first photo, I borrowed Kassia's bodice. As expected it's way too big, so even though these two would make the perfect pair to replace Kassia and Adrian, there's no way to rework the bodice a second time. Or is there? Let me think about it some more.

Party Shinanigans

1/6/2013

Took a few more photos and made a New Years Party album - after starting a brand new Favourite Photos 2013 page. In fact, there's a bunch of new pages needing making now that it's a new year, but they can wait until there's actually something to put on them.

We are slowly clearing out all the holiday decorations, so that's the end of the Holiday Photos for another year. Because of the flu, I haven't done much of anything this week, other than take a few photos, but hopefully things will get better this coming week.

Took a few photos of Kassia in her new wig today as well. I just don't know what it is about this doll - she's just not coming through with the look I had imagined for her. In real, up close, she looks pretty enough, but in all her photos she looks so depressed. I don't know if it's the lighter skintone, her faceup, or her costume and wig selections, or her face sculpt. Lonnie is proving a challenge too. I've never had this with a doll before, so it's rather unsettling.

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