Iyrilaeth's new hands (and a shot of Anna's too)

I have this massive fascination with hands and wrists that started with (oddly enough) watching Lady and the Tramp as a kid. I loved the way their paws bent when they were doing things and whilst crawling around the house pretending to be a dog I realized human wrists and hands were really neat.

Anyway, years later hands are still a big deal for me so a major part of doll 'shelling' is finding the right hands to express their character. I have a whole separate wishlist for hands I want for characters that I don't even have heads planned for yet.

Sometimes I'm okay with something generic as long as it's an attractive looking hand but sometimes I have a very specific look in mind.

To get to the point, I really wanted a pair of the Dollshe DS18M rhythmos hands for Iyrilaeth and after selling some things, I decided to go for it before they stopped producing them and I potentially lost my chance to ever own them.

They arrived today and I am pretty much in love with them.

I did a box opening for hands because I was so excited.

The tiny wrist balls are a mild issue since they sink into Iyrilaeth's wrists and he ends up with no mobility pretty  much, but that is something I guess I can try to work on at a later date. He'll need restringing before I can really do much about that since it was really hard to get these on as is.

I actually broke one of his old hands in the process. To fix this I will probably just remove the rest of the resin lump there (aside from the notch that keeps the hand in place on the joint) and replace it with a metal screw-in hook.

After an absurdly frustrating few minutes of trying to wrestle with his overly tight stringing, I managed to get these on and life was good.

I also recently bought a secondhand pair of Iplehouse hands for Anna. I wasn't a huge fan of the default Aoi Tuki ones and had been meaning to replace them for years but none of the hands I really liked for her tended to be sold separately. A few months after putting this pair of Iplehouse hands on my wishlist, I managed to find someone selling them secondhand so that I could avoid the waiting period.

The resin match is not great (although I imagine at one point it would have been because Anna was far more pink years ago). I am not that bothered by it but if I ever decide I am I may just let the new hands sit on the porch for a little while to yellow a bit. (or go and try one of those light dye techniques to make her more pink again all over. Might be a better plan since her Souldoll head is more pink than the body too)

I actually considered taking pictures at the time but I thought it might be weird to make a post featuring doll hands. Obviously I have since changed my mind.

arrival of IOS Infernale and face up attempt

IOS shipped my Infernale exactly when they said they would. I was very impressed. He arrived over the weekend while I was out of town for A-kon and my mail carrier was kind enough to call me on my cell phone and get my permission to leave the package with the apartment office so that I could pick it up as soon as I returned. (This saved me a trip to the post office. I was very happy!)

I got home Sunday night but was able to get him from the apartment office on Monday morning before work. For the last couple days he's been sitting around without a face up because I was intimidated.

My last two attempts at face ups came out... less than stellar, to put it politely. I'm very easily discouraged when I fail at something so it can take a while to push past that. Adding to my anxiety was the fact that Infernale has an open mouth with two interchangeable tongue pieces and I struggle with doing face ups on dolls with the tiniest bit of teeth showing.

After a bit of arguing with myself, I decided to gather up my airbrush and pastels and assortment of brushes and head out to the balcony to get to work. It is absurdly hot outside today so I was quite uncomfortable, but luckily I was in my project zone so I didn't notice until I was all done.

I didn't really get any in progress pics, because I didn't want to get too attached while there was still the possibility of screwing it up terribly, but here are some pictures of the face once it was pretty much finished.

I think I overdid it a bit on the red under the eyes and on the eyeshadow. I really struggle with face ups on WS dolls.

Here are the tongue pieces post-blushing. These were a pain to do because they're so small and they wanted to fly off the table when I tried to seal them. And then the pastels didn't want to stick to them so I had to airbrush them and they kept getting stuck to my fingers and falling and collecting dust. I'm going to have to break out the tweezers if I redo these guys.

And here are some shots of the completed head with the two different tongue pieces. It was already a tight fit, but the layer of gloss on the tongues made it even harder to get them in and out. I'm sure there is some chipping of the paint in their future.  I was, however, relatively pleased with the color.

And here we have a shot of him on a body which may or may not be his permanent one. The hands I've been saving since 2008 just in case I ever decided to shell his character. They came with Soom's Vega - Last Song and they've been sitting in a closet for about five years now.

Not 100% certain about this wig, but the one I was planning to use didn't look quite right once he had a face up. (really liked it before that though). Will see how it goes though.

mini projects

I got on a bit of a selling things kick and ended up doing a few trades and fun stuff like that.

The first thing I got in a partial trade was a Leon Kennedy Minimee head. Ever since seeing Enzyme's on DoA, I've kind of wanted one.

Anyway, the one I got had been modded and the eyes were opened more. The above picture is how it looked when it arrived. I forgot to take my own pictures so that's one of the sales pictures. I decided I would just mod the eyes into a more serviceable shape. The default eyes for the sculpt looked almost closed to me so I sort of just chose a shape to sculpt them into.

Here's the head after a round of epoxying. I haven't sanded them at all yet so they're pretty uneven. But I did get some eyes for him.

I got a really good (in my opinion) deal on a Resinsoul immature bust, which I put on Elaria's body since I really didn't intend for hers to be as big as the default one that came with her.  NSFW picture of the new bust on her body.

The fit isn't perfect so I will have to do some modding, but for now I feel like it looks fine with clothes on. Behold my glorious photoshop skills trying to hide the mess that is my house.!

a busy day

As mentioned in my last post, I decided to sell some things because I needed IOS Infernale. There is an 80-85% chance he will be my Istthraen, a character I have wanted in doll form for years.

Anyway, with one of my sales I was asked if I could do another face up on the head for them. I was a little nervous about that since I've only ever done face ups for myself and Selly.

I did sort of a 'mock up' version yesterday, laying down the general colors and blushing to give the person an idea of what I was getting from their request, and after getting the go ahead I started on the real version today. Luckily, they were online and I was able to get feedback relatively quickly after sending them new pictures!

Between messages, I started work on a new robe for Auralion. His old one was just cotton and I figured he'd want something a little more ostentatious than that. I had this sort of idea that I might want to do the robe in black but I wasn't 100% sure that would look okay, so I made both versions.

I also made his pseudo-tabard thingy but it came out way too wide and kinda wonky so I'll have to revise that later. I'm not sure if the black would work okay if the thing didn't cover most of the lower half, but for now I'm pretty sure I like the red better.

 Here is the face up I spent most of the day on and off working on. Some of the blushing detail is lost because indoor lighting tends to do that. But it shows the basics of it reasonably well.

Now I just need to figure out what I can use as a face protector for shipping since I'm not sure I have any around.

selling things to afford other things

My title is the most descriptive thing in the history of descriptive things that are descriptive.

Oh yeah.!

I fell off the face of the bjd hobby for a bit (as I am prone to doing on a semi-regular basis). Usually it's a few months on, a few months off. It's a cycle.

Anyway, I was drawn back in by the completion of IOS' Infernale. 

I only want his head but I was worried I wouldn't be able to afford it. But it ended up being the push I needed to finally sell some things I'd been not entirely happy with for a while, so now I can afford him. All is well.

I am excited!

I love trades

Circumstances being what they are, money is kinda tight at the moment. This has meant that, despite selling a few things in the past month, I haven't been able to afford a new body for Orkas. His previous one sold on layaway and I've sold one head and another full doll but between Christmas and having to save up for other things, he ended up stuck on an old Customhouse body that was just barely functional. (it's pretty much falling apart)

Anyway, I managed to get a trade offer from someone offering a flexi-perennial body in NS for one of my sale items. Hard to really say what that body is worth since Domuya doesn't exist anymore and I tend to see them going for really cheap on the MP, but I felt like it was a good deal. I've always liked Domuya's bodies and was sad to see them go. Anyway, I made the trade gladly and today the body arrived.

Old Orkas had a modded flexi-perennial body in tan to go with his Elfdoll head in homme skin and now new Orkas has one in normal skin. I'm not sure I'll bother with doing the mods again--at least not for a while--but I'm really happy with him now. I was really unsure of whether I liked the mods I'd done to his head before, but having a more appropriate body makes all the difference in the world. I'm glad I waited and tested his head on a new body before springing for an Elfdoll Vivien head as a replacement (because I was sorely tempted to do that).

Will need some new NS hands at some point since it was the LE elf archer version of the body, so the hands were not compatible with Orkas' gloves (an essential part of his character) so right now he is using my Impldoll Triton's grey skin hands since they aren't visible under the gloves anyway.

 

The picture doesn't really show how the new body affects things but I wanted to add one anyway. It's probably not something that I would even know how to capture in photographs accurately, but to me the difference is pretty big even when he's just sitting there.