New Wig for Aura (test)

I really liked Aura's old wig but unfortunately the colors were not accurate to my mental image of his character. And since I had some spare golden blonde colored yarn lying around from making a wig for Ezreal, I've been toying with the idea of making a new wig for Aura.

Yesterday I decided to go ahead and go for it.

The major downside of not being able to find the right color in the same brand I was using before is that this brand doesn't allow me to make my strands as long. It's an acceptable length but not quite as long as I really wanted. The other down side is that it's not as smooth. It has a little bit more of a frizzy appearance, which isn't bad. It's just not quite as silky smooth and shiny as the old wig was.

But the color is more accurate. And it was either this or start seriously considering making the mixed yellow-blonde and white his canon hair color. Which could have had interesting melodramatic backstory stuff to go along with it, but I just wasn't sure I wanted to go that route.

I had to use the cap from a spritzer bottle dealy and glue strands onto that in order to get Aura's hair even close to long enough in the back. I've considered having him cut his hair shorter in Legion but it's not set in stone yet and  I think I'd still prefer that doll Aura have his traditional hair even if I did go that route.

This is how he looks right now. I do really like the color. I'm still debating on things like the length and less shiny aspect. One thing I definitely do like better is that it looks more finished in the back. No one ever really saw the back of the other wig, but there was a large amount of wig cap showing as well as the seams on the bottom length of hair. That always bugged me and was a large part of my motivation to remake the wig, actually.

making wigs

I cannot recall if I mentioned my horrifying attempts at making little Theo a mohair wig. But it was horrible and I decided not to make any wigs for tinies again as a result.

And then the other night I decided to give it another shot since I had bought enough for several wigs and it felt like a waste not to use it.

This time I took into account what direction the hair was going when I cut my pieces, and it turned out much better.

I kept meaning to get better pictures of this in the day time and then it never happened so I've given up on waiting to be un-busy while the sun is up and have decided to just go ahead and do the entry before it's old news.

I originally intended this to be for Aura but it came out so fluffy that I just had to try it on Liss and I ended up liking it much better than the previous wig I made her.

So I ended up making Aura a different wig and giving Cail the one Aura was using previously.

Here is another one of my lovely post-sundown photos! I mainly switched their wigs because Aura previously had the wig on the right and it was darker than his skin, but Cail's head is blushed darker to match the body I put him on so if I'd given him the new wig (left) it would have been much paler than his skin. This way they both end up with wigs that are just slightly lighter than their skin, so it's more cohesive since they're twins. Ideally I will one day be able to get another body that matches the default skin tone but for now this will do!

I just need to make little Cail some appropriate clothes, finish Liss' dress, and then get everyone shoes and the little crew will be complete! Big first for me. I never finish any of my doll projects! Or... barely ever. I have a few that I consider completed.

On that note, I should update my projects list because I believe some of my projects are done and some of them are no longer relevant as key elements may have been sold or scrapped.

new wig for Avignon

I had been thinking about getting Avignon a new wig and really the only thing stopping me was my inability to find the right color. But after a zillion years of browsing the marketplace on DoA, I managed to find a wig in the right color!

I thought it was going to be too big but it's actually exactly the right size for her tiny Souldoll noggin! No need to mod and potentially destroy it! Yay!

It's so fluffy XD It took me a while to even begin to make it manageable. It was just going everywhere and I had no idea what I was doing, but eventually I googled something to do with floofy hair and managed to figure out something.

I got new eyes for him because I was hoping to replace the really really bright ones he has now but the dome is too low and they didn't fit right. Oh well. They're nice eyes so I'm sure someone else will use them.

I slightly changed where I part Orkas' hair. For some reason I am more happy with him this way. I have no idea why it made any difference at all but it did...

Still on the fence about that lower lip but I'm going to give it more time before I make any decisions about it. In person it's stopped bothering me as much but in photos it feels very large.

I am not working on Sunday and I want to attempt to make Shino and Alek some jackets then. Or at the very least make SOMEONE some clothes. This is a thing I need to do. The number of people in need of clothes is decreasing but one day that number is going to hit zero. Only new arrivals will be clothes-less. That is the goal!

EDIT:  After an  un-successful attempt at giving Ezsphrein a new face up yesterday, I sort of got it in my head that my Latidoll Chaim (who has been my Ezsphrein for years now. I think longer than anyone else) looks too young for the character I want him to be. I've kind of always resisted replacing him because of how much trouble I went to to get Chaim, but the more I thought about it the more I really didn't think he fit the role.

So I thought for fun I'd just throw this spare Souldoll Chiron head I have on the body I had Chaim on. The Chiron head was airbrushed grey to go with my Impldoll Triton body but I wiped it so I could take pictures for a potential trade on DoA and then my trade partner ended up being interested in a different head which kind of worked out since once I had Chiron all cleaned up I was reminded of why I liked the sculpt to begin with.

So I tried the head on the body and tried on the official Ezsphrein wig and I immediately liked the combination so I went to go give the head a face up. It's pretty messy in places but I'm happy with it overall.

Fun story, the whole reason I 'updgraded' Defliel from a Customhouse Chamomile into a Souldoll Killian was because his head was too big compared to Ezsphrein's. This started a sort of domino effect where over the course of a few years I ended up replacing pretty much all of my heads so that everyone was at least reasonably in the same size range and didn't look too terribly weird together.

So I guess it's sort of come full circle now.

I was initially considering attempting to sell my Chaim head but the more I think about it, the more I think I will just hold onto it and one day when I am overflowing with funds I will get him a body along with my Customhouse Chamomile head (which I have held onto for ages because it was my first SD) and they can sit around and be old school together and sit on the porch and tell these young'uns how hard it was for them in the good old days. Wearing poorly made sock clothing. Having smudgy face ups sealed with gloss sealer because I didn't know there were different types. All that good stuff.

Cailath's new wig

I had this whole list of things I wanted to work on today and I ended up doing silly grown up stuff like cleaning instead.

But I did manage to find time to make Cailath a more character-appropriate wig. I might go in and work on it a bit more tomorrow because it's not quite as long in the front as I wanted. It's also a little more layered and fluffy but I just have too much fun with that...

I tried to get pictures of him by himself but he didn't want to cooperate until I shoved Aura in the picture with him, and then he only cooperated marginally better.

He does not photograph as well as I feel like he should. Obviously he has a lot to compete with but I quite like him irl and I don't feel like he looks as good in photos. But at least you can sort of get an idea of what his wig looks like now.

Tomorrow I hope to actually get around to properly finishing his eyelids (which right now are hastily carved in and painted over because I didn't feel up to redoing his face up at the time) but I will probably get distracted by some other project instead because that's kind of what I do.

Unrelated, but his hair looks more like 'cuddly anime protagonist' than 'assassin' but I guess that doesn't really matter since his hair (and the rest of his face) are covered when he's doing that sort of thing. If I ever get hyper ambitious I'll actually make him something resembling his hood and mask dealy. For now I will probably just focus on making him something passable and also modding his ears similar to Aura's.

I should also consider doing some body switches or dyeing his. Or possibly not using a color that doesn't match next time I airbrush his head to make his mods less obvious. But I don't imagine him being paler than Aura so I'll probably just stick with airbrushing that way and do something about the body. 

Relocating Shino's eyebrows

I was just about to go ahead and wipe Shinozaki because his face up just wasn't working for me. In fact, I was so frustrated I was starting to look around for potential replacements. I haven't liked the last three or so face ups that I've given him and in the past year I've barely been able to look at him because he just wasn't making me happy at all.

Before doing something completely crazy, I decided to redo his face and possibly mod him further if that didn't work (because I wasn't really 100% happy with the mods I did to him originally but I had dumb plans for the head based on one person's owner pics. I would say I need to stop doing that but Shino was a nice happy accident.)

Anyway. I decided to try relocating his eyebrows further down before doing anything else because I was relatively happy with the rest of the face up. So I did that and made them look a little more angry and suddenly I was so much happier with him!!

I also tried a different wig on him. He has three different fiber wigs (that's two more than anyone else) and what do I do? I put him in a spare fur wig I made. It was too short but I kind of liked the look so at first I was going to just make him a whole new one out of yarn the way I did Auralion's, but then I told myself that that was a silly idea since Cailath is still sitting around in a temp wig and should be next up for a proper custom one. So I just gave Shino some small yarn extensions.

Perhaps once Cailath gets a proper wig I'll go ahead and make Shino one. I do love crazy hair that sticks out every which way. Tomorrow I should work on Cailath's. And also finish his eyelids so they look proper. Which might mean redoing his face up. We'll see.

I also kind of want to work on a few clothing projects. Iyrilaeth still needs something resembling a proper outfit. And at some point I do want to give Shinozaki and Alek some sort of fancier clothes. A couple reasonably stylish jackets might do the trick since I am not unhappy with what they wear. I just find it a little too dull. So that's my potential list of projects to choose from tomorrow.

wig fixing and a picture of Orkas

I finally managed to get Elaria's wig into a tolerable state of existence. No photos yet because it's still drying after the boiling water treatment I gave it. I managed to pour boiling water straight onto my hand multiple times and give them lesser burns a few other times. And one could definitely make the argument that it wasn't worth it since I will likely replace this wig anyway since I don't hate it now but I don't love it either.

It's possible once it dries I'll like it better. I guess we'll see.

In other news, I've become very attached to my Vivien head/potential Orkas. I'm just not sure it's right for him.. but I really really want it to be. I'm going to try getting the right eyes (purple without the really bright centers) and see if that helps. If not, I will probably attempt a different wig possible. And if all else fails I will attempt to make the actual open eyed version of the head work.

It's also possible he just looks too healthy for Orkas. Between the homme skin and the more rounded features, he's just not capturing crazed telepath as well as I want him to. His eyes are uneven so maybe when/if I get around to fixing that I'll redo his face up with more blues and blush in the hollows of his cheeks more and see if that helps. Possibly increase the bags under his eyes too. Or something. I really don't know.

Could just be that since his last face was so intensely frowny, anything will seem pleasant by comparison. I can't really put my finger on what I didn't like about his previous head. I just have difficulties with making Iplehouse dolls work in person. Alek is probably the only exception to that. Though I do miss my Akando from time to time...

It might also be the lower lip... bit more full than I imagine Orkas' would be. But for some reason I'm terrified of modding the head further? Even though I already did crazy things to open the eyes??? I'm not actually sure what is stopping me. I'm generally not afraid of modding (Cailath's head was limited to 10 I think and I modded it beyond recognition because I'm a bad person...) but for some reason with a head I've wanted for so long, it just feels like I shouldn't. That whole obligation to make it work bit I guess. I don't know.

face ups: Orkas and Avignon

EDIT: I could just about punch myself in the face. I went to go check the Elfdoll website and they'd put a normal skin Vivien head up for sale. I guess someone must have cancelled or not paid or something. If I had just been patient I could have saved myself all of this trouble! 

I went ahead and bought it anyway. Seeing the head in person may help me figure out if I've done the eye mods correctly since it's hard to figure out based on photos.

I'm still not 100% sure this head will work the way I want it to or even that I like it enough to use for someone else if it doesn't work for Orkas... but here's a progress update anyway.

Last night I finished sanding epoxy and prepping the head for its first face up. I had this really stupid idea that I should wait until after the face up and see if I liked it before carving in eyelids. I don't even begin to know what I was thinking. Under what circumstances would not having eyelids be beneficial? I don't know.

So I gave it a face up. Hated it. My best friend pointed out that the eyelid area (where they SHOULD have been) needed some color or he needed eyelashes or something. So I wiped the head and left it alone for the night. Then today I went and carved in eyelids and decided to do attempt #2.

I can't decide if I just hate this thing because I did the mods poorly. Or because the wig just isn't doing it for me (I tried on a couple other wigs and liked it a lot better...). Or if it's the eyes I constructed for it (I say constructed because I didn't make the irises. I just assembled a base for them). The eyes are very bright. But they were what I had around that would work because regular 12mm eyes had irises that took up almost the whole eye socket.

He's a bit cross eyed here. It's hard to position his eyes properly due to the uneven eye sockets. I still haven't figured out how to fix that without potentially damaging something. I have since fixed the eyes a bit and can stand to look at him a little more. I don't like what I did with the colors on his face up. But it's better than last night. Last night was just embarrassing.

I went ahead and re-did Avignon's face up because I really want to like her and I've just struggled so much with managing to make her look like her character and look good at the same time. I tried on the first wig I bought for her after redoing her face up and didn't immediately hate it so that's something.

I am considering getting her a mohair wig or something because I just can't find a fiber wig that I'm happy with for her. It's just really hard to find the right color in any kind of wig though. I want something sort of like what she's wearing here but with slightly more red undertones. It kind of photographs like the color I want but in real life it's a more dull brown.

It's been a rather frustrating last few days on the doll front. Still haven't managed to fix Elaria's hair. I'm not sure this wig is even worth the trouble.

arrrrrghhhhh

I was messing around with Elaria's wig last night and decided I wanted to try to re-style just one tiny part of it, and I thought maybe it was small enough to do it on an ultra low setting with the flat iron (because on occasion that works out okay) but it made the ends all frizzy, so I had to break out the boiling water. And I decided to just dip the one part to get rid of the frizz because pouring it over it wasn't working....

And then half the wig fell in the water and so the whole front part is awful now and I am having such a hard time trying to fix it and it's horrible and frustrating and I'm tempted to just get her a new wig because it was a dumb cheap one anyway... but uuugh. Just so annoyed at the whole situation.

Id's new wig

A basquillion years ago, I drew the only picture of Id I've ever drawn, and I gave him this sort of bowl cut type deal or something. I don't know. I didn't put much thought into it, but for some reason I have adhered to it fairly strictly for years.

Today I finally decided that I wasn't entirely pleased with this arrangement, so I started grabbing other wigs in the orange-red range out of the closet and trying them on Id's head. I didn't really worry about them being the right size since I'm fairly confident in my ability to mangle a wig.

One of Orkas' old wigs looked pretty good on him so I decided to take it in some to fit Id's head. Just about the instant I got started, the aforementioned confidence disappeared. Orkas has always had fur wigs so it wasn't anything super challenging, but I was still a little worried I'd get the shape wrong and ruin everything.

It's a bit wonky at the top but otherwise works well.

Now if only I could figure out how to work eye positioning in dolls his size. It probably doesn't help that I opened his eyes myself and they aren't quite even.

back from A-kon

I mentioned a while back that I put Aura on my Popodoll 68cm body and was much more pleased with that match than when he was on the Angelsdoll body I had him on before. Well, I gave it more time and decided that despite the fact that I have at least once in the past drawn him looking a little more muscular, this didn't really mesh with my mental image of him. It was more based on influence from in-game images of Blood Elves.

Or rather... I didn't decide this. I was browsing DoA and saw a thread asking people what they thought about the more muscular trend with dolls these days, and for the most part that doesn't bug me at all, but there are definitely certain characters I wish I could get less muscular bodies for. For example, I always felt that even the relatively slender Domuya bodies were too well-defined for Lyric. If I was sure it would not make him bobble-headed, I would get him a Doll Chateau body, but I'm a little concerned the 60cm body would be too small for his Soom head. More research may be in order.

But I'm getting off topic. Aura, Andael, Statik, Esyrlon, and Doppelganger also have more slender builds (of the non-muscular variety). Doppel works just fine as the 60cm Dollmore body is tiny and works perfectly for him. I'm content with the Domuya flexi-perennial body I have for Esyrlon. It's a little more well-defined than I imagine him in my head, but the overall size is very good. Statik has a modded Thaasa body which leaves him with almost no muscle mass, so I'm happy there.

Andael and Aura have proved more problematic. Neither of them is supposed to be more slender-emaciated like Doll Chateau's bodies and both of their heads are too big for some of the other options out there. I still haven't figured out what to do with Andael, so for now he has to deal with improper body types, but I got an idea a while back for Aura.

I wasn't sure if it would work or if it was too stupid, so I never really mentioned it. But I saw some pictures of the Dollstown 18yr girl bodies and thought the overall shape looked really good. So I did some research for a while and tried to see how it would compare to other dolls in that height range (trying to keep his height relatively close to Cailath's and they're both supposed to be in the 70cm-ish area)

Anyway, I dug up almost every spare doll part I had lying around (as well as some things like lego sets that I hadn't opened) and managed to scrounge up enough money to buy one second hand. It's freshskin so it doesn't really match aura's head, but then I'm not sure what would since Har is an odd sort of pinkish color? I might eventually dye it to match better but for now since you can really only see the very tips of his fingers (need to get him bigger hands at some point) it's not a big deal.

The body arrived RIGHT before I left for A-kon. I was kind of hoping to get the mods done in time to bring him with me, but I didn't have enough time so I just really roughly sanded down the chest and had to call it good enough for the time being.

I did a little more work on it today since I don't have to go back to work until Tuesday. It's still not quite in a state where it's worth showing off, but I tested his clothes on it. I kind of hated it at first since they were made for a body with wider shoulders, so I sat around lamenting the waste of money and decided to try to find someone else the body might work for. I considered giving it to Avelarion and had his robe and head on and everything, and then for some reason I decided to try Aura's head on it again.

I think I like it better this time? I can't decide if the clothing combo looks good or completely ridiculous.

 The first one kind of helps show how slender it makes him? And then of course my camera didn't want to focus for a straight on shot except for the one time I was screwing around holding the camera at an angle. But there he is from the front. I don't feel like he looks exceptionally bobble-headed so that is good. As I mentioned, I'm really waffling on whether the red on white is good or bad. I'll probably re-make his base layer robe with another brocade of some sort if I decide the white isn't working for me. I do like the idea of a pattern on it. Also, Avelarion's robe is far better constructed than Aura's was.

Hopefully this will also give me some motivation to update Avelarion's outfit. Aura's gloves need re-designing I think. And I may go back in and line his hood to help hide how badly brocades fray. Possibly assault it with fray-check?  It was meant to be a prototype. I didn't expect to actually like it as much as I do. I would re-make it but it turned out completely different from the pattern I drafted, thanks to my failure at sewing. But I ended up liking the messed up design better than what I had planned so I'd have to figure out how to make the same mistake again on purpose. XD

Anyway... I'm really happy with it aside from the clothing fitting difficulties. If money was not an issue, I'd buy like three more of these bodies to do the same mod to (and maybe even some to not mod and actually use as girls). It definitely has a lot of the issues mentioned in the Dollstown 18yr thread like the difficulty sitting up un-aided, but it's so elegant looking that I just really don't care.

Got distracted and it randomly occurred to me that the Spiritdoll Elegance body might work well for Andael. Will have to look into some head size comparisons between that and Migidoll and possibly save up for that next. That is of course assuming that Batchix and Donn Kinney don't steal all of my money this summer with their impending doll releases... Maybe I should shoot to start saving for a new body for Andael this winter. XD

And in closing, here is my favorite shot of Aura from my mini shoot today. I love when his hair is being crazy and unruly.

I know I've already written like an entire novel for this entry, but one more thing occurred to me. Iyrilaeth's new wig (which I should get some pics of real quick) --okay back-- has blonde and white like Aura's does. Anyway, I think this is kind of a cool coincidence because it's sort of my headcanon that in my story's universe, those two are related somehow. Aura only has one kid, Elaria, and having Iyrilaeth be older than them would ruin the timeline, but I never planned out Cailath's children so it's possible Iyrilaeth could be descended from his line. Just random thoughts. XD

And in closing (for real this time) here is Iyrilaeth's hair all cut and stuff.

minor update

I ended up cutting Iyrilaeth's hair after telling myself that I would just buy another of the wig if I hated myself for cutting it. But I don't, and it's perfect for him now! I've been meaning to get pictures but I've been distracted by other things and feeling mildly under the weather.

Also did a bit of face up practice. I think I may need to calm down on the reddish lines along the cheeks and across the nose. XD I think it's really cute but perhaps not appropriate for every character ever.

I should also give Iyrilaeth a proper face up (or at least touch up the one he has) since he looks almost like a blank head with eyebrows next to everyone else.

I hate face plates...

I decided today's project would be redoing Lyric's face up, and then I decided while I was at it I would redo Andael's since last time my attempts at airbrushing resulted in him looking rather sunburnt.

Lyric behaved for the most part. I had some minor difficulties but nothing I'm super concerned about.

Andael, however, is a Migidoll Noel and he uses the face plate system and is impossible to deal with. As you might recall, last time I attempted to redo his face i dropped his head on concrete and shattered one of his ears and chipped his nose. I was able to repair the ear and decided the small chip in the nose didn't bother me that much so I left it alone. Well, this time I dropped him again and chipped the area above his right eye.

I don't know how I'm supposed to hold a face plate when doing a face up. If anyone has any advice that would be great... I'm not super happy with his face up (which I went ahead and attempted anyway because I wasn't in the mood to mix up epoxy and fill another hole in his face (because he got one in his chin completely randomly. I never dropped him or injured his chin. It just was suddenly there when I was wiping his face one time)) but I'll leave it for now because I just don't have the patience to attempt it again.

Lyric looks a bit more angry than I'd intended, but then he has every right to be and I suppose it makes sense he'd express it a bit. He also looks very dead but that's also appropriate for his character.

The dark spot on Andael's eyebrow is where the chip is. I haven't finished the eyebrows yet because I didn't feel like mixing up paint and attempting to draw fine lines.

In other news, I got a free wig with a purchase on ebay recently. The plan was to cut it shorter to be proper hair for Iyrilaeth, because while I did really like the one he was using as a temporary, it just wasn't very in character.

Anyway, this wig is long and curly at the ends and Iyrilaeth is supposed to have about chin length hair, but I am finding that I actually rather like it on him as-is. I am not sure if that's just because I like the wig as-is or if I actually like it on him.

Ignore his ridiculous ensemble. I haven't finished making his clothes yet so in the mean time he's just wearing an assortment of stuff. His face up needs improving since it was just hastily thrown together after his mouth mods, but after the luck I've had today I'm going to leave it alone for a while.

I'm going to give it some time and see how I feel about the wig later. The color is perfect and if it was shorter the style would be perfect for the character. I'm just finding it hard to bring myself to destroy it.

PoM: Deidara, part 2 + arms for Moment

I put my hand over part of Dei's mouth last night and decided the problem was that his smile was too wide on the right side, so I set to work rearranging that some and then set the head aside for the epoxy to cure.

In the mean time, an exciting package arrived !

I've been wanting to do something with my Dollzone Moment for ages now, but he really couldn't do much aside from just stand in place because of how heavy and unwieldy his petal arms were. I put up a wtb thread looking for regular arms for him, hoping to get something that would let me replace the lower half of his arms so that he would have a wider range of positions open to him.

I found someone willing to sell pretty quickly and today the arms arrived.

After a bit of work and some hot glue sueding, he can now stand un-aided and sit down without arm parts sticking out for a mile. I'm not sure yet if I'll hold onto the petal parts I'm not using just on the off chance I want to put them on from time to time or if this new arrangement will be his new permanent state. I'm leaning toward the latter because in his current state he strikes a good balance between fancy parts and functionality (in my opinion).

I'm really not used to dealing with dolls in the 40cm range so when I first opened the arms I was convinced they were far too small for him. They work well though. The color is slightly off but it doesn't bother me. And now I feel like I can design some sort of outfit for him and figure out what I want to do about a face up and other fancy leaf/petal stuff.

I also took a few photos of other dolls who only had temporary pictures up on the page listing all of them. And then I got back to work on Deidara. I re-did his face up and actually painted his scope dealy this time.

Then I spent hours making him a wig even though I realized about five minutes into it that it probably wouldn't work as well as I wanted. It might have worked out okay if I hadn't messed up on the style. I kind of went into auto pilot and started doing it the way I'd done his first wig back when I had no idea what I was doing and didn't realize what I was doing wrong until the very end. Oh well. Learning experience. Next time I want to use different yarn too. I much preferred working with the stuff I used for Auralion's wig and it was a lot faster too.

New mouth pics with (mostly) painted scope. It still needs some small details added but it's functional for now.

There's a picture with the wig I spent far too long working on. It's not awful but it just didn't work out the way I wanted. I might not necessarily go 100% with his canon hair style since his ears are too far back for it to look right I think. We will see how it goes I guess.

wig making

I've been meaning to make Auralion a new wig for a while now but have been very intimidated by the prospect since he has a rather specific hairstyle.

I read a lot of tutorials and watched a lot of videos and finally decided on a method I thought would work well. Then I proceeded to get sidetracked and after buying the materials I put the project on the back burner and ignored it for a solid two weeks.

Well then I started work on my mod project for Aura's twin brother, Cailath, and while I didn't think the head turned out similar enough to be successful in that regard, I did grow rather attached and wanted to make a proper wig for the as-yet-nameless head.

So I went out and bought a children's wig from the party store so that I could deconstruct it and sort of play around with wig making.

After watching a few more tutorials I decided that for the sake of practicing (since I don't know what style I want to go for yet for him) it would be easiest if I didn't have to sew, so strapped a plastic bag over his head and hot glued down some lace in the shape I wanted for a wig cap. I then cut away the plastic bag and started to hot glue down wefts of hair. The entire process was extremely quick and easy and looked surprisingly decent (in my opinion) considering the materials used.

Anyway, after this was done I decided I really wanted to make more wigs just for fun so I looked at yet more tutorials and decided I wanted to attempt to fix Aura's wig after all. But I initially decided I would be lazy and just try to make a clip on ponytail for his wig.

So I gave that a try and was less than pleased with the results. If I did it again I think I could do it better but I didn't have the right color to work with anyway and I had used all the longest wefts from the wig I bought to make the attempted ponytail and it seemed like more trouble than it was worth to try to detach them.

I still wanted to fix Aura's wig, however, so I decided to try my original plan. This was to use yarn to make the wefts myself and then brush out and straighten the yarn before attaching it to the wig cap. Since I had also planned for this to just be a prototype, I went with the same plastic bag, hot glue, and lace method. Then I brushed out tons and tons of yarn wefts and used a flat iron on the lowest setting to straighten them.

The yarn that I thought matched Aura's original wig well ended up almost white so I attempted to mix in a brighter yellow I had. The result made it look more like he has streaked hair and I almost scrapped the project after gluing down the first strands, but I decided it would be good practice to see if I could finish and get the style right. Since I was working with really thick yarn, his hair ended up thick enough to make the ponytail without any fancy additions, clip ons, or two part wigs.

I was going to just leave it be after finishing the ponytail but I ended up cutting and styling it and I think I might actually keep it as his official wig.  It ended up looking much better than I'd expected. It's kind of a lot to adjust to because he's looked so prim and proper with his neatly parted long straight hair for ages and now he has all these layers and spikes. It's much more accurate for his character but it's a big change after all these months of dealing with the temp wig.

I couldn't decide on one picture because I wanted to show various angles of it. There are a few things I'd change if I did it again but for now I'm fairly pleased!

an unsuccessful evening of attempting to airbrush

I managed to color match the ears but I messed up on the face multiple times. Normal sealant and airbrush sealant were both giving me issues so the face up itself came out splotchy. I re-did it twice but finally gave up and just sealed it and put the head on a body because it's late and I didn't have time to redo it again and didn't want to leave him blank overnight.

Also his wig turned out much paler after the boiling. I'm used to wigs getting a little more dull after this treatment, but I was a little surprised at how light it was. Oh well. It's only a temp. It's way too wonky looking to be permanent.

Despite being out of focus, this shot was the only one I liked. Possibly because it's hard to see all the things that went wrong with the face up. And partly because I like the way the hair drapes in this one. Tomorrow after work I may give the face up another go. We'll see how it goes and if I feel up to dealing with the frustration.

When I do the official version of Aura's wig, I think I'll do it the way I draw it, with the part being off-center. One can't really tell where the part is in this picture, but it's in the center and I don't really like how it looks from the front.

more exciting arrivals (and some minor body and wig mods)

After I got my Cyril, I ended up selling a body I no longer needed in order to get him one of his very own. I did want to get him a Dollshe body and was just going to save up for that, but then a super duper cheap Angelsdoll 70cm body was up on the MP and I couldn't pass it up. It was the v1 body, not the v2. If it had been the second version I probably would have passed on it because I had some issues with my v2 prior to doing rather extensive mod work on it.

Anyway, RIGHT after I bought that someone decided to put up a Nabarro Har head on the MP. This was my dream head. I had up a WTB thread and was checking the MP for it every day. Seeing as I had just recently spent money, I was initially going to just pass on this, but the more I thought about it, the more I knew I would most likely regret it for a decent portion of forever if I didn't get this head.

Back story is done. Skipping forward a week and a half or so: the head and body both arrived today after I ran down to the mail box every thirty minutes or so. Sometimes every five minutes. I was a little over eager.

The packages sitting on the dining room table. I was going to just tear them open but I thought this was worth commemorating.

I opened the Har head first. Here you can see the boxception going on.

The mini-box was really quite cute.

My first glimpse of Har's head.

And he's free! His previous owner modded his mouth and gave him elf ears. I shall have to break out the airbrush to do some color matching.

For color comparison purposes, here is the body next to the head. Har's head doesn't match anything I own but that's not really a huge deal for me. I've never been hyper-concerned with resin matching. This does, however, show off the one drawback of this body (in my opinion). I've never been super keen on how inflated the chest looks. So it was off to the modding table outside to fix that...

I marked off the area where I wanted to dremel down the chest. Couldn't really mark the top part where I wanted to deflate it a bit but I mentally marked that.

After some dremel work, this is what I had. Well this is after dremel and a bit of sanding. It was pretty ugly at this stage. I was starting to thoroughly regret my entire life.

And then I spent more time sanding and started regretting life a little less as it smoothed out. It's still uneven but I was starting to lose the light so I figured it was good enough for the time being and called it quits. The pecs are still kind of a bit much compared to what I wanted for Iyrilaeth, but I may just leave them for the moment because I'm not 100% sure this will be his forever body. I also chose not to sand off the junk for that same reason (Iyrilaeth is androgynous). In the event that I do decide I am perfectly pleased with him on this body and do not want something else instead, mod work will continue.

After giving the body a quick shower to rinse off any leftover resin dust, I decided to get to work on giving Aura a temp wig.

This was a regular, center parted blonde wig. Using the ever-helpful boiling water, I re-styled it to allow it to be tied up in the back. It's not perfect but it will do for now.

the last flight of Icarus

lol dramatic title for random crap.

I've been on an inspirational low for a bit. Partly because I got discouraged working on Esyrlon's outfit and even when I was happier with it, that negativity was still there in the background. And then part of it was just that I was going nonstop last month and wore myself out. And then real life got stressful and I was exhausted.

But this isn't a blog about my life.

I got this wig ages ago and it was sort of a curly mullet. Straight hair all around on top and in the back it was long and wavy. I tried to straighten it with a flat iron years and years ago, and it came out a total mess. So I decided to try to salvage it with boiling water. I'm relatively pleased with the results. It can actually be worn with the part on either side. If I part it the other way he's rocking the Flock of Seagulls cut sorta.

Aleksandr is modeling this wig, but I will probably save it for Layne. They are supposed to look shockingly similar so I was sorely tempted to just turn Alek into Layne. But... we'll see. 

 

Also did more mod work on Loki and re-did his face up. I'm happier with it this time but wish I hadn't blushed the nose quite so intensely. XD I may fix that another time, but for now I'm just glad it's looking better than before in a general sense. 

And now for the reason I gave this the title I did. Here is my ex-Ikyras, an IoS Garsh. He has been up for sale for ages and I thought I'd give him a new face up in the hope that he will sell better. For now I have crappy pictures because it's dark but tomorrow I will try to get some natural lighting shots.

wig modding and more faceups

Scileraen is one of my bjds that I really struggle to properly bond with. I think he has a lot of potential and when I do take the time to try to make him work I feel really attached, but it's one of those cases where I got a mold because I saw potential in it, but what I wanted required a lot of modding. And I'm impatient when I first get a new doll and often just want to enjoy looking at them rather than spend ages sanding them.

So I did some quick mods on him but then left things alone aside from that. I'm hoping to get some more serious stuff done sometime this week, but for now I re-did his face and wig (which is always a huge pain). This time I decided that rather than attempt to assault it with hair glue I would try styling it more permanently by arranging strands and pouring boiling water over them so that they'd stay in that position better.

Hair is still drying, so we'll see how it works out for real later. It has potential to work for what I want though.