DollsArtCats

Inspired by the Lucky Cat, Aurelia gets her ear tips covered with crinkly gold leaf. :D

True ebony black is hard to cast--Liz (Simply Divine) cast some hooves in black and said that she had to discard 4 or 5 casts to get one good one, because of bubbling and roughness due to the intense pigment. Somehow Mirodoll has figured out how to get around this, or maybe they can just recycle bad casts back into the pot--but whatever black magic they are using, lets them offer "Rain" here in ebony black; 68 centimeters tall, for (drumroll) 198.00 USD plus of course the seventy-something dollars EMS shipping to the US. Here is the link so you can be amazed too: Mirodoll in Black If you order one, and want to put a faceup on it and spray it, don't use Mister Super Clear, as it will fog white. I have been told Games Workshops Purity Seal is the one to use, though I haven't had a chance to try it myself yet. Purity Seal is also notoriously temperamental for splatting and clogging (different batches are different), so be prepared. But true black resin! :o

The book had parts set in the late 18th century and there was at least one ship...

It usually takes me about 8 versions to get a cover the way everyone likes it. This one may take 9 or 10, but most of it is "set" now. Part of me still likes the Giant Carrot version. And one more:

J claims to not have a lot of interest in gardening, but he's right there to defend the plants against intruders, like Japanese Beetles. They came first to nom on the neighbor's elm and grape plants and then zoomed over to eat the roses here. But J trundled out the heavy artillery and got a lot of them this way: And then J went on to get a jar of soapy water and picked off about 50 more over the course of a week, and there are almost no beetles left. The only thing we have ever sprayed for is wasps, but I have found a couple of new, non-toxic, ways of dealing with them. (And it's been so wet there haven't been many). One is a improved version of the milk jug trap; it's a manufactured opening that you insert in the plastic jug of your choice, and it's called The Fatal Funnel. (I have this vague feeling I have done a cover for that one.) The other method of getting rid of wasps is to buy a fake hive and hang it up, which apparently works really well, it scares

I've seen worse. (I am not taking Bryan's head off again unless I absolutely have to.)

It was a gorgeous day Sunday, so instead of staying inside and working, J and I went off in search of hardware stores. A co-worker of J's had told him there was a place that had "every tool" but it was sort of hard to find--the co-worker had orginally thought it was on Butterfield Road, so we had looked around there on Friday, found a Games Workshop (and Purity Seal, a competitor to Mr Super Clear, with the warnings in English...haha, I would have handled MSC with even more respect if I could have read the warnings--they are in Japanese on the MSC cans). Anyway, after getting the actual name of the mystery hardware store... ... J found it on Google and we went to see. Like many places in Chicago, it was closed on Sunday, but it was large and looked promising, in spite of the fact that the AND in the sign was sagging outward. If only there was some tool for that. So we went on to Harbor Freight Tools. Harbor Freight is set up a little like the "As Seen on TV"

Just some photos of the cats hanging out in the yard with each other..here the gray cat says "I'm gonna play bite you!" Then a dog barks: "That's so embarassing." Just Stripey:

Sometime around April of 2007, Luts and Cerberus Productions (CP was founded in 2002) formally became two companies, and CP opened a website for their own line of dolls and named the company "Fairyland", and introduced the 70 cm tall "Feeples" (Fairyland People). For a while both Luts and Fairyland made "Minifee", and at some point..maybe 2010? Fairyland took over the production of Minifee and then the Delf lines, and Luts stopped making them. I wanted to put together a Minifee as a gift, so I looked around and TatsuKitty offered me an old Luts "B" line Minifee body for a great price, and bajib found a Minifee Rena head that she could part with. When I got the two parts together I noticed that the color of the resin was different between the Rena head and the older body: So I took out Kalypso, who is also a cobbled-together Minifee; and Kalypso's newer body was the exact color of the Rena head. I know the Rena is a more recent sculpt--

It's once again "Time to sell someone to pay for someone" time, and once again, Amber, the Nanuri '07 Vamp on a small Soom Gem body, gets to stay. Why does he keep going back on the shelf? Because he makes me laugh! :D

Oh noooooo! LOL! And no way should you grind down a neck that expensive--plus the shoulders are wrong too. (We are ignoring the color difference here in the interest of science).

I have this wonderful Onyx head, and even a body to put it on. This faceup was done with an airbrush and looks very professional, but it was just...not what I wanted, and it was somewhat loved and worn, so I spent an hour yesterday cleaning it off and putting on a new, more amateur faceup on her. It's a good thing the dolls don't care! Here is the Original Light Onyx if you want to see how Soom painted her (mine is of course the Light version--I would love the Dark version too, but Arianne02 might have the only one.) Eventually I may send her out to be professionally painted. The dry weather means that I have to start watering. I know where the faucets are in back, but in front there is just a faucet in the garage to do the front lawn and plantings. A faucet with hot and cold taps,right by the garage door. This was so that George, one of the previous owners with a car hobby, could scrub up before going inside.(I suspect he is the one who left the Chrysler key and ignition o

The new heel feet are not compatible with the old heel feet; the ankle ball is very different, so you can't swap feet back and forth from the old bodies to the new bodies, or the new bodies to the old bodies.

There was something about the Soom Migma Alice's costume that bothered me...I decided it was the length (classic Alice has her skirts just below knee level. And then I found a beer ad and I knew why Soom Alice's costume looked odd to me! This is not Soom's fault, this is because I am too old to be really up to date on Lolita fashions; which Soom Alice, with her lace choker and wristlets, is really channeling.

The brooch is copper wire, hammered and wrapped about with needle-nose pliers; and is by Deviant Art artist UrsulaOT . She also has a great pdf tutorial on how to make wire wrapped jewelry, and a link to her Etsy there if you want to own some. (I would happily own all of it). There is a lot of variety in her Gallery, it's not just jewelry!

Actually his name is Gabriel, he is from Reddit, and he is thinking.."what are we doing?", since his owner let him have a whole day of doing forbidden things (like being out, in Gabe's case).

Michael Conley is someone I have known from way back in the late 90's, from a somewhat raffish alt binary group for Poser. It was a lot of fun; so much fun that my ISP decided that we were all sucking up too much bandwidth on the newsgroups and got rid of them; so it was hard for me to access the Poser group, and see what everyone was doing for a long time. But every now and then, Mikey and I wander past each other on Renderosity, and he sent me a link today of some of his blues guitar work. If you love the blues, you will love this: "Hollow Between the Ears" -- if you click on the title it should load the player and play. It's just Mikey playing. He's unsigned, by the way (hint) :D

Friday night in Naperville.

You do what you gotta do...

Mom is an amazing knitter, among many other things. And she put little beads around the hem...so pretty! Mirabelle, a Granado Fayette on an Angel of Dream body, is just borrowing the shawl; it belongs to my Granado Gitana, who now has a shawl... and shoes, and not much else yet! (Mirabelle looks like she is plotting on how she can keep the shawl for herself). Thank you, Mom! (heart icon here)

Farmer's Market special :D

I think I might do these from now on so I can "live" with a sculpt before I buy it--but I really like the gray Bianca shown here. For an easier download, go here: Vampire Bianca/Sky

K had her hair done by Brett, and I think here she is is getting ready to go out drinking with..her kindergarten buddies. Last time I saw Gary he was about 4 feet tall. I see from his photos he has gotten taller. "Little Johnny K" has also mysteriously grown, like the beanstalk. Amusingly, they both still look like themselves, only stretched. :o

Grrl on Den of Angels knits (Sonja, her Onyx-Vesuvia "knits", which is how I figured out that Grrl also knits, and is on Ravelry.) I do not knit, so I find this fascinating, especially as I adore yarn. She sent me a link to yarn.com and while I have no idea what I am looking at, I want it. I suppose I could pet it and occasionally make wigs. Here is a sample page: It's like wearable paint.

I'm trying to get a cover into shape, and it's going through it's "ugly duckling" stage...I suddenly realized last night I had inadvertently created a giant carrot on the right side of the picture. More today, and poor Frau Holle is 90% colorized, but not done done.

And I was totally not ready--I thought I would make him some pants this weekend but no, here he is! I did find some eyes that I liked, a ratty wig, and a shirt that fit. Still no pants, though. He's really cute! Size comparison with a Minifee and a Idealian 58 (this was before I found some slightly more dignified things for him to wear)

J found this while we went around Ikea last night. I went for shelves, but we left with a wastebasket, a sheepskin, a gift card, 2 funnels, a reading light and a rolling cart instead. I also saw this Swedish Fish swimming upstream towards the cafe: I still need to go back again for a chair and maybe those shelves.

And yes, it's Migma..though it's a "Romantic Migma" with the eyes sculpted to be more closed. I freely admit that I clicked all the options I wanted, to see what the total would be, and looked at all the sale text, and read how to do a layaway--and then decided it would be prudent (though sad) to pass--for one thing I have THREE Migma heads here; two of them a ridiculous purple, and if Alice had come in White Skin I might have gone ahead and gotten her anyway just to get the other heads a spare appropriate body. (I think my Granado Gitana would have fit as well--I really like the new Soom girl bodies). But I don't need another NS body, not even a really nice one. She does come with the awesome heely feets, and I love the Queen of Hearts makeup and red hair: You can peek at her here: Alice And Queen of Hearts Sigh.