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Showing posts from August, 2013

Iplehouse Has a New Custom Doll System

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And it does indeed include gray skin! So you can order your gray Vampire Claude now, and from the first to the 15th of every month you can run over and order a gray EID girl with some head you can split with someone else, and swap parts around. If only the Iplehouse neck was more like a column and less like a mushroom, I would buy more bodies for other heads I have here. (I really like the SID bodies). Now I am thinking about a gray Lahela at some point in the future...:o

Iplehouse Claude Vampire..Girl

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A slightly tweaked version of a quick paintover I posted at Den of Angels--with Claude painted up as a girl. He's pretty cute. The problem is that if you order him in gray, you will never find a female body the right size (the SID neckhole is BIG), and he fits ..almost...on the Iplehouse EID girl but as I recall he looks ...odd. And of course you had better have gotten NS or WS to make this work. On the other hand the big Angelsdoll girl body in NS just might work if you filled up the neck hole a bit.

Cat Bath

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Meanwhile in Egypt...

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The Food Pyramid ..a repost, but it still makes me laugh. Also, The Inconvenience Store : and finally, Anubis' Lament :

Japanese Beetle

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You have to admit they are pretty...

Aurelia Repaint

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Testing some techniques in Art Rage, painting over and restructuring a photo of a Soom Onyx. Other additions from TieraZon and Photoshop.

Gordon Ramsay Needs Just a Little Thyme

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Cats on the Web

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My gray cat usually comes right to me for a kiss when he looks like this...though usually he's meh about kisses:

Solarsenshi Paints Soom's Sweet Witch

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Solarsenshi painted up her own Soom Sweet Witch; and I think this is how the default paint should have been-- Irene filled out the Witch's lips in a more natural way, and now you can see how pretty the sculpt is. The original default painting was cute, but more like "Miss Korea" than a style that really flattered the sculpt's shape, and I think Irene made her look amazing. There are more photos of the Sweet Witch here: http://solarsenshi.blogspot.com/2013/07/trouble-maker.html Caketown is always worth a visit, though sometimes it makes me want to go find or make cookies. :D

3 New Fractal Wallpapers

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1280x960 pixels, download here: Clockwork Universe 1280x960, download here: Colliding Galaxies And finally, a smaller one: 800x600, download here: Tentacular I'm still keeping my VampireBianca paper up until she ships. :D

Shushu in the Phlox

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After getting a lot done on Saturday, on Sunday J came down with a flu virus, and stayed home Monday. I felt ok, but I have been struggling with some weird eye infection, so mostly we lay around and I did some work on the computer. The phlox and the buddleia I just put in are doing their job of attracting butterflies--I had a swallowtail yesterday, and of course the camera was inside, in my purse, so you will just have to take my word for how pretty that butterfly was.

Loongfish 166cm

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Thanks to Ilsonya's blog, I have found more photos of Loongsoul's Merman. (I think he is actually a water dragon, or something, named GongGong). He is a handsome fellow, though he needs his wave stand to be upright: Here's another view of the stand: Gorgeous though he is, he is also..large: He is also mysteriously absent from the English website--either he is a TaoBao special, or he's not released yet. So if you like, you can look at his vampire turtle cousin, who is also very handsome, but needs a napkin: JunShi Black Turtle Vampire Dragon Warrior Thing

Costco, Really?

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August 24th...AUGUST...at Costco: Not even all the Halloween stores are open yet!

Soom Free Choice Beryl

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Yep, there she is--a full hoofie Beryl, thanks to some trading, some luck and some kindness on the part of Marketplace sellers. The horns are from something else...I think a Soom boy but I don't know which one. I like them better than Beryl's defaults, though. I did glue one magnet in backwards late last night, and then had to pull it out with acetone, an exacto and a second neodymimum magnet. There is nothing more exciting than a Gorilla-glue covered flying neodymium magnet, except maybe an errant Roman Candle. Here's the full body--she has some tattoos but I wanted to keep the photos Safe For Work: And here are her feet--I did make a mistake when I put on the matte medium base-- I didn't keep my brushstrokes going in the direction the hairs would grow, so it shows when the light reflects at a certain angle. The second hoof came out fine. I did hot glue suede her, and I used real suede on the base of her hooves and between the hoof and the hock. I need to make a st

Does Iplehouse Realskin go all the way through?

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(Note dust collection system; towards the end, he moved the nozzle to under the neck.) Yes, the color goes all the way through! (Though this body is very green on the outside, which is why I was willing to cut the neck for a different head.) Iplehouse dolls really don't hybrid well.

Stripey, what have you got?

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"Nothing" "Is that a chipmunk?!" "I was just washing it."

Soom Shadow Sprite Nyer

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Now here's a little cutie that Soom just released--and not only is there the adorable gray shadow version, there is a Cream White Light version: You get a human head, a pointy ears head, normal human feets, and fairy feets with either version--no seam sanding on the gray version, though. These little Sprites are beautifully detailed--I saw an Auber in person and he was just perfect in the fine details of the head and hands. Sale page is here: Little Miss Nyer

Change in the Addiction Claude

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Iplehouse posted an update on their website; pictures are "forthcoming": First, we checked all the messages and opinions you left us and wanted to thank you all for taking time and effort to share your opinion with us. When our sculptor designed Demon version Claude with horns, he wanted to try a new creative attempt and wanted to make it very realistic unlike other dolls. Since we always support on trying new things, we supported his artistic decision. But it looks like it may have been too soon or too realistic. Once again we want to thank all the customers who understood and supported out intention and we will keep on trying new experiments in the future too. Also we want to say thanks to all the customers who have taken time and effort to share their opinion with us too. These kinds of ideas are a lighthouse which shows the way we should be heading. Since many customers have asked us to release Claude Vampire head as an option, we decided to release additional vers

Meanwhile in Maryland...

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The dogs at my brother's landlady's house are still waiting to be served...

The red tentacle wig

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This is the first time I have tried using roving instead of wefts to make a wig. In many ways it is a lot easier, though partly that is because I just smoothed out a big hank of wool and tacked it onto the wig cap I had made out of an old T shirt. Then I braided parts of it and just twirled and stitched other parts. It is easy to get Dr. Seuss hairdos with it, and it feels nice (I like wool anyway). Here is the front: The "fringe" is just that--the edge of the roving sticking out rather inelegantly. I still had fun making little spikes. The trim covers the edge of the wig cap that would be visible otherwise. And yes--that is a Soom Beryl head on an Impldoll random body...not my old Love Me or Die Beryl (the name of that release makes me laugh) but a Free Choice Beryl that I am 98% sure is an actual FC Beryl--the resin matches perfectly my FC body, and even Soom has a hard time matching resins batch to batch. I also know some of it's history and where the original body

Cooking Instructions

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If you like brownies, get the Ghiradelli box--they are so much better than the Betty Crocker or the Duncan Hines. (None of which are bad ; I mean, we are talking brownies here)

I only thought about asking...

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...but I knew what the answer would be. :D

Shane Gray

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Rumor has it that Iplehouse is thinking of adding "Gray" to the list of resins available in their Custom Doll System. It's just a rumor, but a fun one--during the first fifteen days of the month right now, you can do a "mix and Match" of heads and bodies with your choice of resins of (this is from memory, so I may miss one or two) White, Normal, Peach Gold,Realskin, Light Tan, and Ebony. Because I had Photoshop open anyway I took a few minutes and decolorized 3 random Iplehouse dolls, ones that just happen to be ones I am interested in :D. Here is Ashanti, who looks stunning in anything: A gray Stella: And a gray Soo: The real dolls (assuming Iplehouse does add gray) will look much better since the makeup will be adjusted to fit the gray, instead of me fooling with sliders in Pshop.

Caveman and Cats

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Once more I have been rummaging through Party City for wigs--I'm really looking forward to the opening of various Halloween Stores, because it will be wiga-palooza then! This one ("The Crazy Caveman") I grabbed not for the cheesy skull beads (a weird omake) but for the two-toned wild and wooly look. I want to make a small wig for my Granado Terra out of it, but there is so much, I though I would experiment with making a wig for my Soom Galena as well. Serendipity has plenty of neat, controlled wigs but sometimes a faun needs to be able to run wild. So here is the WIP: I don't like the trim on the front, I am going to make some paperclay helmet thing to edge it instead. On this wig I kept the mesh from the original wig and just cut out a small section of the larger wig and added darts in the back. The weirdest spot is underneath, but doesn't show, and I have some small braids back there also concealing bare spots--it's still "big", but I am getting

Morning Glories

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I like growing morning glories--for one thing, they are basically a weed. Sandy soil, heavy clay, strange industrial tailings...it's all good. I've even grown them in New Jersey, where we had so much shade you couldn't see the house on Google Satellite for the trees. But the soil here is clay, so heavy that if it has been dry for a while, you'd have trouble getting a pickaxe into the dirt; so I wasn't too sure how well the morning glories would grow. So I just bought one pack of seeds from the hardware store, soaked them overnight and poked them into various parts of the yard, hoping they would come up. They did: That is one plant. (Two plants, this time.) This one I have had to take scissor to so it won't eat the sage or the marigolds... So far, only the first one I planted (in a planter) has bloomed, possibly because it got scorched by the barbeque, which it was trying to overwhelm. All this green and flowers...for only 1.25! I wonder what would happen if