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Showing posts from August, 2015

Iplehouse Shows You How to do Asa's Hair

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Yes, this style! This is all my Asa currently has: Vermont Chick told me to go look in Iple Data, which is buried under here (You have to be logged into the site first): HOME < IPLE_TALK < Iple Data < How to make Asa's Hair Style There is a TON of useful things in this subfolder, "Iple Data", including pictures of the various sculpts in different wigs and outfits, which can really help to see if the sculpt is going to work for the character/ clothing you have in mind. I still need to find or make that style of wig first, and I am tending towards making it--I spent the weekend being very busy, but also I made another wig, a hand for Ital/Forrest,here, still needs nail shaping and paint: I also did some research on where to buy Apoxie Sculpt, Fimo, LaDoll and some other stuff because I want to make some flintlocks and some other rubbish. I went to Dick Blick in Wheaton and they had none of the things on my list, though they have GIANT BAGS of porcelain clay

Nayuta Suntan Tattoo

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Dollmore has released a new Nayuta Kenzo Tattoo , this time in Sunshine, and he looks great--I have seen owner photos of the original tattoo Nayuta and he's just stunning. Here I love the look of the white on gold. I hope they have a etching process to do this that isn't just an artist with a scribe!

Ital the Ice Lord

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Krowbar had a Fairyland 65cm male body that I thought would be great for Gideon, as I had one once before ( Xtal has that one now). So we did a trade--she told me up front he had an "Ice Arm" that she wanted to keep, and I thought that was fine since I could just stuff a nub of resin in the arm hole and attach feathers and Gideon could have a "Wing Arm". Krowbar felt that she should send along a little something extra with the body, since it only had one arm..so she sent... a head. This head, in fact: I thought maybe he was a Scar Breakaway, which are very much liked by people who collect Fairyland dolls, but after some Googling I found that while he was the Breakaway mold, he was really Ital the Ice Lord, which explains the Ice Arm. I'm not sure what explains the scars, but that seems to be a thing with Fairyland. Krowbar had added the smaller eyes (which I like a lot) and the fancier ears, and it turns out the teeth as well--they were done so well I thoug

Shintaro Ohata --2d and 3d

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This beautiful painting is actually a sculpture in front of a painted backdrop, and it fills me with the same joy that I had as a kid when I looked at Viewmaster slides and the animals in the foreground looked 3d and the landscape and sky in the back were flatter and looked more like photos. Take a look at more of his art on the High Fructose site --it's gorgeous and what I would like to be doing with the dolls here.

Shakeup at Soom

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Thanks once again to Prince Whitemare for spotting this facebook post . There is a bit more about Soom there, but also some very dainty and pretty small dolls, worth a visit on their own!

Benny The Greater

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So here's the new, larger Benny head; still with no ears, now made out of Fimo (which is less gooey than Sculpey) and needing some more fine sanding and cleaning out of his eyewells. (The next head I will set up from the start with a support that presses out the eyebacks to begin with, and has a smoother surface for the back of the faceplate.) Here's the foil being pulled out from the inside of the face-- Once the foil was out, I trimmed back the edges, and you can see the interesting... but unfortunate... texture inside. I actually went and found the dremel and read the instructions so I could use the tiny sander to start eyewells in there. It's a slow business because it looks all to easy to pop through the eyelid without meaning to. Here he is with his feet--I have a Soom Euclase body with the claw feet and hands (I think it was from the Free Choice Event in 2014), and I am working on painting his feet and body before the weather gets cold. In case you were wonder

Granado's Pluto

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Granado's Pluto has been released, and he is gorgeous. I would get him myself, but I have no character for him, and more importantly, he is designed to go on the bigger Evol body (which is more or less EID sized) so he wouldn't be size-compatible with the rest of my Granado crew--he'd be more the size of Kip, the Impldoll Plaice, who is an amiable moose, or Phillipe, who is currently hogging more than his share of the doll shelf. I have one slot for a 65 guy on a lower shelf, but even sideways Pluto wouldn't fit, and I hate to store anything that isn't a headless body in such an undignified way. So for now the gorgeous Mr. Pluto has to stay at other people's homes. You can buy his clothing too, by the way, and it might be a good idea since he is a large man. The outfit looks nice, too . Here is the blank sculpt: I want someone to make a Steve Rodgers/Captain America fan doll out of him. :D

Dollshe's Fashion Line

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Mr. Dollshe has been working on the details of his smaller version of Grant Phillipe and Ausley Love, including some extra hand poses. He has photographs of the dolls laid out in pieces, so you can see all the parts, and where the silicon disks go; which I thought was interesting. (I was not willing to pull apart Phillipe to see what was going on inside). The article (and photos) is here . Part of me wants a big Ausley Love-- so I am hoping maybe next summer she will go on sale. :D My friend Jo has one and she loves, loves her and her posing.

Kalypso Gets Taller

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I've wanted to upgrade my Shushu's body for a while--I have never been a fan of the neck key design and finding her shoes...and clothes in general, was hard--she isn't Barbie sized, and isn't MSD/unoa sized, and Fairyland doesn't sell much for clothes unless you want fullsets, AND they now have a bewildering variety of bodies, so it's hard to figure out what fits what. But today was the Mitsuwa meetup, and I went and swapped for a Soulkid body, which is one of those "where have you been all my life" kind of doll experiences. For one thing, the Souldoll body is double jointed and has peanut knees and elbows; she's beautifully balanced, and has a clever if not entirely sucessful ankle design--the calves are the ball, rather than the ball being attached to the feet. This moves well and looks gorgeous but it means the upper edge of the foot is fragile, so she has had some repairs. Overall it's one of the loveliest bodies I have seen, especially f

Sculpey vs LaDoll

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It turns out that Benny is a small man..too small, in fact; which turns out not to matter: I had finished his ears and was using the pliers to pull out the foil support so I could dig out his eyewells and cook him, and I was doing this over the trash since I was making a lot of little bits of foil..and of course I lost my grip on the head... and BOOM into the trash he went. Luckily it was mostly paper, cookie crumbs and bits of foil in there, but his ears squashed off entirely and his profile lost some shape as well. Raw sculpey is a pain to keep nice. But I fished him out of the bin, and decided it would be better to shape his ears separate from the head and glue them on after cooking them separately-- since they were thinner than the rest of the head and would cook too fast. So I put his head in the oven for 35 minutes, and he came out perfect as far as cooking goes--nice and hard but not scorched or brittle. Then I took him over to the newly arrived Euclase body and it was ...no w

Iplehouse's Omar

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The handsome Omar is now up on Iplehouse's Flickr ! People on Den of Angels have pointed out he looks a lot like Omar Borkan Al Gala, the hottie who was supposedly asked to leave Saudi Arabia because he was "too hot", if you believe everything you read on the Internet. But Omar definitely is a doll. I'm poor or he'd come home to live with me, or maybe I will just make a little paperclay head of him. It turns out to be fun to make heads, lumps and all. And Omar is for sale here! http://iplehouse.com/home/shop/item.php?it_id=1640383845&nhn1=en

Paperclay (LaDoll)

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OMG this stuff is lumpy. Still rough--she's sandable, which is nice, and I was able to get eyes in her last night. I have not begun to ear with her ;) Here's Benny, who is all white normal sculpey. I started him while I was waiting for Tasha to dry a little, and to see how easy Sculpey was to work with compared to LaDoll. The sculpey is harder to deal raw with because any touch mars it, but I am hoping once he's cooked he'll be sandable as well. I need to go find refs for both of these, so far I have just been poking at them with a crochet hook and a letter opener without much to look at. Benny is updated now, though still not finished . At least he is NS now.

Impldoll Ankle Balls

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Last week I bought this very nice Impldoll Idol Realskin body, and once I had unwrapped it and put away all the bits that came with it, I discovered that she didn't want to stand. I took a look at her ankles and they are different from both Coriel's and Erzulie's-- Erzulie is one of the first Idol bodies, and Coriel might be Idol version C-- and this one Version B--I hope so, because Coriel stands fine and I am hoping when my other Idol ships that she will have functioning ankles. Another person was asking about ankle balls on Den of Angels a few weeks ago, so there might have just been a batch where Impldoll was tinkering with the formula, maybe to make them like Iplehouse ankles (Impldoll, don't do it). Anyway, in the photo you can see how small they are and how they are sort of "inside" the foot well. The ankle itself above the ball is tapered to fit around the top, but someone didn't take into account the fact that having a small ball would make the