Impldoll Ankle Balls

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 ankle flange hit the edge of the foot itself, which is one reason why Iplehouse ankles are so crappy.

By the way, if you need the foot measurements, go here:

http://dollsartcats.blogspot.com/2015/05/impldoll-female-idol-feet-and-stringing.html

The ankle problem seems fixable with Sculpey. It was really hot yesterday so I didn't feel like running the oven, so instead I used the boil/steam method to cook the sculpey. The color is the "translucent" stuff which I have decided is a fail, because..well you will see.

Here is the ball, raw and uncooked, without the hook hole.

Here it is a little more shaped. Putting the R and L on the back of the balls was the smartest thing I did all day.

My steam setup.

Ready to cook.

I actually ended up steaming them for a total of 30 minutes.

The balls are out, installed, and she stands like a champ--the problem is the steaming didn't make the balls hard enough for 70 cm of pressure from the strings, so this happened.

OK, this time I will cook them according to the manufacturer's directions in the oven. The trouble with this is they come out plenty hard, but the color is ugly. I wouldn't really call that an attractive translucent color. (this color is also impossible to blend smoothly into other colors, and I have tried when making faux opals). Also there was some shrinkage, so the balls no longer fit smoothly into the feet. I ended up putting some lumpy La Doll on there and then painting them so the color wouldn't be so obviously off, but it's still nasty. I need to look for some pre-mixed polymer resin that is closer in color to the Realskin of the Impldoll body.

I also sueded the inside of the shins with chamois to pad them a bit and maybe stop some of the thrashing of the ankle balls.

Since I had the oven pre-heated anyway, I made Luna some ears. They are very silly:

Here they are cooked up, again following the instructions.

Not as nice as the raw dough at all in color; and speaking of dough, whenever I went past the pan I thought "oo cookies" EVERY TIME even though I knew perfectly well what they were. J came home and did the same exact thing, so I broke down and made these:

Just lemon, butter, sugar, vanilla, eggs and flour and a little salt.

Anyway, the current ankle balls do work for now. Maybe I should make her some leg warmers.

I missed last nights posting because we had a tornado warning (the sirens do go off) and we had to sit in the basement for 20 minutes waiting for the weather to go overhead, and then I went ahead and finished baking the cookies instead of processing photos. We just had a few branches in the yard today.