Projects and the return of Paige and Zihu

  I have finally worked out what I'm doing with my bjds! It's only taken me over five years! In December I ordered two new Iplehouse kids. Celina in white skin, to take over Zihu's old role of Claudia from Interview with the vampire. She hasn't arrived yet but I'm already working on clothes for her. That's what my fabric painting in the last post was from. (By the way, washing the paper off went terribly. The printed lines stayed stuck to the fabric and when I finally got them off, they took the paint with them. But I had a redo with plastic backing and it worked, so no big drama.) I've been studying the movie to do costume sketches and I kind of plan on rereading the book and writing down any clothing descriptions. I'm putting it off though because I'm pretty sure the clothing descriptions are mostly just a colour followed by the word silk. Ugh. Silk is too vague a word. It can mean anything - velvet, satin, organdy, shantung, ugh, ugh, ugh. It's like the word Victorian. It covers too much to be helpful by itself.

The other kid I've ordered is Daisy in peach gold skin. I spent weeks agonising over whether to get her in peach gold or special real skin. I didn't want another normal skin doll, because they're a bit too pale. At the end of the day, the decision came down to the fact that Iplehouse's real skin looks a tad sallow to me. Then when you consider that resin yellows with age, in a few years that's going to look like she's got cholera or liver disease. So even though it's a tiny bit too pink for my liking, I chose peach gold on the assumption that it might mellow to a nicer colour than jaundice.

My original plan for Paige, Zihu and Daisy was to make them sisters in the 1920s and 30s. But that idea sucks. I'd feel the need to make three dresses, every time I made one, and they would all be from a very narrow time period. I hadn't even lifted a needle and I was already bored. Idea number two was to assign each doll a year, like American girl. After a few days, that idea sucked too. It would mean there would be lots of stuff I couldn't make. And that would make me want to buy a lot more dolls! In the end, I have decided to assign each doll a fifty year period for her clothes to come from. Zihu can wear anything from 1800 to 1850. Daisy (when she gets here) has been given 1850 to 1900. And Paige has been given 1900 to 1950.

 When I was painting Paige, now to be named Lily, I was trying to focus on making her look both delicate and clever, rather than beautiful. I'm not sure if I succeeded but I'm not unhappy with her, so she'll probably stay as she is for now. I had a couple of issues with her. I really wanted her to keep her hazel eyes. BUT because her eye sockets are so small, she doesn't really work with dark eyes. Unless I shone a lamp directly in her face, cold war interrogation style, her entire eyes looked demonic black, which was not the look I was going for. The other issue with Paige is her head shape. Her head is very narrow at the bottom but quite wide at the top, once you add a wig the effect is amplified, and with the wrong wig she ends up looking like Megamind or some giant brained creature from a 1960s sci fi show! I'm not a hundred percent happy with her current wig, but I'm going to see if I can style it better.

 Zihu, whoe has changed her name to Eleanore. . . or possibly Elizabeth, on the other hand was a delight to work with. Her face up, pretty much painted itself. The only issue I have is that even though she's a doll from Dollmore's Narsha line, and she's wearing a Dollmore Narsha wig, it keeps falling off! I know, I have a silicone head cap for her somewhere, I think I'l have to dig it out for her.

Now to the clothes I've made.
These are not my own patterns. I was too lazy in the end to draft my own, so these have all been made from Antique Lilac's easy kid dress pattern, with lots of changes because I can never leave things alone.

This first dress was originally made for Eleanore (Elizabeth?) but unfortunately the Narsha body has gigantic man hands that didn't fit through the sleeves, so ultimately it will probably be given to Claudia. For now, Lily is wearing it.

 It's muslin over cotton sheeting, with machine stitch decoration in white. I chose the machine stitch because I thought it looked like a reasonable alternative to featherstitching, which I did not want to do by hand.

This second outfit was my redo of Eleanore or Elizabeth's dress. It didn't take much to make the pattern work with the Narsha body. It was a simple case of replacing the sleevebands with elastic casing, which I suppose isn't historically accurate but I guess if I really wanted to I could thread ribbon through the casing instead and tie them closed. I don't want to though. The pantaloons are made from an adaptation of Antique Lilac's boy's bathers pattern. And the shawl was adapted from the collar of the easy kid dress.

The shawl has the same fake featherstitching as the other dress. And interesting thing this dress taught me. . . It's made out of a men's dress shirt that was made of a linen like cotton and I discovered that if I turn my iron up to the cotton setting, it scorches my ironing board cover! Who the hell makes an ironing board cover that isn't heatproof?! The shawl isn't quite long enough. I measured carefully to make sure the ends could cross over the chest and meet behind her back. And that's how long I made it. Except it's supposed to tie behind! I'm either going to have to put press studs on the ends or stitch some baby ribbon to the ends that is long enough to tie, if I want this to work.

And random sewing terminology lesson. The tucks on her dress are tucks. The tucks on her pants are pintucks. I see these terms used interchangeably a lot lately. Even on sewing websites. But they're not the same thing at all. A tuck is a pleat in the fabric that is sewn in place. This was usually done so clothes could be let out later as someone grew or gained weight. Or they would be put into hand me down garments to resize them for their new owner. Tucks are functional. Pintucks on the other hand are purely decorative. A pintuck is much narrower, as wide as a pin. Effectively it's as if someone has placed a pin along the fabric, sewn around it, and pulled it out. They stick straight up and there would be no point whatsoever to taking them out.

Finally Lily's 1920s dress.

I don't have much to say about this dress. It's ok. I'm not in love with it. I'm don't dislike it. I don't like the way the skirt hangs in these pictures and other than that I feel very whatever about it.

Now next things. I need more socks and stockings for these girls. Eleanore Elizabeth needs more period appropriate shoes. I'm thinking black ballet flats to start with. Lily just needs ANY shoes that fit! Poor barefoot urchin. Which means Celina and Daisy will need shoes too. I also need to see if I can make Lily's wig look better, less like she has water on the brain.  And when Daisy gets here, if she's doing the second half of the 1800s she's going to need a crinoline and a bustle. I haven't bothered with underwear to much. Eleanore or Elizabeth has her pantaloons. Lily has some french knicker sort of shorts. But I haven't given them period appropriate stays or petticoats, mostly because there is no point to a corset on a doll that doesn't have a soft body. It won't reshape her, it will just add bulk. But the crinoline will be necessary for certain skirt shapes.

I'm planning the crinoline at the minute. I'm not sure what to use for the hoops, I have some ideas but I'm not sure which ones will work or if I'm going to want it to be washable. I also want to avoid my two gigantic pet hates with crinolines. I don't want the bones to show through the dresses and I don't want that too short effect where the dress is longer than the petticoat and so follows a graceful curve to the edge, then drops straight down. So I'm thinking it will have to be multi layer. A cage layer with hoops, a ruffled layer over that to hide the bones and a flannelette layer on top to make it lie smooth. But attatch all three layers to a yoke so it doesn't add too much bulk to the doll.

I also want to make at least two basic guimpes.  Don't ask me how to pronounce that. I've only ever seen the word in print. But from the mid 1800s to the first world war, dress pattern catalogues talk a lot about guimpes. Which is a basic blouse to wear under dresses and pinafores. Some were very simple, like a peasant blouse, some were more elaborate. I want to make one out of lawn and one out of muslin, just so they're there if I need them. Very plain ones though, so they can stand in as needed for anything from the 1850s to the 1910s.

If anyone has any idea on making a crinoline, whether it be what to use for boning or construction ideas, please help! Also is Eleanore or Elizabeth a better name for Zihu? At the moment, I'm calling her Eleanore Elizabeth because I can't decide. I would just name her that but it's too long.

Playing With BJDs

I've been thinking a fair bit about my ball jointed dolls lately and I don't think I've ever discussed them in much detail here.

(By the way, if anyone (maybe Xanadu) feels bad because her bjds don't have shoes, take comfort in the fact that none of mine have clothes yet! And I've had at least one of them for over five years!)

I may have used this picture before.

I like it too much to feel bad about it.

My first bjd was a Dollmore Zihu. She was bought to be Claudia from Interview with a Vampire. If you don't know the book, or movie, Claudia is a child vampire who continues to age mentally but not physically, which ends up making her all kinds of crazy.

I wanted a Claudia doll because I wanted to make Claudia type clothes. In the book she has an elaborate recency wardrobe and in the movies her clothes are . . . Well, to me, her clothes are the best part of the movie. I especially wanted a doll worthy of a GOOD recreation (I've made several bad ones, for various dolls) of this dress.

Sorry, it's not a great picture but it's the best I can find right now. I am in LOVE with this dress. Frankly, I would probably kill a dozen people (more if I didn't like them) for this gown in my size.

Anyway, I chose Zihu to be Claudia. The only drawback was that she was only available in "Normal" colour.

I did her face up myself. My main concern was to make her not look like all the other Zihus I had seen. Back then (early 2014) if you google image searched "Dollmore Zihu" almost every result had very faded lips, almost no other shading or blushing on the face, especially around the eyes, freckles, and a very light coloured, maybe slightly gingerish wig. It might not have been EVERY one, but I remember it irked me. To me the point of Bjds is how customisable they are. If you're making it identical to everyone else's, you may as well buy a Barbie. So, I actively tried to make her look different. I thought the sculpt itself was beautiful and I wanted her face up to reflect that.

And here she is today. Wigless.

Her eyebrows and lower eyelashes could be better. Her upper eyelashes are frankly awful. I ruined my one set of doll eyelashes and didn't want to wait for another set to arrive by post. So her eyelashes are cheap human falsies from the chemist, cut down to size. And they are fantastically uneven.

But she has never looked vampiric enough to me. Claudia needs to be paler. So currently, I'm saving up, to hopefully buy an Iplehouse KID Celina in white skin. Although in the link, you may not see any resemblance, the sculpt when blank, is quite similar to Zihu's, so hopefully will give me the effect I was going for.

And if it starts to look like I'll be able to get Celina, I can make Zihu over to be someone else.

In the middle I have a weird doll group of kiddelfs by Luts. I thought they'd be comparable to Zihu in size but Zihu is smaller than a MSD sized doll and bigger than a tiny BJD. So no.

Why is it a "weird doll group"? Well, I bought one doll body and three heads. Ok, onesone of the heads was a free gift for spending over a certain amount. I thought I could practice face ups on them, then decide which face I liked best.

If you're wondering which faces, they're Bory, Buzzi and the Summer 2014 Event head and they look like this

Over the years I've had a few insane ideas of what to do with these. One idea that stuck around longer than most, was make the heads over to represent fire, earth and water and make an elaborate costume for each. Then switch them out when I felt like it. But I never got around to doing anything. Now I really want to do something with them. Just not sure what. They've barely been out of their box, but at least now they've had a coat of MSC.



My newest BJD is Paige. A KID sized doll by Iplehouse. She's a similar size to Zihu. Their torsos are nearly identical in size but Paige has longer, slimmer arms and legs. Her hands are smaller too. I did not think to compare their feet.

My Paige has a factory face up. It's very pretty. But very generic. This face should be filled with intelligence and curiosity and cheekiness. Instead, it's pretty. I think it's the lips. She should have a thin lipped, mischevious smile but they've put too much colour on. I want to repaint her but she's so pretty (Which is also WHY I want to repaint her!) and I like pretty things. My brain is a weird place.

Anyway, here's Paige's unnecessarily convoluted story. When I made my dollhouse (Wow! That's some tangent!) I discovered there was a ridiculous amount of dollhouse stuff available. In order to reign in my "I want"s and my spending, I decided I needed to know when my dollhouse was and who lived there. I chose May of 1885 for the date. Specific, I know. I like the 1880s and I happened to have a Bloomingdales (I think) catalogue for May 1885. Since one of my interests is family history, I chose some of my ancestors to live there. . . Actually, I killed off most of their kids (including my great great grandfather) because I couldn't afford that many dolls and didn't think there'd be room for them. So my Great-great-great grandparents and their oldest daughter live in my dollhouse. (Except it's 1885 in the dollhouse and they're the ages they would have been in more like 1865.)

What's this got to do with Paige? My original plan was to also get another dollhouse to represent my nana's family in the early 1930s. This was obviously when I lived alone and had two spare bedrooms. But then the dollhouse I wanted was discontinued, my brother moved in, then the Giant Husband, then the Giant Baby and I realised I would never have room for another dollhouse. But I felt bad. Like I had somehow let Nana down.

I had been eyeing Iplehouse's dolls for a while when they released Paige. And she caught my attention. My Dad used to have a picture of Nana when she was about ten and she looked a LOT like Paige. So, I decided, if I couldn't have a Nana dollhouse, I would have Nana doll.

 My Paige is named Lily. Nana's sisters called her Lily or Tigerlily, because she had yellowish-hazel eyes like a cat. When she finally gets clothes, she will be dressed in late 1920s and early 1930s styles. I'm trying to decide whether to make Zihu one of her sisters, or some other ancestor. Maybe Nana's mum or nana's nana. Not sure yet. I think another ancestor would be more fun as it would give me more time periods to choose clothes from, instead of always the 20s and 30s.

                 

I played around with different wigs on them today, and so I've included some more photos. Neither of them have clothes. For these pictures they shared a Simba dolls blouse that didn't fit either of them well and at one point Zihu was wrapped in the tucked fabric that Tiny bled all over the other week. Being a vampire she didn't mind. I took these in a hurry and it was my first time using my actual camera in over a year so they aren't great. I also cannot work out how to get the pictures to show up side by side. It would be cooler if they did.

This first wig had no hope of fitting either doll. It was bought for a totally different doll and was way too big. I still like how it looks on Zihu though.

                                   
Next is a Dollmore wig with pigtails. I hate these pigtails wigs because I can never make them look even. The two pigtails are always different heights, or one sticks out at a stupid angle. I think they're cute but they make me swear.

The next one is another Dollmore wig. I like how it looks on both girls but I also think it looks a little bland and it belongs to one of my Kish dolls any way, so these girls can't have it.

           

This is a Leekeworld wig. Another one I stole off one of my Kish dolls for today. For some reason it makes me think every doll that wears it looks "French". I don't even know what I mean by that.

Next is another Dollmore wig. This is the one I originally bought for Zihu to wear as Claudia but I don't like her in it. I was disappointed that it didn't make Paige look more like Bernadette Peters.

I hate this next wig so much. The hair fibre is too thick (The individual fibres not the stitching), the styling looks clumsy, the fringe is only ok if it was cut in the dark with a lawnmower, and the "wispy tendrils" are huge hanks of hair!

Next is the default wig that came with Zihu. It confuses me. All the hair comes out kind of sideways like it wants to be tied in pigtails but it's not meant to. I never know what I'm supposed to do with this one. I think it make Zihu look like the little girl from the Beethoven movies.

This next wig is my favourite wig ever. It's by Dollmore and the fit is amazing. It pops straight on these girl's heads like a hat, without any turning inside out or stretching or anything. And then it stays on! And stays in place beautifully!

I love the colour of this wig, which may be why I bought it. But it's the same style as the chocolate coloured pigtails wig and has the same problem.

And finally a Luts wig that I love the colour of.

And finally a picture of the girls together in the wigs that are theirs for the moment. Looking at this I can't help but think Paige desperately needs a new face up. Next to Zihu, even though Paige's face is more professional, it has no personality.

Taking these photos, I discovered that one of the magnets in Paige's headcap was loose. It kept popping out and her headcap kept popping off. So, if Paige looks a bit weird here and there, it's because in about a quarter of the pictures, she doesn't have her headcap on. Not that it's not attached properly. More, I got fed up with fighting with it and took it off and she modelled wigs without it.

NPK Collection doll

My 18 inch doll from EBay arrived yesterday. I was going to spend some time doing an in depth review but if I plan that, it will never get done. So here's a quick post about her instead.

She's already my favourite 18 inch doll. Although in fairness, her look is so different to other 18 inch dolls that you can't really compare them.

The neither good nor bad things-
She's all vinyl.
Her eyes are fixed, they don't close.
She has rooted eyelashes.
Her hair is a wig.
She comes with a "Certificate of Authenticity" but since this isn't filled out it's kind of meaningless.

The good things -
There's a fair bit of weight to her and the vinyl seems really nice.
 She has really nice airbrushed blushing on her face and hands.
Her nails are painted a natural colour.
Her clothes are well made.
Her shoes are great. Fake leather with actual, proper soles and working buckles.
Her hair actually feels like hair and swings beautifully.
Her face is really cute.
I don't know if it will show in pictures but the airbrushing on her face is amazing. Shaded and layered in a way you don't usually see on play dolls.

The bad things -
If you look closely at the paint on her mouth and nails you can see brushstrokes.
Her dress is . . . really ugly.
If you part her hair so you can see it, her wig cap is quite messy looking.
Her hair is insanely long. Too long. And her fringe is pretty uneven.
Her eyelashes are odd. VERY long but also a dark, blood, red colour. From a distance it looks like shading. Close up it's very strange.

Here's a close up of her face.

Her hand

This is how crazy long her hair is

That pointless certificate

Redressed in a nicer outfit

And in a lineup with a Journey Girl and an Our Generation doll

And here's what happens if I leave dolls on a chair while I wash dishes

For the record, that was three hours ago and he hasn't given her back yet. And she's still naked and bald!

So, the new doll isn't perfect but she is amazing. I'm already plotting to get a second one with dark hair!

What I've learnt about Azone

 I got some Azone Pure Neemo dolls for Christmas. I know, that's ages ago. But I was planning on getting one more before I wrote anything about them or did anything with them and so far that hasn't happened. But in the meantime here is what I've learnt about different Azone bodies and sizes.

 There are four different Azone Pure Neemo bodies. Which one a doll has mostly depends on the age of the doll. I say mostly because there is an overlap period when the new bodies begin production where certain types of doll will have the old body, while others have the new one.
  The oldest body is called Advanced or Advance. I've not seen one of these in person but they seem to have minimal or no articulation. Instead they have interchangeable body parts, so you change the dolls pose by removing body parts and replacing them with others in the correct pose. Which frankly sounds like a storage nightmare.

  The next body is the Flection body. The Flection body has lots of joints. The arms move up and down at the shoulders but not side to side. There is also rotation to the upper arm. The elbows are jointed with a hinge. The hands rotate (but don't bend) and can be removed and replaced with other hands in different poses. They swivel at the waist. Their legs move forward and backward at the hip. There is a rotating joint in the upper thigh. Knees bend on a hinge and the ankles are on a ball type joint. But there is limited side to side mobility in the ankle because of the shape of the lower leg. That is a LOT of joints!

 The next body is the Full Flection body. Which is confusingly similar to the last body but realistically it's almost the same. The legs on the Full Flection dolls move out to the side very slightly at the hips. And I mean VERY slightly. And there's an extra joint at the shoulder so the arms can move sideways, away from the body. Otherwise these seem to be the same as the Flection body. Of my two Full Flection dolls one has jointed wrists that bend, the other (surprisingly the newer one) only rotates at the wrists, so I'm not sure which is more common.

As far as I can tell this is the only significant difference between Flection (right) and Full Flection (left)

  The newest body is the Emotion body and. . . well. . . there isn't a lot I can say about these because other than prototype pictures, I've never even seen a picture of one. Rumour has it they have a ball-jointed waist and all the old joints but with improvements so they can do things like kneel properly. But I don't know anything for sure about them. I'm not even sure I got the name right.

Four different sized Pure Neemos

  So back to the Flection and Full Flection bodies. To put it simply they come in four sizes. Extra Small, Small, Medium and Large. To put it not so simply - it's a bit more complicated than that. The Extra Small dolls are simply Extra Small. They're all the same size, 21 cm or 8 and a quarter inches. An Extra Small doll has hands a different size to the other dolls. So whereas hands are interchangeable between Small, Medium and Large dolls, the Extra Small dolls need Extra Small hands.

  The other sizes are a little more complicated. Because they're made in two parts. The sizes are often listed as doll size, then bust size. So there could be a Medium doll with a Small bust. Or a Medium doll with a Large bust. And they won't be the same size as each other. Or the same height. Because what's referred to as the doll size is the leg length/size up to the waist. And the bust size isn't just the size of the boobs but ALL of the body above the waist. And there are four different bust sizes that can be used on these dolls - Small, Medium, Large and Extra Large (or LL)! This leads to a lot more variation in sizes.

As an example, the doll on the left is a small doll with a small bust. The doll on the right is a medium doll with a medium bust. The doll in the centre is a medium doll with a small bust. So she's the same size as the small doll from the waist down but the same size as the medium doll from the waist up. Interestingly all three dolls arms are exactly the same size. BUT the Extra Small girls arms are a completely different size.

  As well as size differences there are two different skin tones. White (on the left in the picture above) and normal (on the right) which is quite pinkish and not really very dark at all.

  The default hands are sort of starfish hands. Wouldn't be my first choice if it were up to me but some of the dolls come with extra hands and packs of extra hands are sold separately as well. My largest doll came with five extra pairs of hands

And my smallest girl came with three extra sets of hands

Including this hand which is holding something but I don't know what!

A coin? A charm? A guitar pick?

  I'm going to finish up for today by showing how they compare in size to some other dolls. I'll probably write more about these girls soon but I've run out of time for now.

Left to right - When I read I dream, Stacie (old), Extra Small, Creepy vintage Skipper, Small, Small Medium, Medium, Moxie Girl, Olsen twin. Looking at this I'm kind of keen to dig out my Moxie Girl clothes for them!

And I'm not sure how well the neck joint would fit, but the "When I read I dream" dolls heads would proportionately be a good fit on the Extra Small body. (I've always felt their heads looked too big for their original bodies) BUT it would make them about an inch taller. Maybe a little less than that. Other Barbie family dolls probably wouldn't work as well unless they were fairly pale because the Pure Neemos are not tan at all!