Package from Russia

On November I made an order on Etsy shop called CaramelBJDcom. They sell doll socks and clothing with awesome prints and they had a 1st year anniversary sale coming up. I had been admiring their items for a while and when I heard about the birthday sale, I had to take advantage of that.

I purchased three pairs of socks for Lyra, four pairs for Stella and also jeans and a shirt for her. All of the items were pre-order stuff so I had to wait for a while for them to be made. The shipping took a bit longer of what I was expecting but never the less, everything was fine once it came. All of the clothes were packed nicely and nothing was missing. The quality is wonderful! Let´s see what I got:

The items were well organized and labelled correctly.

And here´s Stella modelling the clothes:

Darn she looks cute!
Notice the new purple shoes how well they suit with the outfit.

There is just one word to describe the shirt: kawaii! The jeans are absolutely perfect and so well made. The fitting is snug with no loose waistband, just like a well tailored jeans should. There are little working pockets on the back side:

Then the socks, first Stella´s:

From left: Vanilla Bouquet, Gzhel, Blue and Pink, Caramel

...and then Lyra´s:

From left: Autumn Evening, Dead Head (there´s a deer skull on the knee), Mechanical Romance

All of the sock fits with no complaining and look good. Some of the pictures on their shop are a bit lighter or darker of what the products actually are but nothing so drastic that you´d be disappointed. Overall the colours are very vivid. My experience of this Etsy seller is nothing but very positive and will definitely buy more from their shop also in the future. I highly recommend!

Little Christmas doll meet!

We had a Little Christmas meeting on Saturday 12th December. Lots of people, lots of dolls, lots of talking and nice time. For the first time ever I had a chance to meet Xaya from A Little Book of Bluefairies and see some of her lovely dolls. Enjoy the pictures!

Dust Of Dolls: Appi

Azone

Enaibi dolls tiny, tiny mouse.
She was only about 7 cm tall!

Frodo

Soom Mirabil

Bluefairy Tinyfairy May Valentine with Soom goat legs

Minifee Karsh as Legolas

Minifee Mio, Azone and Piposdoll cat

My girls Stella and Lyra!
(Minifee Ryeon and Atelier Momoni Nena02, Reira)

Bluefairy Tinyfairy Patric.
He was just like the Joxter from Moomins!

Luts Centaur

Volks Lorina

Unoa girls

Xaya´s Bluefairy Pocketfairy girl and Cocoondolls tiny Hilla

Xaya´s Bluefairy Tinyfiary girl

Project Diorama: Change of plans

One day while walking home from a market, I found two glass doors leaning on a dumpster. There was no way I could´ve left them there and I grabbed them with me. The decorations are beautiful and perfect style for the greenhouse study. I tried it with the flooring and it looks even better than the previous window I had there and as a bonus, this new one is much lighter to handle and it is exactly as tall as the white one was. Wow what a coincidence! The only con is that it is narrower than the flooring so I have to add there a lengthening piece. I will paint it white and distress it a bit.

The other wall is also progressed with cutting on the upper corner and window opening, which is raw at the moment and waiting to be finished with Dremel. However, I have to straighten the upper arch of the window opening just for the reason that it´s easier to make the glass and the framing with straight lines than curved.

Captured In Glass eyes review

After Lyra joined the group, I have been on a quest on finding the perfect eyes for her. I had already bought a pair of ED´s 12 mm Milky urethane eyes, but as she arrived, I soon realized that they did not look good on her because of the wide iris. The iris covered almost the whole eye opening which was not the impression I wanted for Lyra as she is a sharp and smart girl who is far from that droopy-eyed, child-like appearance, so a new pair with more realistic iris proportions was a must.

As I scrolled the DOA and red many threads with pictures of different eye brands, I came up with Captured In Glass. The eyes are hand made by a person called Lu, and while they may not be as perfect and vivid as ED´s, there was one feature that made me chose them: you can order custom iris sizes. Not many eye maker offers this option and CIG´s prices are well worth the quality, starting as low as $ 8.38. Special requests adds a few dollars more but even then they are very affordable.

I arranged a little group order to save on the shipping costs ($ 6 for one order despite the number of pairs). The waiting time was one week from placing the order and the shipping took another week. Here is what my GO participant ordered:

From left to right: ET67, EJ02, ET24
All in 16 mm, normal dome, round back with handle.
Taken in natural light.

From left to right: ET67, EJ02, ET24
All in 16 mm, normal dome, round back with handle.
Taken with flash.

All of the above eyes are 16 mm, round and with stems on the back. The colours are pretty accurate within the sales pictures on CIG´s website, only the ET24´s are almost black in colour and to me they look more like the ET21´s. Also the irises are slightly smaller on these than on the other eyes from this batch (shows on the pictures above). There seems to be some subtle variations between all of these three pairs although technically they all should be 16 mm. If you looked closely and compared the two eyes side by side, the pupil on the other eye was off-centered but this was not very obvious with the bigger sized eyes, but the smaller the scale goes, the more noticeable the flaws come. That is the nature of handmade items though, so just for a record for those who investigate their items with a looking glass, these eyes are not for you.

 My vision for Lyra´s eyes were intensive amber brown. The E6 looked just the right colour but as I very much liked the look of the EN realistic eyes, I asked if it was possible to make the E6 colour in the style of EN series with low dome, flat back and sized 12 mm with 5 mm irises. The answer was yes.

I was very excited when the package arrived but the surprise was not a happy one: my eyes were not what I asked for. Not that they would have been ugly or poorly made, but they were not the colour nor the size I ordered. This is what I got:

The colour I was expecting to have:

E6
Photo: cig168.com

As you can see, the eyes I got were just plain yellow instead of amber. They had this nice iris pattern that EN style has, but it was so light that only the photo revealed it. With naked eye you barely noticed it. I guess the beautiful pattern stands out more on bigger eyes. I didn´t got the smaller iris either. I am not sure if she accidentally sent me a wrong pair or what, because I even sent her many illustrated pictures of the proportions for the eyes and examples of the colour just to make sure she´d understand. I had really high hopes for these eyes and immediately sent a reclamation about them. Lu answered very quickly, was deeply sorry, apologized for the disappointment and promised to make me a new pair. At that point I started to wonder if my request was just too difficult to execute/ understand and that maybe we were stumbled across a language barrier (and because of that, I do blame myself). I decided to ease off Lu´s task by asking if she could make me just the ordinary E6 but with smaller iris. I red between the lines that now she finally understood what I meant - and if I am not very wrong, I think I heard a relieved sigh from somewhere across the globe. Maybe she was just too polite to say no for my first request even though she didn`t quite get what I wanted? Anyhow, she also promised to give me an extra pair of eyes for free as a refund. Okay, so now I was relieved too and started the waiting again.

When the second delivery day came, I was even more excited than on the first time. Maybe I could finally have the eyes I had been waiting for so long? And yes, the new re-made eyes were perfect! On the picture below I put the first "wrong" pair in the middle for comparison, on the left are the extra refund eyes and on the right are The eyes for Lyra. You can see the difference between the colours of the middle and the right pair. The extra eyes I got are 12 mm and green, probably Y18 or Y45. Definitely a keeper for possible future characters and the yellow´s in the middle would be great for some animal-ish character (wolf/ bird/ etc.).

All are in 12 mm, low dome, flat back.
From left to right: maybe Y18 or Y 45, custom EN eye (unknown colour), custom E6 with 5 mm irises.
Photo taken in natural light.

And finally here´s Lyra wearing her new and - oh so beautiful and perfect - eyes:

E6 in 12 mm with 5 mm iris, low dome, flat back

E6 in 12 mm with 5 mm iris, low dome, flat back

They are lovely, aren`t they? When I put them on Lyra, all the pieces just clicked on their right places. She was born just as I had imagined! Last, with the both packages there were some eye putty and lash strips to go with the eyes as freebies.

Eye putty and lashes

Even though this experience included some drawbacks, I will definitely be a returning customer for various reasons. 

Pros:

- the prices are super affordable

- the quality is beautiful

- the colour chart is huge

- you can ask for special colours/ sizes/ etc. (as long as not asking too complex things)

- the waiting time is short

- Lu is super sweet and always wants to make sure her customers are pleased with their purchases.

Cons:

- tiny imperfections 

- language barrier in some cases

I hope this review was informative and helpful for all of those who are thinking of getting CIG eyes.

I am now also @ Instagram!

Photo: Instagram

Just a little announcement: I have created an account on Instagram and the user name is buttons_and_pastels. I`ll be posting there everything related to BJD´s, and will be showing more work-in-progress -pictures of my crafts. You are welcome to join me there too, just hit the follow button. :)

Shoes, shoes, shoes!

A while ago, I purchased a Minifee high-heel feet for my Stella. I didn`t have any nice shoes to go with those tip-toes, so I headed to eBay. I had red from DOA that some of the 22" American Model and resin Evangeline Chastly shoes fits Minifees nicely and the seller is paul_zhangby. There are lots of different brands on the seller´s store and some of them will probably fit other sized BJD´s as well even if they are not originally made for them.

I bought six pairs of shoes of which five of them are here:

The brown & pink flats on the left are for Lyra and they are YoSD sized. They fit her perfectly! The yellow boots on the middle are originally for Ellowyne/ Tonner/ Marley and the item description stated that they fit on most of the YoSD`s but unfortunately they are waaaay too small for Lyra. However, they are so detailed, cute and well made that I might just keep them as a prop on Lyra´s greenhouse study.
The browns, the greens and the pink boots are for Stella and fit well as I had red. I purchased the brown ones only because the back of them is black and since there wasn`t any black & white pumps that would have met my taste, I decided that I´ll cover the brown part with white or black paint - or if I dare - with turquoise! Actually I bought one turquoise pair, but few days after I had placed the whole order, I got a message that said they were some how damaged and could not be send. I got the refund but because those specific ones were the ones I wanted the most, I chose the second-best ones and took these violets instead:

These suit Stella´s pastel coloured style well too.

I am very pleased with my order and the whole transaction. All of the shoes are detailed, well made, the prices are super compared to the quality and the seller trustworthy. I highly recommend the seller to anyone who´s seeking for nice shoes for dolls.

Last, from a marketplace I found these pearly pink flat shoes with heart shaped rhinestone buckles:

I don`t know the brand (there was no mention about it) but they fit the Minifee flat feet like a glove! I just randomly bought them because they seemed to be the right size and luckily they turned out to be just that. I must take some pictures of all of the shoes on a doll but nowadays it gets so dark so early that taking photos is a bit of a pain. I really have to buy that light tent and some daylight lamps for sure.

Faceup for succubus

My friend ordered a new doll from Impldoll: the Loss Of Brilliant -series`s grey skinned Azalea. She wanted to shell a character of hers, which is a succubus but to save money, she ordered the doll blank. She bemoaned that her face painting skills were poor and she needed to find someone to do it for her. As I heard that, of course I wanted to help and offered to make it for her just to get more experience for myself.

As the succubus is a winged man-chasing female demon, my friend wanted the faceup to be strong, seductive and above all: have red lips. Here is what I achieved:

I put her super long eyelashes intentionally to highlight her femininity.

This was my first time ever to paint a grey resin but it was no harder than normal skin resin. For the first time I also used Army Painter as a sealant and to be honest, I do like Testors more. T gives better tooth for pastels to stick on but on the other hand, maybe it`s just because I haven`t used to AP. Anyhow, I´m sure I will get used to AP as soon as I get work with it more. I have one bottle of Testors still left but as it runs out, I have to start using AP instead since in Finland Testors is no longer available.

My friend liked the finished face-up and I was very happy to see her approval. I already took her another doll to my "spa" so more faceups to come later.

Too Spooky Halloween Monster Tag

Photo: morguefile.com

There is a BJD tag going on in the blogs so I decided to join the fun! Let`s start:

Werewolf - How has the hobby "transformed" you?

I´d say the biggest transformation has happened to my general interest of dolls. Usually as a child, I wasn`t very fond of dolls but more of plushies and soft animal toys. Only dolls I liked were some barbies and some other cartoonish-/ fantasy type ones which had some magical elements like wings etc. But the day I saw my first pictures of BJD`s I immediately thought they were something unbelievable beautiful and so the seed was sown. After a few years I came across with BJD`s again realizing that these dolls actually existed and it was possible to buy them. The difference between Barbies was so big that I wanted to know more. The first doll meet I joined was the last seal for my decision to get a BJD.

Other major change has happened to my perspective towards money: now a doll with 300 $ price tag is considered as cheap, while back then I´d have been astonished and devastated. Not sure is that a good or a bad thing, though. ;) Also the hobby has given me a new channel to use my crafting skills.

Vampire - The dreaded sun! How do you feel about and cope with yellowing, or more generally the aging of these dolls?

I am not afraid of yellowing or aging. I do not expose my dolls on direct sunlight nor store them on their boxes or dark rooms either. Aging and changing of the colour is just the nature of resin and just like everything on this planet gets old, so does the dolls. In my mind these are items that must be seen and put on displays. I very much enjoy just to look at them even if I didn`t do anything else. To me, dolls are eye candy! If I paid 500 $ on a doll, only that is a reason big enough to look, play, and handle it like all the time, otherwise it would be a waste of money, wouldn`t it? I would never buy a doll just to bury it in the darkest corner of my house and dig it out just a few times of the year to quickly look at or to sew a dress. That is not who I am and how I act. Like old teddybears, also old and much-loved BJD´s are beautiful, yellowed or not.

Frankenstein`s Monster - Have you ever modded a doll? Tell us about it! If you could magically try any mod without fear of failure, what would you like to try?

I have done only one modding on my first doll, which was MSD sized Angelregion`s Littlefair Ren girl. Her nose and chin were very sharp and pointy, so I sanded them a little bit down to give her softer features. Other than that and seam sandings, I haven`t done more.

If I had the chance to make any kind of mod I desired, I´d like to do some sort of fantasy creature with big wings. Thing that I have been really thinking has been finding and hybriding heel feet for my Nekome. Older Delf bodies never came with the heel feet option but the new Senior Delf´s heel feet are interchangeable with their new Delf´s. However, since my Nekome is so old and yellowed already, the new resin would never match hers.

Zombie - Have you ever caught the Marketplace virus? Name some unplanned purchases that jumped out and "infected" you?

My second doll, which was LUTS´s Delf Soony, was sort of an unplanned purchase. I had craved for Soony since the first days of my BJD journey, but never before had money or courage to buy her (I was just a teenage back then). Then I saw her on sale at DOA and since the price was so good and I luckily had some spare money in my pockets, I decided to go for it. I justified my whim by referring it as a birthday present from me to myself.

Actually all of my dolls have been purchased without any specific or detailed background or thought. I have mainly just bought dolls that have been pleasing to my eye really.

Photo: morguefile.com

Skeleton - What`s your favourite body sculpt? Forget heads!

This is a tough question because I have so little experience of different doll bodies. I like the look of the Fairyland´s and LUTS´s doll bodies and I love Atelier Momoni´s Nena body. It would be easier for me to say which bodies I do not like (aesthetically) but I´d need more real-life experience to tell what would be my ultimate favourite.

Witch - Name some dolls that are magical! Seeing them on your dashboard inspires you! Can be general sculpts or specific dolls owned by talented friends.

I love Unoa Lusis and once I had her, but sold very quickly due the need of money for other interests at that time. I probably will get her again sometimes and been lately thinking that repeatedly. I have always loved that face! There are so many talented hobbyists that I don`t want to point out any specific. Everybody has their own charm.

Ghost - The one that got away. Do any limited or rare dolls "haunt" you to this day?

The doll that I have always liked and wanted was the Angelregion Fair girl Diana. When I purchased the Little Fair Ren, I would have chosen Diana if I had the money. So, she haunts me every now and then, just like the Unoa Lusis does too. Luckily I have been safe from the bigger ghosts.

Freddy Krueger - What is your worst doll nightmare? Has it happened or not?

My worst nightmare have probably been something to do with shipping like where I get a package with completely distroyed doll etc. That has never happened  - and hopefully will ever happen!

Jason Voorhees - If you were gonna make Halloween costumes for your dolls (or if you plan to!) what costumes would you make?

It´s a pitty we don`t celebrate Halloween here in Finland so I haven`t actually really thought about any costumes. But now when the cat´s on the table, I might want to do something to do with spiders. Not meaning just clothes with spider patterns but actually making a doll look (figuratively speaking) like the real insect. My vision is too complicated to describe, though.

Chucky (possessed doll) - Have you ever been scared of dolls or a certain doll? Be honest!

Yes, by Chucky himself. I was something like five when I saw the Child`s Play movie poster with Chucky on it and man that doll creeped the hell out of me! If I ever see that picture again, I still got the same horrible feeling that took me over then.
Same thing with antique dolls. To me, there is always something very disturbing about them. Maybe it´s their eyes which usually stares glazed to nowhere and they look like they had just seen a ghost. Old dolls are used so many times in horror movies so I tend to get a bit alert every time I see them.

Photo: morguefile.com

If you want to participate to this tag, feel free to copy the questions:
* Werewolf - How has the hobby "transformed" you?
* Vampire - The dreaded sun! How do you feel about and cope with yellowing, or more generally the aging of these dolls?
* Frankenstein`s Monster - Have you ever modded a doll? Tell us about it! If you could magically try any mod without fear of failure, what would you like to try?
* Zombie - Have you ever caught the Markatplace virus? Name some unplanned purchases that jumped out and "infected" you?
* Skeleton - What`s your favourite body sculpt? Forget heads!
* Witch - Name some dolls that are magical! Seeing them on your dashboard inspires you! Can be general sculpts or specific dolls owned by talented friends.
* Ghost - The one that got away. Do any limited or rare dolls "haunt" you to this day?
* Freddy Krueger - What is your worst doll nightmare? Has it happened or not?
* Jason Voorhees - If you were gonna make Halloween costumes for your dolls (or if you plan to!) what costumes would you make?
* Chucky (possessed doll) - Have you ever been scared of dolls or a certain doll? Be honest!

Fauna has born

Usually it takes quite a long time for me to finish a faceup, but with Fauna I broke my record and finished the painting in a day. Yay! I enjoyed the painting a lot and I think I managed to achieve the realistic deer look on her. I used pastels, watercolour pencils and acrylics. The pictures can speak to themselves:

Closeup of her faceup. Taken with flash.

I am still thinking should I add some eyelashes, though. Deers do have huge eyes and usually very long, black lashes so it might look good on her. Oh well, I can add them any time if I feel like it but that`ll do, at least for a while anyways.

PS. She is such a tricky poser! She tends to kick a lot so I have to study more about her anatomy. Maybe I´ll find some tips and tricks to get it easier.

Project Diorama: the flooring

The diorama is slowly progressing. After considering different flooring options from real mosaic, faux tiling made from egg cartons, painting marbling effects, etc. I decided to go the easy way and chose to checker the whole area with matt white and glossy grey paint. It was easy yes, but turned out very time consuming while painting the squares even (and my perfectionism didn`t help either, lol!).

First I drew the lines, then I covered half of them with tape to make the checkering.

This is how it turned out.

I am pleased with the result. At first I was a bit skeptical about whether it would look cheap or too flat, but gladly it created a nice texture on the surface since the paints I used were quite thick. When the whole set is finished, I will batten the raw edges from both the floor and the wall so that they will be much neater.

Box opening: companion for Lyra

Hello everybody!
Today I got the long waited package from mail. I usually consider about purchasing a doll quite a long time, but with this particular doll, I didn`t ponder too long. Especially when I got an e-mail from the artist herself where she asked was I still interested in pre-order one of her dolls, I just went with the flow. I had asked about the dolls from her earlier, so she knew I was interested in having one. As far as I remember it was June when I placed and paid the order and the waiting time was estimated to be three months, but the process time took a bit longer than what was expected. Anyhow, that was not surprise at all, as we all dolly enthusiasts well know. ;)

Can you guess from what company this doll is?

I was a bit worried to see the box crushed like that!

Despite the dent, everything was fine at least so far...

...digging deeper and for my relief nothing seemed to be broken. Phew!
I also got a beautiful shopping bag with Nympheas Dolls art on it.

The doll was wrapped inside a cushion and tied on its place for secure shipping.

And there she is!

The eyes were included in the price but the others came as extras.
The chicken is a small ring.

So the new little fawn is a Fanny from Nympheas Dolls and she will be as a companion for Lyra. There were three colours to choose from: chocolate, strawberry tan and butter. Mine is butter, since I felt it would be the most realistic looking and hence that, I wished for brown eyes. Isn`t she just darling? The little deer is so delicate and detailed. The artist - Sophie by name - apologized that the factory which does the casting is slow, but the resin quality is superb and I can do nothing but agree on that. Just lovely!

I have already decided her name and she will be Fauna. Next I`ll do the faceup and paint some flecks on her back. I am so excited about this new little creature, so more of her soon as I start the painting.

Photo from: morguefile.com