Lyra´s outfits

I haven´t yet introduced my Lyra properly on pictures mainly because she hasn´t had any clothing to fit her personality and style, and generally I don´t like to take pictures of a doll that´s unfinished. However, this has now changed.

As much as I love and live for crafting, miniature sewing is one of those things that makes me absolutely crazy! Learning new skills is wonderful, but honestly I have given up with that area. The numerous times I have tried to sew something for my dolls the results have always been cursing, broken needles, holes in the fabric and so on. To spear myself from despair, I have liberated myself and outsourced it to the people who can master it better than I ever could. I highly appreciate those who can sew such a tiny pieces of clothes as I know how effing hard it can be!

So I met a talented seamstress at our little Christmas meeting back in December. As I looked the incredibly small and detailed doll clothes she had made, I asked if she could make something for me too. I had planned a mori-style outfit for Lyra and her choices of fabrics and patterns were quite similar to my preferences.
The person I am talking about is Krista Salama, an Etsy seller with a shop named FaeryKiss. Krista sells both ready-made clothes as well as takes commissions. Soon after our meeting we started messaging about the details for the outfit. I found a spot-on picture of a mori girl with a beautiful outfit and asked Krista to use it as a guide for my commission. But differing from the reference picture, I wanted the loose undershirt to be natural white with long sleeves and wanted to leave the green vest off. It seems to be pretty simply constructed, so I may be able to sew it by myself and the belt is easy piece of cake. Also I already had the cute socks which I ordered earlier from the CaramelBJD -shop, so there was no need for new tights or socks.

The making of the clothes took quite a while because there was many little details I wanted to discuss about before making final decisions. Christmas and the holiday season was another reason for slowing the process generally, but I wasn´t in a hurry and didn´t mind that at all. I like to give the artist all the time she needs to make my piece as good as possible without having the feeling of being rushed.
Now when all the pieces are ready, I am very impressed with the result even though it wasn´t a surprise after seeing the other pieces she had made previously. The quality is impeccable with the small but so straight sewing lines and even smaller pleats and buttons. The materials have authentic feel and look.
According to this transaction with Krista I am recommending her creations to anyone who wants to have professionally made doll clothes. She is great to communicate with and because she has graduated as a seamstress and making clothes is her full time job, she really knows all the aspects of the art of tailoring. We are definitely not speaking of an amateur here that´s for sure!

Now let´s see how the outfit came out:

The socks are from CaramelBJD and the shoes from eBay

The main outfit includes four pieces: bloomers, petticoat, dress and a shirt.
To make the outfit more versatile, a separate T-shirt was made as well. This is just basic piece, but works nicely under the dress for warmer summer days:

And when the chilly autumn breeze is blowing, what would be more nicer than to add a hand knitted cardigan with matching legwarmers to the ensemble:

The knitted pieces are commissioned from another talented Finnish artist from Etsy called Junipa aka JuniDoll. The other craft I totally suck is - surprise, surprise - knitting. I have a soft spot for knits maybe just for that reason!
I contacted Junipa and she happily made the cardigan and the legwarmers according to my instructions. To the same batch I asked her to make a pair of cool Bumpy -leggings, of which I had seen a picture earlier while gazing her earlier creations in her shop. I have to figure out some nice outfit to go with the woolen leggings so I have no pictures of Lyra wearing them yet, but hopefully I´ll have something to show you sometime soon. When I got my order after a few weeks, I was happily surprised with a small gift of a chain with keys. So adorable! The yarn of the cardigan and leggings is mainly very soft alpaca and the leggings are thin sheep wool. The tiny stitches are just the right scale for dolls. Gotta love into bits!

I can warmly recommend Junipa´s knitted wonders to you all! The ones who are just as inept in knitting as I am, Junipa´s small wonders are pure joy to look and touch. Or even if you can knit, the scale is so small that even the most enthusiastic knitters might give up in front of the challenge, but not Junipa. I love how many super talented crafters we have within this doll hobby and it warms my heart that I can support them by purchasing things they have made or commissioning them.

Big thanks to both FaeryKiss and Junipa!

I could say that this was Lyra´s first proper debut as a complete character. I am very happy how she has bloomed to be just like I always imagined her to be right from the beginning. Now I have to get the diorama ready so that I can start taking proper photos of her in the environment she belongs.

See you next time!

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!

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.

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.