This bad boy joined the doll shelf last week. His name is Kai, and he is a Taeyang Hitsugi, another from the Nightmare collaboration set, of which I already had Ni-Ya (who I call Dominic). Kai has such a dramatic, unique look, he really draws you in.
He has this amazing dark brown hair with white, blonde, and red pieces, with lots of long braids, and various layers.
He has multiple piercings on his face, which gives him a real badass look. I really like how he contrasts with Dominic's look. Dominic (Taeyang Ni-Ya, see photo below) has tight leather pants, and quite a "pretty boy" face. Dominic is quite a vain womanizer, while Kai is a bit of a free-spirited hippie who expresses himself through his style as well as his music
Dominic (Taeyang Ni-Ya joined the family this summer)
Never the shy one, Kai immediately began recruiting other dolls to join his band. It's not surprising that Dominic was easily persuaded to take the position of lead vocals. Luna surprised us all by volunteering as drummer. Who knew she could play drums?
So far the band is looking pretty good, but what they really need is a name!
I have a feeling Dominic is going to enjoy the spotlight
I recently re-styled Suzette (my Pullip Io) and wanted to take some photos of her. The restyling of Suzette was actually the result of a failed re-styling of Luna. This is what Luna looked like originally:
Luna in 2014
I had a character in mind for Luna- a free-spirited, fun-loving, distractible, impulsive gal, who has moved around a lot and held a lot of different jobs. I wanted her to have a natural Bohemian style. I created a Pinterest board for her style, which you can check out here:
And this is what she looked like after her makeover:
Luna in May, 2015
Now it turns out, although my idea of Luna's character suited a Bohemian style, her face-up really did not. I found Luna's pink and blue eyeshadow was too flashy for the earthy look of her clothes, and I thought her faceup would be better suited to a completely different style. So I thought about changing her style, but I was set on the character having this style. I thought about changing around characters but I have several characters in mind, and a complicated domino effect happened inside my head as soon as Luna was knocked out of this character's spot. I felt overwhelmed and flirted with the idea of abandoning my story (The secrets of Woodside picfic/music video series) altogether.
Then I discovered Lilcurly and her YouTube videos which explain how she styled each of her Pullips. Coincidentally, I also noticed she had a thread over at Dollchemy which detailed her process for re-styling one of her dolls. She and her beautiful dolls totally inspired me to get back into styling my characters! Instead of creating a moodpboard like she did, I just created Pinterest boards for each of my dolls that will appear in The Secrets of Woodside. Once I had my boards all set up, I realized that I could switch Luna and Suzette's characters fairly easily, leaving the character I loved with the Bohemian style I loved.
This is how Suzette (Pullip Io) looked before I restyled her and changed her character:
Suzette was dressed as Romantic Alice up until now
... and this is how Suzette looks now that she has taken on the free-spirited, fun-loving, Bohemian character:
Wowsers! What a difference!
I love her new look, with lots of browns and turquoise accents. I made a lot of her accessories, which I will show up close in the video at the end of this post. Her pose was inspired by a Pinterest pose I found:
I had a hard time getting her to lean forward enough for her elbow to rest on her knee (notice the floating elbow in the photo above!), so I played around with a few different options, including cropping:
cropped out the floating elbow
and having my daughter press on the back of her shoulder, then cropping out the human hand to the right:
If you know what to look for, you can see Liv's hand through Luna's hair to the right
My husband gave me the idea that I could have used fishing cord to tie her elbow to her thigh, but I had already packed everything up by that point. I do keep fishing cord in my doll photography bag for that very sort of application, so I had a face-palm moment... but I do really like how these photos came out regardless of the floating elbow.
I made her updo using sari ribbon, string, beads, a feather earring, and a paperclip
I made her jewelry using broken jewelry of my own and more scrapbooking supplies
I am a huge fan of Behind The Scenes (BTS) shots of other people's hobbies, so I always try to remember to snap a BTS shot for my blog whenever I do anything, so here is today's BTS:
My usual doll photography area in my craft room (shown in previous blog entries, if you're interested, try searching or clicking the "Doll Photography" label on the side bar) was blocked off, so I set this up in my husband's photo studio. I used 2 kids chairs to drape my fabric backdrops behind my props. The Freudian slippers are not required, lol, but I have to lay right down on the floor to get shots in this space, so I take off my footwear so they don't get wrecked by the concrete floor!
Below is a video showing my new Suzette and taking about my styling process for her.
I've been searching for a fluffy, funky wig for Luna since December and finally broke down and bought This wig at Jpopdolls. I say "broke down" because the shipping was a lot higher at this shop than I wanted to spend but I couldn't find another wig that I wanted nearly as much. I am so in love with the new Luna:
"Who, me?"
Yes, you, Luna... you look amazing!
"Why thank you!"
"You must like my new hair, do you?"
I think it suits her quite well! At first I thought I'd have to change her purple eye-chips, but the more I look at her, the more I like them as they are.
This weekend we were snowed in so I got a few doll-related housekeeping tasks done.
I rewigged my Taeyang Natsume doll (Jax) with a Luts wig:
Now that's more like it!
So this was my first time using a Luts wig, which I knew tend to run a little small. I could't find the style I liked in the larger size, so I took a chance and ordered the 8-9" anyhow, hoping i could make it work one way or another. It too some wrestling to get it on, and it does't sit flat against his head, resulting in a bulge on the top of his head (see in the pic below).
Pointy wig :(
I do really like the style of the wig, and I've read that you can fix this kind of problem by cutting a slit in the wig and sewing in a triangle of elastic to make it bigger. I like the shagginess of the cut, although it turns under in a funny way on one side. I'm hoping I can get it to flip out on that side eventually but I'm focussed on fixing the top-of-the-head bulge first. The back is just amazing and the overall quality of this wig is really impressive. Very soft, shiny, full wig.
but I love the back!!
I'm really fortunate to have a large craft room, and I have lots of storage space that I don't always need to use, so I moved some things around and ended up with a whole extra 4-foot shelf. I decided to use this shelf to set up a doll room because I was having trouble storing the doll furniture that I've been making. I figured, rather than have it in boxes and bins and taking it out every time I wanted to set up a scene for photography, I might as well have it out on display. I don't have any photos of my space, but this video shows the shelf as well as a few other doll areas in my room:
Finally, I had a bit more time while the kids were playing, so I decided to redress some of my dolls. I wanted to dress them all in Groove outfits, and here they are:
All dressed up, and nowhere to go!
Above, from left to right: Suzette (Pullip Io) in the Santorini outfit, Ally in the Coney Island outfit, Nikki (Pullip Tomoe Mami) in Kiyomi's stock outfit, and Luna (Pullip Tokidoki Luna) in Ally's stock outfit.
Just some girls, having fun!
Picture perfect
It's hard to get 4 dolls all looking into the camera at the same time, but I think I came close for this one. Suzette is looking a little off, probably because she kept falling backwards.
Last week I hit my Jetmax scrap bin again, this time to make a Pullip couch for a scene in an upcoming music video. If you missed my post on building a bed and bookshelf from Jetmax scraps, check it out here.
Here's how my latest project turned out (tutorial video below):
Luna and Suzette appreciate finally having a place to sit down!
Suzette: "Whatever you do, Luna, don't move! There's a Giant CAT behind you!"
And here's a video of how I made it (the supplies including measurements are given in the video):
