Re-styling my dolls, and another Pinterest-inspred photoshoot

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:

Follow Tracy's board Luna Style on Pinterest.

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:

see the Pin

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.

My second pose was inspired by this Pin:

see the Pin

... and here's what my photo looks like:

Suzette's new look!

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.