More about Makies

I admit it, i'm obsessed with these things ok?

in fact, it was only last month I reviewed my first three.
http://flyingpurplemonkfish.blogspot.co.uk/2014/12/makies.html

Yes... FIRST three.
I say this because since then my little 3d printed family has expanded.

Yessss...



I had christmas money, well, amazon vouchers and so this happened.
But let's go back a little way first.

As well as offering dolls to be made directly on their website, Makies also make gift vouchers.
They sell them through Amazon, which is useful when you have vouchers to spend. The vouchers are £69, just like the dolls, though you do have to pay postage on top of that regardless of how you purchase your doll.

what arrives isn't your traditional voucher either, it's a small cardboard box.

Inside the box there's a lot of tissue paper.

Some stickers too.

A leaflet and a gold envelope.
Oooo gold. It's teeny and shiny.

Inside the envelope is your more traditional voucher. A credit card sized card with a panel to scratch off.
Inputting this code into the Makies website credits your account with £69 to spend on whatever you want, but let's be honest, everyone's just gonna use it to get a doll right?

Now being January, Makies have a promotion going on for free shipping. This is a nice deal because shipping isn't exactly cheap (I think it's about £8 within the uk).

I ordered my doll on Dec 31st, though the lab didn't reopen till jan 2nd. And so my 2 week wait began.

on the 15th I got the email telling me my doll had shipped. Postage via DHL takes 24 hours if dispatched mon-thurs (DHL don't deliver over the weekend) so friday the 16th my parcel arrived.

YAY.

The others gathered to welcome Lirel.

This girl was designed with the biggest elf ears I could, heavily tilted eyes and strawberry milk skin.

She came with purple ribbons tying her into her box, the previous three came with red heh. I wonder if they switch the ribbon colour every so often or something.

As you can see, her faceup was a bit bland. She has light blush, some lip colour and a thin line of black above each eye.

So out came the pencils and pastels.

oh and the false lashes.

much better.

Her outfit is a bit disappointing I have to admit. Her dress has a false printed on the fabric collar, which strikes me as pretty damn cheap.
It's nicely made and actually constructed of stiff fabric instead of the strange lycra stuff Jian's outfit was made of, but it's not her style at all.

That's better.

Lirel's wig is super long, though it's not very thickly rooted. Honestly if it was she'd topple over from the weight. It's lovely and soft and a beautiful rusty colour. the bangs are quite thick, but the rest is very sparse. But it looks fine, just feels very odd to run your hand through her hair and there be so little of it.

Her glasses are Makies glasses I also bought. I bedazzled them with some stick on sparkles I had.
Her shoes came with the fabcoat pack I purchased back in december. they're the same style as the black ones she came with, but their texture is very different. I think they're made of different plastic, they feel much smoother and less grainy. they're also shinier.

This is why i'm so addicted to Makies. How different you can make each one look. Jian has this sort of impish face while Lirel's a bit more elegant.
I freaking love her elf ears omg.

While she and Nate are the same skin tone according to the maker, they really aren't in reality. Nate's a more yellowish pale, while Lirel is VERY pink.

so... so pink.

I also learned some interesting things while playing about with dressing the girls.
The skirt Lirel is wearing is actually from a Moxie girl. It had leggings sewn into it which I cut out but the leggings did fit the doll as well.

The "psstt i'm taller" Bratz clothing fits really nicely.

As does this Spice Girl dress.

Bratzilla skirts fit but tops are way too tight.

The cape things work well though.

Skipper sized clothes also fit really well.

 As does Sindy and Barbie sized stuff, though that said...

 Barbie shirts end up more like dresses on the Makies and 3/4 trousers end up perfectly full length.
The waistline on a lot of dresses is totally wrong as well.

Moxie boyz stuff also fits big, the pants are a bit too big and way too long. But the top is cute.

What I believe was a Barbie short top works ok, and the pants are actually What's Her Face (Or Wee 3 friends. They fit perfectly)

Bratz shirts fit perfect too. And Stardoll trousers which were 3/4 length fit at the perfect length on the Makie leg.

Bratz Boyz pants also fit great on the girl Makies. The pants are about the right length (perhaps slightly long) and shorts are perfect. Bratz girl stuff there's just no way you'll get on a Makie, too small.

The Bratz Boyz pants don't fit the boy Makies so well, they won't do up at the back but otherwise they look fine.

Also, wee 3 friends/What's her face shoes fit. Well, the sandals do. Which is a nice other option for the girls who don't want to wear Ken shoes or default slip ons.


But um.. i'll come clean...

I wasn't just waiting for my fourth Makie to arrive.

Three days later, this boy arrived too. <_< Don't judge meeeee!

Zhi presents a wonderful example of how deceptive some of the Makie lab outfits can be.

Now in the maker this outfit looks like it should be a long sleeved tee and a pair of jeans. But in reality it's a lycraish top and a pair of stretchy tight fitting leggings.
Lol.

Coupled with the slip ons, poor Zhi isn't looking hugely masculine is he?

I wanted him to come with a long wig, but at the time of ordering boys were still only able to come with one of three fur wigs. Any other choice was something you had to email support about.
The lab told me they'd actually send me the wig I requested attached to another scalp, testing their new idea for wigs that involves switching out the entire skull plate rather than trying to stretch a wig cap over the head and hoping it stays put.

his fur wig looks silly, so let's get him looking more like himself shall we?

Clicking the skull cap off is really easy. Just squeeze the head gently and it pops off. The new cap clips on nicely, though the wig does overlap the scalp a little so you have to pull the edges of the wig cap away from the edges of the 3d printed scalp to click it into position nice and tight.

Voila, new wig.
And yes that really was less fiddly than the old method. The wig is securely glued to the 3d printed skull cap, so it doesn't slide around and it's already in the right position. No trying to figure out where the front is (a problem I have with Nate's wig because it's a very similar length the entire way around) and no slipping off when redressing. So yay!

Still, that outfit... Zhi is NOT rocking that outfit in the slightest. Who thought leggings were a good look for a man? Sheesh, poor Makie boys need a serious stylist intervention.

The shorts Gabe and Nate came with are much nicer I have to admit, as are the tops for both those outfits. The stripy top is actually made of a cotton knit sort of fabric like a proper t-shirt and the green minecraft themed top is really stiff fabric, but still a lot more masculine feeling than stretchy lycra sort of stuff.

I wonder if this is in fact the exact same shirt the girls also come with. They have an outfit featuring a red top just like this, but it comes with shorts instead of leggings.

Faceup done, phew... and new outfit aquired.
Ken shoes, home sewn pants, the afformentioned Makies stripy top and a Moxie Boyz gilet.
His bracelets are loom bands.

I decided to while i was at it, touch up my other Makie's faces.

They look a bit creepy without skull plates or eyes, but it gives a good idea of their different facial structures and their skin tones.

Zhi was designed as the elder brother of Jian, so they're supposed to look similar. I really love how they look together.
He's actually slightly paler than she is, showing again the variation in the dye process. It would seem every single batch is slightly different, with some variations more obvious (Nate and Lirel) than others.

Jian has really dark feet and arms, while her body is slightly darker but more similar to Zhi's overall tone. Zhi's dye is actually a lot more even in tone across his body.

Also, in case you were wondering (nobody was were they? ) yes, their heads are, like all their body parts, interchangeable.

Zhi makes a pretty ugly girl, though at least looks like a girl. But Jian just looks hilarious on the boy body. The boys have a wider jaw than the girls which makes their head slightly larger overall. They have the same sized crown, but their faces are larger than the girl faces due to that wide jaw-line.

It means they look a bit unbalanced on the body of the other gender. though this would probably not be so obvious once they were dressed. So um... yay for those wanting a girly head on a boy body and vice versa?

Someone on twitter asked if the boys and girls could wear one another's clothes. So this is especially for them. Also, it made me laugh ok?

Zhi was a remarkably good sport about it all. I couldn't be bothered taking shoes on and off so just switched feet, you can see the huge difference in the colours of Jian's feet compared to Zhi's. He looks like he's sunburned just his feet!

The boy tops are baggy but look really cute on the girl body. The pants are unisex, they're made from the official Makies free pattern (available in the forum area of the website) and fit either boys or girls.
The top Jian was wearing is Bratz (taller bratz, totally polished I believe) while the skirt was home made as well. It's a bit tight but has a split in it.

Then we tried the outfit Lirel came in.

I was surprised this fitted so well. The leggings seem to be cut from the same pattern as the black ones he came in, so fit fine. The dress is fitted, but not over tight.
It actually fits really well, so good news transvestite makies?

Next up was Jian's original outfit. The shirt fits fine, though it's not the most masculine cut being styled like a baby tee.
The shorts are stretchy, though they leave NOTHING to the imagination. oh dear...

These failed jeans I made work a bit better, though the t-shirt still feels a bit short to my eye. Width wise i'd say it's fine, but the torso length seems a bit off to me.

I'm gonna come out and say it... Zhi ROCKS this spice girls dress damnit. ROCKS it.
The leggings aren't such a great idea, but he fills out that dress nicely. Hehehe.

Back in his proper clothes.

And in conclusion yes, yes the boys can wear the girl's clothing but the girl clothing is generally cut a little too feminine to look that good.
Conversely, the girls look absolutely adorable in the boy outfits. So yeah... make of that what you will.

Though he was pretty good about the whole dressing in drag thing, Zhi did look a lot more comfortable in his proper clothes.

I also wanted to figure out if I owned any other dolls with similarly sized heads.

As it turns out, La dee da heads are similar

Least width wise.

But the dah faces are a lot flatter so glasses don't really work. Alas.

I tried headbands as well but they didn't fit. Presumably because the la dee da head is squishy while the Makie head isn't.

Lorifina's head was also a similar sort of size. But as she doesn't have a hat or anything I couldn't test that out.
I believe her wig size is one size up from Makies (a size 8 instead of 7) but it's quite differently constructed with a clip on cap etc so not really something I can switch between dolls.

He could steal Little Apple masks, which was fun.

Stardoll fits the girls beautifully (and the boys for that matter, Zhi's wearing stardoll jeans)

I also learned that the more recent Bratz Boyz have wider waists than the old ones (only slightly) which means the post 10/10/10 boyz pants fit the Makie boys perfectly. Right length, right waist width, they could have been made for the makies, it's wonderful. Gabe is wearing Masquerade Gable's jeans now, leaving poor Gable pantless bwhahaha.

I also discovered that This Is Me (t.i.m) tops and jackets fit, though the pants, shoes and hats sadly don't. Alas.

So that's my little Makie family, which is steadily expanding.

HELP! I need an intervention... or more money hahahaha.