Sure it wasn't without tears and anguish and the usual depressive state, but we made it!
I just gotta make it to new year.
So let's look at toys!
Of course December is the time of year you're supposed to stop buying things... right?
Least normal people stop buying things.
Me? I do all my christmas shopping in November so then we hit december and I get stressed planning parties and depressed because christmas and start to itch to buy something nice to make myself feel better.
So yeah.. I end up spending more than I should in december and it's a bad habit but it gets me through this season without completely losing the will to exist.
So first of all, Kismet's wig came!
It's actually way softer and less shitty than I expected it to be. It sheds like crazy but long wigs do.
I'm really pleased with how this girl came out. Not bad for an impulse purchase huh?
And speaking of impulse purchases...
I also if you recall, impulse bought another resinsoul that had been languishing in a basement for a few years. I'm a sucker for a story like that lol.
"i'll save you!" I yelled as I threw a wad of cash at the owner. lol.
He's a Resinsoul Song in dark grey on the double jointed body.
Pretty boy but I already own a Song (my girl Lyric) and duplicated sculpts make me crazy. So why'd I buy him?
well he came with a second head and that's what really got me excited.
It was also a Song head but had at some point been modded to have closed eyes.
It's hard to tell in pictures but the eyes weren't totally closed, there was a teeeensy little gap. But the mods were pretty lumpy and as the seller stated, it was an early amateur attempt that needed work.
Having a head already modded well, that's just ASKING for me to mess with it right? I thought "i could reopen those eyes, heck yeah.. maybe i'll do some other mods while i'm at it."
"easy" I thought.
I was pretty eager to get started so as soon as the doll arrived I grabbed up the sleep head and started stabbin'. Epoxy is, I learned, WAY harder to scrape off resin than I thought.
First step was the strip the paint so I could see what was resin and what was epoxy but in doing that I learned something else about this head. The WHOLE head had been airbrushed, every... damn.. inch..of it. Which I wasn't expecting at all.
I spent a good while just scrubbing and scrubbing to get it all off so i'd have a nice blank clean canvas to work with.
Which revealed another interesting issue with this head, the colour isn't even. It's difficult to make out in photos but his whole head was mottled and discoloured. Not sure if it's epoxy residue, a poorly cast head or some reaction to the airbrushed paint but the WHOLE head has faded bits and swirls in the colour.
wiiiierd.
I'm feeling less and less guilty about modding the shit outta this.
I got his eyes as open as I dared before I felt like I was starting to cut into resin. They're narrower than his original eyes would have been but that suits me just fine, I don't want him looking like Song after all. He's gonna be someone NEW.
Here he is with eyes in, you can see the layers of paint still present on the head (especially around the mouth and ears)
He looks so worried. He KNOWS what I have in store for him bwhahahaha.
Bad pic but the solid white bits are milliput mods. The other smears? Well you can see his ears right? that's how mottled the resin is. I couldn't get it to not be mottled and I don't know what was going on there. I removed SO MANY layers of paint omg. Maybe all that scrubbing with a magic eraser caused a lot of sanding marks I dunno, but I couldn't buff them out so I gave up and just rolled with it. I'll have to blush the epoxy to match anyway.
Because the epoxy around his eyes was already white I saw no point trying to tint the epoxy for these mods as well, I was gonna have to do a blush over anyway so why bother?
The tips of his ears are almost white and I never touched them with epoxy at all, it's just sanding marks and discolouration of the resin.
I sculpted this boy a new nose that's kinda bulbous and cute and a new chin to balance out his new big ol' schnozz. I love a big nose on a doll hahah.
then blush.. blush blush blush blush omg so much blushing.
this took like 10 layers of pastel.
there's nicks and scrapes to the head, little parts where there's damage to the resin or epoxy and patches where the seam between resin and mod are fairly obvious but for my first additive mod i'm fairly happy with it.
I tried to even his eyes out (resinsoul dolls almost always have wonky eyes) and Song actually has a really wonky mouth (it's shunted wierdly to one side) which I considered working on but decided it was far too much work.
I think he looks cute.
But because he has so many layers of pastel on him to cover up the milliput, doing a faceup is gonna be tricky. Usually I would do the eyebrows first and eraser them into shape, wipe em, try again and so on till I got the right shape but i've found with layers of pastel underneath there is, even with a lot of sealant layers, a big risk of scraping or dislodging that layer where trying to even out a layer above. You have to be really careful doing any paint work over the top of pastel blushing like this, so I had in my mind at least, ONE shot at eyebrows.
So uh.. no pressure?
They came out pretty even all things considering.
I painted in some little teeth because I thought it looked kinda cute.
It's all very messy. You can see how uneven the edges of the eyes actually are for example. The freckles hide the seam where the milliput meets the resin and you can really see how wonky Song's mouth is here. See? the nose and chin are mostly even with one another but the mouth skews to one side. This is something ALL Song dolls have, it's a flaw in the sculpting. I noticed this when I painted Lyric, the filtrum comes down to the middle of the top lipe and then the top lip skews sideways. It's sooo weiiierd.
In a way though, the wonkiness of Resinsoul sculpts makes them great for mod projects because your own wonky sculpting kinda ties in ahahahaha.
I loooove his new nose shape omg.
I only bothered blushing the front of the head, so the back and sides where the ears are are the original colour. See the white on the ears? and the white at the temples? that's resin discolouration from what I can establish. SOOO strange.
the other head was also airbrushed but not as heavily and came clean fine, smooth normal dark grey resin. This head though, I dunno what happened to it. Poor head.
Here he is on his body before I finished tweaking the mouth area. This is a good example of why I painted the teeth in. See how gaping his mouth looks? I dunno why it looks like this but I couldn't fix it so the teeth hid that strangeness and made him look a little goofier which appealed to me. hah.
A few more layers of pastel to smooth things out. Darkened up his lips, smoothed out his teeth as best I could (the resin inside his mouth is really rough and I can't get anything small enough in there to sand it down) and white eyelashes which make him look more sad rather than startled like he did previously.
The body is a double jointed resinsoul body, a body I didn't actually own an example of previously. It's a finnicky body. The knees are okay once they're sueded (and this body came pre sueded yay) but the elbows like to swivel because they have little cup joints like Ming's body, it does my head in. Ramming some pipecleaners in there helped a bit hah.
The poor boy is INSANELY floppy though. His strings are not his original strings, they're black for a start (and resinsoul only send things with white strings) and being old, have lost a lot of elastication. They're also way too thin.
So i ordered him some new strings.
While I was doing that I also ordered him new clothes.
I decided to go super frilly for this boy.
A frilly shirt, frilly bloomers and a corset I had bought for something else hahah.
He has a really long torso so the corset helps break up some of that length.
His outfit isn't done yet. He'll be getting some pastel stockings, little slip on shoes and some ribbons.
And because I can't stop tweaking, MORE faceup work.
I intend to give him sparklier eyes once Candy Kitten reopens her Etsy shop. I love her eyes, they're so vibrant and shimmery. I think they'll really help.
I'm not sure about the wig. I kinda like it but I was thinking a long straight ombre wig in pastel tones for him. But finding one for a reasonable price without insane shipping is proving really difficult. He might just keep the mental curls for a while haha. They kinda suit him. right?
He's been restrung with strings 2x as thick as the ones he had and I admit, for a moment I was wondering if i'd ordered the wrong size but nope, they're fine. I didn't bother restringing his arms because the thinner elastic helps stop the cups rotating and the elastication seems to be okay, but the rest of him got totally restrung so he now stands the hell up. He does however have the same quirk my Jun (Nhar) has where one hip likes to pull outward. With Nhar I fixed the issue by ramming some eye putty into the socket so I might have to do that with this boy too.
I've named him Hugo, he's a sad clown boy.
And for reference, the blue girl is an unmodded Song head. This shows the modding done. His eyes are slightly narrower and more angular, he has a totally new nose and a longer chin. It's enough that they no longer look like the same sculpt so i'm happy enough.
I also gave him a manicure because I could hahah.
Once the fabric shop reopens i'll get him a nice ribbon for his tie instead of a scrap of ratty fabric, and maybe something to wrap around his waist as a belt for a pop of colour too.
Overall, i'm fairly pleased with my first mod project. His head is darker than his body (it's charcoal rather than grey) but his high collar means you don't really notice and to be fair, a lot of people wearing makeup have that anyway.
I'm looking forward to having him all finished up.
but now I have a spare Song head in dark grey lol. Not sure what to do with that. Hmmm.
I don't want to mod it too because it's in good condition and I feel bad about messing with parts that aren't already fucked you know? With this head I had very little to lose as he already had eye mods that needed sorting out and a lot of sanding mark issues and discolouration, he was a very tlc head and i'm pleased to have breathed some life into him.
So maybe i'll see if anyone wants/needs a head haha. Sadly I don't think there's much market for fantasy colours, which is a shame because resinsoul's fantasy tones are so pretty omg.
I also traded some Living Dead Dolls for other Living Dead Dolls. In this case the Candy Rotten and spare Damien I had from buying the whole set of 20th anniversary "varients".
In return I got 3 Oz dolls, The Tin Woodman who has screws for eyes eheheheh, The Scarecrow who's missing a brain (lol) and the Wizard who comes with all the pieces the others are lacking (A brain, a heart and a bag with some uh.. brass balls in it for the lion ahahahahah ahahahah omg)
also talking ressurection Varient Cuddles. She's cute. My middle kid is scared of her specifically hahaha.
She says things like "keep looking and i'll pluck your eyes out!" and giggles.
Silly.
And I finally opened the rest of my 20th anniversary set.
I wasn't sure about Eggzorcist and i'm still not, but as I intended to keep the others it felt wrong to not keep her as well.
Her dress is beautiful with these abtrace sort of.. noose-like flowers? It's weird. She has a fabric noose around her neck and a big fluffy bunny hood.
She has short purple hair.
She looks like she's been eating blackberries ahahah.
Unfortunately she can't hold her damn basket despite having a gripping hand. I ended up elastic banding it to her.
Posey's also been into the blackberries hahah.
She's just haunting though. Her hair is beautifully soft and slightly greasy feeling so it tends to fall in a somewhat straggly way that I think works quite well for her. Her eyes are grey and glassy and photograph almost totally white.
She has blood dripping down her neck and a gash in her head that her hair covers.
She's the simplest of the set with no shoes and a beautiful but quite simple little nightgown. She comes with a single accessory, a white rose with blood drops on it. She's also the only one who doesn't have a grippy hand, instead she has an open hand with a peg slot for the rose. It took a lot of effort to get the peg to fit into the hole and I do think it looks a bit weird. I'd have liked a better solution.
Sadie has her mismatched eyes which are quite striking and adorable pigtails. One of mine's is a bit squished.
Her dress is beautifully made and she came with a knife, a bag and a bouquet of black roses.
I liked the bloodied knife best so that's what she's holding.
Sin is just absolutely stunning.
You might notice the plastic around her neck? the black stains so that's to stop staining happening and i'm glad the factory thought about it as neck stains are a pretty major issue with ldds.
her dress is the same cut as Sadie's but made of felt, presumably a nod to her original outfit (curious that Sadie's isn't also felt heh)
She has littel plastic horns embedded into her head, beautiful ered eyes and even a demon tail.
Her accessory is a pitchfork.
All the grippy hands can be pretty difficult to get the accessories into as they're very hard plastic with little to no give, so ramming the accessory in requires a fair bit of force and getting the exact right angle. One it's in there though, it's pretty secure.
Such a cool set.
I think Eggy really sticks out like a sore thumb though. But then she's always been a bit of a wierd one.
I also did a trade with someone I met on facebook (lol, I meet everyone online, i'm such a loner)
She desperately wanted some dolls the UK market got in better quantity than the US and I kinda wanted some US only MH.
Coffin Bean wave 2 was never released, to my knowledge, in the UK for some reason and it always pissed me off.
I hated that we toward the end had this shit happen a lot where we'd get half a line but not the other half (like sweet screams)
It sucked.
I at one point imported a coffin bean Twyla because her dark hair is just so dang pretty to me, but I sold her out of guilt for buying "too much" that month. *sigh* story of my damn life right there.
She's very pretty with three different shades in her hair. Blue, purple and the mint tone.
Her outfit is this weird ass romper with spiders on and some creative kiddo has given her a mannicure hahaha.
Her shoes are nothing to write home about but they work fine and are pretty cute.
I always loved her shadowy swirls. Why'd the reboot reduce them?
Robecca has really bulky bangs and very vividly blue eyeshadow which is interesting.
her outfit is a one piece dress in two different fabrics with a steampunk heart brooch and a funky arm band thing that reminds me of a Pip Boy because i've been playing way too much Fallout hahaha.
I feel like she needs a belt.
Her shoes I believe are a reuse of the shoes from her deluxe fashion pack in a different colour. They're kinda cool because they're a bit victorian spats mixed with riveted metal. I think I prefer them in this colour, they look more like actual spats than they did in blue.
I might paint in the details though, those bolts totally need colouring.
Venus I think is the standout though, the MVP of the line. Green lips is something we've not really seen with her and it looks SO DAMN GOOD. Coupled with the neon green and pink of her eyeshadow it's just such an attractive look for her.
Her dress reminds me of her music festival outfit a bit with the ripped overshirt. It's a nice dress, simple but effective.
Her shoes are her signature shoes without the painted detail. I always thought these were a fun sculpt with the teeth heh.
Also in the box came this giant Obitsu head which i'm not sure what to do with (it's huuuuuge and hard and not overly attractive imo)
A bunch of random bjd resin arms and legs and stuff and this head. She's a Resinsoul Li in dark tan.
I always kinda liked this sculpt because it's frankly bizarre. She has massive ears, a really sharp nose and kinda duck lips, a massive overbite and this really narrow jaw. I couldn't ever call this sculpt "pretty" but it's interesting and I do like interesting sculpts. I like a face with character and Li definitely has a characterful face.
My only problem now is figuring out if I want this head to be a boy or a girl and finding a body for it.
but that's sort of on the back burner for a bit while I save up for other more pressing things.
The same day this girl also turned up.
Way back in June I answered a survey for a company called Dollshe about an idea they had to scale down some of their sculpts to different sizes/heights, an idea I was ALL ABOUT BABY. Well it turned out they had a lottery going and everyone who replied got entered (I had no idea) so I was pretty stunned when I got an email saying i'd won a doll.
I had to triple check it to make sure it wasn't some scam.
I got third place which meant I won a "bubble pet Molly", a tiny little anthro kitty doll.
I got to pick from three colours. Cookies and Cream grey, a biscuit tone and vanilla white.. I think.
I picked grey because it seemed the most versatile.
Dollshe is notoriously slow to get dolls out with some people waiting up to 2 years! for their dolls, so I settled in for a long wait reminding myself that I hadn't paid anything for this girl (even shipping was free) so if she took 2 years, what was I really losing?
as it was, it took about 6 months which for Dollshe is actually REALLY quick.
Molly didn't come with eyes, these are just some eyes from my stash ( I think they're 14mm) which made her less creepy to play with and take photos of.
She's tiny, standing only around 19cm tall. She's slightly taller than my Hujoo rabbit.
She's a really unusual colour too, her grey is slightly brownish grey? It's quite a nice natural fur colour I think.
And she's impressively posable.
Her default feet (she came with 2 pairs) have this little plastic soles that clip on with magnets which allow her to stand up (they give some grip and a flat surface) which is an interesting idea.
She has a joint at the base of her tail, hips, upper torso, shoulder, elbow, wrist, neck, knee and ankle and most of these joints have an impressive range of motion on them.
I even got her to balance on one foot briefly.
She has teensy little sculpted claws and pawpad which is sooo cute omg.
and i'm absolutely astounded that something so small can pose so dynamically.
She came in a plastic baggy wrapped in newspaper, which is a strange way to post a resin thing but the box was pretty sturdy.
I stuck her back into the box just for fun lol.
She doesn't have great up down head motion because her head is supposed to pop off as you can see here. It only holds on with a single magnet so it's very very easy to accidentally decapitate her. Dum de dum.
And she came with a second sleeping face plate.
I'm not so keen on this one, I think she looks cuter and less angry with her eyes open.
But it's kinda cool she comes with extra parts. Most Dollshe dolls I think do.
She's SO CUTE OMG.
I quite like that. I wish more companies would give you a body and a head certificate as it becomes a huge issue if you ever split them up.
So thank you Dollshe for such a generous gift!
I dunno what i'm gonna do with her yet, but i'll figure something out.
Also found this little dude in a charity shop before christmas.
He's a fully working Furby Baby. My last Furby Baby had a lot of problems so I rehomed him to someone who would love him regardless, this little guy seems to work AOK which is awesome.
Not a colour I would probably have picked, I tend to prefer realistic colours to my robot pets but for a fiver how could I not take this cutie pie home?
And finally christmas came!
Not many presents this year. My mother stipulated "no presents for the adults this year" as a way of reducing stress and expense.
My sister however ignored this and sent me a Living Dead Doll anyway lol.
So sweet.
This is Roxie, who's from the Zombie themed line they did years ago.
She has a 13 stamped on the back of her head.
and a bloodied bandage on one arm.
Husband meanwhile opted for a Sindy. Not just any Sindy, Tennis Star Sindy.
there's a reason.
See, while I don't really care much about 90s Hasbro Sindy dolls, this girl right here was my first ever sindy doll. Way back in 1991 I had a birthday party and at this party one of the gifts I was given was this exact Sindy doll.
Now, I didn't have many dolls that weren't inherited from my older sister or cousin, certainly i'd never owned a new Barbie so she was my first brand new, mine and only mine 12 inch fashion doll.
Which in itself is kinda special.
I remember being a little bewildered though, as I didn't much care for dolls back then (I was a huge tomboy) and the person who bought her for me I think was just a random school friend/class mate. Quite a generous gift when you think about it as they also gave me a fashion pack to go with her and some doll shoes.
Still, she was MINE and perfect unlike so many of my secondhand Barbie dolls who my cousin had "made over" (read: trashed) or were in pretty dated clothing (My sister is 8 years my senior so I had 80s Barbies and it was the 90s man! Their clothes were all 80s clothes)
I loved that she came with a teeny tiny tennis ball, I remember even then this delighted me.
I remember loving her crimped hair and more athletic body type which compared to the barbie dolls of the time, was far far more realistic and attractive.
It annoyed the shit out of me that she couldnt' wear Barbie clothes or shoes though. There was just no compatability. Sindy had a wider waist, narrower shoulders and a smaller bust, her feet are about twice the size as Barbie's hooves and flatter... it was annoying.
So all she ever had to wear was a tennis outfit and the fashion pack, which i ADORED.
It was called Tutti Fruitti (the black dress with the yellow heels was the one I had)
Now, this means of course that Tennis Star Sindy has a sentimental place in my heart. When we emigrated to the UK most of my toys were left behind in storage, I took only a few of my precious cuddly toys with me and the rest were lost in a breakin which i'm sure i've mentioned before.
So sadly my childhood Sindy doll was lost to the ether, and finding a replacement was, it turned out, not going to be cheap.
Of course the one damn sindy I had as a child HAD to be the wierdly rare and saught after one huh? Finding her for less than £20 out of fricken box proved difficult and pissed me off as I still don't get WHY.
What is it about this specific sindy doll that's so special people??!
anyway, this one is brand new in box, which is an added level of nostelgia omg.
A generous and kind gift from my husband to reaquaint me with my first fashion doll, my first sindy, the doll I remember above all others.
and omg how 90s is this box?
I'm not sure if I should free her, maybe i'll wait till i find the even rarer and even more expensive to bloody obtain Tutti Fruitti fashion pack for her! lol.
then she'll truely be my childhood Sindy doll.
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