Monkfish's dolly ramble: I know I know, i'm a slacker.

I have been really slacking off on the doll updates. It's not that I haven't been working on stuff, albeit slowly, it's just I haven't really felt like I had anything worthwhile or interesting enough to share.

I haven't bought any new dolls this month as i've been paying off a layaway instead, which has taken all my funds and i'm waiting for a few things to drop in price anyway.

But I did realise I have several things I didn't actually talk about already here because i'm forgetful <_<

lol.

So here's a random assortment of dolls!

First up I got this girl down from the shelf to consider again.

She's a Dollzone Moon head on a Mirodoll body but I dyed the head and it messed up... very badly leaving her extremely blotchy which then required several layers of pastel to hide.

It left a pretty rough texture which was difficult to do a faceup over and the end result just didn't work for me. So I decided to have another go and see if I could salvage her.

The first step was to try to remove as much of the failed dye as possible. I used acetone and windsor and newton brush cleaner and a LOT of elbow grease. My hands hurt after scrubbing for several hours but I got most of the worst of it off. It actually impressed me how white she went back to being, I expected to have to sand her to get the dye off so that was nice.

The next step was to try out my new airbrush. I've never used an airbrush before and mixing the colour was annoying. I didn't manage to get enough "green" in the mix but it was close enough to the eye (my camera makes it look a lot more mismatched honestly).

The airbrush gave me a nice clean layer to work with which had a better texture than the layers of pastel did, less er... lumpy. I figured I could blush a lot of the colour mismatch anyway.

In natural light her head is more blue than her body but it's close enough for me.

I'm very pleased with how she came out. Airbrushed resin is substantially easier to paint on than blush layers so I think i'll do this in the future if I have to do any major colour mods and dye is not an option.

This girl's body is a cool colour but ultimately that's about all it has going for it. Mirodoll's engineering is awful. I had to mod her shoulders so the arms actually sat correctly in the sockets and I swapped her hands out for resinsoul ones because the miro hands are ugly blocky things with an oval shaped wrist so they can't actually move in the round socket of the arm.

Her knee peanuts don't actually fit her legs correctly but I can't work out WHY so I haven't tackled trying to fix that yet. She stands, but it's pretty obvious she was constructed with limited understanding of how ball joints actually should function.

You get what you pay for with Mirodoll, they're cheap, they're quick but they're also messy as all hell.

Still, it was also the only neck size that could fit this head without modification. The Dollzone Moon head is actually YOSD sized (so 1/6) but quite large (she takes a 6-7 sized wig) but this means a narrower than standard neck opening for a 1/4 body.

Ultimately though? I can't recommend the Mirodoll body unless you really want a project.

I do like this doll though, but that's more down to how nice the Dollzone head sculpt is.

A while back I ordered several factory reject Tonner/Wilde Imagination heads from Aliexpress.

It took me a while to figure out what to do with the first batch but here's Angeleque on a Barbie Endless Hair Kingdom body.

the skin tone match is pretty close, the body is a touch lighter but it's not bad.

The only modding I had to do to this body was cut the very long internal neck peg down, she can't tilt her head but I don't think the original doll could either to be honest, but she can turn it and she stands well in her boots.

Her wig is a Makies wig from my stash. I love these curly wigs okay? they're really fun to style because they hold whatever you do to them so well.

Her eyes are 12mm flat backed oval glass eyes in a pretty green tone.

I think this sculpt is just so gorgeous. Tonner did an amazing job with this particular face sculpt.

Lizette was a little more difficult to find a body for as she's a touch darker and more saturated brown than Angelique. She's a near exact match for Monster High Clawdeen in fact, so I bought an old half customised Frightfully Tall Clawdeen to see if it would work for a hybrid.

Getting the head on was a pain, the way the Monster High necks are sculpted is bizarre and it means her head is a bit floppy which annoys me. I'll have to figure out a solution at some point.

She wears 12mm oval flat backed eyes in a bright brown tone and another Makies wig.

Now it's worth mentioning that I didn't have to cut their heads open at all to get those eyes in. All the tutorials I saw online said to slice the heads open but I knew from talking to a tonner collector a while back that the way the factory did it was sticking the eyes in from the front (this collector mentioned that a lot of the glass eyes ended up with hairline fractures and cracks as a result of this and ended up sold cheap as seconds) So I figured "why can't I just heat the head up and stick the eyes in from the front like any other doll?"

I left them to stew in boiling water for about 5 minutes and the heads got nice and squishy and the eyes popped right on in. Angelique was easier than Lizette because Lizette has narrower eye sockets and my thumb was hurting by the time I got to her but it just takes a little force and they plop into place.

I might redo Lizette's faceup though as i'm not 100% pleased with it.

My second lot of heads came in about a month after I ordered. The seller actually didn't have the ones I wanted so sent me substitutions but that's fine, they were really not very expensive and the substituations were mostly pretty interesting.

They switched out one Elowynne head for a different one with factory paint, the Amber head for a Patsy (I kinda wanted a Patsy head anyway heh), and a random other head I wasn't overly interested in that was part of the bundle was switched out for a far more interesting Madame Alexander Steampunk Wicked Witch head.

I intend to paint her up in a sort of vintage style as you can see here from my initial attempt. I haven't a clue what body I can put her on though because she's bright green! So hmmm.

I haven't figured out bodies for this lot yet, or eyes. It might take a while to find the right body for them all.

In extremely disappointing news, our local kids charity shop has closed after their landlord failed to offer any relief over the pandemic closures and rent kept going up (or so the rumour from staff and managers of the store go)

Honestly there's a special place in hell for landlords who screw over charities for terminally ill and disabled children. -_- this jackass certainly has not endeared themselves to the local community who all loved that shop.

But this meant they had a "everything must go" closing down sale. It was extremely sad. The charity has really suffered badly over the pandemic. It's a very small local charity that runs two hospices one of which they've temporarily closed due to a lack of funds to keep both open. Most of their shops have closed with only 6 left. The staff who worked there are all bummed out and searching for a solution to reopen with a cheaper unit but yeah, whether that'll happen or not remains to be seen.

(seriously, if you can, send some money to Shooting Star Chase)

Anyway,

the first day of the sale the queue was 2 hours long, seriously, people stood in a queue for 2 hours just to enter the store and buy stuff! How mad is that?

I decided I didn't want to do that. It was like black friday level crazy, the queue was running down the street!

The second day the queue was still long but not as nuts so I queued for maybe half an hour or so and had a look at what they had left.

they still had quite a few dolls for 50p each so I grabbed a fair few to clean up. This was one who's been in their doll box for quite a few months now. She's a Holiday or Birthday Barbie or something, on a Model Muse body but with a cracked neck and swingy legs and when I grabbed her, absolutely frazzled to shit hair.

She has such a beautiful face though.

Her rooted lashes are a bit wonky and even after flat ironing her hair it's not great but it's a lot better than it WAS.

I did try to repair her neck but it's so badly cracked that I think it might be a lost cause. Particularly with her legs being swingy too. The Model Muse body really was NOT designed for play but clearly this doll has been played with quite a lot. Thing is, the model muse body is a pain in the arse anyway. It's molded with asymetrical legs so can't stand up without a solid stand and the posed arms and legs limit things even more and can make her very difficult to dress. While I like that she has painted nails and the sculpting of the body is pretty nice, it's just not a very good body for anything other than static display and I really do prefer to be able to pose my dolls and sit them the hell down.

So she'll likely get a new body if I find anything that matches her skin tone.

I think she deserves a better body anyway. I really do like her face and i'm not usually a big Barbie person. I appreciate the grey eyes and that coy closed mouth smile. (I think she'd look STUNNING with dark hair but i'm not about to attempt to reroot her, I hate rerooting lol)

The other dolls I grabbed are mostly for hybrid projects or repainting so I haven't taken photos of them.They're not that interesting in their current state anyway

Auction Photo

The big problem I have when i'm waiting for a new bjd is that after a couple of months I start ITCHING for instant gratification.

So this little guy crossed my feed and I was like "ooo Luts?"

He's an older Luts Ttori which is a sculpt they still sell and one I hadn't really looked that closely at honestly, but I am a SUCKER for a tlc doll.

Auction photo

As you can see from his auction photos, this guy had some issues.

As well as being yellowed due to age he was badly stained around his head and apparently needed restringing as he was floppy as heck.

He also has an old style faceup which I knew would be pretty grubby as sealant seems to attract grime and every secondhand old doll i've handled has looked so much brighter and cleaner once i've removed those layers of old yellowing seal. That said, he didn't look too bad in photos, I just wasn't totally sure about that teensy pursed "I sucked on a lemon" mouth but looking at blank sculpt pictures assured me that it was mostly the way they painted his lips causing that, not his actual lip sculpting.

Auction photo

Now I will admit, these sorts of older style bjds aren't usually my taste but they ARE the style of doll that got me into bjds in the first place many many years ago. Blue Fairy was my first real bjd love and they have a similar style to Luts, what i'd refer to as the "traditional" style bjds. Chunkier bodies, soft child-like faces and big ol' heads and eyes. I've been wanting a companion for my Blue fairy for a while and had planned to get a Luts Muhwa at some point anyway (and I likely still will because Muhwa is adorable)

First thing to do when he arrived was to clean the heck outta him and assess.

As it turned out, the staining on his head was only surface marks which came off with a little gentle scrubbing with my magic eraser and some nail polish remover.

His faceup was also not too badly yellowed and had no chips or damage but I couldn't handle that mouth, it was orange (I assume the pink of the original colour has yellowed over time) and he was rather heavily blushed.

I pondered if I could remove the mouth paint and blush only but as is often the case, once you start removing any paint the "tide line" where the old sealant is becomes increasingly difficult to hide.

It felt a little of a shame as he had beautifully painted eyelashes and very delicate eyebrows but I couldn't handle the lips as they were so off with his face!

He's cute under all that. And the resin isn't actually that yellowed, it photographs quite pink but it's more of a magnolia sort of colour in real life.

All the staining is gone and after quite a bit of scrubbing, soo too is the original paint and seal. Man they sealed it well, it took a LOT of scrubbing and in the end I resorted to sort of scraping it off in layers as it was the only way it would shift.

He has what looks like old sculpy for eye putty. Ew.

Interestingly, he came with a booklet which has instructions on restringing (damn they string them wierd, he has a separate string for each leg. Why?) but also mentions specifically using sculpy as eye putty, something that these days is considered a bit of a "no no" due to the oil present in it and its tendency to turn into disgusting crumbly grossness over time.

Doesn't look like it's done any damage to the resin or the acrylic eyes though, but i'll probably replace it with white tac at some point because the peach tone shines through the whites of his eyes making them look bloodshot and i'm not a big fan.

One full repaint later and he's looking substantially less pissed off.

I gave him a more neutral eyebrow position and also extended his lips to where the sculpting actually ends which results in a doll with an expression that's more chilled rather than the "I will stab you through the hand for what you just said!" look of the original.

Here he is alongside my one other doll in this style, my Blue Fairy Louis (my first dolly love! lol). They work quite well together I think.

What's interesting here is that it looks like they have very similar skintones but they don't at all. Jonah (my Louis) is a rather saturated peach colour while Ttori is a paler yellowish tone, but they both photograph as pale pink. Wierd huh?

Ttori came with a load of clothes as well. A suit and little black smart shoes as well as a pair of dungarees, a grey shirt and sneakers. He also came with two wigs, the black one pictured and a cheap brown fur wig.

I already had the glasses and I love me a doll with glasses so he claimed them. Heh.

He's come out very cute I think. Not bad for an impulse buy right?

He's still a bit floppy. I did tighten up his strings but I think he could benefit from completely new ones honestly. And if I do restring him i'm not doing it the wierd Luts way with the separate leg strings because it's awkward and results in two large knots instead of just one.

I'll stick with one long piece of elastic thanks.