Hi, Elisa? It's Diana the Doll Fairy. Listen, would you like to do a Smart Doll Collab? Hi Diana, I would love to! Can we invite more people? Sure! (metal music) Hello? Hi Alex, it's Elisa from Moonlight Jewel, I want to do a collab with Diana, and I wanted to ask you if you would like to join us? Oh hi Elisa! Sounds like fun, but let me ask my sister okay? Yo Barb, umm, Elisa and Diana want to... I was born for this! So yeah, we’re doing a smart doll collab with Diana the Doll Fairy
and Elisa from Moonlight Jewel. We agreed on the Lolita fashion theme despite our
absolute lack of knowledge about this fashion trend. Everybody chose a slightly different version of Lolita style so make sure to check the other videos from this collab! For our doll, I was largely inspired by this outfit I found online. It seemed overwhelming at first, so I decided to kick off this fashion challenge by making something I could wing on the first try, which is the petticoat. I’m cutting out all of the petticoat layers, to these dimensions: Since my fabric wasn’t 2 and a half meters long, and that’s how long the bottom ruffle needs to be, I joined multiple pieces together. Next, I run a gathering stitch through both of the bottom layers at once. Pulling by the bobbin thread, I’m gathering the ruffle to be the length of the middle layer, which the layers of I have pinned together. I can now align the gathered edge of the ruffle to one of the edges of the middle layer, and sew them together. After that’s done I’m top stitching the seam allowance so the ruffle lays towards the bottom of the underskirt. I will repeat the same process to attach the middle layer to the top cotton layer of the petticoat. After that’s done, I will make a casing for an elastic at the waist. I fold the edge over about a centimeter and stitch close to the raw edge. I measure out the length of my elastic and mark it on a longer piece. Then, I thread it through, to the other side of the skirt. I’ll stitch that end in place to secure it. After I’m sure I won't pull the elastic out, I start gathering the skirt on the elastic till the marking I made earlier pokes out of the skirt. Align that mark with the edge of the skirt and stitch the elastic in place. The last thing to do is close up the back seam, right sides together. Next, I decided to do some mockups of the dress. I figured out what kind of sleeve I wanted on this pink one, and tested the decorative strip, and I learned that I can't tell the right side from the wrong side on this skirt. I fixed it up later, and you may have seen in on our Smart Doll Robyn on our instagram. I had just enough fabric to make this dress so when I was confident it would go smoothly, which it didn’t really, I went ahead and sewn the final design. I’m using a bodice and a sleeve from Tatyana’s free dress pattern, I’ll link it below. I added my modifications to it, so we can add a front closure with that decorative strip later. I also made a skirt pattern to match the bodice dimensions and after gathering all of the notes from my testing let’s go and make a dress! I started by making the decorative panels by folding strips of fabric and sewing very close to the fold. I believe what I’m making is called pintucking and there’s a special sewing machine foot that can make it for you, but I don’t have one, nor will I need one in the future, so I did it manually. It’s a really small detail, and I made two rows of them, but I like the texture it adds to the dress. To one side of the panel I added a lace, which I cut in half, since only one edge of it will be visible. Honestly that made me so happy that I could do it, lace can be hella expensive. With the strips prepared I can sew in the darts in the bodice. I pressed them all towards the side seams and down. I will connect the decorative strip to the bodice, but only a few centimeters, because the skirt needs to be attached to the bodice first, and as you can see that has not happened yet. It is a weird order but it is the only order in which this garment works. Here you can see me being suspicious about the length of the strip, but it seemed like it was long enough. After that’s attached I can trim the neckline according to the pattern. I attached the fronts and back together at the shoulder seams and we can finish the raw edge of the decorative strips by adding a narrow button placket to each side. I’m going to add real buttons here later, so I trimmed away any seam allowances to reduce bulk and increase the chance of success with the buttons. I’m adding a simple stand collar at the neckline, making sure I’m not adding any necessary bulk here as well. On a human sized garment the inside raw edge would also get turned under so it's not visible, but here I just used some fray check and stitched it down as is. Not perfect, but good enough. Next are the sleeves, which are made with two parts. The puffy part gets gathered on both the bottom and top edges. The other part gets hemmed, and the two pieces can be joined right sides together. To gather the bottom of the sleeve I used a thin elastic, which I anchored at one of the edges. Then I run a wide zigzag stitch over the elastic, making sure I don’t catch it with my needle. That creates a casing for the elastic which can be pulled through to the desired length, similar to the waistband of the petticoat. Make sure to secure the elastic, and the sleeves can be installed to the bodice. All we need to do now is close the sleeves and side seams, and we can move on to the skirt portion of the dress. The back panel of the skirt has 3 gathered tiers. The panel gets hemmed first, and the layer seam lines are transferred from the pattern. At those lines I will attach the corresponding tiers of ruffles. The ruffles will help hide where her kitty tail attaches to the body. The circle skirt is finished by sandwiching it between a pair of panels and now I’m craving a sandwich. Let’s connect the bodice to the skirt at the waist, and finally attach the rest of the decorative panels. The dress is almost done, but if you were paying attention, the length of the strip was put into question before, where I deemed it long enough. That my friends, was a lie. Cue the mental breakdown. I decided to leave it for now, and focus on finishing the button placket. After consulting the sewing bible, aka the sewing machine manual, I began the process of adding tiny 5mm buttons to the dress. I started at the bottom in case it didn't work. Initially I planned to only add a few working buttons from the top and fix the bottom in place, as the whole dress doesn't need to open for it to be able to be put on, but since the buttonholes didn’t give me any trouble this time, I added a whole of 11 working buttonholes. To cut the holes I use this trick: I put a pin at the ends of the buttonhole, so that the seam ripper hits the pin before it can cut through the thread of the button hole. That way I’m not damaging the hole. I marked the other side of the dress and sewn the buttons in. Next step was the apron thingy and I tried to make it exactly like in the reference photo, but my first try turned out weird. The hem of the dress didn’t help it either. The way I tried to fix the problem of being a dumbass and cutting the strip too short, was making the dress look kinda square in the front, so I decided to rework the hem first, and worry about the apron later. I undid the previous hem, and trimmed the skirt evenly, by measuring from the waist. Then I filled the missing few centimeters with more ruffles. Since the style is lolita I figured it wouldn’t hurt to add another ruffle. The Apron thing: take two. I came to accept that on the doll scale the fabric will not flow like on a real person, and I opted out for a simpler, circle skirt design with a couple of pleats, which I made out of a different colored fabric to add some spice. It’s really nothing fancy construction wise, I added a simple waistband to it with a snap button at the back. To make it more fancy I added a ruffled trim to the bottom edge of it and a decorative trim at the waist. I decorated it with some chains later on as well. For our Lolita girl I’m going to use a Mirai Cortex head in milk. Cortex heads have these casting lines on the jaw but they are easy to sand down. This time I’m not planning any mods or crazy makeup like on our previous custom Smart Dolls and after two layers of MSC I’m starting the face with watercolour pencils. These dolls have huge heads and I’m sorry if the painting process is sometimes shown in crazy angles. From the beginning I knew I wanted this character to have animal features and I thought a cute cat mouth can work with this theme but I was wrong. My first attempt to do the eyebrows ended with an evil brow made by a dirty eraser. Looks cool but this time I’m going for a cheerful expression. My main inspiration for the shapes of the eyes is the original Mirai Suenaga doll. I want to keep everything simple, clean and anime style. For me deciding what eye and eyebrow shape I want on the doll is the most difficult and time consuming part of drawing a new face up, especially when this is an original character. I’m building the colours in layers spraying the head with MSC everytime I feel like I need to save the progress. Okay, the third attempt at the brows and... another failure. Let me quickly redo her lips and try the brows again this time starting with a brown watercolour pencil. I tried a soft expression too many times so I decided to make her brows a bit more confident looking. She looks like Haruhi Suzumiya now. I don’t know why I used a warm orangey brown as a base. I’m planning to give her platinum blonde hair and I don’t think it matches well with the warm brown eyes so I’m adding two layers of greenish grey to neutralize the colour. I’m also adding a very soft touch of pastels on her cheeks and lips. After getting rid of that orange tone I’m drawing a waterline with a white pencil and drawing the base for future highlights. On the next layer I decided to darken the eyes a little bit and started to draw details on the brows. This is where my “simple and clean” rule started to change its meaning. I grabbed my teal pencil and coloured her eyebrows with it. I also added it to the tips of the lashes and did a gradient on the eyes with teal and purple. Then I thought that pink is a very lolita-like colour and I added it to her lips, eye creases and under her eyes. A bit of sparkly powder on the cheeks and we can spray the face again. I’m starting the new layer with white acrylic paint and applying it under the brow and detailing the brow hairs. I like to add white lashes to emphasize their shape. I remember drawing one thick white lash on Crush’s face and I thought it can be a cool detail this time as well. And this is the painted head. The faceup turned out to be way more colorful than I planned and I couldn’t decide which eyes suit her best. I wanted to use brown and purple ones but ended up with handmade cat eyes in teal and golden. For her hair I’m going to use Celery, Snowdrop and Macadamia Nylon from the Doll Hair Emporium. First I’m going to make hair wefts. I cut the end on one side and after the hair is evenly placed on the plastic document sleeve I’m pouring the glue. A ruler will help me with a clean finish of the glue part and will keep the fibres in place. The wig cap materialized into existence off camera. I’m glueing the wefts starting from the bottom at the back and going around the head. If you want more details on how to make a doll wig with bangs I highly recommend checking the Wig Basics video by Maria Lazar as this is the one I watched before doing this wig. I’ll leave a link in the description. To do the parting wefts I use a piece of thick paper and a hair straightener. These wefts have to be flipped and ironed right next to the glue part and we need two of them. For the whole wig I used a glue that is flexible when dry but it didn’t work for the parting so instead I’m using a glue that also dries clear but not flexible. I’m placing two wefts in the opposite directions and hold them in place for a while. This light blonde nylon is very sheer and unfortunately the glue is still a bit visible but in my opinion the wig looks pretty good from the front and sides and that’s all we need. We have a wig, now it’s time to do something with it. A few months back I cut Barb’s hair and watched some tutorials on how to do it properly and now I’m going to use these tips to cut this wig. The effect is pretty okay so I guess it works on dolls too. I want her to have short curly hair and I’m going to use jumbo straws and every bobby pin we have in our house to curl her hair. This is the part when you have to be extremely careful. These bowls are filled with ice cold water and boiling hot water. I’m dunking the hair in hot water first, trying not to wet the wig cap as it’s made mostly out of glue. And when all the curls are heated I’m giving them a cold bath to set the new shape. Immediately after this treatment I placed the wig onto the head so the warm wig doesn't lose its shape. I let it dry overnight and we can now untangle the curls. For some reason the mint hair holds the curl much better than the blonde. Maybe it’s because the fibre is different or maybe my curling technique was bad. It’s time to take care of the bangs. I made a big no no by using the thinning scissors and it made the ends of the hair white. I had to trim it even more so the bangs turned out a bit too short but I’m okay with the final result. As a last styling step I’m curling the bangs with a heated metal stick. I’ll spare you the details of the first few shoe attempts I made. This is me already desperate to figure something out. I have these cheap shoes from Aliexpress that I know will fit the doll’s foot, and I want the shape of the last on which this shoe was made on. So the logical step here is to pour silicone into the shoe right? I wasn’t sure it would work, but it did. Now I have a form to make the shoes on, and the first thing I’ll do is a paper mache layer. At this stage I thought I might still cover it in fabric so I copied the shape of the upper with tape, but the paper mache was a bit too lumpy for the fabric to look good. I decided to bust out my polymer clay stash and sculpt the shoes out of that. Before I discovered doll customizing I was an aspiring polymer clay artist, but sewing won me over. I used gold clay to sculpt the upper of the shoe, smoothing it out with the knife, my hands and a cotton pad dipped in rubbing alcohol. I baked that on the silicone. After the first bake I removed the silicone lasts and used some teal clay to add the sole and the heel. I took my time smoothing out the layers and making the shoes somewhat symmetrical. I baked it once again before turning them over to Alex for a glowup. Among the accessories are some cute socks. I started by adding a stretchy lace to some jersey. I’ll zigzag it on using a walking foot. Then, I can trace the pattern on the fabric and stitch on the marking. The pattern is from Tatyana from Moda-Vation, I’ll link it below. After sewing on the line I can trim the excess fabric, flip the socks and put them on the doll’s feet. The next thing I made was a little cape, and I’ll link a pattern to it in the description as well, this one is from My Little Doll Story. You’ve seen me do enough sewing today already. I shortened the cape a bit, but other than that I made it according to the instructions. I added a hook and eye closure that you may recall from our previous video, and decorated the cape with more buttons and chains. The last item on my agenda is a cute messenger bag. I made up the dimensions in my head and made a paper mockup first, to see how it would compare to the doll’s body. I still feel like the bag is a little too deep, compared to the width and height of it, but I looked at it for a long time so maybe I’m seeing something where there isn’t anything. Anyway, I added the decorative strip onto the back piece first, and I did all of the stitching by hand, just like a leather bag would be normally put together. I made the little handle out of thin strips of the faux leather I was working with. The material has a white fuzzy side, and when you cut it it has some thickness, so to cover all of the white parts I used a 3D fabric paint in a matching color. I mostly sewn stuff on, but I used rivets on the handle, since it would be hard to add a stitch there. I sewn the side to the back piece, and for the fron i decided to change it up and use gold leather. I strengthened the front flap by adding another piece of leather there, and to finish it off I added a cute bow and a strap. My velcro closure didn’t exactly work as planned. Instead of opening, the velcro peeled from the gold leather. Whoops. There’s nothing interesting inside anyway, just a filler to make the bag look less flaccid. The reason why we want her to have animal ears and tail is pretty simple - we have a tail and the ears already done. We did a Succubus doll for Valentines Day but somewhere in the middle of that project we decided to shift the idea for an Arctic Fox. It didn’t work out because of the dress but the wig, ears and the tail were already done. So we started the Lolita doll with ears and tail in mind. It turned out that we used a totally different colour palette and the tail and wig had to be made again and I don’t like the ears anymore. So in the end we redid everything and have the scrapped items again with no doll to put on. But back to the Lolita doll. I have this leftover teal saran from making Prima and Armand and I’m going to use it to make the fur wefts for the tail. First I made the regular yarn wefts and I’m just glueing small amount of the saran hair on top. To make a fade from blonde to teal I’m dying yarn using alcohol inks and pastels. Twisted wire will be a great base for the tail. I’m wrapping it with medical tape so I can easily glue the fluffy leftovers from brushing the yarn. This will make the right volume of the tail. After the glue is dry I’m adding another layer of tape and fluff. And to make it really chubby in the middle I’m adding one more layer. Then it’s time to start glueing the wefts. I have blonde yarn with nylon, mint yarn with nylon, a bit of green yarn and dark teal yarn with saran. The addition of synthetic doll hair makes it look more cohesive with her hair and also makes the fade look smoother. The tail is going to be magnetic as we don’t want to make a hole in a very expensive doll. This step is unnecessary but I want to be sure that the magnet won’t scratch any doll parts. As I said before I don’t like these ears anymore and I sculpted these new ears on my computer, in Blender. First I thought about making the ears fluffy but I didn’t like them either so I asked Barb to print them in resin. A bit of paint and fluff inside the ears and they’re ready. The shoes need a bit of an upgrade especially with the colours. It’s very helpful that the base is already gold and blue but they need to be the right gold and the right blue. Off camera I decorated them with chains, nail decorations and tiny ribbons that Barb made from the same materials she used for the bag. I also added a few golden thingies on to the bag and to the cape. And with that our Lolita girl is ready. This is how she turned out! Even though lolita might not be a theme I have a lot of knowledge in, this fashion challenge was really fun and pushed me to do a lot of mental gymnastics to figure everything out. It showed me how much I’ve grown as a seamstress in the past few years, and how many new techniques I have yet to learn! Diana, Elisa, thank you for inviting us to this fun collab. We learned some new stuff and explored a whole bunch of Lolita fashion styles. It was a pleasure to collaborate with you! (Elisa) You're welcome! Thank you so much for the collab. (Diana) It was so lovely collaborating with all of you as well. (Diana) As always your work and your attention to detail are just stunning and you inspire me every time. (Diana) And I love how all of our dolls look together! Don’t forget to check out The Doll Fairy and Moonlight Jewel. We wanted to name our doll Nya which is a Japanese word for meow but decided that Nia sounds more like a real name, so Nia it is! Do you like lolita fashion? If you do, what is your favourite type? Let us know in the comments below. I would like to try a gothic lolita style someday! Make sure to Follow us on Instagram for some sneak peaks and subscribe for future videos! Have an enchanted day, and we'll see you next time! Nya! *bloopers from our scenes in Diana's and Elisa's videos*
