Annyeong! Welcome to Dollightful! As you know from the title, I'll be making Eevee from Pokémon. After the Valentine's Day Sylveon doll, I decided I would go ahead and make all the Eeveelutions! Well... assuming I don't run out of steam. You guys helped me vote on who to make next on Instagram, so thanks so much! You also helped me narrow down and decide on the best concept. I sketched up a couple of variations and, after much discussion, finally settled on this one, so let's get to the doll! I'll be using a Howleen Wolf doll for this custom. She's a perfect match. She's got the younger and smaller little sister body type and the perfect skin tone. To begin, I've got to remove Howleen's pink hair, Then cut off her ears with a box cutter. It seems I never used the default ears on these guys... To remove her head, submerge the doll in hot water until the vinyl is nice and squishy and then tug it off. And as usual, remove the rest of the stubble with a pair of pliers or tweezers. Usually I work exclusively through the neck hole, but, thanks to cutting off the ears, I have two more orifices to use! There's tons of glue in this doll's head. Check out this huge chunk right here. Ewww! Once your doll's head is nicely cleaned, use acetone to remove her factory paint. I use Q-tips in a scooping motion to do most of the work then clean up the whole face with a tissue. Wipe the face down with a little warm water to ensure that your first layer of sealant will adhere. Here, I'm painting the head brown to match the hair I'll be giving her. But what to do about those ear holes... I've come across this problem before. Previously, for my Ruhara doll, I filled in the holes with hot glue and tried to plug into that... It works semi-well, I guess, but I'm going to try something different this time. I thought I'd just glue a layer of cotton fabric over the holes and see how it goes. For the reroot I'm using this beautiful, red brown saran from restoredoll.com. I don't need particularly long hair, so that makes handling these loose strands pretty easy. To keep your pile of hairs organized, separate a small section away from the entire hank and work with that first. For each plug, lift a couple of hairs from one side, press the rest away with your fingers, and peel it back like a banana to cleanly separate it without making a tangled mess. It seems to be going through the glued on fabric just fine. Let's see how it does on just the fabric... Well, a little loose, but I think it'll hold it in place until I can glue it from the inside. Yeah, I think this is gonna work! After you've rooted most of the head, go back for one final pass on the part. The part always takes way more hair than you'd expect to look full. Taking a waterproof glue, I cover the inside of the head to ensure those plugs won't fall out. After tucking her hair out of the way, I'm bringing out my mungyo soft pastels. I used some reds and rusty browns to blush her elbows, fingers, toes, knees, and cheeks. Uh, the cheeks on her face that is... And, after that, a layer of sealant on both the body and the face. Try to use your sealant on a cool, dry day if possible. Give the doll a good 30 minutes before starting the face. Howleen's mold has almond-shaped eyes, but I want my Eevee's eyes to be tall and large, so I'm drawing far outside of the doll's sculpt. I'm placing her eyebrows higher up than usual to give an innocent and curious expression. I definitely want this doll to look young and childlike. I'm mostly using browns, which happens to be my shortest bunch of pencils, so my hand keeps trying to cramp. I like to work back and forth with the pastels to get a smooth, blended look. You can clean up areas around the face with a kneaded eraser, which is that gray blob you see me using occasionally. I find that it's a very useful tool for doll faces. Flying back and forth with my cream-colored highlighting pencil and a black pencil, I pull out the lights and push back the darks, giving more depth to the drawing. I decided to leave off eyelashes this time. I thought the outline was good enough, especially since I want my Eevee to be young and childlike. That's also why I stayed within the same color family as her skin tone. You know, for that 'no makeup' look. Graduating from watercolor pencils to acrylics, I mix up a few colors to help me finish her face. Eevee has beautiful brown eyes, so I want to highlight them with a warm orange. I'm placing the shines towards the top of her eyes to mimic the drawing. After your final layer of sealant has dried, you can add fun touches, like High Gloss Varnish to the lips and eyes. Time to make her outfit and accessories! She's got lots of poofy fur in her design, so I prepared many, many acrylic yarn wefts. To see how to make these in detail, see my friend Mozekyto's video in the description box below. I made a simple dress out of cotton fabric and painted on the design with watered-down acrylic paint, while it could still lay flat. Then I pin and stitch on the wefts. I ended up using two rows on both top and bottom to make it full enough. With some trimming and grooming, it looks just like my concept! For her shoes, I use epoxy sculpt to create the sole and then go on to attach the sides of the shoe and tongue. My shoe making method is really iffy and messy and not very straightforward, which is why I haven't made any doll shoe tutorials yet. But maybe I will once I actually figure out what I'm doing! Hehe. For her bag, I sew and turn a tiny tube of faux leather to act as the belt. After sewing a tiny u-shaped bag, I run a gather stitch around the top and turn it into a drawstring pouch. With straps sewn into the back, I can attach it to the belt. Why does Eevee need this bag? To hold her everstone, of course! I'll be making Eevee's ears the same way I made Sylveon's: Sew basic shapes together and insert a 20-gauge jewelry wire. Using Fabric Tac glue, I attach small bits of wefts to the ears to fill in the shape. I learned from my Sylveon doll that you should make the ear base significantly smaller than what you actually want because the fur will volumize and enlarge the shape. So they're cute, but the yarn I used isn't quite dark enough, so I'm going to take my pastels again and dust on the right color. That's more like it! Here, I'm painting on the small detail that is the color shift from black to brown on Eevee's ears. To style her hair, I tried this super professional method shown by doll hair designer, Denisa Medrano (linked below), but I didn't do it right and sort of left her in the freezer! Hehe, so that one's on me. It damaged the sealant a little bit, but not too bad, so I proceeded to styling the hair the way I usually do. Using a pair of pliers, I anchor the ears into the head and bend the arms to make sure they won't fall out. But even my Tried-And-True method of boil washing couldn't keep the girl's bangs in place! Is it because it's saran? I swear I've successfully styled saran in the past, but these bangs were so stubborn I had to resort to gel, so I bought this Power Swing Ultra wax. If this doesn't hold it in place, I don't know what will! I went through a tail to be bendy and posable, so I'm creating a twisted wire base. And inserting it into this tail casing that I made. Next, I'm going to add stuffing that came from making the yarn wefts. Then, starting at the tip and working to the base, I'm going to stitch on the yarn wefts. That's right, I'm not going to glue these. Even fabric glue can stiffen the tail and make it rigid ,so sewing it, slow as it may seem, is definitely the better option here. Eventually, the last weft is in place! A little trim and again more brown pastel, and the tail is complete. To connect it to her body, I'm going to fit a wire in through the back of her clothes and around her waist, out of sight. And she's done! I had so much fun making this doll, and I absolutely loved how she turned out! I know some folks wanted me to give her a brown-to-blonde hair to mimic the tail, which sounds really cute if you decide to make your own Eevee, but I chose solid brown for two reasons: First, it adds a nice darker color to her design and balances value. Second, I thought it kept in step with the young girl look. I I wanted to keep her simple, and I thought multicolored hair may look too complicated or make her look older. You know, like when you're a kid, you just let your hair be itself, and you only discover the world of hair dye and ombré style towards the end of high school or something. Of course, she is a fictional character, but that's what was going through my head. Now's my chance! Sylveon, go! Use Fairy Wind! That should be good enough! Let's catch it. Pokéball go! I'm so glad to have Eevee on my team now! I know we'll become good friends. Give a thumbs up for this normal type cutie pie and subscribe for more toy customizing! Thank you so much for joining me and I think you know who's next! Stay artsy! Annyeong!
