Annyeong! Welcome to Dollightful! Okay, so Mozekyto made a doll last month that was basically the cutest thing I've ever seen As soon as her video released I got to chatting with Eliza about it and we were basically fangirling over this doll and I was like:"hey you want to make Harajuku dolls together?" "Like right now?" and Eliza is like: "I'd love to!" and I was like "YAAAAAS", so here we are. To be honest I don't know much about Japanese street fashion I'd seen the occasional photo of these over-the-top decorated girls, but Mozekyto's doll prompted me to look into it. After reading up about it and watching a great documentary, which I'll link below, I fell in love with this fashion. It's all about boldly embodying things that make you happy! Not worrying about social opinions and just enjoying your fashion. everyone is always smiling too - I love that mentality. I only just scratched the surface, but the style I'll be attempting with my doll today is called 'Decora Kei'. Apparently it is one of many subcategories under the Japanese street fashion umbrella term. You've got your fairy kei's and guru kei's, oshare kei's, dolly kei's car keys, Florida Keys! - the list goes on. The differences can be subtle and frequently crossed categories, But from what I gather Decora kei is the brightest and most accessorized of all the Harajuku fashions. Adorable accessory shops are a common sight here in Korea, and I assume in Japan as well. Although they are clearly geared towards young girls I love these little shops and usually end up leaving with a sparkly new hairpin or two! I suppose if I want to be a decora kei girl, I should buy more like 30 of them. So with all that knowledge What shoud I make? In the heat of the moment I sketched up some Harajuku esque chracters but mostly to explore the fashion and accustom myself to the aesthetic, as opposed to creating a strict doll concept A lot of what the doll will look like depends on what materials I have after all I gathered all the brightest, most colorful fabric and accessories I own to start. I had a surprising amount of colored tulle so I thought I'd try making a rainbow skirt I cut strips of tulle and strung them all together with the help of my cat assistant Gathered everything, scrunched it together to make it nice and poofy Added the trim, gave it a waistband, Aaaand, [Haaah] Well it was cute in theory, it didn't pan out how I expected... I think the chiffon is partially to blame? I didn't have tulle in those colors, so I hoped a substitute would work, but it's pretty frumpy and awful isn't it? I also attempted a sock to doll sweater conversion that MyFroggyStuff pulled off so elegantly but, Alas, that too came out frumpy. It probably didn't help that the sock was (slightly) used either Ain't nobody wants to wear an old sock! So instead, I made her a simple shirt pattern with a cute design painted on the front in acrylic, But that ended up not fitting the doll either. What's up with this? Let's scrap everything and try again on the whole outfit, shall we? I changed my approach and decided to try making an over-sized, zipper hoodie for my doll. Long story short, a lot of trial and error went into this one! I started with an Ever After High male hoodie pattern, hoping it would be cutely over-sized, but it completely engulfs a Monster High Girl doll.... I tweaked the pattern again, and again, and ended up making several prototypes. But I stuck with it and eventually created this colorful zip up hoodie! Normally when I make clothes. I might fudge it here or there and say "ehh, that's good enough." But this pattern had to be perfect! Because... I'm selling it on my Etsy! Some of you have been interested in my patterns and finally I have something to offer you! It's just the one at the moment, but here's hoping I get more up there, anyway I hope you guys enjoy that, back to the doll! So from a pile of failed first attempts rises the final version of her skirt, shirt, and hoodie. Hooray!! Shoes are important to decora fashion as well, using Fimo polymer clay. I modeled a heel and large toe cover around my mannequin doll's feet. I left lots of room around the toes so that they can slip on and off. I then baked the clay, sanded away my fingerprints, and cut out these shapes which will form the majority of the shoe. Sew the pieces together, right sides facing turn them inside out, and now you've got a pretty finished edge, which will be glued on like this. I used UHU Power this time, and it held the pieces together nicely. I tuck the ends under the toe, then glue the tongue of the shoe to the underside of the toe as well. Dot on some acrylic paint to look like eyelets, then use a cotton thread to lace up your shoes! I wanted to add some last-minute raised details to the shoe sole using more polymer clay although I didn't know at the time how the fabric parts would fare in the oven. Please don't catch on fire.... For socks I cut two rectangles, hem the tops, sew them together turn them and, Pull my thread to gather the fabric. This gives them a baggy, loose sock look. I popped on the shoes and... aaww the clay cracked..... I Guess I made them too tight after all , I patched the cracks with glue, but I likely won't be taking them off the doll again. The outfit looks pretty cute! but it's missing accessories. We've got an assorted selection of beads, buttons, charms and polymer clay canes designed for miniature food! Time to stick stuff on, piece by piece It was hard to get a feel for this if I'm honest. Generally I like to control everything about a project, but that mentality doesn't work with this fashion. It needs to be random, almost thrown together, over the top! I finally realized I had to let go of my controlling nature, and embrace the chaos if I wanted this doll to work. Hot-diggity! The outfit is all done! I've neglected the head until now because I was waiting for supplies in the mail. Let's get to it! I softened her vinyl head with a hair dryer before gently tugging it off. She's already such a cute doll. I'm sorry about this, Draculaura! Cut off all of her hair near the roots and pull out the rest through the neck hole. Next use acetone to wipe off her face. I'm getting rid of the black hair paint as well. Nice and clean! I repaint the head with lilac acrylic paint to match the new hair she'll be receiving. I'll be using these gorgeous colors from The Doll Planet and dollyhair.com The Doll Planet also sent me their special reroot tool that is available on their shop. I've always used my homemade one, so let's give this one a try. Pick up a couple hairs, slip it on to the cut needle eye, and STOB it into the head. I like to fill in the hairline first, then the rest of the area, saving the part for last. which always takes way more hair than you'd expect, so plug thoroughly. I had some trouble with the hair slipping back out of the holes when I retracted my tool, thinking It was the needle, I switched back to my own tool But the problem persisted, so I can only conclude that this hair is just particularly slippery to work with. But the texture is so soft and the color is lovely, so it was worth dealing with it. All right, it's all plugged! Take a fast-drying waterproof Glue like Fabri-Tac and squeeze it into the head. Do your best to make contact with all the plugs- particularly the hairline and the part. To make this a little easier to work with I went ahead and divided the hair at the part, and poured boiling water over it to tame the poofiness. I also prepared where the bangs are going to be but I'm not going to finish the hair just yet, she needs a face first Tuck the hair out of the way for now, and prep her clean face with Mr. Super Clear sealant, And as always remember to stay safe and wear a filtration mask. Spray the face, and let it dry for 30 minutes. Now the fun part begins! Moonlight Jewel told me about Haruka Kurebayashiii, an adorable Decora girl who models for the fashion. I drew lots of inspiration from her for this face up, So, starting with Mungyo hand-rolled pastels, I dust on bright orange, hot pink and green for her eye shadow. I also added pink to her lips, a little on her cheeks and timples and her cute little nose. Taking purple, I sketch in the shapes of the eyes and the eyebrows. Something that looks great on dolls, is when you create a gradient in the eyebrows. In this case we have a dark purple at the outer tips, and a pink at the inner part. After sketching the rough shape of the eyes and irises, it's time to spray the doll again. If you look closely, you can see my pencils are actually scratching off the pastel layer below, I believe this happens when the sealant isn't applied properly. It was really humid that day for me, which is probably why this happened. The next day with a solid coat of sealant, I build up more saturation in her eye shadow, lips and eyebrows by layering on more pastels. And successfully darkened the eyelids. Because of the rainbow palette, I got to use many colors I don't normally work with which was refreshing! It was fun drawing on a bright design! Switching over to acrylics to move things along, I paint in the sclera and accent more highlights. Then I come in with purple to deepen the lashline and paint the iris. I've seen artists draw complete faces using only watercolo(u)r pencils and sealent, but I can never get the colors opaque enough with pencils alone. find what works for you, I guess. I also wet my brush and lifted color directly from my pencils to touch up certain areas, like the tear duct and water lines. With a SUPER sharp pencil, I delicately scratch on some eyelashes, but I had a hard time getting them opaque too. Hmm. I layered on more sealant, but it's a slow go. Acrylic saved me again!! I've got my tiniest brush, and I'm holding my breath. But they still ended up more heavy-handed than I'd hoped, gotta work on being more delicate.. The eyes are cute, but you know what they need, copious amounts of glitter! Paint a thin layer of glue over the iris, then pour on the sparkle. Tap off the excess, and voila! Sparkle tastic eyes. To push it over the edge, I add one more sparkly shape in pink acrylic. While I have the pink mixed up, I can detail the lip creases, too. And lastly, the cute accents! In real life these would be little stickers I think. I paint white on first, then come back with the bright colors on top. So colorful ^0^ One more spray, and then we can let her hair down, with the head burrito removed we can finish styling and cut the bangs. This stuff continued to act slippery, and I may have over plugged the part this time which is a first for me. So, I had some trouble getting it to behave. With a combination of binding the hair and multiple boil wash sessions. I finally got it to lay correctly. For a subtle wavy texture, braid the hair then boil wash it again. Weee!! (Haahaha!) Looks cute! She's almost done now. For the final touches, let's reunite her head with her body. Decora girls and boys adorn themselves in waves of hair accessories, so we need to create some tiny hairpins. I painted a strip of paper multiple colors using acrylic paint, and sketch a couple cute designs onto some cardstock. I also used more of the store-bought miniature foods. I cut them out, glued them together, and also glued pins onto the back. I didn't want to glue these accessories on to the hair in case I ever want to restyle it, so this is the best solution I could come up with. Now our Decora cutie is complete! ♩Bouncy music♩ For this doll, I chose the name Ayako, which can mean 'colorful child' in Japanese. I gotta say, working with so many bright colors kept me in a good mood the entire time I made her! Something about Decora fashion just makes me smile! Like this doll is the embodiment of my inner child or my persona or something. ♩ More bouncy music♩ I also came to understand and appreciate Harajuku fashion a lot better! It looks like a random and chaotic assortment of garments at first, but it has to be done well. As I learned from my failed clothing attempts and accessorizing for this doll. There's a perfect balance somewhere between rainbow chaos and playful accessorizing, that was surprisingly hard to nail down. Basically, it was harder to pull off than I expected. ♩Eternal Bouncy Music I hope you had as much fun watching as I had making Ayako. She sure adds a saturated splash of happy colors to my custom collection. Make sure to watch Eliza's video for her take on a Decora fashion doll. She's SUPER cute, you're going to love her. And of course give Mozekyto's video a watch to see the doll that inspired both of us! I Imagine the three of these cuties are best friends with a passion for street fashion! On that note be confident and have fun with your own fashion. I think everyone deserves to rock clothes They love and feel good about it! Subscribe for more colorful toy customs and stay artsy! Annyeong! Subtitles by: Human!Tale Sen the Guardian ♩More Friggin BUBBLYYYYYYY MUSIC♩ This Cat
