Annyong! Welcome to Dollightful! This is only the second episode in the stock box series, but, oh man, this one's kinda crazy guys! I debated even finishing up and posting this video, but, I figured I might as well. Last time you voted on a theme, and galaxy won by a landslide! So to the stock box we go! Who could we use this time? Or rather, what parts could we use? I thought it'd be fun to combine a bunch of random pieces I have into a finished character. So we might as well use this Frankie body, who has Abbey's hands for some reason. Actually, I think Frankie's head went to Leafeon, and Abbey's body went to Glaceon. For a head I'll be using this decapitated Bunny Blanc! These are some pretty random pieces all right! So let's see what we can make of it. Something to note about this Frankie, you can tell this was an early doll, back when they used elastic at the hip joints instead of plastic joints. Just an interesting note about their early construction, the plastic joints work way better. We're going to paint this doll from head to toe, and I think I want her to show a lot of skin, so we're going to sand off the molded panties. Honestly I don't like molded clothes of any kind on a doll, especially dolls with such beautiful sculpting like Monster High, it cheapens it somehow. So, take a razor, or box-cutter, to slice away the majority of the raised texture, then come back with a fine-grain of sandpaper to smooth out the surface. It looks pretty awkward, but twist those legs around to get the best angles! There we go! Beautiful. Now for the fun part! Painting the doll! I grabbed some bright beautiful acrylic colors, including red apparently. Prepared them on a palate, added a fair amount water, and started painting. I suggest working on one body part at a time, so you can work while the paint is wet. I add a blob of color one, then a watery blob of color two, and watch the magic happen. I was inspired by the stunning, colorful, Hubble Telescope images we all know and love. Parts of the doll do remind me of those egg dye kits you can do around Easter though. This was so much fun, I might have gotten a little carried away even. Even if you don't want to do this on a doll, I suggest getting out your paints, and just doing it on a canvas or something. It's really easy, and fast, and looks amazing, so, I highly suggest it! Kind of therapeutic too. For the time being, I think I'll keep Bunny's cute, white bob. So I tuck it out of the way, before removing her factory paint with Acetone. Then it's the same story. Whee~~ I did try harder to control the flow of colors on her face, and I think that was a mistake. If you let the colors, "do their own thing," and swirl around, it generally ends up much prettier. Take the back of her head for example, all the cool stuff happened in the back, where I wasn't even trying! [Chuckles] Let's make this look more like a galaxy, by painting on the stars! Taking a tiny brush, and white paint, I dab on tiny dots. Some bigger, some smaller. I started out with real constellations, like Orion here. Then the Big Dipper, up on her shoulder, and then I wanted to make up my own! Like this heart on her booty! A diamond on her foot, and this great, celestial Pikachu! The whole I painted on her, I tried to keep the doll on a squishy surface, as not to scratch, or rub off the body paint. Acrylic will stick to the squishy vinyl head no problem, but hard plastic, like the body, wants to shed acrylic paint. So seal it in and convince it to stay in place with some matte varnish. I mix it half with water in an attempt to keep it matte when it dries, but no matter what I do, it always ends up glossy these days! It's like the only time I got the ratio perfect, was in my very first custom video, and, I've failed to recreate that effect ever since! Nevertheless, let's give the body three coats, to protect the galaxy~ Faceup time! Pastels basically did nothing, so let's do this whole thing in acrylic paint! No watercolor pencils this time, so something a bit different for me. Let's start with establishing a base for the eyes, by filling in the whites. While I have the white mixed up, I thought white lips might look cool too. Since her skin is so busy and colorful, I felt the face needed to be simple. Next is the iris shape, decided to go with a light blue. With a slightly darker blue shade, add definition around the iris's edge. Taking a dark purple we can paint in the, "eye line." Using a tiny brush I try to stroke the paint, delicately from the corner, out to the wing. Next are the "eye creases," these tend to be the thinnest lines on a faceup for me, which makes doing this with a brush (instead of a sharp pencil,) all the more challenging. But if you can get a good angle on the head, and hold your breath! It can be done! Lastly: The eyebrows. I was going to do white here too, but something told me they should be dark purple I hesitantly dot on where I want the eyebrows to start, taking note about the distance from the corner of the eyes, then go for it and hope it works out! If you don't like it, work fast, and remove the acrylic with some water. For highlights, I mix a mint green for the left side of her face, and a pink for her right side. Paint these highlights under the eyebrows edge, on the lids, and around the inner corners of the eyes, for subtle definition. ~Sparkle time!~ We've got: Pearl Ex powders, glitter, and nail art glitters to work with. Stroke a small dab of glue over the iris, and dab on the glitter. For the eyeshines, we're going to place on a star shaped glitter much like Charlotte Copperchain had. I forgot to add eyelashes until now so let's do that! And then add flecks of white stars over her whole face. "Beautiful and mysterious," was the expression I intended to give her, but Bunny's adorable, smile-y mold, makes her look much more friendly than mysterious. So... not sure this is working for a 'Celestial Goddess' character Let's pop her head back on and take a look. Along with the cute face, the hairstyle is also adorable, which doesn't lend to the 'Celestial Goddess' feeling at all Also its a warm white now that I look at it, let's replace it after all. Using these materials I create a sewn wig for the doll That's an entire tutorial within itself, so check out this tutorial of mine, back when I said "Annyong!" a little too enthusiastically. The wig I made is a deep mysterious purple, with some lovely magenta streaks. Although, on the actual doll, the magenta and red don't look great together do they? We can save anything with more glitter right? Taking some gems and rhinestones from Hobby Lobby and craft shops I hot glue, and regular glue, details to the wig achieving a sort of, "crown look." It gave me "Belly dancer" vibes, and I started to think about how a belly dancer outfit, would work well to show off her skin. So let's turn to the clothes. I've mentioned Walkercolours many times now for her shoe tutorials, but did you know she also makes the cutest little doll lingerie I've ever seen? So following her tutorial I created the tiniest bra in existence, using: white cotton fabric, glue, a little lace detailing, threads for a criss-cross strap, and finished it off with rhinestones and silver chains, for some Belly dancing bling! For a skirt, I start off by gathering a strip of tulle, and attaching it to a waistband Tiny doll skirts don't have the "weight," to keep them down and in place, so attach a small ribbon around the crotch, to make sure it won't ride up. Next I have this cool fringe left over from lining a shawl of mine I thought it looked Belly dancer-ish as well, so I sewed that on, added some more jewels and chains, and.... hmm.... well... Is this working? Maybe the fringe is too much. It's a little visually busy. Hmm... A little better I guess. Maybe panties instead, so we can see her legs? But that makes her some kind of, "Celestial Lingerie Model" character? What even is this doll?? How about a short and simple dress? No the 'poofy' shape doesn't suit her Maybe a tight-fitting knit dress would be more elegant? Uhhh... Let's move on to the shoes.. First take your medium of choice, whether it's clay or apoxie, and form the base of the shoe. I thought a star shape on the heel would look cute, but it ended up looking like a starfish. Whoops! Next use a thin 1/16'' sized elastic, and loop it around your dolls heel. It should be stretchy enough to slip off over the heel. Sew two of these small loops together. 1/8'' elastic also looks cute! Take the loops and sew them inside a strip of ribbon, this will be the back heel of the shoe. Glue this ribbon on the shoe base while it's on the mannequins foot, then attach a ribbon near the toe, loop it over the foot, and mark where it should be glued. Note that a little loose is better than too snug. Cut out a sole shaped bit of fabric, and cover the sole. Paint the base to match, -it took me two or three coats of paint,- and lastly to cover up this unsightly gap between sole and base, let's glue on a length of string Not bad! Okay, so this is what we have! Yeah... I like a lot of separate elements of this doll, but nothing is working together. I spent and entire two days away from this project, to do other things and take my mind off of it, and when I came back I finally realized, how much I dislike her. I was fooling myself up to this point, like, "It'll be fine, I'll figure it out!" But, nope! Hot mess! I knew she needed tons of revisions, but I wasn't sure what it would take to make her look good! So I did a bunch of the revision process off camera. The first thing I did was cover all the red on her body, with lilac instead. Giving her a more stable color pallet of cool pastels I also changed her white lips to dark purple, Although it's less 'contrast-y' and therefore a little harder to see, it gives her a 'Pastel Goth' vibe that I like. Lastly I painted three layers of Glow-in-the-dark paint over her eyes. I decided to scrap the wig completely, and make a new one out of this totally awesome, Glow-in-the-dark hair from TheDollPlanet. It's a glued wig cap version instead of sewn this time, partly because the fibers of this hair are more delicate, and partly because I was getting impatient! The purples and magentas of the original wig, and all the crown-like details, just didn't complement the galaxy skin somehow. Still don't know what to do with the clothes, so I dug up a couple cute numbers, from store-bought dolls I've collected over the years, for a little fashion show! My favorite items were Avea Trotter's wings, and River Styxx's cloak. The wings were kind of small, so I made a bigger, jointed pair, out of black paper and wire. Thinking it would giver her a cool, and dramatic silhouette But they ended up looking bulky, and kind of 'crafts-y ' So forget those! And back to Avea's wings instead! Using wire and Epoxy sculpt, I extended the wings, so that they'll be visible from the front, around the dolls' big cloak and hair. I set a snap into the Epoxy while it was still wet, and the other end of the snap into the dolls' back. This was a great idea, and I'll probably try it again sometime, but the snap I used was too small, and weak to stay attached, unfortunately So I got a bit fed-up and hot glued it in place. Going off the cape she now has, a staff-weapon seemed suitable, so using a chopstick and wire I cooked up, a simple fantasy-themed staff I tied thread into a star shape to echo the design of the bra. That's where I draw the line and say she's finished! I'm still not completely satisfied, but I think she's a definite step-up from stage one! After a Skype call with my family, we all agreed she looked best in the nude, to show off the galaxy painting, and that clothing cheapened the, "Celestial Goddess" vibe I was shooting for. Of course I'll save the wig, and all the clothes I made. Maybe I can use them on a future custom! How funny that this doll was such a struggle, in stark contrast to Macaroon, the first doll of this series. It's a great example really, Sometimes going in without a plan means, your mind is clear, and uninhibited by overthinking a design. So you whip up a great doll on your first try thanks to instinct. And sometimes going in without a plan means, you waste a lot of time re-working mistakes, and getting frustrated with the failure, because you are "winging" it after all I considered not posting this video because, from a tutorial standpoint, it does a pretty crumby job. But I thought you'd still find it entertaining, and if nothing else, know that it's okay to make mistakes with your artwork I make tons of mistakes, and it's just how we learn! The experimental parts of this doll were the most fun, playing with marbled acrylics, using only acrylics and no Mr. Super Clear to paint the face, and coming up with a removable wing method, which I can improve upon in the future. Although I got a bit fed-up with her towards the end, she's not a bad doll! In fact, I think she looks pretty cool now! It's hard not to look cool when your hair glows in the dark! Still, I can't help but feel she's missing, *something* in her design to make her feel, fully complete. So, if you know what that something is, leave a comment! We're going to name her Nova, after Supernova, which is an event that occurs at the end of a stars life, whose dramatic and catastrophic destruction, is marked by one final titanic explosion! Yeah, that basically sums it up. Don't forget to click that icon in the corner, to cast your vote, for the next stock box dolls' theme! Hopefully executed a little better than this one... And subscribe if you haven't already, so that you never miss a custom! Our toy-loving community has a lot of fun! Stay artsy! Annyong~! Oh no! It's happening! There's no saving her now! [Explosion] [Wilhelm scream] [Laughter]
