Blythe customs

Collecting Blythes has tempted me to customise them - I am not a fan of basic Blythes - but I am a fan of certain customs. So I thought that I would at least attempt to customise my own Blythes.

Considering that I don't customise my own BJDs, this is a pretty big step for me. So I ordered a whole heap of stuff from CoolCat - eye chips, pull rings, sanding sponges, needle files, mohair needle and a few other things and the other day I stopped by Spotlight which is our crafting/fabric/homewares super store and I picked up some acrylics, paintbrushes, tacky craft glue and a paint extender.

All I have left to get is gloss varnish, MSC and pastels. Pastels and gloss varnish I can get to at a local art shop, but the MSC either has to be ordered online or I have to go especially into the city to get some. That of course is a pain in the butt as the city is a good 50 mins on a train and possibly an entire day gone.

But today I took my first step. I grabbed one of my ultra fine sanding sponges and attacked my practice faceplate - I didn't really prepare, but I felt like doing it right then. I think I did it right, she looks duller than before...

I also attempted to carve with my needle files, but I don't think it came off properly. Do I need a scalpel or some blades?

Blog Challenge 25: Faceups?

Ahhh, the faceup question. The simple answer is no. I will never do a faceup on one of my dolls. The more detailed answer is below, lol.

I can count the number of dolls I have bought blank on one hand. There was Ianthe and Isis at the start of my collecting history and now Vesna and Rasmus. The rest of my dolls who have non-default faceups either did not offer an option to have their head faceuped, or I bought them blank or already painted secondhand.

This is simply because usually I have no problems with the default - there are a few dolls that I will be buying later on that I am going to pick up blank because I'm not a fan of the default, but that rarely happens. Usually I consider getting the default a cheaper and more convenient option than finding a faceup artist and spending more money to get them painted. Three of my four dolls bought blank was because buying them blank was cheaper - Ianthe and Isis because at that time I believe the number of dolls I was buying at the same time was around 6 (it was a bit nuts in the early days) and Vesna because I was already buying a few extras and I thought I might as well knock off a little bit of the money. Originally I was planning on buying Vesna with a default. Rasmus is a little different, while I liked his body and fantasy parts well enough, I was never a real fan of his face, especially not his eyes. They were a bit too narrow and slit-like for me, so I was going to decide when I got him whether or not to mod his eyes. (in the beginning I was actually thinking about dumping his head and finding another... then I realised how few SOOM heads that were available in CW I actually liked... most of them I already have.) So Rasmus being blank is to allow me the option to mod his eyes if I really dislike them.

Ironically enough, those four previously mentioned as well as Persephone (who is a special case) are also the only dolls I had a choice whether or not to have/keep a default faceup, the rest are either event items where no faceup was given or secondhand and bought blank or already with a faceup. Persephone is a exception because while I bought her secondhand with a default faceup, her default started to peel and I then chose to give her a non-default to replace it.

Faceups have in some cases - most notably Isis - made the character of the doll. Isis' ability to glare at me even while blank and her successive goth faceups make her who she is - this is also the case with Sirona, although her sleepy expression also helped!

While this is a BJD blog challenge for the most part, I am now the proud owner of a number of Blythes (only one of which I have) and I can honestly say that for the first time I am considering customising my own dolls.

Blythes are a lot larger than BJDs and that might have something to do with the idea that it may be easier to customise them. I don't have as clear an idea of what I want my Blythes to look like and feel that there might not be a bad thing when it comes to me customising them myself. It also looks a little easier than faceuping a BJD...

I have a faceplate arriving that I will use to practise on. Here goes nothing...


Dolls with default faceups:

1. Marcheline (new)
2. Bellona Lua (SH)
3. Osiris (new)
4. Ma'at (new)
5. Icarus (new)
6. Ares (new)
7. Mati (SH)
8. Arawn (SH)
9. Magnus (new)
10. Caesair (SH)
11. Angelu (new)
12. Anubis (new)
13. Janus (new)
14. Cassius (new)
15. Violet (new)
16. Seth (new)
17. Nephthys (new)
18. Veja (new)
19. Corvinus (new)
20. Sol (SH)
21. Pallus (new)
22. Emmeline (SH)
23. Mithras (new)
24. Diana (SH)
25. Thyra (new)

Dolls with non-default faceups:

1. Sirona (nc) - LK
2. Persephone (choice) - bought SH with a default originally - Andreja
3. Ianthe (choice) - LK
4. Isis (choice) - LK
5. Morrigan (nc) - LK
6. Vulcan (nc) - LK
7. Nemain (nc) - AngelToast
8. Poseidon (nc) - incomplete LK
9. Zeus (nc) - incomplete LK
10. Hades (nc) - LK
11. Fea (nc) - AngelToast
12. Pax (nc) - AngelToast
13. Nox (nc) - AngelToast
14. Magna Dea ??
15. Vesna (choice)
16. Rasmus (choice)

Mini Blythe Explosion

So I've gone a little Blythe crazy for a couple of weeks here. Well, not completely - but enough to change my Blythe collection fairly rapidly.

I blogged about the market happening... Blythe count 1.

So while she has been sitting to one side - I'm not a fan of shinny faces and I think until she looses it, she might stay sitting around, I've been looking at customisers. I signed up for Blythe Kingdom quite a while ago now and I spend most of my time (when I'm not aimlessly scrolling through the MP threads - lucky I don't like Blythes THAT much... and most of them are sold on ebay anyway so even if I did like them, I never have that much money that quickly, lol.) looking through the customisers.

I always knew that if I had a Blythe that they would have be customised in order to keep them (my VV's occupation of her carrier is proving that theory). So I am always on the lookout for customisers. Most notably at the moment, those who do mohair reroots.

I really like mohair and much prefer it over the cling-to-everything effect of saran. Not a lot of people do mohair reroots and I don't think I have the guts to do it myself. (I might be coming around to customising my own in regards to face ups and the like, but not mohair.)

So I dug up my courage and messaged one of the two customisers I was considering - Moofala. (http://chantillylace1.blogspot.com.au/) I haven't got an email back yet, so that has stalled. But then the same day I went off to the Australia Blythe forum and started to aimlessly trawl their Sales thread.

Wrong idea...

I found a thread entitled "3 Day sale all Girls under $130 including registered post"... I thought "Oooh cheap stuff!" and had a look.

Blythe count 3.

Yes... This delightful person was selling a Simply Mango - a doll I had always been considering because one of the Moofala customs I love so much is the same face mold and that gives me half a chance to a have a good custom on a reasonably priced doll.

The other one that caught my eye was a Love Mission.  It's kind of hard to explain why this one caught my eye - I didn't even know that there was a Blythe called Love Mission before I went into this thread. The face mold is completely different to the dolls which first caught my eye (of which the Very Vicky is one) or of the customs I love (of which the Simply Mango is one). It was the name, it reminds me of one of my all time favourite sets of books.

This might sound slightly icky since the name is "Love Mission" well, its not. The books are rare fiction with almost a cult following by those who know about them. I read them when my local library had copies (and this is a MASSIVE rarity - ironically my local library's copies have since simply disappeared.) The author is Liz Berry and the books are Easy Connection, Easy Freedom and my personal favourite, Mel. The books are very hard to find - the author herself has no copies of Easy Freedom and second hand copies have gone for as much as $300 on amazon and other booksellers.

Anyway, the books star a number of rock stars, as well as three distinct bands that the author has created. One of those bands is called 'Night Mission'.

Very strange and uber misdirected way to come to a purchase of a Blythe doll, but there you go. She's the only one I have very firm ideas about a look and a name and the like. Her name is going to be Devlin (Dev for short) - and she is going to be in the style of a late 70s, early 80s rock star.

So I am tossing up between giving my Love Mission, Dev, a full mohair reroot with big curls or getting her saran highlights in like red and purples - any ideas?

Market Aftermath

Markets are evil, evil things.

Two years ago, a lovely Blythe collector set up a modern doll market for Barbies, Blythes and BJDs (plus any other modern dolls which are bypassed by the other doll markets). I have been to every one since then and most of the time have kept myself to simply purchasing BJD clothing.

The final market of last year I started looking at some of the Blythes. I joined up with a few Blythe forums and started to price them. I had a good look at custom Blythes and have pretty much decided that if I got a Blythe that I would get a customised one.

I went to the first Market of the year yesterday and spotted a Very Vicky for sale.

... she's now mine.

I haven't decided on a name yet, although Magnolia is the name which keeps going through my mind, so that may be what she is called later. But I have already started to consider how I will customise her.

I would love to have her hair re-rooted with mohair, but having had a search for people to re-root her (since I'm unsure how to do it myself) it seems like I might have to wait, since there aren't that many who do it. So I'm now considering saran highlights.

She will most definitely get a new face up which will be matte - being able to see myself in her face is not a good thing, especially not when taking photos! The other thing she needs is some new eye chips. I have to decide on which ones and from where and how I will change them... etc. etc. etc.

And I have to pick a customiser to help me! I would prefer an Australian for the first one, so I have to do some more digging around!

Confusion follow up... Delivery!

So he arrived today!

I found the Mega Gem sized box to fit the feet in amusing... though they are UBER feet.

Beast hands... extra height with extra leg and checking out the specs.

The wings propped together (still debating on super glue and blutack) and the toggles for his back

Rasmus!

The outfit... that cape is heavy!

Of website errors and confusion

So I have been mired in confusion since Thursday. On Thursday I went into the SOOM website to pay the next instalment on my Arkose. I followed all the instructions and had got to the last bit when it informed me that there was an error with Paypal. It suggested that the payment hadn't gone through.

So I paid it again, and it went through fine. I refreshed the page, to make sure that the payment had gone through this time... and it came up with "Left to pay: -$1.00".

So even though I hadn't MEANT to pay Rasmus off he suddenly was paid off.

Later that day - roughly lunchtime, I got an email stating that they had changed the status of the order that I had. I immediately thought "Surely they haven't shipped him already!" - they hadn't, they'd just changed him to "before shipping."

The next day I was randomly checking the status of my orders on the SOOM website, when I noticed a blue note next to Rasmus... "on shipping." I hadn't received an emailed shipping notice, so I clicked into the invoice to see the EMS tracking number. No number was listed.

I checked later on Friday - no number. Saturday... no number. Sunday... no number. Monday (this morning)... no number. So at roughly 3pm, I put a question on the board about the lack of tracking number and querying the lack of a number - had he really been shipped or had they stuffed up like the paypal notice stuffed up earlier?

I was out for dinner when I got the email "SOOM has updated the status of the order"... My thought was that SOOM had corrected an error and placed Rasmus back on "before shipping".

I logged on, expecting to see a green notice... instead it was blue! I looked into the invoice, and there was a tracking number. I checked it...

Rasmus made to Australia yesterday and made it into Melbourne this morning... it is likely that he'll be delivered tomorrow (since today was a Public Holiday).

....! So confusing!

Her Royal Highness, Vesna

So if you're not a follower of my flickr stream, you might unaware of the arrival of Vesna, my SOOM Clozel.

She actually arrived on Friday, but although I asked my brothers about parcel arrivals - neither of them had seen a delivery man. Frequently I am advised by a card when delivery men haven't found me and have left a parcel at my local post office. When I got home, there was no card, so I was a little disappointed.

When the tracking finally updated at about 6:30 to show that there had been an attempted delivery and my package was residing at a post office, it was too late to go out and get it. This immediately caused a problem - not all post offices open on Saturdays. Those which are run by the Postal Service - Australia Post, are never open on Saturdays and are almost always closed by 4:30 Monday to Friday. The other type of post office, those which are franchises, can be open on Saturdays and often set their own hours.

I am "lucky" enough to live between two post offices. One is a outlet, run by Australia Post, which closes by 4:30 Monday to Friday and isn't open on weekends. I am only able to get to this post office on certain days after work - Thursdays and Fridays, simply because they are the only two days a week that I finish before 4pm.

The other post office is a licensed franchise, which is usually open until 5:30pm Monday to Fridays and 9-12 on Saturdays. It depends on the courier to which post office my parcels go to. Without a slip, I have no way of knowing on Friday afternoon, where my parcel had gone.

So... either I can collect my parcel on Saturday morning at the licensed post office, or I have to wait until Thursday when I get out of work early enough.

Enter problem number 2. I make appointments well in advance and for this particular Saturday, I had made a 9 am appointment at my hairdresser (red/pink... woo!) and I often spend a couple of hours in the hairdresser and if its busy, it can be up to three hours. So I spent the morning stressing over whether or not I would have enough time to collect the parcel before going to the hairdresser or if I would finish before the post office shut and if I didn't then I'd have to wait until at least Wednesday to get my parcel.

Luckily the salon wasn't all that full and it didn't take as long as normal and I was able to get her! She doesn't have a faceup yet, since I took it off when I originally ordered her, and nor does she have her final eyes yet, they're still coming from the maker. But she has her wig and her magnificent outfit and those wings...

Unlike all of my other SOOMs, she isn't wearing her fantasy feet - I haven't really unwrapped them at all. I did unwrap one, and it wouldn't stand up on its own. So I think I'm going to consign them to the storage box and find another pair of feet for her. Currently I want to find a pair of CW Migma feet, they will better match those of the Arkose, and since Rasmus (my incoming Arkose) and Vesna are meant to be twins, they will match very well.

The other reason for this is that the Migma feet weren't all that popular, so there are a few pairs floating around on the MP. I haven't bought a pair yet, but I'm looking for both them and possible faceup artists for her head. I'll be looking for a slot for her in the near future.