Some time ago I was noodling around on Youtube and found an entirely new thing – customising dolls.
I knew people had done it but I didn’t realise it was SUCH a big thing.
Now, I am taking a break from full time work so I have some time up my sleeve to do a few things, so picking up a fiddly time consuming craft is right up my alley at the moment!
I have decided on Monster High dolls as they appeal to me – there is a wide variation in head and body shapes. Cheap to buy second hand.
This is the blog post about the first one I’ve done.
If you know me you know I go in hard and start with the difficult stuff. You also know I’m really into science fiction, so you can guess where my interest in customisation might lie.
I went to ebay and bought a set of 6 dolls. I also bought another a box of broken dolls, which may have been a mistake as they are all missing hands, and you need hands. However more on that in a later one. I have a lot of extra heads too, to play with.
The main thing to do is you have to dis-assemble them first if you want to remove the hair (either if you want them bald, or to have a headshape that is not human, or re-root the hair). You have to get the hair plugs out from the inside as they are glued in and you can’t pull them out from the outside. Which means heating the heads to get them off without breaking the neck mechanism. Then cut down the hair, then pull it out from the inside with thinnish bent pliers. I found putting a wash of acetate inside the head melts the glue and makes it easier to pull but you also then have yuccky, tacky, soft plugs of gluey hair you have to get out of the heads. It’s a messy, long job.
There is a point where your hobby starts to resemble the end scenes of Apocalypse Now.
Then you use acetone to remove the factory paint, use cotton buds to get it off the eyes and mouth and then wipe the whole thing down with a pad soaked in acetate.
And get hiiiigh on the fumes.
Hey, I found a use for those egg cartons I was stashing before the fox killed all the chickens!
So as it turns out this hobby is quite expensive. You need, as a bare minimum:
- Pliers – to remove hair
- Acetate, cotton tips and pads – to remove factory paint.
- builder’s putty if you are going to do any changes to the shape at all – that stuff you get that you knead the two bits together and it heats and sets and forms a hard plastic that sticks to everything, like doll heads and your own fingers. I first discovered it when I was trying to do taxidermy, so I guess all the hobbies are related. You also need sandpaper to smooth the edges with and I also ended up using the Dremel on more than one of mine. The stuff sets fast and it stinks.
- Mr Superclear UV, which is the spray you use on the faces so that you can lay down colour. I got mine on ebay. I am going to get cotton gloves to to protect the faces from my hand dirt.
- Artists pastels – used as ‘blush’ and face shape them. I had these as I’m an artist. I bought a dedicated small squareish brush to apply with too.
- Artists watercolour pencils – to draw the faces in. I had to buy a set of 36, not cheap. you can’t use artists pencils as they need to be water based and pencils are not. You also can’t use cheap ones as they don’t have any pigment depth to them. I know, I tried, I had cheap ones. Fail.
- Artists Acrylic paint – to highlight face bits. I had these as I am an artist. at the very least you would need white to touch in the eye highlights
- Tiny thin artists brushes – to moisten the pencil and use for the paint.
- Doll hair and a tool to re-root (I have made my own, will post this later on what I did)
- Fabric and paint and trim (lace, ribbon, beads) to make clothes and accessories with – I also ended up buying a lot of different felt squares as it’s easy to work with, but I have a lot of scraps of fabric as I’ve been sewing/crafting for years. You’d be stuffed if you didn’t.
- You have to be able to sew or fabricate the costumes so you need sewing stuff. Bare minimum scissors, thread, needles, pins… I’ve started calling this hobby ‘cosplay for dolls’. Fabric scissors as well as general scissors because you will never go back to trying to cut fabric with all purpose scissors once you switch to ‘the good scissors’.
- Strong glue for fabrication
- A bottle of acrylic gloss varnish, to paint over the eyes and lips of the finished doll. Without this they don’t ‘pop’. I was put off by the cost (20 bucks a bottle) and then I accidentally found I had a bottle in my box of random crap. Hurrah!
- Things to fabricate with: cord, foam, etc. I also bought a small bottle of liquid latex to make a certain thing look right, more about that in another post. This is an expensive hobby!
- TIME. These things take time. Lots of delayed time waiting for things to dry. And time to learn. Watch youtube. I like “Dollightful”, she has a quirky way of speaking and she does tutorials, but there are other good ones out there.
- The ability to deal with frustration and problem solving. Turns out these things are much harder than you think they will be.
You also need somewhere to work. Because I’m intending on getting into making jewellery, I recently purchased a jewellers bench – and it has to be the best thing ever for this, multiple surfaces to keep and hold stuff on. I have not made any jewellery yet…. I have spent my entire time at it working on dolls. Any desk would do but you quickly accumulate crap for this so unless you want to constantly be taking out and putting away, find a dedicated space with lots of storage for all the stuff you’re giong to use.
My initial attempts at doing the face were were farcical.
I did a lot of washing off and re-doing both paint and pastel. I didn’t know what I was doing or how. I’m sorry I didn’t take photos to share my shame with the public here. Dammit, I forgot!
I decided on a list of characters from science fiction to work on. My first doll to complete is based on Zhaan, from Farscape. She is blue with spots, she wears a blue dress with some trim.
I had a complete blue doll so I used that.
I covered up the hair holes with the builder’s bog, to make a baldcap and sanded it back. All that watching seasons of ‘faceoff’ and discussions about blending, really helped here! I laid down about three coats of blue acrylic hobby paint (‘sapphire’) on her. Then I built up the face with many layers of pastel, acrylic, and watercolour pencil, spraying Mr Superclear between applications. That stuff has toxic fumes while it’s fresh so you have to take them outside and either hold your breath or use a face mask. Let it dry for over half an hour per coat, though i would wait an hour in future to let it set.
The key is to layer the colours. And use unexpected colours to help it pop. The pictures I used of Zhaan were pure blue but pure blue was boring on it’s own and she looked terrible, so I used touches of pink/red to shape her face, in her eyes, and in her mouth.
The head dots were made with watercolour pencil, took me a while to make it work well. Be aware of highlights. The tutorials and customisations on Youtube will help work out how various people do this. When you’re done with the face, use the gloss varnish over the eyes and the lips, it makes it look a billion times better. I have found with the brand I have it’s a minimum of three coats.
At the point I was doing this one I was also working on other dolls. And I was cursing myself for having picked a full head makeover too.
I had a shirt in the 90s made of silk that I’d bought in Singapore in the family 1988 trip, that I had long retired from use and used for other projects. I still had a bit of the silk, and it was a perfect colour, so I used that. I would not again finish the sewing of a complete outfit and try and stuff the doll into it, I’d sew the doll into the outfit for a better fit.
I made the greaves and the collar from leather that used to be in a ripped black leather jacket that I had in my stash of fabric. I painted them gold and painted the decorations on in acrylic paint. Finding gold acrylic was far harder than it should have been, no one had it in stock! I lost a greave in the process. Still has not turned up. It’s very confusing and bloody annoying, I had to make another one.
I glued them on with strong contact adhesive (holding it on with masking tape as it dried) and covered the glue that had squished out with acrylic paint. I also made little felt shoes…and glued them on. I also painted her hands to match her face, they were a lighter blue. It was not until after i’d completed her that i worked out her hands were on her body backwards. I probably can just swap them over but I’ve not done this yet.
The hardest thing was getting the head back in without doing a bit of destruction about the neck. To get the head off I had dipped the whole head in hot water, but you can’t do that in reverse without wreaking everything, and I could NOT find anything on line for ‘putting a monster high head back on’. FRUSTRATING. I should have practiced this first, the next few I did were easier.
I ended up wrapping the head in a tea towel and holding the neck hole over a boiling kettle to soften it, then the head was able to be worked back in. I had to re-touch up the paint and it kind of made a mess out of the work I’d done around her neck, which has been somewhat hidden with the collar on her neck piece.
Completed doll:
The next dolls I have done took less time as I’ve problem solved my way through. I have also done two dolls that are pure beauty makeup and with hair styled from their original hair- soooo much quicker. I will post about them in time. I have yet to put hair on a doll. I’m ready but it’s going to be a world of pain, methinks.
I really liked the outcome. There are things I’d do differently. The head is quite heavy with the builder’s bog, not as heavy as the next two I fabricated though. It’s possible I will do Zhaan again now I’ve worked through some of the issues, but as a first one, I’m really happy with her.
