dolls, but make it fashion

so: a directory post!

if you're only here for the dolls, which to be fair is still a majority of the posts, all non-doll posts are tagged #hobbies that are not dolls so you can filter everything else out

#bjd is where all the ball jointed doll posts are, including all my doll-related sewing, crafting, and crochet projects

#bjd profiles i'm in the process of making posts replicating all of my doll profiles from Den of Angels; this tag is where you can see all of those as i get them posted

#elder scrolling is just the Elder Scrolls fanart drawings, plus TES game posting and some Elder Scrolls-themed doll crafting

#drawing is all the traditional art i've posted here, both TES and otherwise

#beefies!!! is posts with my puppy; if you hate puppies i guess you can specifically filter him out but i would suggest using this tag to view him tbh

other than dolls, drawing, occasional video game stuff, and lately my baby dog, things that may show up every once in a while are human-sized crochet/sewing/crafts, cross-stitch, the odd jigsaw puzzle, and my attempts to grow vegetables. i mostly use this blog to document my bjd hobby but also as a sort of creative journal in general...

Beef Wellington is dejected bc he can't go outside today...he doesn't understand that he'd have heat stroke if i let him out right now, all he knows is Yard is his favorite place and he wants to run in circles as fast as he can and shout at birds and chase bugs and find sticks to chew on (his usual routine) and for some unknown reason i am not letting him do his thing. even his favorite squeaky toys are failing to fill the lack of yard time, since OBVIOUSLY he would prefer to just take them outside

he got a little glimmer of hope when he saw me taking his picture and decided to give me his most polite sit and babyest face 🥹

back to disgusted when he only got pets and loves but no open door 😔 sorry buddy i can't let you cook yourself in 91°+ 😢

repainted my Impldoll Crystal faceup before i even finished putting the whole doll together

i'm still learning to do my own faceups, and the last faceup i did on her, which i was planning on keeping, was decent skill wise but still Wrong

i was so relieved to have finally done something i was ok with as far as quality that it took me a little bit of living with it to realize that while it was not a bad faceup, it was not at all what i'd actually wanted for the character i'm trying to make. i kept trying to push the contrast (bc that's what i like to do when i draw) and i ended up with a faceup that had really strong bold pinup-esque makeup and sharp eyebrows... overall it would have been perfect if i was trying to make a doll of a sassy rockabilly character. except that's not the doll i am trying to make at all

this is much softer and actually a lot more similar to the company faceup shown in Impldoll's pics, and usually i want my dolls to be painted really differently from their company presentation, but i guess this is the rare instance where it was pretty close to what i actually wanted?

not EXACTLY the same, but not nearly as much of a difference as just about all my other dolls.

HUGELY different from what i did before tho. also tbh a lot better, now that i'm looking at them side by side!

my Raccoondoll Lara head arrived two days ago i think? anyway this morning i went up to the room where all my dolls are stuck in an inconvenient pile taking up space where they don't belong while i redo my art/doll room, and i tried her on some bodies

(yes tumblr you're about to see some naked plastic bodies pls brace yourself just like i am braced for a stupid fucking mature content label 😒)

i was hoping to put her on a Supia 65cm body, so first i tried her on my Supia 60cm doublejointed body just to see how that would look. i figured if she fit on that she'd be probably ok on the 65 since Supia makes their girl heads fit on either one.

what i was not expecting was an almost perfect resin match! that's basically a difference that would be corrected just by a faceup. so now i guess i know what color Supia body to get. i thought the rose pink would be much stronger of a color than the Raccoon white. but they're damn near the same. as for size i think Lara looks just a little too big on this body, which is cool bc she'll probably be just right on the 65cm one i wanted for her. so far so good

next i tried her on the Impldoll 63cm model body that belongs to my Angel of Dream Yuki head. resin match is irrelevant here, this body was dyed to match the Yuki. i just wanted to see the proportions. tbh it looks pretty nice, but it's not the shape/build i want for her-- still want to use a Supia 65.

lastly i tried her on my older version Impldoll Star body-- this version of the Star was a 65cm body and is pretty similar to an old Iplehouse EID in size/general shape, so i figured it was the closest body i have to test her on to see how she'd look on the Supia 65. it looks good! this works for me!

and here's all 3 side by side. it's weird bc relative to other heads i have, she's actually not a super big head at all, especially compared to the Islanddoll Noah that the old Star body belongs to-- but i really think she looks best on the big 65cm body in this lineup (center).

had a little bit of free time to work on dolls today, decided to use it to dremel down the neck on my recently acquired Supia body to make it fit the Elfdoll K head i got it for. this is just the rough dremeled stage still, i haven't sanded anything yet

left is the pic of the unmodded body with a K head on it that the person i bought it from took to show me how feasible the hybrid might be; right is post-today's dremel session with my K head. color match sucks for sure but all his parts are getting painted anyway so i don't care

finished the second of the small series of drawings i had wanted to make for the TES Gala event (long after said event is over; i got a late start and only finished one in time.) i'm still going to draw the whole series tho just bc i really love the ideas and want to make them...

it's ink/alcohol markers/colored pencil on bristol paper, and as usual i struggled horribly to get a photograph of it that looks accurate and captures all the details. it's an 11 × 14" this time, so slightly smaller than the previous Gala drawing but still too big to fully fit in my scanner. i put it in anyway just to see if i'd get a better image-- some of it is cut off, but here's the scan:

the colors are a little washed out in this one 😭

close up of my favorite part of this drawing!! i just really liked the idea of the Vestige dressing her little bantam guar guy up and bringing him with her to the Gala. he looks very satisfied with himself 😊 they're still in Fargrave; i wanted it to be like a whole editorial fashion shoot type thing set in different spots around Fargrave. the window design was sooooo freaking hard to draw by hand; the geometry is wonky as hell and does not bear close scrutiny so just let the general effect wash over you 😅 i probably could have gotten it more regular and even if i'd spent ages measuring and laying out the pattern in pencil first, but tbh i wasn't 100% sure what i wanted to put in the background until after i already had the Vestige and her guar fully inked. oh well at least it's not AI 😅

once i was done fighting to get a halfway decent picture of this drawing, i put it in my portfolio book where i keep all my art, next to the first one in this series, and yet again i was struck by how much better my art looks in person/off screen 😭😭😭😭

still want to do at least 2 more drawings in this series, but it'll probably take me a while to finish them. as long as i have this one all wrapped up before next TES Gala...!

got the lashes from Etsy that i should have just gotten the first time, put them in my Impldoll Crystal head and decided to just go with the first pair of eyes i made for her after all bc my second and third attempts were actually bad whereas this pair was just imperfect🫠

i did something sort of dumb last week...

there was someone on Den of Angels who seems to have a pretty enormous bjd collection trying to figure out who some of her really, really old DIM Minimee heads were and listing tons of them for sale on the Marketplace. i saw this one in the "whomst is this supposed to be" threads and thought it was interesting...and then when she listed it for sale for like 29 dollars i impulse bought the damn thing just bc i was so curious to see it in person! i don't have an idea or a character in mind for customizing her, i literally didn't want to add any more dolls....i just really wanted to see this head in person and the price was not high enough to be a barrier 😅

i said on DoA that she was probably meant to be a Minimee of Demi Moore based on the pics her previous owner was posting, and now seeing her in person the resemblance is even stronger so i am pretty positive that's what her sculpt is. super weird that i felt such an urge to see this particular head irl, bc i'm neither a fan nor a hater of Demi Moore. i don't have any particular feelings about her one way or the other, i just am vaguely familiar enough with her existence as a celebrity that i recognize her likeness. she is dirty and so incredibly butter yellow...the contrast with her deep yellow resin makes my hand look like it got boiled in these pics. i am very cool/pink-toned but not to that degree! 😅

the neckhole/slot is really roughly carved out. i haven't tried her on any bodies to see what neck she might fit, both bc all my dolls are in an inconvenient spot right now due to having my art room torn apart, and bc i have no idea what, if anything, i even want to do with her and don't really want to try thinking about it right now-- i have enough doll projects going

the inside of her head is filthy, has several previous owners' names written in pencil, and there's a date in there-- 2008-- so she's at least 18 years old and maybe even older that that, if that name wasn't the original owner. she also has two layers of two different kinds of putty holding her eyes in. it's pretty gross in there tbh 😬

more pencil markings-- initials? idk if these were from the maker or another owner. the magnets are ultra corroded, and the headcap doesn't line up and won't close. i thought that was the magnets at first, but on looking closer, the head opening/edges of the headcap are also super roughly carved, just like the neck slot, and the ridges on the headcap that were meant to slot into the head opening are rough and asymmetrical. i am wondering if this headcap ever lined up and was able to close even when the head was brand new-- it doesn't seem like it. this must be why the previous owner had a band of tape around the opening seam in the sales pics.

well i am finally done with waiting in patience. (i actually like the way Chinese tracking updates get translated to "wait in patience," like a somewhat stern reprimand, a lot better than when American websites are annoyingly chipper and cutesy and tell me stuff like "hang tight!"). regardless of how it's worded, my 9+ month wait for a Miracledoll Zhi Shen head ended today. and the box was the fanciest one i have ever gotten for a head, for sure.

she was bubblewrapped and face protected when i first opened it but i took all that off, put her back in her fancy box, and took it all downstairs to take pics. she has one of the plastic card-type COAs in there with her, and they also sent a nice pair of glass eyes. almost a shame she won't be using them-- she'll be getting red eyes since she's going to be a Dunmer 😅

the light was fluctuating so wildly while i took these, a thunderstorm was on its way in. here's her face tho

and then two seconds later it got DARK but here's her profile

and the neckhole in the bottom of her head is HUGE and will need modded to be a much much smaller diameter. she was made to go on a 68cm muscular body and was very much in line with the trend for big tall dolls with very tiny heads. i got her to go on a 60cm Resinsoul body 😆 i was figuring that she was so incredibly pinheaded on the giant body that she'd probably work okay on a smaller 1/3 size. i compared real quick to the bust piece on my Resinsoul body and the proportions are fine; they should be perfect once i do my planned shoulder-widening mod.

i had to take these pics in the unfinished windowsill in my art room bc especially right now with the storm coming in, it's the only room in my house with enough natural light to get a decent photo. but it is also currently an unusable, gutted mess of a construction zone...

so normally i am pretty good about waiting for bjds even tho i dislike having an open/unfinished transaction for an indefinite period of time. but this Miracledoll head has me feeling jittery...it took nine months from my order to get a shipping notice, which is absurd when i think about how many companies have sent me a single head within a month of ordering (Elfdoll, Angelsdoll and Impldoll all come to mind) and now it has cleared US customs and the tracking just repeatedly says it's "in transit at US." ok but...it went thru New York customs and...i am in the Northeast. it doesn't have to cross the country...🥺 it's only bothering me/making me nervous bc if anything goes wrong and it gets lost it will take me another frigging year to get another one 😭😭😭 when i got the tracking for my recent Impldoll Eudora, i barely looked at it. i just want this stupid Miracledoll order over with...

throw???

*considers returning it so i can throw again*

maybe.....

NOPE. LEAVING

for @tes-gala --my Vestige, in a dress that represents both the Serpent and the Shadow; alcohol markers/colored pencil/various inks on paper

(i'm posting it now bc i want to have at least something up before the Gala ends, and i am realizing that there is just no way i'm gonna finish the whole set of drawings i had planned between now and tomorrow night, no matter how much i want to! there are not enough hours in the day and i am also getting major hand fatigue 😅)

now for the lore behind my design:

i chose both the Serpent and the Shadow for her bc, as the Vestige, she has little to no memory of her former life before being murdered by Molag Bal, and so has no idea what her original birthsign would have been. the Shadow is an obvious choice for her both as a thief and a nightblade, and bc her past is hidden from her. there's also the fact of her technically being a Daedric entity now instead of the human girl she once was, casting a shadow over all of her experiences: a feeling of not quite belonging to the world again despite being in it. the sheer black overlayers in the skirt of her gown, as well as black being the main color of her look, were meant to represent the Shadow.

the Serpent is obviously represented by the snake that wraps around her body as a sort of belt and necklace. i chose the Serpent because of the way that as a constellation, it attacks and disrupts the other starsigns at random. for the Vestige, this symbolizes the way that her life was disrupted and the nature of her existence changed by Molag Bal and thus her original birthsign being lost to her. i incorporated it into her look by having it wrap around her body and throat to allude to the violence of both the Serpent constellation and her being changed into the Vestige.

the background is meant to be a bit of Fargrave-- as someone who is not quite a Daedra but also no longer a normal human, i imagine that of all the places she travels in her adventures, Fargrave and its sort of liminal nature feels very comfortable to her.

a close up of her face. i REALLY wish i could get better photos of my art! it always looks so much better in person. the best way i have found is to put smaller drawings in my scanner, but this one is 14×17" so doesn't even come close to being able to fit in the scanner 😭 and tumblr makes it look even more like buttcheeks...pls click the images to see them looking a little better at least 😥

art tip: when you're really behind on a drawing that you need to finish in a specific time frame, a very cool thing to do is come up with a really detailed background concept! 🙄

still working hard on my TES gala art, not only bc i think it's a super fun event that i really want to participate in (altho that is definitely true) but also bc i really love what i came up with and want to make it just for its own sake. i put a lot of my character's lore into the look as well as general TES lore and i love it a lot. sadly, it isn't a very simple drawing. actually to show the full look, i have to do two drawings 😅

last year i had loads of ideas for the theme for different characters-- all of my own TES ocs and quite a few NPCs as well! i managed to finish the looks for 3 of my own characters; there was a fourth that i finished long after the event was over and never posted, and the rest i still have as planning sketches that i would love to actually do finished drawings of someday. i designed a super simple background for all of those, so that all the drawings would look like pictures from the same location/event but it would be easy and quick to replicate in each drawing.

this year, i had less time to draw, so i decided to focus on just trying to come up with a design for one character-- my Vestige, from ESO. and i figured since i was just putting all my effort into one character, i could afford to plan a more detailed background

and now i am sort of regretting my decision but also not 😅 regret bc i would be finished already if i'd gone simple again, but not-regret bc the drawings will be so much cooler when i finally manage to finish...