pelé ear surgery/mod
since i finally have time for doll stuff i decided to change pelé's ears! when i got the astoria sculpt i assumed that the ears were magnetic and was a little surprised that they are fully attached! (i would have gotten her regardless though haha) since this character is human, i needed to remove the faun ears (hopefully keeping them intact enough to make them magnetic, for fun), and then sculpt and attach human ears. first, i used this giant olfa saw thing to remove them.
when i first cut them off i was sort of rethinking the whole thing 😅 it looked really rough, and i had cut deeper than i'd meant to into the head. after sanding everything until it was smooth i felt a little better but still pretty nervous. also- please excuse the state of my cutting mat in the next few images- it's like ten years old and used pretty regularly.
i sculpted bases for the faun ears and enclosed magnets in them using polymer clay that i tinted with pastels to match the resin color of the head. i did. bake the whole thing (resin ear with polymer clay attached) in the oven. which i would not do again- it looked nice and worked well but it smelled crazy 😵💫 my biggest concern going into it was the ears warping but they came out fine. idk about my lungs though :v
next, i sculpted a bunch of ears out of the polymer clay. i really struggled with this- i don't really sculpt in general and i've only used polymer clay once or twice before. i thought that the right ear came out oversized in a cute way but the left one was kind of weird looking and too large. i didn't have enough tinted clay to remake it after i baked it though so i proceeded with the weird ear.
after a lot of sanding both ears were not perfect, but looking pretty good :) i stuck them onto the head with eye putty and tried yuki's wig on to get a better sense of what the finished doll would look like, and i'm happy with the result! i also tried the sanded faun ears on and they looked pretty cute too :)
i had never done a mod like this before and i had a lot of fun doing it + learned a lot while i was working on it! maybe one day i'll also make ears for yuki haha
