Check out Dollchemy.com

Do you like your dolls with a heavy dose of customization? Do you like to sew for your dolls, or create little props for them? You might want to check out the forum Dollchemy.com! It made its debut in early June. When the co-owners of Dollchemy approached me to be a part of the moderating team, I happily accepted. Dollchemy is growing slowly and steadily, and I don't know how unbiased I can be since I'm a moderator and of course I'm going to think it's awesome, but I seriously believe that. I think with this brand new forum, we each have the opportunity to contribute to a wonderful resource and hangout for members of the doll hobby, so no matter if you love BJDs, Pullips, Blythes, Monster High, My Little Pony, Pinky Street...all are welcome, as long as they are not recasts/bootlegs/clones/knockoffs/factory or TBL. So if you are looking for a new dollie-centric forum to hang out, or add to your list of virtual haunts, then please consider registering at Dollchemy.com. I hope to see you there!

Beni makes an appearance

I'm shockingly bad at maintaining my blog. I think that one of the main obstacles with this is because if I do anything that requires regularity, I start to view it more as a chore rather than one that I find fun. Another reason why I may not blog as regularly as I like is because my time is spread out over the internet at various sites. There are the usual haunts--Dolly Market, Blythe Kingdom, Den of Angels. And other time-suckers such as ebay and etsy. I also periodically check facebook for new posts and I also have to catch up with Flickr, ipernity, Tumblr and Twitter. I'm one of the few people who STILL does e-mail. In addition to all this, I'm currently taking an online course through my public library & Gale Education about becoming more assertive. Yes, it's true--sometimes I can be a real doormat; but I think a lot of that can be attributed to my culture and upbringing (Japanese-American), but that's a whole 'nother blog entry. Today I'd like to show you one of the projects I've been working on for weeks. It was my intention to take in-progress photos as they happened, and put them here and on various photo websites. But that just never happened. Sometimes I just couldn't find my camera, and other times, I just plain forgot. I'd get caught up in working and if I stopped for photo-taking, I probably would have lost creative momentum. Anyway, some background--I began wanting a Yeolume of my own ever since PODO was first released. This feeling intensified when I got to host Penny the Traveling Yeolume in April. I shopped around and when I found another collector getting rid of her Yeolume PODO for $60 shipped (even to Hawaii!), I pounced. There are a number of things that I didn't especially like about PODO when I saw her in person. I thought her lips were too pursed, for one thing. I wanted her to be more of a happy girl. Here's my one and only "in-progress" photo! And here's Beni all put together again. By no stretch of the imagination is her face-up in anyway perfect. It's decent, sure--and for now it suits her fine. Maybe later, depending how the face-up is holding up, and if I can find a face-up artist within my budget with open slots, then I would consider sending her out for a new, professionally done face-up. There are some areas that just don't seem as crisp and clear as the face-ups I've commissioned others for. For the face-up, the supplies I used were: Faber-Castell pastels, acrylic paint thinned out with water, and Prismacolor watercolor pencils. The sealant I used was Volks Zoukei-Mura powder spray. I used these insanely tiny brushes for her eyebrows and lashes. And Tamiya gloss for her lips. Looking at these photos, I think what I need to do is spray-matte her one more time with the ZM spray, and then give her lips another coat of gloss. I want those lips to really shine. This is pretty much the first face-up I did which I'm mostly satisfied with. I think that I could get better with practice, but I don't have a whole lot of blank heads to practice on. And no, the answer to that dilemma is not to buy more dolls.