Coffee Talk- update on our Korean Bike Licenses

November 14, 2017November 13, 2017Leave a comment

Hi guys… so just an update on our bike licenses. Last week we went to do the practical test and got our Korean Bike licenses Yay!!! My husband got a perfect score on his test but I was so nervous that I missed the very first turn. After that I put my foot down which is also a no-no and an immediate fail. Throughout the rest of the test all I could think of was ” Oh no I don’t want to come and do this again next week” I was so concerned about redoing the test that I didn’t concentrate on the rest of the course and made no further mistakes. When I stopped the bike at the end of the course everyone applauded me and I was really confused because according to me I put my foot down… but my husband told me that I put my foot out… but it never touched the ground. So I passed the test after all 😀

Furthermore I finally got outfits for my dolls that I ordered just before Easter. It took a very long time to get here but now I have it. I ordered it from Lovely Woods when I bought my first doll and wanted to recreate Harley Quinn and a female Joker. Since it took so long to get here however, I scrapped that idea and just made my own custom doll. I dressed Cinnamon in one of the outfits and took her outside. I’m still deciding whether or not to do a Harley Quinn doll so for now I won’t share that outfit yet but here is Cinnamon in the park 😛

Water-nymph Monster High Face-up

October 26, 2017October 12, 2017Leave a comment

Hi guys, today I want to share my third monster high face-up with you. I’ve been having a lot of fun with the Monster High customs and I’m really glad that I started this hobby. I feel that with every doll I make, they seem to get better and better.

With the first one, I was really scared to do anything too drastic so I tried to keep everything simple. I asked my kids at school to name my first doll, and they decided on Cinnamon. They say that my name sounds like Cinnamon so the doll should be called Cinnamon…

With the second doll I tried to be a little more adventurous. Honestly I messed up her one eye because I wasn’t sharpening my pencils enough. She turned out pretty well for my second try, except for the one dodgy eye, I’ll attribute that to battle scars since she’s a warrior. I also tried making doll Armour, which I think turned out pretty well.

The third doll was supposed to be a water nymph. I planned on coloring her hair, since I’m to scared to do a re-root just yet, and give her minimum clothing so as to look like she emerged from the water. That, however didn’t turn out the way I planned. Firstly I struggled to color her hair. I watched a YouTube video where they colored the hair with acrylic paint and shaving foam…..

Needless to say, that didn’t work out as hoped and the colour washed out with the water when I rinsed her hair. I then decided to go with food colouring, which worked, but the colours weren’t dark enough so I added some extra colour with blue and purple sharpies.

Then came the outfit…. I wanted it to look something like this…

but after struggling too much to get the fabric I wanted I just decided on making her a forest fairy with blue and green feathers.

At the end I think she’s one of my prettiest dolls even though I thought she had a very broad face at first, she turned out pretty well 😀

Monster High Doll with Armour

October 19, 2017October 12, 20171 Comment

Hi everyone. I hope you had a wonderful weekend. The sun is shining, the flowers are blooming and everyone seems to be in good spirits.

I have recently started a new hobby by customising my own little Monster High Dolls. After finishing my first doll I started on the second. The first one was very conservative in nature but I wanted to try something a bit more adventurous. I modelled my doll on one of my game characters in Neverwinter (when I still played :p)

Here we go from start to finish

First I started again by removing the doll’s factory paint with acetone ( nail polish remover), cotton buds and cotton balls. This time went much better than the first time even though I smudged her one eye a little. After removing the factory paint I washed her face with warm soapy water and left her to dry. If you look closely you’ll see that I couldn’t successfully remove all of the factory paint.

Next I sprayed her face with Mr Super Clear and left her to dry for about 5 minutes.I then started to draw her face with my water colour pencils starting with the eyes, then the eyebrows, eye lashes and lips. I would start with light colours and work my way up to the darker colours, spraying her with Mr Super Clear between layers. I sprayed her around 5 times. As soon as I were happy with how a certain part of her looked I would spray her and then go over that area again with a darker pencil. Remember to sharpen your pencils often because that makes all the difference.

After finishing her eyes I added some face tattoo’s because she is a warrior 🙂

Initially I wanted to do the full armour but it proved to be a bit harder than I planned so I opted for minimal body armour and a skirt. To do this I used a fun foam sheet. I drew my ideas on a piece of paper and copied it onto baking paper in order to trace it on the fun foam. I started with her swords.

I cut separate pieces to get the desired look and then just glued them together. After which I decorated the swards to look like elemental fire weapons.

After the glue dried I cleaned it up a bit by cutting away all the excess pieces of glue and painted all the pieces with black acrylic paint. When this dried I went over the glued areas with gold acrylic paints to get this look.

I also had to paint her shoes black as I bought a doll with irremovable shoes and painted bodice, I then sprayed the shoes with Mr Super Clear to stop the paint from coming off over time.

and there she is, my second little customised dolly 😀

Trying something new

October 12, 2017October 12, 2017Leave a comment

Hi everyone. I know I’ve been a little quite over the last few weeks. I’ve been trying to figure out a few new interests and I am now ready to share some of it with you.

A few months ago I saw the cutest Corpses Bride Ball Jointed Doll. At first I thought that you could buy them like that but later I realized that it was a repainted custom instead of a factory doll. In the following weeks I saw more and more of these dolls until I eventually thought of trying it myself.

At first I had absolutely now clue how to even begin. I did lots and lots of research and watched countless videos before eventually ordering my first doll and repainting supplies. I bought 3 dolls, Draculara, Lagoona blue and Dayna Treasura Jones. My plan was to create a repaint of Harley Quinn but after seeing some other first time custom face-ups I decided to go for something simple at first.

Here is what I did. First I needed to get the supplies needed to start the venture so this is what I got.

Dolls
Acetone ( I used basic nail polish Remover)
Cue tips
Cotton balls
MrSuperClear
A gas mask ( Mr Super Clear is toxic)
Gas filters
Vapour Cartridges
Watercolor Pencils
Soft Pastels ( I had the hair pastels so I just used those)
Some makeup and paint brushes

The hardest part for me was removing the factory paints.

All the videos make it seem so easy but I guess its only because they’ve done it so many times. For me it took quite long, the acetone made me feel nauseous and a lot of the paint smudged over the dolls’ face so I had to try and remove it over and over again.

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In the end her face was still kind of smudged but workable. I have to admit that when I removed my second doll’s factory makeup it went much better, I will share her with you as soon as I’ve finished her 🙂

After removing all her factory paint, I washed her face with warm soapy water and left her to dry. I then sprayed her with Mr Super Clear and left her to dry. It didn’t take too long for her to dry, about 5 minutes and I then started drawing her face.

41ccb3cb0f8478a4e5b2173a0ac75629 First with very light pencils. Then going in with darker colours.

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She came out much better than I expected although her eyes weren’t dark enough.

I then decided that she probably needs a new dress, so I took her factory dress apart and pinned it to an old jean, cut out the pattern and hand sew it back together. I also used the Velcro that was on the original dress and stitched it onto the new dress. So here she is.

My father also loves collecting “dolls” although he has a collection of action figures not really dolls, have a look at his collection….

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Monster high face-up Sagittarius

September 15, 2017October 14, 2017Leave a comment

A few weeks ago I was watching a Live Instagram post from “Dollightful” ( she’s an amazing artist check out her channel here’). She was busy talking about her progress on her Pokemon doll Umbreon and was asking for some ideas from her viewers for her channel. One person commented that they would like to see zodiac inspired dolls and although “Dollightful” didn’t comment on that I thought that it was an amazing idea.

Doing up your dolls like the signs in the zodiac seems like it could be a lot of fun. I tried to look online for some inspiration and whether or not other artist have done this, but I mostly found that people only make their own sign and that’s where it stops. Being narcissistic I also decided to do my own sign first since that is the sign I know the most about.

She’s an archer born under Jupiter. She is a strong fighter with a big heart who wants to see only the good in others. But don’t cross her in the wrong way or her arrow will shoot straight through you, with deadly accuracy. She is always up for an adventure and although she sometimes seems aloof she has the capacity to care deeply. She believes that showing your emotions is a sign of weakness therefore you won’t easily see her broken, but when you do, consider yourself lucky as this means she trusts you.

I have also decided to model some of my future dolls on my friends and their signs 😀 with their input of course… My next zodiac dolls will include Leo, Scorpio and Capricorn. Unfortunately because of all the humidity here in Korea at the moment I have to wait until the end of August before I can do another face-up, but stay tuned 😀