Biccy visited today and brought Zero and Satin and we took some pics, swapped some wigs and eyes... and generally had a fun time.

My son is now set to marry her, I think because being thrown onto the couch repeatedly is so much fun!!! :)

Pics that came out worth a damn are

Given that I failed to capture Rini but otherwise did pretty well in the first shoot, I enlisted small helpers to help me set up a second. The light at this time of year in our back room is amazing, even after 5pm.

First, Shall - still without name. *looks meaningfully at partner*



Then Rini. She needs a new wig, but her head is so little that they're hard to find!



Thanks again to hiritai for the trick with sharpening the eyelashes. Even with my shiny new Photoshop CS3 and its Smart Sharpen, that extra work on Shall's eyelashes makes a world of difference in my view.

I'm feeling much better, btw. :D

I'm home sick today - home alone sick to be precise - so what better activity than to take a few pics.

The two things I meant to snap pics of didn't work out to be LJ-worthy, but I brought Reki down in to the room with natural light and she's almost smiling today! Maybe she's appreciating the fact I didn't drag her along to the meet on Saturday???

Anyway, two pics, one fine and one quite awesome - her eyes finally show their mettle.

A few weeks ago I canceled an order I'd put in with a doll company as the item I was looking for was no longer going to be available. The order had previously sat for well over a month, paid for, confirmed... not shipped....

When at last I spoke to a real person they were helpful and said no problem - the order will be canceled now. Great stuff!

Now, today, I get an e-mail that goes (somewhat) thusly:

Dear gelfling256

The order which it receives in 2008/01/22 was canceled.

Order number : [ xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ]

- The 'Cancel order' with lower part is same case.

- It pays, until about prearranged date does not become the payment not to be and the case which the manager cancels.

- Before the payment is confirmed, the customer direct cancellation one case.


I think it means I'll be getting my money back soon! ! XD

My Easter story is under the cut.

I read a nice tutorial by hiritai on DoA about making eyes brighter in photos. I tried it on the Shall pic from the last post. What do you think? I think hiritai rules. :)

Oh, also, I think I need to upgrade my Photoshop. A Sharpen tool?! Yes please!! :)

Finally FINALLY I'm posting some more Shall pics. helene_in_melbo did a WONDERFUL face-up and new eyes (special golden brown) came in the mail this week from Ginarolo on DoA. Now, if only I was a better photographer!!

Well, my Ted is finally somewhat ready.

I did his face-up entirely with pastels and watercolor pencils - just like Helene would. So, anything you like, credit Helene and anything that you don't... it's all my doing! :)

He's kind of in borrowed gear right now - Shall's default acrylic eyes, Tomoyo's default fur wig and some leftover cheesecloth I didn't use making an herb bag for a roast the other afternoon.

Two pics - enjoy!

Him: Who the h3ll are you?
Me: Try to be nice, okay?


Me: What's wrong now?
Him: I wouldn't expect you to understand.

He's going to be so much fun to work on! He's a Ted - my Dragon boy!

Did I mention I had fun today? Well I did! And those other two did as well. Let's do it again next week!! :)

Thank you Helene and "Corney"... and everyone!!

Now Shall is off having her face-up redone it seems somehow appropriate to post up the pics I took of her recently with my new daylight-temperature lights. There's even a halfway decent one of Reki before she finally spat the dummy and threw off her wig. She's really quite grumpy at the moment. I'd say it was that she's not very fond of her wig but I put on a different one (a nicer one!) today and she STILL seemed grumpy!

The look on my sweetheart's face was priceless when he opened this package. I was sure he'd guess the contents from the box size and shape but come to think of it we haven't had any SD-sized boxes in the house before (and may never again) so perhaps I was worried for nothing.

We dressed her up Christmas Day after the kids headed out to be world-saving anime characters and build Star Wars icons with LEGO, and I stole a wig cap from Kiki for her this morning. Late afternoon she was finally photographed - not by me - and this is the photo I was allowed to use. I'm glad my sweetheart feels about her as I do about my dolls. :D

We're already discussing wigs and eye colour choice, and I've promised I'll get him some Enchanted Eyes - as they're so great in Reki - during the next order period.

So, I ordered my sweetheart a gift when I got my tax return, and on the website it says "8 weeks to prepare" and there was NO WAY it was going to make it by Christmas, but... but... it's shipped today! It's gonna make it!!

I spent the last week trying to add to the order something that had come back in stock on the website, but the customer service people are - um - Korean and were obviously struggling with my request. Finally it got all sorted out and the the wire transfer got through to them yesterday and I save the shipping I wanted to save (but lose the telegraphic transfer fee, which was actually still significantly less) and now... I really am so pleased it's gonna work out alright.

Because I had no present back-up plan whatsoever. It was going to be a totally lame note "something's on the way - expect it mid-Jan". NOT very Christmas cheery!

I'm just going to go have a little lie down now...

I expect if he reads this he can guess what it is. But I'm betting he won't read it. I'm betting YOU can guess what it is. If not, you'll hear more after the red guy does the coming-down-the-chimney thing at our place.

Yay!!!!

Another post-meet post.

Yay! I had fun on Saturday!

Many beautiful dolls and wow - you couldn't ask for a more perfect wedding couple. The outfits were gorgeous and the flower girls soo cute!!

sefieslj's Rhin was completely stunning in rl and I was soo pleased to hold Moggie's little Dollzone gift fox. Oh for bigger pockets and better sleight-of-hand! ;) Elizabeth's daughter was pretty cute too - it was lovely to see proof that my own girl might sit through a meet sometime in the not-too-distant future. I hope Cathy's little one settled, finally, somehow - poor little one.

It was lovely talking to everyone. We will meet again! Yipee!

I've been hard at work making my Pepe ready for this meet as the main problem my dollies have is nothing to wear.

The wig was the hardest part with the silver Leekeworld one I'd ordered specially being simply too big, even with a silicone wig cap to help it stay on. Such a pity, as I don't know who else would wear this particular wig, though it'll fit Tomoyo and others for sure. SO I reverted to my modded Monique Trix wig (thank you rattimoth for the know-how) and I think it came out pretty good.

No pics from the meet from me, though Sefie and Annie-chan did a great job there. Just this shot of Reki in her outfit. See? I name them eventually! :)

Today we met Shin-san at the Ai Exhibition at the Collingwood Gallery. Honestly, there were a few other things that caught my eye but Shin-san's porcelain bjds eclipsed everything else. He brought three dolls, beautifully dressed, and his own Kiki. My friend Diane was so close to buying one for herself despite their considerable (but not unreasonable, given everything) price-tags.

We met jamiest, Sarah and Simone there, SImone with her ShinyDOLL Akaali (Shin-san = ShinyDOLL), and the other two also with wonderful dolls.

Shin-san took pics, which he posted on DoA.


Shin-san's porcelain beauties


Two Kikis - Shin-san's is on the right, mine is on the left.

It was wonderful to meet Shin-san and hear him talk about his dolls. He is an engineer and a lot of thought has gone into the body designs of his ShinyDOLL dolls. Kiki is his latest amazing creation - what next I wonder?

I haven't seen much of Kiki since the exhibition - she's taken to sitting in Diane's room. I've finally converted her to bjds (but at what cost??) ;)

Here she is, but she's slow to load so she's under the cut.

So, who maxes out their credit card on dolls? Well, it wasn't quite like that because there was a heap of one-off stuff on the card before the doll purchase, but it was the little resin one who pushed it over the edge.

Scary.

So I hereby announce: No More Dolls!
(don't worry - I have more than plenty!)


Aaand just wait until I have a lovely sunny day to snap a pic or three of my winsome new arrival. :)

I had a great time Saturday at the meet at RMIT. Thanks to everyone there who made it that way!! The place we were supposed to meet was locked, but it only took a short wander round to find everyone. Unfortunately there was some filming happening there so we had to move. After an abortive attempt to locate another courtyard (I take partial responsibility, but it was Too Sunny!) we ended up in the cafeteria.

I hope we didn't lose anyone entirely. bicceh  found us eventually when she finished work. Yay Biccy!

I brought my Lishe ("Lishie" for the day) and Rini my Banji. I did not bring a camera. Next time....

There were many wonderful dolls there - more than I can list. midspace  had brought his Rainy dolls and someone had brought a Catsy! (maybe taru_sama  ?) I even got to see a DOT Shall in person and am tempted to buy one for my other half for Christmas. It's the only doll he really covets. But SD-sized dolls are so heavy! I also saw more Bambicrony dolls and think I could buy ALL the headmolds. Oh, putting aside the cost and space considerations, that is! ^^;

"Lishie" got roped into a funny photostory with two DOC Yens brimming with attitude - you can see it here thanks to sefieslj 

The majorly funny thing that happened is that somehow Daniel, God of Posing, got inundated with an entire harem of girl dolls. Someone did a headcount and got 20 girl dolls. Next time I'll have to bring all boys, neh? Here is the progression, thanks to Hooli.


Whenever you go somewhere there seems to be a high percentage chance you'll run into someone you know from a completely different area of your life. Well, it happened to me this time. A family friend was walking past and stopped briefly to chat.

"And you're here with..." he said, surveying the scene.

"Doll people," said I, glibly, realizing that this didn't begin to explain what he was seeing.

"Doll people," he repeated, nonplussed. "Well, give my best to your family..."

I'm sure I'll be hearing more from him in the near future.

Bliss from DoA has sent me some glass eyes for my U-noa to try with the eye mechanism. Here's the lowdown.

The eyes
Top is the original acrylic eye. Bottom is the new eye, a blown glass "sleep" eye. Note its thinner "stem" and larger hole.


The mech
Inside my U-noa's head, you can see the eyes in place within the eye mech. I use eye putty to hold those little metal rods snuggly in place. Makes a bit of difference when you pull the faceplate on and off - bits don't fall out all over the place.


The eyes within the eye mech
You can see the eyes sit pretty much the same. Which is good. Left is the new eye.


Attaching the lever
I've put on the part that allows the eyes to actually move from left to right when the head is closed. See the problem? The acrylic eye's stem is just the right thickness for the groove in the lever part. The new glass eye's stem is narrower, so it'll rattle around a bit. The larger hole through the eye might also allow extra (unwanted) movement.


No problem - I can use eye putty to fill the groove and the thinner stem of the glass eye will stick in it, preventing unnecessary movement. (No pic of this - the sun went down AND my camera battery died.)

Now view the eyes in situ when the faceplate is put back on.
I'm finding the new eye sits just a fraction higher that I would ideally like, but I'll fiddle with my eye-putty filler in the lever groove and see if its position can be adjusted a little. All in all, not too bad. I'm not sure if these eyes are standard glass-blown sleep eyes (12mm) or if Bliss ordered something specific. But it's looking promising!

Here's Tomoyo with her odd eyes. Just so she can regain the dignity she lost having her head off and opened up. The glass eye is on her right.

My modded Lishe head had her Serendipity body arrive a little while ago, but it needed some adjustments as the elastic used was so thick that the knot would not go down the neck hole, which I needed it to do if I was going to attach the Luts/CP neck mechanism, snagged from a nice girl via DoA. The neck donut Luts sends you to adapt your Luts/CP head to another body is, shall we say, entirely inadequate.

I ordered some thinner elastic from Dollmore but when it arrived it also was too thick. So I decided to restring with the knot in the widest body cavity, which turned out to be the thigh. Not easy to do! I used one of my spare Bambicrony head S-hooks as the one that came hooked through the neck mech was woefully to flimsy to hold two loops of such heavy-duty elastic, and the one that came with the body was super-huge. Just a little modification was needed so the larger curve of the S fit snuggly in the neck mech without hanging down too far and the smaller curve sat in the neck with a bit of room to spare so neck movement isn't too impaired.

I'm not particularly looking forward to taking her all apart when the warmer weather comes to sand/coat her, and then reassemble, but at least now I know it's possible, right?

I have finally got a bit of a better understanding of what my camera can do, and with a tripod and looong exposure, you can see how nice she came out, despite how pale and wan the sun is at the moment. She's wearing a Mio top and jeans that Tomoyo never quite got to liking, and socks and hairclip by Her Delicate Strength. The wig is the sister to Tomoyo's from Reve en Poupée, in a different style but same copper/dark copper blend.

Okay, it better be true.