Prior to Pre-punched Holes came ... Clip ons!

As the title suggests lots and lots of experiments seem to have been going on over at MakieLabs, one such experiment, reminiscent of Mattel's Diva Stars was "Clip on Clothes for Makies"!
Here's the Forum Post:


‹MAKIE Blog

"She wore blue 3D printed ABS Plastic..."     14 Jan, 2013 12:45


chelseac (Staff - 189 Posts)

"Sulka and James have been playing around with the Makerbot again, and out came this bright blue click-on dress! Well, the front of it at least."



"It’s customized with (slightly fingerprinty) white tack. Looks pretty cute, huh? Can’t you almost visualize it on a Blythe thanks to my sweet photo-framing skills? "




Well this lead to a flurry of replies from Forum Users & Makie parents, and in particular this one from Poklfil started the MakieLabs Staff off on some more experiments, but first, here's what Poklfil had to say:

  poklfil  (Here since 17th May '12  - 1084 Posts) 14 Jan, 2013 16:23

That's neat! The shade is really pretty and I like Polka dots Wonder if you could print a hard cap clip on wig? Like This….


"The doll is Bambola and you can clip plastic wigs onto her head"


Just in case you haven't seen this doll before, she is a 29cm BJD made from French Resin which was sold as an exclusive through Haute Doll - her wigs are also made of resin; for more information on these dolls go to: http://www.bambola-world.com/

In case you're not sure - I'm in love with that Bambola Doll! ... and I guess she worked her magic on the Makie Staff as Chelseac  replied with this:
   

chelseac  (Staff  - 189 Posts)  14 Jan, 2013 16:41

"Interesting, interesting…I like that doll, and it is convenient to have perma-styled hair, as well. *strokes chin*

Corsets aren't a bad idea, that does seem like something we could do with clip-on bits like this. Belts too, to belt in otherwise oversized clothes? Hmm…"

And so 2 days later, Chelseac posted this ...


  

chelseac  (Staff - 189 Posts)  16 Jan, 2013 14:17

"More Makerbot experiments!

Poklfil asked about click-on hair in the plastic dress thread, and as it happened, James had already made a couple of wig caps:"



"They’re obviously not on a doll (and not to Makie scale … and a bit smudgy), but what do you reckon? We like the idea. Fuss free! We want them for humans."


They definitely have potential but I'm not sure I'd be up for the "Marge Simpson" version and some of the other suggestions Forum Users came up with, having said that though I'd be quite content with a "Sora" (Kingdom hearts ) or a "Goku" ( Dragon Ball Z ) one!

I also love the 1940's style that the above Bambola Doll is wearing, personally I think more "Traditional" styles are far more pretty, but I do like the idea of some Manga / anime / Game related ones for when my dolls want to "Cosplay"!

For more info, check them out on: http://makie.me/

Makie News ...

A couple of days back I mentioned after receiving the Makie News-Mail re: New Colour choices, that I had a couple of other things to report on the Makie front, well here's a post I spotted from Jen (Makie Staff ) in the Forum regarding pre-punched scalps for re-rooters - this option follows a post from another Makie Forum user / Makie Owner called Poklfil, who had drilled holes into one of her Makie's heads and rooted her with  yarn.

Pokifil's Experiment and following Tutorial caused a big stir in the MakieLabs, who I guess had never thought of this as being an option?

 Anyhoo, they asked a few questions, got a few answers and came up with a couple of Design Prototypes, which would give Makie Owners a few more choices in terms of hairstyles and customising.

Jen announced the prototypes 29th January in the Forum ( http://makie.me/ )via the following posts:



 jen (Staff -120 Posts)

" Hi folks! Inspired by poklfil's rooted hair thread, James has modeled a couple of scalps with holes for your review and critique. Here's the first one, with 2mm holes for yarn/mohair dreads:





Not prototyped on the printer yet, but we're heading that way. How's it looking? Anything to tweak?"


 jen (Staff - 120 Posts)

"And here's the second one, with 1mm holes intended for rooting with finer hair. A bit further to go on this one, we reckon. James is adding a dense row of holes to the perimeter of the scalp – anything else?"




29 Jan, 2013 12:43

 jen (Staff - 120 Posts)

"Extra row added:"



 jen  (Staff - 120 Posts)

"On a related note, I've just chucked up a blog post about another scalp option: part-punched holes.(That's probably not quite the right term, but it's so new we don't know what to call it yet. )"



And Following on from these posts, Jen posted the "Part Punched" version on a different thread in the Forum, and here's the proposed design...


 jen (Staff - 120 Posts)

"James has been a modding and prototyping machine lately! Today, he pinged over a couple of scalp renders with holes, for Makie-makers who'd like to try rooting hair.

He's also mocked up a version that I like a lot. It's got a hole pattern ‘part-punched’ on the underside, with a thin layer of plastic over the top."



"Looks like a plain, smooth scalp until you want to customise it – then you poke through each individual hole and root with your fibre of choice to create the style you want. Cute ‘shaved’ flip! Mohican! Soooo many options…

Early days for this, and it hasn't been prototyped yet, but maybe this scalp… has legs?"


 jen (Staff - 120 Posts) yesterday, 12:05

"Quick update on this: James is sending the 2mm scalp prototypes to print today, and we'll be trying them out on a Makie soon. Watch this space.

Happy Monday!"

So there you have it, rather than just having a wig which is either glued onto your Makie's scalp (I'm informed some come with this, although I haven't seen this as an option in the "Create a Makie" part of the site, or a separate wig, which some Makie Parent's find slips a bit), Makie Parent's now have the option of buying a pre-drilled scalp (dependant on which type of "hair" they want for their Makie) and rooting his / hair hair to suit your own / your Makie's style!

More Makie news to follow...

The latest addition to my Hujoo family...

My adorable new girl "Maromisa" arrived yesterday morning and as I've been unable to keep myself from plotting how I was going to customise her when she arrived, I couldn't stop myself from starting straight away.

She's a Chocolate Skinned Version of Ciel's "Miri" (see previous posts) - I almost bought one a few years back but as "Mimiwoo" only had the 24 cm girls in either white or apricot skin and I'd noticed she also had boy versions - "Wings" in chocolate skin, I opted to buy a boy version instead, then wait for the chocolate girl to become available if ever.. When they did, I spotted  Mimiwoo was selling baby versions, and so I ended up buying an adorable 12 cm Chocolate Skinned Suve  instead; and just when I decided I'd definitely buy her this time (last month) I discovered  Junkyspot were selling an exclusive Light Grey "Freya" and I just couldn't resist her!

Still never mind, she's here now and she's all mine at last... Here's how she looked while awaiting for her "face up"...

And here's how she looked after she'd been given some eyelashes, a base coat on her lips, very light blush to her cheeks and her new eyes. I'll be adding some more blush to her cheeks and finishing off her lips soon, but so far I'm very happy with how she's coming along. I think the Amber Eyes really stand out against her gorgeous skin tone.

I may have to try and make her a wig soon though, as the one I bought ready for her is sadly too big, as are the other wigs I have waiting for new owners, so right now she's a "Kojak" - Hujoo! I don't mind though, because I think she is stunning with or without hair!

I'm really looking forward to having "Maromisa" finished and making some cute little outfits for her, so she'll be able to met her "brother" Akimoto,  little sister "Ae Sook Aiko", cat cousin "Freya" and having some family photos taken!

Email News from the MakieLabs team!!

Well well, looks like the MakieLab Team have finally come up with the goods and found a way to  add a choice of colours which they've now added alongside the original white version (now renamed "Ice Frosting" ) which you can chose to have added as a "blush" on your doll.

The three new colours are "Strawberry Milk" - a pale pink / flesh tone, "Cocoa Bean" - self explanatory! and  "Pale Pistachio" - a well I'm too not sure how to describe it, MakieLabs call it "a Supernatural Shade" but in terms of actually naming the colour, well in some pictures it looks light grey, but in others a kind of yellowish green with a hint of grey, so yeah I guess "Supernatural" is probably the best word for it!

Here's the preview I had earlier when I opened up the email:

makie.me Email - 30th January 2013

The link in the email took me to this page on the MakieLabs Website, with these pictures, (I've had to take a few screenshots as I couldn't fit it all in), which give a much better idea of the likely shades on offer at this present time - oddly the "Pale Pistachio" looks like a beige or tan colour in these photos....

http://makie.me/campaign/colours/

http://makie.me/campaign/colours/

http://makie.me/campaign/colours/
Left to right: "Strawberry Milk", "Cocoa Bean" and "Pale Pistachio".

 Even odder "Pale Pistachio" looks more like the light Tan shade I achieved with Rit Dye in the above photos (see  my last Makie Post for reference), yet in the ones I found in the "Press Pack" have a more greenish hue, odd because its the same doll photographed throughout!

As you can see the back plate of  the "Cocoa Bean" variation is much darker than the "skin tone" of the rest of the body - this is due to the fact these dolls are not made in one solid piece as several of the body parts are removable for customisation and so these body parts are of  a different thickness to the non-removable parts, which are a lot thicker.

Being thicker the non removable parts are a lot less porous to the removable ones and so paint or dye will not be absorbed at the same rate or overall intensity (of finished product) than it is on removable parts such as the "back plates".

Under the section entitled "Hand Dyed?" (see picture below) they explain these differences with the following statements: "Simple nylon fabric dyes work to create beautiful new shades of Makie. On some of the darker shades the grain of the print is more pronounced, less so with the light shades." 

They go on to add: "There are variations in colour: darker in places, lighter in places. Like hand-finished clothing, each finish is unique to your one-of-a-kind Makie."

http://makie.me/campaign/colours/

On the MakieLabs blog they say: "in a nutshell, you can now order Makies in three new shades in addition to classic white (which we’ve named Ice Frosting - yum!). We dip-dye Makies during the production process to create these colours – it’s a step between printing and finishing, which means that at the moment we can only blush new orders. However, we’ll be releasing the dye recipes shortly for folks who want to blush their Makies at home."

The following pictures I found in the "Press Pack" and have collaged them to make it easier to identify and choose between them in these close up pictures.

Top left to right: "Strawberry Milk, "Pale Pistachio".
Bottom left to right: "Ice Frosting" & "Cocoa  Bean".

The "Introduction post" gives some interesting details regarding the colour coverage and overall effect, which I'll quote for you here in case you didn't read it on the photos above or were just looking at the pictures...

One of the things I'm glad they addressed is the way the skin looks rough (for want of a better word) in the pictures of "Cocoa Bean", while in the lighter shaded dolls they have the appearance of having smooth skin, anyhoo, enough talking, here;s how they describe the doll's new skin tones:

Strawberry Milk - "Strawberry Milk is the sweetest, most delicious shade of all. It is chilled, and delicious. Just a blush of something special."

Pale Pistachio - "A big favourite at Makielab HQ, and a surprisingly flattering and subtle shade of Zombie. Or Elf.".

Ice Frosting - "Our first, porcelain-white Makie" -  "Ice Frosting will forever be an option, for those of you wanting the cooler, more ethereal Makie. Spookily smooth."

Cocoa Bean - "Like chocolate mixed with fresh cream and stirred with a warm wooden spoon. Cocoa Bean brings out the unique grain of your doll. Interesting, with woody undertones."

To add one of these new skin tones to your Makie Doll, you have to choose the colour option during the design process, here's my latest Makie "Pengelli" in the design stages, which each of the available "skin tones" so you can get an idea of how your doll would look depending on the colour chosen...  

Pengelli  with "Ice Frosting skin tone"

Pengelli with "Strawberry Milk skin tone"

Pengelli with "Pale Pistachio skin tone" - very "Ghoulia yelps"

Pengelli with "Cocoa Bean skin tone"

Once you've decided on your Makie's skin tone, sex and everything else, just give him or her a name,  optional character traits and then click the "Save Button" and you're Makie is now ready for you to either buy as a doll, use as an Avatar or keep and tweak until you've got him or her exactly as you want them to be.

It seems this is the week of announcements over at MakieLabs - lots of cool and exciting things have been happening, so I now have a couple more Makie related things to share with you, which I'll be posting over the next few days...

In the meantime, you can click this link: (Making Makies) and have a go at making your own Makie.

Enjoy,

My First Re-Root - a.k.a - "Brain Drain" - circa 2001 - 2002

Just thought I'd show you guys how I taught myself to "re-root" although at the time I didn't even know it was called that, or that people even did this to dolls - I just had an idea and thought I'd go with it and see if it was possible, and wow it was and it worked out so much better than I hoped it would!

Brain Drain started life (her Art-Life) in a box of dolls inside my local Air Ambulance Charity Shop, I needed some "victims" for some ideas I had and when I walked into that shop and saw a huge box of dolls (all kinds of dolls) I just had to buy them, but not before I asked "How much for the lot?"

It was definitely £5 well spend as I now had loads of "victims" to play with and inspire me... and inspire me they did!

As I was looking them over, I started wondering what a doll would look like with wire instead of hair, this may seem like one hell of a weird leap, but I had recently acquired a car full of computers and monitors that my college were throwing out after upgrading the computer rooms... I had to sign a waiver just in case I was planning to sell them and really had to go some to talk the incredulous looks off of the Technician's faces but as soon as I saw they were stripping that room and loading all the computers into a skip, I began to have ideas of what I could make out of them, and then I saw that box of dolls I just knew what I had to do and so the idea grew and grew until it got so all consuming I had no choice but to give my idea a try, and so I did, and Brain Drain was born!

She originally had a full head of blonde hair, but that had to go, so I grabbed my trusty "Stanley" and my scalpel, ripped her head off and set to work removing all the hair from inside her head.

It took hours to get every single piece out and I ended up cutting my fingers to ribbons in the process, but it was nothing on what came next!

I gutted 5 or so monitors and computer towers and keyboards and a stack of mice ( if that's the right word?) later that day, placing the wires in one box, the circuitry in another and any little bits, screws and other interesting looking other gubbins in another, and then it was time to set to work on the doll again...

After gathering as many different coloured bits of wire as I could and untwisting them from bundles etc. I now had to work out exactly how to get it in side her head, and not only that I had to work out a way to keep it in place once I had it where I wanted it.

As the her hair holes were certainly not large enough for even the thinnest wire I had to enlarge the holes or slice new ones into her head as I went along - more cut fingers!

I learnt that if i knotted each piece of wire after threading it through her head I could make it stay in place or a while at least, but of course due to the weight as I got closer to completion I realised I would need something that will hold the knots inside permanently, I found some Epoxy resin for sale in my local garage for repairing car bumpers, which seemed like the thing, but after trying this I discovered not only would it be expensive to finish her using it, but it just really wasn't practical, in the end I used a combination of I know not how much super glue and the epoxy resin  and what do you know, it's still in there all these years later... in fact as I discovered while styling it, that it is still in there fast!

She was then spray painted and mounted - using wires again - onto a wooden board, also spray painted. The corner pieces are circuitry from computer mouses mounted onto plyboard and then mounted again onto the wooden board on which the doll forms the central piece.
The board is itself mounted on baton and the metallic paint continues into this area also.

In her hand she holds a led bulb from inside a computer, she has a small circuitry chip inside her mouth and another complete with wires stuck to the side of her head, for some reason prior to my taking this photo earlier the ball joint in her right arm shifted so she no longer is lying prone with arms in "crucifixion" position as she has since I first raised this board on completion .. this wasn't intentional, her arms just fell into that pose, but to me it summed up all I wished to say and so for the last decade or so (until today) they have remained in that position... never mind though at present she looks as if she is reaching out with her right hand trying to communicate with the viewer - so this also works, and I can easily move her arm back once I finish this post and go back upstairs.

Over the years since making this art piece I have become more "internet savy" and discovered sometime in the early 2000's - instances where people had changed the hair of their dolls, using a method similar to my own - minus the wire that is!

I decided to give it a go myself, and over the last 8 years, have customised many dolls with new hair of various types and even wrote a "Lens" on Squidoo explaining the different types of hair that are available commercially and how to go about re-rooting a doll for anyone who requires this information.. of course it has been several years now since I wrote that "Lens" and as I am learning new things all the time, I should really get it together soon and update it with some of the new things I have learned and some more tricks and tips etc.

One last thing I just have to say, is that once you have re-rooted a doll's head using wires and a big knife any other kind of re-root is an absolute doddle!!

♡♡♡ Yay ... Alice is finally finished! ♡♡♡

Alice is a Series 1, Little Big Eyes Doll from 2001 who was sent to me in my "birthday goodies Box" by my Dolly Friend Donna a couple of years back (pic's are up in older posts), she had a broken leg, which I did a step by step post while fixing a few months back, if you'd like to see the before pic's, you can find them in my "Doll and Toy Restorations" section...

 After I fixed her leg back on, removed her eyebrows, then I sanded and matted her face, gave her new eyelid make up, eyelashes a new "face up" and home made eye chips.

Then I made her outfit (that look the longest time, as I wasn't able to spend time just doing that and it's all hand sewn...so all in all she's taken a couple of years... with the added bonus that I lost one of the sleeves I'd pre-made for her and had to make another, so it slowed me down... but I was determined to finish her last night and I did "Hurrah"!

 I also made a little heart patterned apron to go over the top of this outfit, which matched her "bunny hat" but after I'd finished the final sleeve and dressed her, I placed it on top and it looked way too much so, she's not going to be wearing it and now I have a "Blythe / Big Eyes" apron for someone else!

 I bought flat chips and cut out the eye decals to go inside each of them...

 Her dress is made in two parts - a short over dress with a long red trimmed skirt underneath - out of plain black poly cotton, decorated with lace trims.

 Under her dress she has black and red stripped tights and a pair of very cool black and red "punky style" boots with chains...

 Her "Bunny hat" is Loita style, made of black poly cotton on top and white, with red hearts pattern lining made of poly cotton, decorated with black lace and tied onto her head with thin black lace.

Her "Cameo brooch" was made from a tiny button and is set against her black lace collar.

Alice is the first "Big Eye (colour change type" Doll I've customised from start to finish... the reason I did so is because she came to me broken and I already have the same doll - boxed, so I felt she would be good practice for me and not such a hardship if I happened to mess up, as it was I didn't and I'm very happy with how she's turned out!

                           ********** More on Alice - 05 / 02 / 2013 ***********

Having just flicked through some photo's of Alice I took the day I received her and started work on her restoration - I'm even more pleased with the results as I can't help but find it so hard to believe that she is the same doll - even though I obviously know she is!

  She went from - Undressed for "Damage Assessment"

 To - Eyebrows and eye chips removed and body parts dismantled  for repairs...

 Next came - Reassembly (with newly attached working leg) - ready for  make up removal, new "home made" eye chips, new lashes, lip carving,  sanding, matting, "Face Up", sealing and a hand sewn outfit.

And finally, she became a Butterfly!