#custom:entrapta

[lemontartc]

The Alliance is planning their next move, but who's that in the back?

Her bangs still need to set, but her tests have finished analyzing and science waits for no one! (Nor do I for hair gel, I love her too much!)

[lemontartc]

I'm impatient so today is a double feature with WIP photos followed by "final" shots (more on that later)

Last time I said hopefully the rerooting would only take two more days. So it was four. And I needed a rest day in between each one. I am only rerooting again for Adora and then I swear never again (I might actually be making dolls for my OCs and maybe if it would benefit them I'll do it for them, but that's IT). I did end up buying a hand drill to replace my janky eraser pencil "grip" and bought jewelry wire cutters to make replacement needles easily, so I invested more in rerooting tools, but I can't imagine how much LONGER this would have taken without that and the wire cutters have their uses anyway. (Wait I actually realized I'm going to reroot just the plugs left by pulling out the purple stripe in Hissfit!Toralei's hair because I hate it and I saved the hair I cut off the Hissfit!Toralei I did customize, but that's like... six plugs it'll be fine I can do that)

The photos above though are mostly to show the body progress. Spraying the whole body whenever I did MSC really did nullify the shiny varnish! Also, I figured out my matte varnish was still coming out shiny because it's so humid (because we had a front come in that dropped the humidity finally) but there's nothing I can do about that, so MSC strategy it is. I have yet to have any issues with MSC regardless of temperature or humidity, which I hear a lot of people running into, so I don't know what's up with that. Maybe I don't know enough to know when it's not performing as well. I did a little body blushing with her but not enough for you to notice, just enough to keep her from being too flat.

I apparently didn't take any close-up photos of her shoes, which is a shame, but you'll see them in her "final" photos and just keep in mind those used to be Clawdeen's SS1 booties (upper right)! Bottom right is what became Mermista's shoes. Upper left I've already turned into Adora's boots (very little to do there lol). Ignore the bottom left, that was me trying to mold the bottom of Glimmer's feet before I gave up. Middle top is going to become Netossa's boots with a loooooot of modifications. They've been sitting with a wedge heel added in on the edge of my work table for ages, and they'll be waiting a while more as we wait on word for Nefera.

Alright, why is "final" photos always in quotes. Well, her bangs need to set, but I just couldn't wait so I went ahead and took her photos with them still tied down and put her in the case as the gel sets. I have one elastic running in the partline between her hair and bangs, which subtly somewhat improves the way her bangs lay compared to above, but they need more so I have an elastic down the center holding it in place as I wait for the gel to set (you'll see in the next post).

Finallyyyyyy, I may have taken a while between updates, but it's because I have a lot! With Entrapta done (minus drying time), it's time to move onto the next. Adora and Catra are on the top of my list right now. Catra is just going to be easy(ier. I do still have to sew her entire outfit and make two wigs), and Adora I really want to do (even if I still haven't figured out her jacket and am thiiiiiiis close to just giving her core Toralei's jacket). The only other girls left are Scorpia (scary, I don't know how I'm doing her claws and tail yet), Frosta (kinda boring and also her coat scares me), Spinnerella (I'm waiting for the next Catty doll to come out for her!), and Netossa (also waiting on a doll to release, Nefera), so Adora and Catra are the only ones left that are really high on my list. After I do them, I'll probably take a break from this series for a little bit to do some "regular" customs, which will be great because it means I can stop sewing lol.

Catra I've actually been working on here and there for ages. She's using Hissfits!Toralei's body and Fearbook!Catra's head because for some reason my Hissfit had a paler head than body and Fearbook had a paler body than head so I body swapped them (not that I've put back on either of their heads yet but you get it) probably months ago at this point. Toralei is such a shoe-in for Catra I could honestly just use her as-is, but I care more about accuracy and her ears are in the wrong place, so I cut them off and will be gluing them back on in the right spot on the sides of her head instead of the top. Every time I broke a needle while rerooting I saved it so I could pick the best two remnants to stab into the ears and the sides of the head to give it more than just glue bonding it. This is my first time patching ear holes, so hopefully it will hold up. I just used two scraps of cotton muslin and uwu glue (I've heard Moonlight Jewel say it that way enough times I legitimately can't remember how it's actually spelled), and then I also stuffed the top of her head with two cotton pads to give the patches a little support (hopefully). I think that should be thorough, especially since she'll be wearing wigs and I'm not trying to root through it.

Today for her I just sealed her ears and tail (I will paint the insides of her ears, I promise I didn't forget like I forget the catchlights every time!) and added extra stripes. Toralei only has stripes on her right forearm and left calf. Catra has them on both arms and her back, but I didn't add them to her back because... Well I could tell you it's because it's complicated with her tail, and the copyright info is molded there so painting stripes over it would look awful because the paint would seep around the molding, and that it's covered anyway in any of her outfits, but the truth is I just forgot she has them there. However, I'm not adding it in now because of those reasons, so shh it was a purposeful decision. Anyway, that means I added stripes to the one bare forearm and both upper arms. I decided to leave the stripes on her leg because I think the extra stripes are cute (and also they're covered in all her outfits). I did paint over the existing stripes a little just to make sure their color matched the new stripes, because I got them close but not exact. Next is to paint the pink on her ears, and then figure out if I should put them on first or do her wig first and just cut it out... One sounds more correct and the other sounds easier lol. We'll see

[lemontartc]

Entrapta update since it's been a while. That's because rerooting has been slow, slow going because it's just really painful. On the plus side, I got wire cutters, so it's easy for me to make new rerooting needles as I break them. I also finally brought a hand dril to hold them because before, well... I was just sticking the point-end of the needle in a twist-erase pencil and using that as a holder. It had a low of issues.

On the subject of the clothes though, I used the left pants pattern I had to roughly pattern out a one-seam style leg for the overalls. I don't have perfect colors for it but I like how it came out within my limitations. When trying to pattern her overalls I quickly realized they're either impossible (how they look down doesn't match how they look up) or she has multiple. The screenshots I was using of them "up" did seem to mostly be from the later part of the show so it could be it changed and I never noticed, but without being able to rewatch I'm not sure. I was going to create the "up" version but then it turned out way too low-waisted and when I added the waist band, I didn't like how it looked over her clothes, so down-styling it is. Photos on will have to wait for when she's done.

I also painted the shoes, but I haven't sealed them yet, so photos will be in the next update probably.

I've actually gotten a lot further in the reroot than this, but I wanted to show the picture on the left specifically (right I just think looks funny before I put in her irises, she looks like Sarah Screams) because you can see how I rooted the hair more densely around where the pigtail will be, and if you look verrrrry closely you can see a little white ball in the middle of the pigtail base on the right which is the pinhead I used to mark them out. I took some time lining up one pin for each pigtail before I started marking out the hair at all so I could account properly for it. For most of the "inner" scalp I'm only rooting every other plug to hopefully help her hair lay more flatly against her head once up since hers is really tight, though I did make it dense for about 2-3 rows around the edges to avoid visible gaps. All the bulk fill is done now and I've roughly divided her hair into two sections for her pigtails. I've just barely started on the hairline, but that and the part line are all I have left. I hope to be done with that in two days? But I'm still not 100% on how to make a bang part, so we'll see.

[lemontartc]

I got SO much done for Entrapta today but the fiber mixing is the only step I took before/after photos of (I do have more before photos, I'll just need to go back for the afters!). Cannot hype Shimmerlocks up enough, their nylon is kind of the only doll hair I ever want to touch again after so much greasy saran from Mattel (plus their customer service is unmatched). I had no idea what I was doing mixing the two colors together so it's not a 100% seamless blend and I ended up with a bunch of lost strands (see the pile on the right), but I think it came out gorgeous and much closer to the correct color than anything else I could find. I put this blend together by taking stock photos into Procreate and layering them at different opacities until I came out with these two colors at a 2:1 ratio and it worked out as well as I hoped!

I also patterned and completed her shirt, and patterned her overalls, painted her scalp, and got my MSC base ready. I did the body repaint yesterday but I want to post pics after the blushing is done. It went way better than Glimmer but not as well as Perfuma. It's really hard to cover up bright green without making really thick layers of paint, so my early layers were too color-corrected and I had to adjust. I also just so happened to rewatch an old Dollightful video where she used varnish seal and then sprayed on MSC to mattify it, which is brilliant to me because I haven't ben using varnish due to hating the shininess and it let paint scrape off Perfuma so easily. I think the MSC method is working! Needs another layer or two to really get there, but I'll do that when I do the pastels.

Normally I do the hair before the faceup because I don't want to pour water over the faceup when it's time to set it, but Entrapta has bangs and I feel like those are going to get in the way if I do them first. Not really sure what order I'm going to do them in, but right now my goal is to finish the overalls, paint the shoes while I agonize, and then do the hair & faceup. Right now I'm not planning to do her mask because frankly I have no idea how (I already spent so long trying to figure out how her overalls worked before realizing they didn't, it's impossible for them to look so different up and down) so that's all that needs to be done. Well that and adding oil stains to her shirt. I'm either going to use water with a tinge of black paint to it for that or a fabric marker

[lemontartc]

Been a while since I posted a customs update since it's been a lot of me getting various projects started and very little completion, so let's do a lighting round!

I've sanded the entire princess alliance in prep for body repainting (minus Spinerella and Netossa, since the dolls I've going to use for them haven't come out yet). Left leg shows a raw grinding pass to remove vines and right shows after it's buffed out and softened. Using a little Acetone and washing it off also helps. Since this photo I also removed the molded on underwear and sprayed her with three coats of plastic adhesion improver to get her ready for repainting. There's some "ghosts" of the vines left on her legs still but I'm kind of headcanoning them as scars? I think Entrapta would have some of them from her machining work and errant experiments. I probably should have rounded the tips of her ears more but ears are kind of my enemy so this is what I'm working with. Still trying to figure out her hair...

I'm using Frankie for Perfuma and Lagoona for Adora. I cut and sanded down the mechanical details on Frankie's leg and filled the gaps in, as well as Lagoona's fin gaps, with some La Doll clay. I've heard people's woes trying to repaint Lagoona's leg and considering I was starting with Fearidescant Frankie with a similar translucent material leg, I thought it was best to treat them both the same way. I sanded them and then painted them with white gesso with a drop of blue and pink added respectively to make it a little closer to the rest of the skintone. I did two coats for both. I'm nervous how it will work on Lagoona, but for Frankie/Perfuma...

It worked out great! Yes, one leg isn't as smooth because of the layering and the clay, but you would never know it used to be a robot leg. After I'm 100% done with Perfuma, my goal is to repaint Venus, and then Lagoona. I'm waiting because I'm planning to use the same paint mix for all of them and just add a bit to lighten/darken it for each, and I'll definitely need a little more of the exact right shade to do some touchups as I work on Perfuma first. Repainting bodies still isn't my favorite thing and I'm not going to be doing it again after this series is done, but it went way smoother after everything I learned on the last one. The color is a little darker than it needs to be I think, but I was trying to put enough red in to counteract Frankie's blue undertone and it came out a way better color from the jump than Glimmer's did. I did one or two layers with the makeup sponge and then touched up any uneven areas with a nail art brush after that and it worked really well.

I'm also doing my first ever rerooting! And as you can see a little paint has rubbed off her nose as well as her ear tips while doing so, hence the need to save the paint until I'm done. I haven't done any of the hairline because I was waiting for smaller needles to arrive, so I've just been doing the bulk of the plugs and trying to figure out where to add new parts (I think a main one on the left side for her Princess Prom look), and this is how far I gotten because all four of the needles I bought broke (my fault, I was way overfilling then at first and went through them really fast before I figured that out, but I'm glad I bought a starter set while I was figuring it out instead of making my own from the start).

I never thought rerooting would be an option for me because of how exhausting I've heard able-bodied people call it, but I didn't think I could do Adora's hair well without it, and I thought I might need it for Entrapta's pigtails as well, so I decided to make Perfuma my guinea pig and I'll be honest: like sanding, it's exhausting but I actually really love it. My back hates it, but it's methodical and great to do while watching a show. The hair I used here is the chiffon nylon from Shimmerlocks and massive shoutout to them because customer service was super fast and helpful when I needed them. The nylon feels great so, barring Adora who I bought Saran for for color-matching reasons, I'm definitely sticking with nylon from now on unless a yarn wig makes more sense (like for Catra who I want to be able to go between long and short hair, or Scorpia who has such short hair I think acrylic will be easiest).

I think I'll be able to finish Perfuma as a doll this week, then move over to Entrapta, and then Adora, and then... I have to make clothes for all of them, oh no 😬