#custom:perfuma

[lemontartca]

It's hard keeping your heart open. It makes you vulnerable, but it doesn't make you weak, and I have to believe it's worth it.

Actually squealed when I leaned back from placing the flowers in her hair 💗 I'm SO happy with her. The Alliance is coming together!

[lemontartca]

Somehow I went from working on Entrapta to nearly completed on Perfuma in like two weeks.

Okay, I know how. I prepped their bodies at the same time and had Perfuma jump the queue for body repaints because I wasn't sure how to handle Entrapta's hair and wanted to experiment with rerooting on Perfuma since her hairstyle is more low stakes, and after I had rerooted her it felt like I was so far in I might as well finish... Plus I really wanted to be sure it was fine to reuse/mix the paint and that was a good call because I was repainting scuffed patches even today. I refuse to seal with varnish because all the ones I have come out way too shiny for skin, and I don't want to try to buy more, so I just spray with my adhesion improver to seal, plus all the layers of MSC I need throughout the faceup. It's not ideal, but I'm not planning to do more repaints after this series and they're just for display with clothing covering most of their joints.

For some reason, the pencil I used on her brows would always look good when I was working on them, and then when I came back the next day would almost have faded away, so I ended up painting them in after these photos but you'll have to wait for the final photos (hopefully tomorrow!) to see them. Putting the eyebrows on this custom also made me realize why I often don't click with Frankie dolls in person even if I love their concept: it's the forehead. The forehead is just too big and square. And it makes sense for a frankenstein, don't get my wrong! I just personally don't click with it, and it's not great for a human custom. If I had realized before I was doing the faceup, I probably would have tried to bring the hairline down a little, but you also can't start plugging in the middle of the forehead slope... I don't know. At least I understand what throws me off about the doll now.

The dress was super quick to throw together, I actually tried to make it look "nicer" by having it be two separate pieces like Mermista's and not just fabric marker like Glimmer's, but the fabric I used wasn't stretchy and the gapping from it actually looked worse than the marker. And again: not buying more supplies right now (although this time it's because the fabric store is over an hour away), so marker it is! At least making the dress was super fast compared to my hours spent patterning everything else I've tried to make.

Starting with Mermista and especially switching over to this doll, I changed my philosophy with what I was trying to accomplish. Researching Mermista I realized the official dolls for these characters (mostly Mermista and Catra) are actually very inaccurate to what they look like in the show, but the spirit was right so it never really occurred to me. As a result, I'm trying to do the best I can on doll scale with limited supplies, but I'm not worrying about things like adding the little keyhole to her neckline or cutouts in her straps. Her shoes are also going to be very, very different, but they're in the spirit of the original design, so I think they work well. I'm modifying Lagonna's shoes from the snack shack playset (it was on a very good sale!) by just adding the flower on the cross-strap from the original design and then filling up the heel with flowers. The original design is in flats, but since I'm modifying existing shoes for all these dolls, all of them are getting a boost up and I think she needs to keep that height to not look out of place. Also I don't want to try to cut the bottom of the shoe in half. Spirit of the original, remember!

The only thing I have left to do is sew together her shawl (I kind of forgot it existed until yesterday) and to finish styling her hair (it's drying right now and then I need to add the flowers), and then I'll be done for now! At some point I would like to make her a tiara like the rest, but I have no idea how to make a physical item that looks anything like what she wears in the show considering none of the pieces are connected to anything, much less on that scale, so it's shelved for now. She had multiple looks not wearing it and I can't decide if it would help or make the forehead situation worse, so it's shelved for now but on my running list of "would be nice one day"s.

Hopefully I'll have time to sew that robe and finish her hair tomorrow, and then I know I'm going to instantly want to take photos, so if that's not tomorrow then it's certainly coming some time this week!

[lemontartca]

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 😬