Pam's Dollhouse - a doll customisation journey

As I'm making a mini Monkey I thought I'd better make a mini me as well. I chose Operetta as the base doll for myself as her face shape is most like mine. I haven't started working on the doll yet - for a change I decided to make her wardrobe first. I love autumnal colours and I think autumn is my favourite season, so I chose a colour palette of browns, oranges, reds and greens for her outfit. I found some gorgeous striped fabric in a bag of scraps I got for £1 from my local fabric shop. The pieces are very small, but more than enough for making doll clothes. The fabric was perfect for making an autumn coat from a pattern by Requiem Arts Design. I added green buttons to the front and the closure is velcro, but I may change that later if I decide she'll wear her coat open. The fringe at the bottom was a happy accident ! The fabric started to fray when I cut it and I thought it looked pretty good so I frayed it evenly all around. Because of the fraying I used fabri...

I told Monkey in a moment of over-confidence I would make her a doll that looked just like her. She has a lovely tan - think like your typical Californian blonde - so I'm using Howleen Wolf as the base for this doll. I re-rooted her hair with blonde nylon. It was my first time using nylon hair and I went far too thick to start with, so I had to pull out a considerable number of plugs to thin them out before I was finished. I patched over where I'd cut off her ears with fabric, then managed to make a large hole in one piece when I stabbed in a plug too enthusiastically. Once I'd finally got the thickness right I used far too much glue inside the head and it took a good week to dry. *sigh* Lessons learned, I'm glad that's all done! Once that faff was all over I curled her hair using pipe cleaners and foil, and dipped in hot ad cold water to set the curls. I cut her hair once the curls were in and styled it a bit more. Monkey has quite short curly hair and that...

I'm so stoked right now, because Dollightful has released her tropical collaboration video! There's something really exciting about seeing something I made in a video by my favourite doll artist (alongside about 4,000 other beautiful dolls!). If you'd like the watch the whole video, it's here:

This week I've been working on drawing out some patterns for clothes and testing them out. My favourite so far is this skirt. I used a factory outfit to get the basic dimensions, then worked out how long I wanted the skirt and how high I wanted the waistband to be. The blue skirt, modelled by Catrine, was the basic skirt design I came up with, with a silver ribbon added at the bottom and a bow at the back to hide the velcro stitching. For Draculaura's skirt (...I think it came undone when I was taking pictures... oops!) I shortened the pattern and added ruffles to the bottom and a ribbon at the top and on the ruffles. I pulled threads out of the tweed-type fabric to give it and frayed edge and I used the thread to sew the beige ruffle and the bow on, so that it all matches.   I'm going to try a few more styles with this basic pattern - making it full length, having a high-low hem, a mini skirt and a petticoat - and then will see it I can modify it again to make a ...

The first Monster High dolls I bought for customisation were a set of two from eBay - Clawdeen Wolf and Venus McFlytrap. As I mentioned in another post, I don't have any pastels or airbrushing kit, and I don't really want to invest in them at the moment. So what was I to make of a green doll like Venus? I had two ideas - something to do with plants or something to do with the sea. I did a few sketches and decided to go along a plant-based theme and make her into a dryad. Her hair was in good condition but I wasn't sure I wanted that colour, so I cut it off and kept it for a future project. After the usual prep (sanding down any lines in the plastic, clean face with acetone, take out hair roots, etc) I repainted her scalp in a dark brown and also painted the ends of her arms and legs in brown acrylic paint. I had the idea that she would have the same colouring as a tree, so I used a brush to get lines in the paint like bark. I fully expect the paint to chip off a littl...