Custom Blythe Project #1 Cherry PART 1
My first project doll arrived a couple of days ago! She will be called Cherry and she’s a red/black shorter haired factory girl. She came with a really shiny face and the normal Takara body type. I had however promised her body to someone already beforehand and bought a jointed body to replace it with 10 different changeable hands for my girl at Sweetiiger on Ebay. The jointed body has not arrived yet, but I had to take my girl apart immediately to hand over the original body to my friend. I’m having some apprehensions now however whether I will like the jointed body at all. I’m liking the more sturdy and less mobile Takara one a lot for my Marnie and Fern, so I may yet have to hunt one down as a back-up for this new girl as well.
All the previous week, I had studied hard some pretty awesome Blythe customizing tutorials online. These two are my favourites for being really clear and easy to follow, with detailed explanations:
I managed to get my girl’s head into pieces and I prepared her for sanding. The trickiest part for me was to get the eye mechanism. I still haven’t managed to get the eyes out of the eye mech though… I’m a bit too timid yet with this and don’t dare to use as much force probably as I should. I just really don’t want to break my doll. Hehe!
Here she is all shiny and in pieces, poor thing!
I love how she looks with her eyes closed! I can’t wait to have her finished with the sleepy eye fix done. It’ll be so much fun to photograph a doll that can close her eyes. I will be changing at least some of Cherry’s eye chips. I have some on order from Argentina, but they haven’t arrived yet.
Oh well, the sanding itself with the 3M sanding sponges (superfine, ultrafine and microfine) was a breeze! I had thought it would be like a weeklong endeavour at least, but I had the head approximately sanded to a relative satisfaction in about an hour. Some parts, like the nostrils, between the lips and the ears were the most difficult to get matte. Emery paper will be needed there, but I’ll finish her up with those after I’ve done the lip/nose carving. This is how she and her headback look now after the first round of sanding:
I’ve tried to watch some carving tutorials on Youtube, but not all of the were particularly useful. They often start from half way, when the initial carving has already been done. I’d like to see how they start it off! I did find a couple of good ones though, like this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHpO7vHHFHQ . It’s still a spooky prospect starting to use a knife on my poor girl’s face! I intend to do all the carving by hand as in I’m not using a dremel. I’ve got almost all my tools ready now, but still waiting for my diamond file set to arrive. Here’s what I’ve got already: a box where I keep the little pieces that came out of my girl’s head, scissors and pliers, a carving knife set and a carving tool set:
I printed out a couple of sheets of paper with lip pictures on them for reference. I’m still undecided as to which shape of lips to go for, but while waiting for the rest of the tools, I can study them and maybe I’ll have a vision of it soon.
I also did a mock up sketch on Corel and tried different things that might work for the face-up. I saved this one, but it’s very random and simplistic. I only wanted to see how different blushing placements would effect the shape of her face and such. She’s not going to look like this…. hopefully! hehe! But it was a useful exercise in that now I know what kind of things I like and what will work and which types of blushing and shading to avoid.
Now all can I do is wait for the diamond files and eye chips to to arrive, before I can continue with my girl. I already purchased some cord too for her sleepy eye pull string. I would love to give her cherry shaped charms for the pull rings, but I haven't found one like it yet anyway.
