While you might be worried about how much Halloween candy you need to buy, my head is 100% in Christmas. I'm already busy making sure that babies who need to be on Santa's Sleigh Christmas Eve will get there on time. Well, I guess I'm not the only one managing my Holiday deadlines...
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When you've got a lot of work to do, sometimes you've just got to focus.
Following my own rooting advice, I'm trying to see how many rooting sessions I can cram into a day before I start to feel it. So far so good. I'm also taking a break from trimming and styling the hair - which makes for much wackier progress photos. Oh, well, it'll be worth it! I've come to the realization that this hair is mesmerizing. As usual, when I finished rooting for the day, I trimmed it up and used a soft brush to style it for the progress photos. Next thing I know, several minutes had passed and I was still brushing! The hair is just so soft and gorgeous - it felt like I was under a spell! I've decided. I'm going to make another Lelou next year and that one will be a keeper! Today was Inventory Day. Even though I don't have updates on any of my dolls, I can still give you an update on what I'm working on. When you're juggling multiple custom orders, its critical to keep track of inventory. That way you avoid buying things you don't need, scrambling to acquire the things you forgot, or accidentally putting the wrong eyes in the wrong doll. To help me keep track of my inventory at CustomDollBaby.com, I developed a Microsoft Access database, CDB-CRM3 (Custom Doll Baby Customer Relationship Management, version 3) with the following functionality:
This video is a quick demo of how I track and manage my inventory at Custom Doll Baby.com. I'm happy to answer questions! Just Leave a Reply! It's important to take your time when rooting the hairline. Especially in the temple area - I like to make sure that the hair is soft, and fine and pointing in the right direction. The Yearling mohair I'm using on Britney has natural blonde highlights in it. So it was great for me to be able to fish those out and root them in the temple area. Using a lighter color or rooting hairs at a lower density are two tricks I like to use to make the hair on the face look as baby-fine as possible.
One of the fun things about starting on top of the head is that you can brush the hair down over the bald areas to make for better progress photos. Baby's first curl has graduated to baby's first comb-over. I think I'm going to spend some time on the complex temple area before finishing my journey down and around. If you hadn't noticed, I've been rooting Britney's hair following my hair pattern from her hairline to her crown. Oh, it's looking so lovely so far! And its really soft! Yearling mohair is super fine. The hair diameter is much smaller than human hair. This is going to look and feel great when I'm done! Every good process starts with a plan. So that my hair follows a natural hair growth pattern, I like to paint my growth pattern before I start rooting. I don't typically cure this painting. Its just a reference that washes off when I'm done. (Artist Note: if you warm your head, not all of the paint will wash off, so don't leave any lines you'll regret later! Keep them as hair-looking as possible.) I found a really cool picture of a baby on the internet that I'm using as a reference for Britany's hair pattern. Britany is a Masterpiece Collection doll, after all. She's been an incredible opportunity for me to push the boundaries of my painting technique and I'm very pleased with the results. Why not also go all out on the rooting? So excited! Time to lay down some hairs! At this point in the process, I typically do a small photo shoot that I call the Interim Review. This allows me to inspect the painting before I start rooting.
But Britney, in spite of being premature, is running late on her delivery date. So in the interest of time, we did a brief cuddle inspection in the sunlight from my window. All but her head has been weighted and assembled. Everything about her is perfect. I just love the way she looks up at me. Its heart-melting. I hereby declare this little one ready for rooting! If you're in love too, order your beautiful newborn today! We're in the painting home stretch! All that lovable little face needed this weekend was wet, rosy lips and a lifelike tongue. I also painted her nail tips and half-moons (called lunulas.) And topped off all that wonderful painting with a matte varnish layer. The matte varnish helps protect her from stains and damage while adding very light texture to the skin. I am falling in love with this face! Once I applied the first few blushing layers and tried on the eyes, Britany's sweet personality really showed up. Something about her gives you that feeling you get when a newborn baby looks at you for the first time. Its wonderful! Anyway, blushing. I work my blushing in several layers and in different degrees of pigmentation. I like to mix reds, blues and brown until I have something that looks very much like blood on my palette. Then I'll apply that full-concentration to areas like the tips of the fingers and toes, elbows, knees, heels, cheeks, etc... I can actually pounce on a few layers of color before I have to cure it. Then I'll dilute my blood-mixture and pattern over her whole body to warm her complexion. And I'll keep alternating between the concentrated and diluted colors until everything is just right. What a sweetie! Creasing is one step in reborning that will make you crazy if you're not careful. The goal of creasing is to create the illusion of depth by appropriately darkening the creases. The deeper the crease the darker the paint. Some are so shallow, like the little wrinkles on the feet, that they don't need painting at all. Its a teeny tiny detail that takes a lot of time. I needed 3 full days to properly crease all the tiny details in this LeLou kit. The key to not going nuts?
Because Brittany is such a frail little preemie, I'm enjoying using the mottling, veining and shading to really give her that "freshly born" look. I also made a special flesh 08 blend to continue to counteract the orange in the vinyl. This was the first complexion layer. You can see in the photo below that this really helped brighten her complexion. The hand on the left does not have this complexion layer yet. Once that flesh tone layer was cured, I started adding blue-purple shading to the hands, feet and face. After it is carefully blended, this layer really brings depth to the complexion of the doll.
As I'm doing with Zoey, I'll keep adding flesh layers and shading layers until the skin looks just right. Once the mottling was perfected and cured, I went back with the same color as the first mottling layer ("Vein Blue") and starting painting subtle veins on the head, hands and feet. Some artists think the mottling gives enough of the appearance of veins, but I love being able to see an actual vein pattern on the doll. I'm excited to begin a new custom doll baby - Lelou, by Evelina Wosnjuk! Britney is a super-precious preemie baby measuring 19 inches long. This is my first Evelina Wosnjuk kit, and I'm falling in love! Everything about her is perfectly newborn - from her barely open eyes to every wrinkle on her hands and feet. To get started, I had to do several neutralizing layers of Phthalo Blue to tone down the orange colored vinyl. Once I had a nice neutral color, I added my Flesh 08 base coat layer. Now, I've finally got the perfect blank canvas ready for reborning! |
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Reborn Doll ArtistHi! My name is Kim. I am a reborn artist based in NC. I have been creating dolls since I was a child. I discovered the art of life-like baby dolls in 2011 and have been reborning ever since. Archives
December 2016
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