A little break from doll customization

I can finally share with you this custom journal I've been working on. It's based on River Song's journal. I made it for my boyfriend who is a huge Doctor Who fan and gave it to him for X-mas. I found a bunch of tutorials online on how to make it. By the way I am also a huge Doctor Who fan.

Progress shots

Finished Journal

Woot! Progress

Not a happy camper...

...and she has reason to not be happy, she's been crying so much her eyes and nose are red, lol! Just finished airbrushing this one, layer one complete. Now I need to add all her details and shading. At the moment she looks like she just walked into a MAC store and tried on the reddest lipstick she could find, hee hee. The lips will be toned down once I start adding the black shading :)


So happy with the way this one is turning out, I changed up the skull design a bit, makes her look fancy :)

P.S. sooooooooooooooo happy to be customizing again, I missed it!

Victoria's Doll

When moving day came, little Victoria forgot her doll in the attic. They had been playing tea time when Victoria's mother called her. In the hustle and bustle of packing, the poor doll had been misplaced and abandoned. The dusty old attic was full of old boxes and many spiders.
Terrified of spiders, the doll tried ever so hard to avoid them, but she eventually ran out of nooks to hide in.

Alone for so long that she lost all memory of her name, she became tired of hiding and decided to talk to the spiders.  To her surprise, she found out the  spiders were actually kind little creatures, who felt sorrow for all those years she sat in the dark corners of the attic, crying to herself. The doll and the spiders became friends. The spiders even made her a dress from their webs to replace the tattered clothes that had disintegrated over the years. Things were finally looking brighter for the little doll. With her new friends by her side, she dared to dream again. One day, some one would find her in the attic and take her home with them.


She will be up for auction later tonight, stay tuned and thanks for reading :)

Thursday night

Masking underway. This part takes so long!!! I added toothpicks so I can hold and rotate the hands while I spray them.

Update

Just letting everyone know that in the coming week I'll be adding a bunch of framed prints to my etsy shop. I am finally getting around to making giclee prints of my Calavera customs and I am super excited about some oval frames I got for them. Also I currently have an original framed art piece in my shop featuring our favorite muse, Blythe.

https://www.etsy.com/listing/116953658/original-framed-drawing-alternative

Today's work

Happy to be at it again

On track

Back in my studio. I finally cleaned out all the dust from spraying msc and setup my air purifier and spraying booth, yay! Currently customizing a box for my next auction doll :)

Behind the scenes

Recent past photo of my doll work vs the digital sketch. I try to stay as close as possible to the original sketch, sometimes a few tweaks must be made.

Slowly starting doll work again

Mostly concept stuff. Currently inspired by Marchesa. Using metallic water color paints to color in a sketch I did. Helps me figure out what the gold will look like on the finished doll. I'm super excited about this one.

What's been going on...

Hello everyone,

I am finally getting around to posting an update, it's been a while but I had so many stressful things happen in the last month it was hard for me to focus. As some of you already know I started having a bad cough due to the MSC sealer I use on my dolls. Even with the cough I was still trying to complete my commission list but finally I decided to stop. It's been a few weeks now since I last sprayed a doll (Victoria's Doll), and my cough is now almost gone. To avoid my cough getting worse I decided to take November off, mostly to let my lungs recover and also my dad's surgery last week (cancer). I still have two customs at home that I just got around to finishing up, one is going home today and the other is going up for auction.

The rest of November is looking like things are going to be much better. My dad is recovering from a successful surgery and I am starting to get my studio in order so that I am able to spray again. Also I have been inspired by Andreja's blog posts. She has been experimenting with different kinds of sealers that are less toxic than MSC and I definitely want to give them a try too.

I am getting back on track and I really can't wait to finish redesigning my studio so I can get back to working on dolls. I really appreciate everyone's support of my work.

Edit:

Just adding on a bit more info about my MSC woes for those of you who use the stuff and are concerned. When I first started having problems I thought it was because my mask was too big ( male size). I purchased a smaller mask made for women thinking it would be a better fit and keep the fumes from leaking into the mask. I tried it on, it fit perfectly, tested it out, there were no leaks. After a couple of weeks trying it out my cough was still bad and it would hurt to breath. I decided to do more research on the subject and I finally realized that one of the big problems was the poor air circulation in the room. I'm so stupid for ignoring the warning signs on the labels "only spray in a well ventilated area". There is nothing well ventilated about my room. So that huge cloud of MSC spray that would rise up into the air and spread all over the room was falling back down covering every single inch of my room in a white dust. I simply assumed that the spray evaporated once in the air but it doesn't. So all those long hours I spent in my studio with out a mask (because I wasn't spraying) I was inhaling all those MSC dust particles. Since I've learned this I have only been going into my studio to clean (with a mask on). It's a very slow process because I have to remove everything from the shelves and individually wipe down items to get the dust off. But I did notice that after a few weeks of staying out of my studio my cough improved and I can take deep breaths again without it bothering me. As I mentioned earlier I am now taking steps to properly ventilate my room to let the fumes and dust escape. So if you do any kind of spraying, whether it's outside or inside please wear a mask. And if you do spray indoors make sure the room is well ventilated. Don't ignore the warning labels on the aerosols sprays, I did and I had to pay for it!

The Haunting

I wish everyone an awesome Halloween night. Here's a little preview of Victoria's doll. This poor doll has been cooped up in an attic for so long that she is finally ready to venture out in to the world in hopes of finding a new family. She's a bit shy, her years in solitude, with only little spiders to talk to has left her a bit battered and broken. Her once glossy, doll like paint has faded away to reveal corpse like appearance. She hopes that this time of year she won't stand out too much from the crowd.

I hope you guys like her, she will be up for auction soon :)

Calaverita de Azucar

A finished commission for cybermelli.

Slowly making progress

I'll admit, I am so behind right now, seriously need to catch up.

A little restoration

Erasing some scuff marks and tiny stains.

New work

Inspired by Dia de Los Muertos.

"Luz" acrylic on wood panel for a group show at Rothick Art

Inspired by my custom doll design.

Currently working on...

A commission doll and an auction doll.

I just started carving both.

September Dolls

I finished two dolls in September. Little Dead Thing #18 & 19. I am super happy with the way they turned out. Both are commission dolls.

You can see more photos of the two on my Flickr.

Little Dead Thing #18.

Little Dead Thing #19.

Finishing up the line work

One line at a time

Hoping...

To get these done soon <3

The Little Ghost of Music

 Eeeps! It's been a while since I updated. I've been so crazy busy these past two weeks and on top of that I got sick. I'm feeling better though, so it's back to work. Here's a doll I completed a week ago for Tu Sabes Blythe. She is inspired by Le Fantôme de l'Opéra.

Current project

I'm almost done with this custom, she's going to be very different from my previous dolls. I've been doing most of the work in the past week. Airbrushing and painting on the small details :)

The Wild Flower

I am so happy to announce that "The Wild Flower" is up for auction on ebay. She is my 16th Calavera custom and my most intricate one to date. When I first designed her makeup, I wasn't sure if what I had in mind would be achievable, but luckily her make up turned out just as I had invisioned it. I hope you guys love her final result as much as I do. You can find her auction here:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=221109839069