Custom Doll: Elm

Hello everyone,
                             
I had been wanting to make custom dolls of some of my characters for a long time.  Previously, I had made a doll of Gletta Short a character from Eyes in the Night before this (I plan to post her customization in the future), so I felt I should make a doll of one of my other characters...

 I decided it was time to make Elm my dryad character, who appears often on my creative arts blog. She is a dryad with a magical singing voice, and her singing can cause magical things to happen. 

I started with this doll. I hadn't decided who I was going to turn her into at first. 

I was thinking perhaps Hazel from Heroes of Olympus, but then I decided she would be the perfect Elm. 

I removed her factory paint using nail polish remover 

(and rinsed her off under the sink afterwards). 

Then I began painting the area where her eyes had been white for the pupils 

and cutting her hair, as it was too short and not the right color. 

Then using a reference image I usually use when drawing her, I added more details to her face. 

I also  gave her yarn hair that matched her 

hair color, given that Elm's hair is black and the doll's hair had been brown. 

I then began by painting her right eye. 

I then finished the right eye. (But I don't have a photo of painting the pupil). 

I then made her chiton, I tried to make it look somewhat Greek like. 

Before                                                                                                                                                After

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Have you ever made a doll of your original character? 

-Quinley 

Custom Doll Project (part one): Giving Her New hair.

Hello everyone,
Today I am going to show you a custom doll project I have been working on. 
Here it is:

I found a doll that had very tangled hair and was not in the best condition to customize, and fix.
She is a Disney Princess Royal Shimmer Rapunzel Doll.  Her hair was very, very tangled...er matted. so I decided to fix it by giving her new hair.

To fix her hair I considered doing a full reroot which would mean taking off  her head. Though having had one bad experience trying to do that, I decided to cut off her hair instead and replace it with yarn (similar to my doll colonial hairstyle post).

So, I began cutting off her hair:

Considering how tangled and matted her hair was, it was a little hard to cut it off. 

At this point in the picture her hair reminds
me a little of Princess Diana's or Kes's hair (from Star Trek: Voyager).

Once all of her hair had been cut off except for a few pieces of hair, which would be useful for helping the yarn stay on. 

I got out my yarn of choice which was bright red and then started hot gluing it to my doll's head. I didn't have the brush I usually

use to brush out the yarn to make it look more like real hair. Instead, I unraveled the yarn and gave her a long and curly hairstyle.


Before 

After 









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Do you like the way she turned out? Have you ever customized a doll before? 

-Quinley
P.S. In Part Two I plan to repaint her face.