Deflocking Tokyo Eitan and painting over his tag holes, adding more dolls to ebay (at saffyruth - i’ll ship anywhere except USA and Canada until I do some postal tests), I did have a bunch of “head only” customs but I’m gradually bodying everyone as they sell better to the french audience.
Doing some kludged gradient dye tests: the wine pink was first dyed with blue ink except the roots, it mostly washed out but left enough stain for a greyish lilac. Not sure there’s enough for a barbie reroot but there’s plenty more wine mermaid dye (it’s my own hair stuff - mix with peroxide and 30 minutes will give you 3 months of shockingly vivid hair) - it takes quite long to develop alone but gives a nice solid colour if you’re willing to wait overnight. The blue was dyed with the last drops of semi permanent blue. I’m using hair harvested from a $4.50 bait Amaya head as it’s tough iceberg nylon instead of easily snagged (and hard to reroot) kiwi.
Not yet willing to blow 10-12€ each for a Cyan Magenta Yellow + Black set of semi permanent dyes from amazon for something that may or may not become part of my skillset. But I spent $8 total on cheapo yellow + blue and am willing to give it an honest try! If it’s something that works out, sure okay, I’ll invest in supplies but eh, I’m not looking to make dolls with human looking hair - I far prefer working with saran and using gradients for that glossy fantasy hair look.
Like sure i’m cheap but also not that excited about learning 1/6th scale colorist skills right now: the blocking required for 7mm dark roots took a lot of mental engineering work (it worked though: a clean cut off of dark wine over 18mm using twisty ties and a soap bar).
But don’t expose developer to Rainbow High hair. It strips the colour. Or at least it did to my poor Cheer Jade.
Yes it is hair developer. This is my first experience with it lifting colour from doll hair. I use it to remove staining on dolls all the time. It doesn’t touch saran hair at all. But the hair RH dolls have is another story I guess. The piss off is that the developer wicked up the hair from the inside of the head.
F
thanks for the warning
Oh no. Good to know though. That would be the cheek bleaching you were doing?
Hair samples came! For one thing, it is immediately apparent that milk silk is not the same thing as either TDP nylon silk or the aliexpress mystery fiber identified by @firespirited as similar to TDP nylon silk, so there goes that hypothesis.
Milk silk on the left, TDP nylon silk on the right:
Milk silk is more reflective, softer, and more flexible.
Here we have milk silk on the left, TDP nylon silk in the middle, and mystery aliexpress fiber on the right:
Milk silk on left vs TDP nylon silk on right:
And TDP nylon silk on left vs mystery aliexpress fiber on right:
Mystery aliexpress fiber is not a color match and is slightly more reflective than this color of TDP nylon silk, however TDP nylon silk seems to vary in reflectiveness and the sheen on aliexpress mystery fiber is similar to the sheen on other colors of TDP nylon silk. Aliexpress mystery fiber is similar to TDP nylon silk in stiffness and thickness of individual fibers.
And some more color comparisons between TDP nylon silk and aliexpress mystery fiber:
Purple aliexpress mystery fiber is close to TDP nylon silk in Espeon, but not exact. Aliexpress mystery fiber is more reflective and slightly lighter. Green aliexpress mystery fiber is closest to TDP nylon silk in Ziggy Stardust, but also not exact. It is slightly greener and darker, and slightly less reflective.
Reflectiveness seems to vary by color among both TDP nylon silk and aliexpress mystery fiber, so it’s likely not a good indication of whether this is the same material.
TDP nylon silk and aliexpress mystery fiber seem very similar. My conclusion is that the two products could be the same fiber, but these exact listings are not TDP’s source for TDP nylon silk because none of the colors are exact matches.
Finally, I had messaged and asked both aliexpress sellers if they could confirm the exact material of the hair fiber. The seller of the aliexpress mystery fiber did not reply. The seller of the milk silk replied, but their answer was not very clear:
My current theory is that milk silk is kiwi nylon with that slightly finer denier than hq nylon. Can’t yet figure out if it’s cheaper to get 30g of limited ‘silk milk’ colours from aliexpress or go via dolltress or mylittlecustom. The bigger question here is what dolls you plan to give that gorgeous blue hair to
Decided that I very much did not like Sunshine Gurl’s hair texture. It’s stiff, a little crunchy, and not at all smooth. Pretty sure it is PP (polypropylene) which tends to crumble and break away with time. I know future me would not appreciate the heartache of having to deal with that, so I chopped it all off.
And it was a lot of hair. Once her hair was buzzed, I realized I didn’t have tweezers that could grip the hair roots to pull out. I’ve been wanting to customize an LOL OMG with inset eyes and figured this was the perfect opportunity since I opted to slit the head open.
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Rough eye cut outs, I did better than the last doll’s eye sockets I cut out. They’re not symmetrical nor perfectly round, but it should be fine. I hope.
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Like I said, there was ton of hair rooted in. I’m surprised it didn’t tear open.
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I boiled the head in hopes that the the holes would shrink a bit, and it worked out so much better than I expected!
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And here she is! Ready to be stuffed into a WIP bin and be forgotten about for years to come!
No, I really hope not. I really do want to finish her this year. Preferably before summer ends because I love her warm weather vibes. Even if she is wearing a fuzzy jacket…
Anyway, I’m still deciding if I want a reroot or a wig. I’m leaning towards a wig at the moment. Or maybe rooted crown and wig combo? Not sure. I want to mimic the same hairstyle because I do so love those buns! I also don’t really plan on playing with her hair in the future.
Either way, I’m gonna need lots of hair.
I have quite the stash of hair but it’s never the right ones I need!
You ever goof up so bad you just stare at the mess in front of you unsure how to react?
If you can’t tell, I melted my foam rollers and fried some of the hair on my Holiday ‘96 Barbie because I forgot that foam rollers have a lower melting point than straws and I forgot to check the temperature dial on the oven.
“But why the oven, Zak?” Because I did not want to deal with boiling water, plastic bags, and finding an appropriate sized vessel to dunk her. Luckily, I caught it early on so the damage wasn’t too bad.
None of the melted plastic from the rollers fused with the hair which is what I was most worried about. You can see how fried some of it got.
I brushed out her hair to assess the damage and to see if maybe I could still get away with it, but no. Even though most of the damage would have been hidden under her hat, I wasn’t satisfied with the curls anyway. Best to fix it and do it right, right?
Thankfully, the flat hair iron was able to straighten the fried kinks. However, there were some sections that, while still brushable, were visibly and texturally damaged. Oh, well.
Not bad.
Okay, take two! This time I’m putting her in a plastic bag and dunking that in freshly boiled water. I had to go up a size with the rollers since, you know, most of them melted.
I’ve been pining after Vanessa Tempo from the Rainbow High Rockstars line since she leaked months ago. I was constantly on the Target app going back and forth on getting her, but that $50 price point was a major obstacle for me. Then a few days ago when the 25% off coupon in Target Circle resurfaced, I took the plunge and got her.*
I LOVE HER.
I think she is my favorite one at the moment!
I have spent the day “Fray Checking” and heat sealing her clothes because there is so much fraying. So so much. I’m also going to have to resew the hems on her shirts because they either bunched up or didn’t catch the fabric at all.
My biggest issue, however, has been her hair.
I noticed a few braids on her crown were bunched tight. When I tried to stretch them, they popped right out of her head. That entire area near her ear is ready to come out if I keep pulling on them.
So I’ve decided that the best course of action is to remove her head, root back in her fallen braids, and fill the inside of her head with a layer of diluted Fabri-Tac glue.
After softening her head in hot water, I pulled it off, and this happened:
That blue chunk of hair was caught in the anchors of her neck peg and were pulled out. Luckily, I was able to pull on the appropriate stands to fix it.
But yeah, it’s been a ride today.
I also started heat sealing/melting the tips of her braids to prevent them from unraveling, but wooboy! Them fumes. Them fumes are strong. I think I’m going to use fabric glue instead because that was not pleasant.
This girl was a team effort with my girlfriend! She designed the face with me and decided the colour scheme, and I brought her to life! North seems to intercept my gfs interest in horror/undead and my interest in glittery pastel things! I really love working on the 17inch monster high, the big faces make the lines look so crisp!
North will be up for adoption as well~ Drop an email to beautifulparallel @ gmail.com or dm us on instagram if you’re interested in taking her home
