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hat_plays_dollsOkay, so, I got the G3 Coffee Break two-pack and as I was messing with it, I kept staring at Deuce:
I kept saying to myself, "He looks like somebody."
I knew I wanted him for a custom-- nonhuman-colored boy dolls that work with Monster High are thin on the ground-- but I wasn't sure who. I was debating between Spelldron Cauldronello and a couple of backgrounders when I had the sudden terrible realization that...
He looked a little like my boy Raythe, from the infamous Reboot/G2.
Now I know-- I know-- that the reboot was not, shall we say, Monster High's best moment. Lots of complaints, and the budget dolls made things iffy, and the joints got weird, and I defend the reboot a lot but it had some problems.
It also had some really great bits, though. Mom Wolf, Dracula, Moanica, the Flaunt Studios animation in general, the Zomboys, and backwards-compatibility with the shoes.
And Raythe.
And frankly, much like with Pharaoh, we were frickin robbed in never getting an official Raythe doll.
So there I am, staring at G3 Deuce, going "But can I get his snakes off?" Worst case scenario, I can't and I mangle his head, but I got 'em off, and so these three G3 dolls will make four G1/G2 customs-- Cleo as Pharaoh (on a She-Ra Bow body), Deuce as Raythe (on a G1 Slo-Mo body), Frankie as Elsa Stein (I will re-root her but she's stealing those Marvel Rising boots), and Deuce's body as Eyera (I gotta buy some ping-pong balls).
Also yes my office is a mess in a lot of these shots, pay that no mind.
Step one of a Raythe custom... wash the head thoroughly with Dawn. Then I primed it with white acrylic paint, and then I sat down with an array of blue, gray, purple, and white paints and Slo-Mo's body and mixed and mixed and mixed until I had a match.
Then came layers and layers of painting. Sometimes sanding, because I knew I wasn't thinning my paints properly (I never do and this custom was for me so fuck it), but I still wanted a reasonably nice surface.
And I sealed it periodically, any time I thought I was hitting a point where I didn't want to lose my progress. I have this super ultra mega matte sealer-- DecoArt Americana DuraClear Soft Touch Varnish-- and while I don't know how it'll hold up to things like... a boil wash, or rough handling, or soap and water? It's so flat that acrylic paint doesn't look sealed. Which if you know anything about painting vinyl with acrylics, you know is a huge thing, because gloss is glassy and matte is still pretty shiny. Previously I've had to use diluted Liquitex matte varnish from the artist's end of the store-- from actual art supply stores, not just Michaels-- which you have to dilute for smaller dolls because it goes on too thick. But this DecoArt stuff?
Flawless flat finish right out of the bottle. (Not sold in my local Michaels store anymore so I may have bought five bottles online, to be on the safe side.)
I knew I wanted to keep some of the shape of Deuce's eyebrows, and I was using his eyes as rough guidelines, so I filled in the brows with white to make them less likely to get lost as I kept painting.
You can see my test patches on his shoulderblades-- and it looks like maybe I had to wrap the neck peg to prevent a little bit of bobblehead? Well done me taking pictures that showed that, I did not remember doing that.
And now, the real work begins!
(Yes, messy under my monitor, pls ignore.)
I couldn't make Raythe as blue as he is in canon, because... well, I had a spare Slo-Mo body. A spare Holt body with articulated wrists was not happening, plus Raythe is actually a lighter blue than Holt is.
I had the eyebrows how I wanted them, and enough coats of paint over the skin that I was ready to start in on details. Lips weren't hard, I followed the shape of the mold, and the eyes... aren't exactly even, but they work fine for me.
Monster High eyes sort of follow a specific pattern, especially for boys-- you've got the eye outlined in black, the sclera painted in white, a light gray shadow under the top lashes, an epicanthal fold (which I'm assuming you'd skip for a character without one), and then you start in on the iris of the eye.
On Raythe I also started the eye shadow at this point, just a slightly stronger blue lightly scrubbed in.
The base color of the iris. (You can see more of that eye shadow here.)
This is actually way more forgiving than it looks-- you want to get as close to a perfect circle as you can (brushing the bottom lid and cut off by the top lid, or the doll will look terrified), but remember you can always tweak the edges of that circle-- nudge them out with more color or in with your white or gray.
This is the stage where it's important to hold your doll at arm's length, even turn them upside down, to try to meet their gaze and see if it's even.
I know it looks like I've wrecked everything, but! Monster High irises are outlined in a thin line of black. (Yes my paint is lumpy, no I don't care. This doll took two months of off-and-on work, he's mine, his freaky flaws are mine, nobody was paying me money for this, I don't have to care that I should have thinned my paints more.)
Making that line a lot thicker than it needs to be at this point means it will be easier to get it nice and narrow in the next step of painting.
Also I am sealing between every stage, here. That way if I make a mistake I need to wipe off with a wet cotton swab? I'm not also erasing progress.
Think of sealing as saving. Creating a repaint system restore point. Seal often!
And here I've gone over the irises with dark gray and added the other important element of MH eyes-- the highlight color! This should be rounded on the top, but there's going to be a pupil over it so I was mostly concerned with getting the bottom widths even.
I had not quite accomplished that when I took this pic.
But we're getting somewhere!
The pupils need a bit of work at this point, and there are some bits that need tidying, but with the black paint over that lumpy spot, it starts to disappear, and Raythe is starting to get that G1 Monster High look.
... I have a bad case of Painter's Finger, but sometimes that's the best way to get the right amount of paint on your brush.
Catchlights added! This is the point where I stopped tweaking his paint, because-- aside from eyebrows, which were going to have to wait for hair so I could color-match them properly--I was pretty sure I'd gotten him done to the best of my ability.
Next to the head of Music Festival Abbey, generously sent to me by someone who likes my Sims 2 work. In my close-up photos, Raythe does look a little textured, but in person at any reasonable distance, he just looks hand-painted. And next to Abbey, I don't think I did any worse than Mattel usually does!
The next time I went to Michaels, I took myself on a trip down the yarn aisle. I don't knit or crochet, but I knew I wasn't going to root Raythe (that would sure test the sealer), so I'd need to make him a wig. Brushed acrylic wefts sounded like the cheapest, fastest idea.
So I got to tying wefts.
Tying and brushing and tying more wefts (screen blurred cos it was irrelevant).
Yarn weft wigs are... a lossy process. I'm gonna have to make something stuffed with all this.
Loop, tighten, slide down to the rest, repeat
Took a break from tying wefts to, uh, put some paint away, but I figured I should take a pic (for reference's sake) of the colors I used to make Raythe... Raythe. Not shown, black and white, but also, yes, my paints are very old.
Like, I do not doubt the customizers who say 'use artist quality paints!' or 'mix your own colors you only need a few main colors!' or 'thin your paints, thin your paints, thin your goddamn paints!' But I'm pretty happy with the results I got out of 10+ year old bottles of the cheapest acrylic paint Michaels sold before it started in on its own CraftSmart line.
Might I have needed fewer coats with a more pigmented base paint? Probably.
Am I ever going to be willing to spend Artist Quality money on paint when the craft paint aisle is right there?
... probably not, no, sorry.
Back to the weft. For the record, although I think I had my hair too full in the final product, the wig-making tutorial I've been riffing off of was this one here, which I have used with some success before on the Sea Monster CAM, and... someday I will finish the Vampire Boy CAM's haircut. Someday.
A test! How did I think this didn't need to be thinned out, just slicked with gel.
And then I figured "well I'd better finalize his paint job (eyebrows) and start his clothes; I don't want to be test-fitting with all that hair in the way!"
The shirt was easiest; I have T-shirt patterns from other projects (though Raythe's pulled a bit), all he needed was the collar added. Someday I may remake this shirt, it gave me way more problems than the rest of his outfit.
But I knew it needed to be a close-fitting shirt,because of the layers going over it. (Ah shoot, I didn't blur this one. Well, we're only talking about drafting patterns.)
How to pin things when you don't want to pin things: Paper clips!
Do I remember where I got the super-thin velcro? I do not. Ebay, somewhere, but the specific seller? Not a clue.
But look! Skinny fitted shirt, without me having to hold it closed!
Hand-sewn velcro.
It's not the dumbest thing I've ever done, and I'll doubtless do it again, but basically the only time I, as a hand-sewist, envy the sewing-machine sewists? Is when I have to hand-sew velcro. Even the thin stuff is... still velcro.
Most of these shots are pics I took to show my friend my progress on Raythe, and I don't remember what she asked me that led to this pic, but this is an advice pic.
This is a Clover mini-iron, sold in the quilting section of your local fabric store for a fairly reasonable price. You know how it's really important, when sewing, to press your seams and your hems as you go?
This is how you make that not a massive nightmare for doll clothes and other small-scale items. Mini iron and a sleeve board.
Onward to pants!
I made the pant legs, then mixed black acrylic paint with fabric paint medium, painted, allowed to dry, and ironed according to the directions.
I do kind of wish I hadn't made the cuffs doubled, cos there were spots I was sewing through five layers of fabric, one of them gathered, and it was a bitch, but. Pants!
Raythe's sadly-unpainted-in-this-shot shoes are from a BTS boy. I have a small backstock of BTS bodies, because they're the G2 boy body. When I either:
a) find a way to paint the arms and legs of those bodies that doesn't peel off immediately
or
b) find a head that works for Victor "Sparky" Frankenstein
I will have so many more customs to do.
The pants pattern was adapted from Decue's Scaris shorts, which have no inseam. Doing one long inseam is easier construction-wise, but not so great bulk-wise, and Raythe's joggers felt like an outside-seam would look good on them.
I could've made the cuffs a lot narrower, but I was worried about his heels, and I hadn't entirely settled on using a jersey knit instead of a quilter's cotton. I had workable purples in both.
And this marked a stopping point for his outfit-- pants done, shoes started, cuff thing in the gray layer, sleeves shredded!
Yeah, the sleeves could've been longer, and I regret that, but I mentioned I might someday remake the gray shirt.
I can do that easily. I have. I have a lot of that fabric.
A lot.
And those BTS shoes. They're not quite exactly right for Raythe, but they're close enough to be getting on with.
The time came to start gluing on hair.
I used Aleene's OK To Wash It, which I used on a barbie in the past (I was young) and it held up for far longer than I would've expected. It did hold the yarn wefts down, too-dense as they were, but it, uh.
It needed some encouragement while they dried.
And then I left him like that until February.
November was full of motivation and progress, December was... less so, January is always a pretty miserable month for me, but generally I frickin' crush February.
Crush February 2023 began with a lot of gel and a haircut.
It proceeded to more sewing-- that's the facing/partial lining of Raythe's not-exactly-hoodie.
The outside is a black liquid knit thing, because I felt like the texture worked with what was shown onscreen. I... also took my hot knife to the cuts in his undershirt sleeves, but I don't remember if that was one of the last things I did in November, or one of the first things I did in February.
A "better" view of the tunic, side seams still un-sewn. I started with the shoulder seams, then added the collars to lining and shell fabrics, then attached the collars.
Then I punished myself with tiny rolled hems on knits, but those hints of blue are important.
Side seams done, and a partially-painted InvisiBilly belt added-- Raythe didn't wear anything over his hoodie in the Flaunt specials, but in the Ghoul Squad series, he had two belts looped around his hips, and I had a spare InvisiBilly belt kicking around, and Signature dolls get accessories.
I can steal from Ghoul Squad if I want to.
Screenshot comparison!
Look, the area under my monitor is NEVER tidy. That's just how this works.
Embroidery floss faux-drawstrings added (and stitched down above the knots), and the other layers added to his cuff thing! Which was then tightened up to the point where I have to take his hand off to get it on or off.
Then it was time for shoes.
Since I couldn't do the chains-for-laces that canon shoes, I opted for a gradient from navy blue to royal blue to gray to white, to try to get the feel of those three rows of silver chains without having to figure out how to get chains on there.
Once I dry-brushed on some pearly finish, I felt pretty proud of them.
But Signature dolls come with accessories, and My Froggy Stuff has a tutorial for making your own doll guitar, and I have a heap of old paperboard tucked away in my office closet.
So I gathered my screenshots and realized that the model of guitar used in Electrified was clearly meant to be Silvi's guitar (it has a crescent moon and a furry sort of pattern on the pick guard) and was just recolored for Venus and Raythe.
Luckily, Ghoul Squad provided-- Raythe played guitar there, too, the same model as Ari... but Ari plays piano (so sayeth her Music Class doll) and anyway her Ghoul Squad guitar was a recolor of Raythe's-- in purple, with a chain strung across it, while the shape suits Raythe's slightly-ragged aesthetic much better.
So I had my guitar to copy!
And a very very very old Barbie guitar to use as a scale model.
Adjustments were made-- that little notch in the side just wasn't happening.
I probably watched that Froggy Stuff tutorial-- er, this one-- about a hundred times to get to this point.
And because I did not take a lot of progress photos of the rest of the process?
Froggy uses an emery board to sand her basic Fender-model guitar; my shapes got way fancier so I needed to get out the dremel tool. The dremel tool made life much better, but? So did wood glue.
If you're making a stacked-paperboard project like this, I would like to highly suggest using wood glue instead of white glue or a glue stick, and using it to coat the edges before (and after, if you're looking for a plasticky-smooth finish) as well. Wood glue and paperboard basically turn your accessory into MDF or fiberboard.
And then it was time to paint.
I'm actually legit proud of myself for that gradient, I'd never really tried to do a gradient before, but as it turns out, it's effectively dry-brushing.
And the little markings!
I super did not freehand those. The stencil was annoying to make, but not nearly so annoying as trying to paint those shapes freehand would have been.
I did tweak them before this shot and afterward, to get them more to my liking.
Some of which you can see here, with my first attempt at frets-- Froggy suggested using strips of metallic paper, but I...
... I did not end up liking that look.
(Please ignore the cat hair on my lap. I am constantly covered in cat hair. Theo is a one-person cat and as I said, these pics were taken to show my progress to a close friend, but... then I figured maybe they'd be useful to other people, too.)
So I ended up painting the frets and the... markers that I have already forgotten the names of. The metallic blue and silver paint ended up much more subtle, but in better scale.
Sealed, partly! The neck in regular matte, for the nonce, and the body in my super-flat stuff, so I still had some tooth to glue on the bridge and pick guard.
Then it was time for gloss, pegs (seed beads in a sort of peacock-coated dark blue), and strings (silver embroidery floss, separated into single strands). Can strings actually work like this?
... I dunno, it's Monster High, let's pretend the coffin-shaped guitar head is a good idea.
Metallic paper accents!
And gloss on the head. Including over the beads. Just coated in gloss sealer to really unify that thing as much as possible.
And now I have a Raythe, complete with outfit and guitar, ready to sing lead for Howling Thunder and Frightening (ft Raythe and Deuce and the Rolling Bones and Woolee).
So let's see, who do I have now who has instruments. Music Class Ari finally happened so she's got a keyboard, and I got the Fierce Rockers three-pack so Venus has a synth-drum kit (Clawdeen a guitar and Jinafire a keytar), which leaves Deuce without an instrument of his own... I got microphones for days (Fierce Rockers two-pack, plus debut Catty, plus Casta), and Cleo's Music Class harp... I have an old plastic Barbie acoustic guitar that's Heath's, cos for some reason Slo-Mo destroying Heath's guitar in defense of himself and others tickles me.
Really, I ought to put Silvi's guitar high up on my list of projects. I got a canon I can copy from right there.
Like what I do and want to help me feed my cats, but don't need anything I have for sale on eBay? You can always support me on Patreon or throw some change in my tip jar.
I kept saying to myself, "He looks like somebody."
I knew I wanted him for a custom-- nonhuman-colored boy dolls that work with Monster High are thin on the ground-- but I wasn't sure who. I was debating between Spelldron Cauldronello and a couple of backgrounders when I had the sudden terrible realization that...
He looked a little like my boy Raythe, from the infamous Reboot/G2.
Now I know-- I know-- that the reboot was not, shall we say, Monster High's best moment. Lots of complaints, and the budget dolls made things iffy, and the joints got weird, and I defend the reboot a lot but it had some problems.
It also had some really great bits, though. Mom Wolf, Dracula, Moanica, the Flaunt Studios animation in general, the Zomboys, and backwards-compatibility with the shoes.
And Raythe.
And frankly, much like with Pharaoh, we were frickin robbed in never getting an official Raythe doll.
So there I am, staring at G3 Deuce, going "But can I get his snakes off?" Worst case scenario, I can't and I mangle his head, but I got 'em off, and so these three G3 dolls will make four G1/G2 customs-- Cleo as Pharaoh (on a She-Ra Bow body), Deuce as Raythe (on a G1 Slo-Mo body), Frankie as Elsa Stein (I will re-root her but she's stealing those Marvel Rising boots), and Deuce's body as Eyera (I gotta buy some ping-pong balls).
Also yes my office is a mess in a lot of these shots, pay that no mind.
Step one of a Raythe custom... wash the head thoroughly with Dawn. Then I primed it with white acrylic paint, and then I sat down with an array of blue, gray, purple, and white paints and Slo-Mo's body and mixed and mixed and mixed until I had a match.
Then came layers and layers of painting. Sometimes sanding, because I knew I wasn't thinning my paints properly (I never do and this custom was for me so fuck it), but I still wanted a reasonably nice surface.
And I sealed it periodically, any time I thought I was hitting a point where I didn't want to lose my progress. I have this super ultra mega matte sealer-- DecoArt Americana DuraClear Soft Touch Varnish-- and while I don't know how it'll hold up to things like... a boil wash, or rough handling, or soap and water? It's so flat that acrylic paint doesn't look sealed. Which if you know anything about painting vinyl with acrylics, you know is a huge thing, because gloss is glassy and matte is still pretty shiny. Previously I've had to use diluted Liquitex matte varnish from the artist's end of the store-- from actual art supply stores, not just Michaels-- which you have to dilute for smaller dolls because it goes on too thick. But this DecoArt stuff?
Flawless flat finish right out of the bottle. (Not sold in my local Michaels store anymore so I may have bought five bottles online, to be on the safe side.)
I knew I wanted to keep some of the shape of Deuce's eyebrows, and I was using his eyes as rough guidelines, so I filled in the brows with white to make them less likely to get lost as I kept painting.
You can see my test patches on his shoulderblades-- and it looks like maybe I had to wrap the neck peg to prevent a little bit of bobblehead? Well done me taking pictures that showed that, I did not remember doing that.
And now, the real work begins!
(Yes, messy under my monitor, pls ignore.)
I couldn't make Raythe as blue as he is in canon, because... well, I had a spare Slo-Mo body. A spare Holt body with articulated wrists was not happening, plus Raythe is actually a lighter blue than Holt is.
I had the eyebrows how I wanted them, and enough coats of paint over the skin that I was ready to start in on details. Lips weren't hard, I followed the shape of the mold, and the eyes... aren't exactly even, but they work fine for me.
Monster High eyes sort of follow a specific pattern, especially for boys-- you've got the eye outlined in black, the sclera painted in white, a light gray shadow under the top lashes, an epicanthal fold (which I'm assuming you'd skip for a character without one), and then you start in on the iris of the eye.
On Raythe I also started the eye shadow at this point, just a slightly stronger blue lightly scrubbed in.
The base color of the iris. (You can see more of that eye shadow here.)
This is actually way more forgiving than it looks-- you want to get as close to a perfect circle as you can (brushing the bottom lid and cut off by the top lid, or the doll will look terrified), but remember you can always tweak the edges of that circle-- nudge them out with more color or in with your white or gray.
This is the stage where it's important to hold your doll at arm's length, even turn them upside down, to try to meet their gaze and see if it's even.
I know it looks like I've wrecked everything, but! Monster High irises are outlined in a thin line of black. (Yes my paint is lumpy, no I don't care. This doll took two months of off-and-on work, he's mine, his freaky flaws are mine, nobody was paying me money for this, I don't have to care that I should have thinned my paints more.)
Making that line a lot thicker than it needs to be at this point means it will be easier to get it nice and narrow in the next step of painting.
Also I am sealing between every stage, here. That way if I make a mistake I need to wipe off with a wet cotton swab? I'm not also erasing progress.
Think of sealing as saving. Creating a repaint system restore point. Seal often!
And here I've gone over the irises with dark gray and added the other important element of MH eyes-- the highlight color! This should be rounded on the top, but there's going to be a pupil over it so I was mostly concerned with getting the bottom widths even.
I had not quite accomplished that when I took this pic.
But we're getting somewhere!
The pupils need a bit of work at this point, and there are some bits that need tidying, but with the black paint over that lumpy spot, it starts to disappear, and Raythe is starting to get that G1 Monster High look.
... I have a bad case of Painter's Finger, but sometimes that's the best way to get the right amount of paint on your brush.
Catchlights added! This is the point where I stopped tweaking his paint, because-- aside from eyebrows, which were going to have to wait for hair so I could color-match them properly--I was pretty sure I'd gotten him done to the best of my ability.
Next to the head of Music Festival Abbey, generously sent to me by someone who likes my Sims 2 work. In my close-up photos, Raythe does look a little textured, but in person at any reasonable distance, he just looks hand-painted. And next to Abbey, I don't think I did any worse than Mattel usually does!
The next time I went to Michaels, I took myself on a trip down the yarn aisle. I don't knit or crochet, but I knew I wasn't going to root Raythe (that would sure test the sealer), so I'd need to make him a wig. Brushed acrylic wefts sounded like the cheapest, fastest idea.
So I got to tying wefts.
Tying and brushing and tying more wefts (screen blurred cos it was irrelevant).
Yarn weft wigs are... a lossy process. I'm gonna have to make something stuffed with all this.
Loop, tighten, slide down to the rest, repeat
Took a break from tying wefts to, uh, put some paint away, but I figured I should take a pic (for reference's sake) of the colors I used to make Raythe... Raythe. Not shown, black and white, but also, yes, my paints are very old.
Like, I do not doubt the customizers who say 'use artist quality paints!' or 'mix your own colors you only need a few main colors!' or 'thin your paints, thin your paints, thin your goddamn paints!' But I'm pretty happy with the results I got out of 10+ year old bottles of the cheapest acrylic paint Michaels sold before it started in on its own CraftSmart line.
Might I have needed fewer coats with a more pigmented base paint? Probably.
Am I ever going to be willing to spend Artist Quality money on paint when the craft paint aisle is right there?
... probably not, no, sorry.
Back to the weft. For the record, although I think I had my hair too full in the final product, the wig-making tutorial I've been riffing off of was this one here, which I have used with some success before on the Sea Monster CAM, and... someday I will finish the Vampire Boy CAM's haircut. Someday.
A test! How did I think this didn't need to be thinned out, just slicked with gel.
And then I figured "well I'd better finalize his paint job (eyebrows) and start his clothes; I don't want to be test-fitting with all that hair in the way!"
The shirt was easiest; I have T-shirt patterns from other projects (though Raythe's pulled a bit), all he needed was the collar added. Someday I may remake this shirt, it gave me way more problems than the rest of his outfit.
But I knew it needed to be a close-fitting shirt,because of the layers going over it. (Ah shoot, I didn't blur this one. Well, we're only talking about drafting patterns.)
How to pin things when you don't want to pin things: Paper clips!
Do I remember where I got the super-thin velcro? I do not. Ebay, somewhere, but the specific seller? Not a clue.
But look! Skinny fitted shirt, without me having to hold it closed!
Hand-sewn velcro.
It's not the dumbest thing I've ever done, and I'll doubtless do it again, but basically the only time I, as a hand-sewist, envy the sewing-machine sewists? Is when I have to hand-sew velcro. Even the thin stuff is... still velcro.
Most of these shots are pics I took to show my friend my progress on Raythe, and I don't remember what she asked me that led to this pic, but this is an advice pic.
This is a Clover mini-iron, sold in the quilting section of your local fabric store for a fairly reasonable price. You know how it's really important, when sewing, to press your seams and your hems as you go?
This is how you make that not a massive nightmare for doll clothes and other small-scale items. Mini iron and a sleeve board.
Onward to pants!
I made the pant legs, then mixed black acrylic paint with fabric paint medium, painted, allowed to dry, and ironed according to the directions.
I do kind of wish I hadn't made the cuffs doubled, cos there were spots I was sewing through five layers of fabric, one of them gathered, and it was a bitch, but. Pants!
Raythe's sadly-unpainted-in-this-shot shoes are from a BTS boy. I have a small backstock of BTS bodies, because they're the G2 boy body. When I either:
a) find a way to paint the arms and legs of those bodies that doesn't peel off immediately
or
b) find a head that works for Victor "Sparky" Frankenstein
I will have so many more customs to do.
The pants pattern was adapted from Decue's Scaris shorts, which have no inseam. Doing one long inseam is easier construction-wise, but not so great bulk-wise, and Raythe's joggers felt like an outside-seam would look good on them.
I could've made the cuffs a lot narrower, but I was worried about his heels, and I hadn't entirely settled on using a jersey knit instead of a quilter's cotton. I had workable purples in both.
And this marked a stopping point for his outfit-- pants done, shoes started, cuff thing in the gray layer, sleeves shredded!
Yeah, the sleeves could've been longer, and I regret that, but I mentioned I might someday remake the gray shirt.
I can do that easily. I have. I have a lot of that fabric.
A lot.
And those BTS shoes. They're not quite exactly right for Raythe, but they're close enough to be getting on with.
The time came to start gluing on hair.
I used Aleene's OK To Wash It, which I used on a barbie in the past (I was young) and it held up for far longer than I would've expected. It did hold the yarn wefts down, too-dense as they were, but it, uh.
It needed some encouragement while they dried.
And then I left him like that until February.
November was full of motivation and progress, December was... less so, January is always a pretty miserable month for me, but generally I frickin' crush February.
Crush February 2023 began with a lot of gel and a haircut.
It proceeded to more sewing-- that's the facing/partial lining of Raythe's not-exactly-hoodie.
The outside is a black liquid knit thing, because I felt like the texture worked with what was shown onscreen. I... also took my hot knife to the cuts in his undershirt sleeves, but I don't remember if that was one of the last things I did in November, or one of the first things I did in February.
A "better" view of the tunic, side seams still un-sewn. I started with the shoulder seams, then added the collars to lining and shell fabrics, then attached the collars.
Then I punished myself with tiny rolled hems on knits, but those hints of blue are important.
Side seams done, and a partially-painted InvisiBilly belt added-- Raythe didn't wear anything over his hoodie in the Flaunt specials, but in the Ghoul Squad series, he had two belts looped around his hips, and I had a spare InvisiBilly belt kicking around, and Signature dolls get accessories.
I can steal from Ghoul Squad if I want to.
Screenshot comparison!
Look, the area under my monitor is NEVER tidy. That's just how this works.
Embroidery floss faux-drawstrings added (and stitched down above the knots), and the other layers added to his cuff thing! Which was then tightened up to the point where I have to take his hand off to get it on or off.
Then it was time for shoes.
Since I couldn't do the chains-for-laces that canon shoes, I opted for a gradient from navy blue to royal blue to gray to white, to try to get the feel of those three rows of silver chains without having to figure out how to get chains on there.
Once I dry-brushed on some pearly finish, I felt pretty proud of them.
But Signature dolls come with accessories, and My Froggy Stuff has a tutorial for making your own doll guitar, and I have a heap of old paperboard tucked away in my office closet.
So I gathered my screenshots and realized that the model of guitar used in Electrified was clearly meant to be Silvi's guitar (it has a crescent moon and a furry sort of pattern on the pick guard) and was just recolored for Venus and Raythe.
Luckily, Ghoul Squad provided-- Raythe played guitar there, too, the same model as Ari... but Ari plays piano (so sayeth her Music Class doll) and anyway her Ghoul Squad guitar was a recolor of Raythe's-- in purple, with a chain strung across it, while the shape suits Raythe's slightly-ragged aesthetic much better.
So I had my guitar to copy!
And a very very very old Barbie guitar to use as a scale model.
Adjustments were made-- that little notch in the side just wasn't happening.
I probably watched that Froggy Stuff tutorial-- er, this one-- about a hundred times to get to this point.
And because I did not take a lot of progress photos of the rest of the process?
Froggy uses an emery board to sand her basic Fender-model guitar; my shapes got way fancier so I needed to get out the dremel tool. The dremel tool made life much better, but? So did wood glue.
If you're making a stacked-paperboard project like this, I would like to highly suggest using wood glue instead of white glue or a glue stick, and using it to coat the edges before (and after, if you're looking for a plasticky-smooth finish) as well. Wood glue and paperboard basically turn your accessory into MDF or fiberboard.
And then it was time to paint.
I'm actually legit proud of myself for that gradient, I'd never really tried to do a gradient before, but as it turns out, it's effectively dry-brushing.
And the little markings!
I super did not freehand those. The stencil was annoying to make, but not nearly so annoying as trying to paint those shapes freehand would have been.
I did tweak them before this shot and afterward, to get them more to my liking.
Some of which you can see here, with my first attempt at frets-- Froggy suggested using strips of metallic paper, but I...
... I did not end up liking that look.
(Please ignore the cat hair on my lap. I am constantly covered in cat hair. Theo is a one-person cat and as I said, these pics were taken to show my progress to a close friend, but... then I figured maybe they'd be useful to other people, too.)
So I ended up painting the frets and the... markers that I have already forgotten the names of. The metallic blue and silver paint ended up much more subtle, but in better scale.
Sealed, partly! The neck in regular matte, for the nonce, and the body in my super-flat stuff, so I still had some tooth to glue on the bridge and pick guard.
Then it was time for gloss, pegs (seed beads in a sort of peacock-coated dark blue), and strings (silver embroidery floss, separated into single strands). Can strings actually work like this?
... I dunno, it's Monster High, let's pretend the coffin-shaped guitar head is a good idea.
Metallic paper accents!
And gloss on the head. Including over the beads. Just coated in gloss sealer to really unify that thing as much as possible.
And now I have a Raythe, complete with outfit and guitar, ready to sing lead for Howling Thunder and Frightening (ft Raythe and Deuce and the Rolling Bones and Woolee).
So let's see, who do I have now who has instruments. Music Class Ari finally happened so she's got a keyboard, and I got the Fierce Rockers three-pack so Venus has a synth-drum kit (Clawdeen a guitar and Jinafire a keytar), which leaves Deuce without an instrument of his own... I got microphones for days (Fierce Rockers two-pack, plus debut Catty, plus Casta), and Cleo's Music Class harp... I have an old plastic Barbie acoustic guitar that's Heath's, cos for some reason Slo-Mo destroying Heath's guitar in defense of himself and others tickles me.
Really, I ought to put Silvi's guitar high up on my list of projects. I got a canon I can copy from right there.
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