I just got home from celebrating easter with my wife and my family, and it was quite lovely. We created a giant photo collage to commemorate my late step grandma who just passed away this week. The funeral is on Wednesday, so I took that day off from all work. In happier news, I did get around to painting my giant mermaid girl from Dollzone. She's a hybrid with a Minas head on a Sawarieda body. I painted her yesterday in the morning, but didn't get around to documenting her until today. She turned out quite pretty in my opinion, though I'm not entirely sold on the teeth on this sculpt. I normally dislike my dolls having teeth, but this was the only head I liked from DZ when I ordered the Sawarieda within a week of her release. I'm still sad that Dollzone discontinued all of their old dolls... Anyway, I'll eventually blush her body too, but that's going to be quite the under taking! I'm going to buy alternative sealant like Purity Seal or Army Painter Matte Varnish to do it with so I can save my MSC for face ups. Here's a picture of her currently taken last night with my cell phone. She's a massive doll and doesn't even fit on my work desk. I dread taking her apart for blushing! Her name is Sam, and she's my siren character. I'm tempted down the line when I eventually repaint her to mod her little buck teeth to pointed and give her long fin like ears!
Either way, happy easter!
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It was a busy weekend for me! I did 2 face ups, not quite as many as I hoped to do, but I had friends come over so my time was a little limited, but I still dented my commission list and even did one for myself! First up we have a Fairyland MNF Luka in natural skin with light freckles, light cat's eyeliner, but otherwise natural. I'm really proud of her eyelashes. She's also my 220th face up to date! Then here we have one I did for myself on my new girl, a Dollzone Moon in normal yellow skin. I wanted her to be mostly natural looking with some light fantasy aspects, such as the scales along her eyes. She is a dragon after all. I made the eyes myself, along with her wig. Here she is all put together! I still need to take some pictures of her in actual daylight. Soon!
January 2016 was a good month for doing face ups, I did a 6 face ups! That is quite a bit considering I couldn't do any for about 1-2 weeks at one point because of scheduling conflicts with my jobs. This week I'm hoping to tackle the 3 part commission I got and get that one done too. If I can't do it before the weekend not the end of the world, but I'll try regardless! I feel like I'm on a roll! My wife and I arrived safe and sound in Vienna two days ago after a long, but fortunately uneventful trip. Yesterday we bought a 9 foot (3 meter) tree with my dad and decorated it too. It's a beauty! Here's the tree (and my wife) in all its glory! It's covered in ornaments and chocolate. Yum! We're celebrating christmas tomorrow, which means I have to wrap gifts today.
Today we'll be going to a Christmas Market and having a grand old time. Either way, while I'm galavanting in Vienna, Austria I obviously can't work on commissions. I didn't even bring any dolls with me as I didn't want to deal with lugging one around the airports internationally. I'll re-open shop and commissions once I'm back in the US in the first week of January. Happy holidays and a grand new year if I don't post again before then! I took some time to myself today and repainted Aurora, my Fairyland LTF Juri 2013. Her last face up has bothered me ever since I put it on her. I'm still not 100% satisfied with it (the eyelashes are a little too strong I think), but she'll keep this one for a while I think. I'm much happier with this scale pattern than the ones along the eyebrows I did last time. She's a little dragon girl, so she had to have something fantastical on her face. Overall I'm pleased with the end result.
I don't have any new work to show since the last post yet as I haven't had the chance yet to go to my alternative face up location. We've had a blizzard, I worked on Saturday, been scrambling to get health insurance squared away for next year, and all around it's been very busy here! Either way, I wanted to do a little personal post about my collection. I've been in the hobby since May 2011. Overall I've owned 26 dolls, but currently I own 15, and I have one on layaway. Here's a collage of every doll I've ever owned, not counting event dolls I had no intention of ever keeping. I'm also only going by heads here as some dolls upgraded to different bodies. Greyscale means they've moved on, color means they are still in my collection. Sculpts are as follows:
I'm very happy with my current collection, though my Angell-Studio Dina is going through a design overhaul (slowly). I already got her a new wig and different eyes, I just need to repaint her now without all those scars. I'm still deciding what to make her look like now. It's difficult as she doesn't have a set character. And then here we have the breakdown of my collection by year. Man... my first year I sure was doll crazy! This year I was surprisingly restrained compared to the other 4 years.
I think it's because in part I became less impulsive and I made a conscious decision to manage my money better. I also switched jobs. I work two part time jobs now that I enjoy rather than one full time one that I despise. It's helped my mental state a lot. The first doll I got this year was actually just a new FP that I swapped onto an existing doll's body, and the other was partially a gift from my SO. I only kept 1 doll from 2012, mainly because she was a birthday gift from my SO, but I've been debating getting her a new body. That's all from me for now! Sorry, that was rather long winded. As I mentioned in my last post, I got married this last weekend. It was a beautiful (and super short) ceremony. I'm the one in the dress and my wife is the one in the knickers and tailcoat. The weather was wonderful, even if I ended up with a migraine just about every day of the weekend. Anyway, now that the wedding is over and family members are back home, it was time to get back to work! What I worked on was a Bobobie/Resinsoul Ya dyed to be a lovely dark tan color. For this face up I was asked to basically combine two of my previous face ups. Dark eyebrows, black and white eyelashes, and white freckles along the eyes with natural lips.
That is all for now! I'm still waiting on a few more commissions to trickle in, but at least my new MSC is set to arrive today. I know, I know... the title is lame, but it's relevant to the new face up I did! Yesterday and today I got to work on a Dearmine Dune in white skin. So far I got his face and ears done, and still need to do his claws on his hands and feet. I will update again once I finish those with detail pictures of the ears, hands, and feet. Anyway, onto some pictures! He belongs to a very good friend of mine and is meant to look like a lynx. She loves the way the face up turned out and can't wait to get him home. Soon! In other news my workplace is offering me more hours next week, so I'm going to have to shuffle around my face up work time a little. I'll still get everything done of course, I just won't be able to do it in one sitting as usual.
I haven't raised my prices in over a year, so it's time to do so. I feel I'm improved enough to do so. I'm only going to raise my face up and body work prices by $5 each. I think that's very reasonable.
Those who I've already quoted are still going to get the quoted price, so no need to fret if you are a current customer and in the middle of commissioning me! Also I started a new job, so now I have weekends off again rather than Mondays and Tuesdays. Such a strange concept to me after almost 2 years of my life! I'll be going to Anime Detour this weekend, so I'll be sprinkling in face up work in the mornings and evenings as long as I'm not too brain dead! I'm filled on commissions at this point, but my wait list is open as I clear them out. And the last bit of news I got is that my birthday is next week! Right on April 1st. Yes, I'm an April fool's baby (there is a joke behind that but I'll spare you the details). Good thing I love terrible jokes! I did a face up yesterday and today, and they are posted to the examples page, I just haven't posted a blog post with them yet. Bad me! Anyway, I redid my Dollzone Miss Kitty and Dollzone Chen's face up in the last two days. Neither changed much, they are mostly just redos for the characters just to update the technique. Both turned out lovely, though with the DZ Chen I tried applied eyelashes and after about 2 hours decided to pull them off. Oh well, Val just isn't the lashy kinda guy. First up is my Dollzone Miss Kitty who I repainted yesterday. She's my always concerned little lion girl who is actually on a DC K-01 body with Soom MD Cheshire paws. I also recently discovered she likes to wear pants. Who knew? Then we have my Dollzone Chen, who's been in my collection for a good 3.5 years. He was originally my third face up, then my 38th, and now my 171st. I actually have pulled off the eyelashes at this point but didn't retake the pictures. He simply looks better without them... That's it for now of my own crew. With March right around the corner it's time to work on commissions again. This time off has been very refreshing and it was nice being able to redo a few of my own dolls.
Since I have no new work to show this week I decided to post my own collection, though 7 in the set up belong to my SO. And here's everyone! Not the greatest of pictures, but it'll do. This is the set up they are always in, even with my two cats prowling about. My SO is expecting another SD boy and an SD body for a floating head.
SD row: Mystic Kids Miri, Resinsoul Ai/DF-A/Soom Beryl hybrid, Soom FC Chrom, DragonDoll Cheng, Dollzone Chen, Dollzone Stramonium, Dollzone April. MSD row: Soom MD Rico, Limhwa Lily, Dollzone Miss Kitty/DC K-01/ Soom Cheshire hybrid, Angell-Studio Dina, Fairyland MNF Ryeon, Dollzone Shoyo, Soom MD Shale/DC K-02 hybrid, Soom SO Shale/Luts Pegasus Jamong hybrid, Eve Studios Pet Oriental cat. YoSD row: Fairyland LTF Chiwoo Elf Girl, Fairyland LTF DES, Soom FC Beyla/ FL LTF/Daisy Dayes hybrid, Soom MD Winnie Dee Ai, Fairyland LTF DES, Dollzone Chinese Dragon Girl/DZ Miss Kitty hybrid. Tiny row: Dollzone Sheep/Daisy Dayes hybrid, Dollzone Dale human. All the italicized dolls belong to my SO, the rest are mine. Just about all of them have been painted by me, except for the DZ April (though I did add freckles to her default face up) and the Eve Studios Pet cat. Everyone else has been customized by me in either face up or body blush. A friend of mine asked me to face up her Luts Satyros Yul in white for her and I managed to finish him yesterday despite having a migraine in the morning. I handed him back to her yesterday afternoon and I am so glad I have photoshop because the documentation pictures were horrible colorwise. I did manage to correct them at least. I think he turned out quite handsome. His name is Blizzard. Also my doll Lily got a new set of legs recently. They are Soom MD Cheshire legs in white skin. I love the way she looks now. The legs aren't a perfect fit, but they are good enough for me.
I just received yesterday the head from the winner of my Tumblr raffle, it is an Impldoll Aldrich just like I used to own. He's a dragon (unlike mine) so he's going to be a lot of fun to work on. I'll get to use my shimmer powders on him. I was also contacted by a friend to work on one of her dolls. She'll drop him off with me on the weekend. Finally I'm starting to get commissions again, which is wonderful because I've been going through doll painting withdrawal. I did repaint my partner's Soom MD Shale again, but I haven't documented it yet. My partner also got her centaur's new body, so I had to shift the doll set up again. Sticking 8 MSDs into one row was a task and a half. See what I mean? The dresser is definitely getting too small at this point. We have another YoSD coming, but I know how to fit her into the set up. Also there's an SD floating head that needs a body, but I think I know how to get him in there too.
Only 2 dolls (MSD) are in a doll stand, everyone else is just standing on their own. Though the SDs are leaning against the wall for support. I've been sick as a dog since Saturday, but I finally feel better today so that's a good thing. That means I can finally mail out the last two commissions I had completed. Either way, I repainted my new girl yesterday and finally documented her this morning. She is a Limhwa Lily in normal skin. I'm really impressed with her posing, the MSD Limhwa girl body really is a treasure. It moves very smoothly and holds poses nicely. I haven't even really bothered to think about sueding her. Her buttlocks are a little finicky, but they do work to keep her sitting upright. Overall, I am very pleased with her.
Now for the FYI: I'm holding a free face up raffle on my Tumblr. The rules and everything are in this post. Since I'm all out of commissions I thought it would be fun to hold another raffle. I tend to greatly enjoy them. Either way, if you would like to try and get a free face up from me and have a tumblr, like and reblog that post! Well looks like I'm out of commissions again, but that's okay. My friend who wanted me to paint her DF-A Fox decided to sell the little booger instead.
All I got to paint now is my new doll that is coming today (a Limhwa Lily), and maybe redo some face ups on my own dolls, but that's about it. Val, my DZ Chen, is in need of a new face up, his is rather old at this point (it was #38). I'm at 138 completed face ups at this point, which has me really proud. I started taking commissions for face ups around end of 2011/beginning 2012. I feel pretty accomplished with how far I've gotten in my craft. Either way, if you need a doll painted, or a friend does, just send me a contact form, or an email, and I'd be happy to do so. I lowered my turn around rate to 2-3 weeks, though more than likely I'll get done sooner with your dears. I'm debating buying ad space on DoA again, it did help business last time. I finally got around to documenting my latest face up. It's on my own Fairyland LTF DES in tan. She's super cute and the FL tan is actually really nice, I like it a lot. It's so funny to compare her to my fiancee's LTF DES in normal skin. Here is Bonnie, she's Jazz's, my DZ Stramonium, daughter. I'm actually in the middle of modding a white LTF hand to look like bone, so keep your eyes peeled for that too!
Now I just need to buckle down and finish up the rest of my commissions. It's been really hectic with work and trying to find a new job that is less draining. Enough whining now, and back to work with me! |
Iza's Face UpsWelcome to the blog area of my site. Here you get to see my progress shots and the such of what I work on. Also I post news here. Enjoy! To Do List:
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