If you paint your nails in the holo with black designs in it that would look so cool =O or vice versa =O

Ah. Wet & Wild. I have a scattered holo from them. It's in a blue-violet jelly (I think) base. I haven't used it much, but it's so old that I bought it before I knew holo was even a thing. XD

That reminds me, I still need to redo my nails.

I'm thinking of breaking out the acrylic liquid and doing acrylic tips again. Problem is, the liquid stinks to high hell.

-Flails- I keep abandoning my threads ; 0;

Well life does happen sometimes, and we are always here when you come back XD

Man
My husbands puppy wrecked my wacom by chewing the cord into pieces and then chewing on my express buttons. . . .
Luckily roommates owed us rent from last month, heard my bawling and came through with 150 so I was able to get a new wacom (I got an intuos art small for $99, upgrading from my draw) and some food items to get us through the weekend.

Now I just gotta make 3 posters for work, by tonight, so we can send them to the printers by tuesday morning.

Nooooo! Bad little pupper!
But also yay for being able to replace it right away.

I finished a poster my boss liked finally! Took me 2 days to get all the layers and colors correct, along with the necessary warnings and wanted social media advertisements. . . .

There's a tiny little grey mark near the S that is my signature XD
This one is nice, it has touch capabilities =O
It's a view of mt.baker (in our area) from the ocean plus creative stretching XD

Oh wow. That is really awesome, Sparx!

Also, I keep meaning to ask...you do ooak monster high dolls?
Do you need any doll bases? Because I used to collect them for a few years and have many many dolls I could possibly sell to you. Or negotiate a trade of sorts perhaps?

=O =O =O
Possibly yes that is something that can be worked out =O
I get paid on mondays so I can paypal then or tuesdays,

Speaking of MH I have a dream about creating a set of wings completely out of the doll hands one day . . . . 50 hands each wing minimum XD
OR trades would work or both =D
Maybe one day after I've gotten a few I could send you a OOAK back to keep for yourself XD

I would LOVE my own ooak. I should take a picture of all the dolls I have. I stripped most of their clothes (because I was going to sell them on ebay initially) except the Skulltimate Roller Maze ones...
XD
Also...hand wings sound kind ofbcreepy, but it would be cool to see.

I was telling Ml1201 about the mh dolls, and she realized I could possibly make her an ooak of Chat noir from her new favorite show XD
This is also a great project to start in spring since I need to spray the dolls with fixative outside and the winds are dying down XD
It's gonna be real cool to have dolls to make into anything instead of trying to make them something specific, that way I can try some new styles =3
I am so excited about it XD

YEah it's just gonna take me a while, plus I need an area to create custom doll parts before I can make the wings =P soon hopefully

Well, for the record, I have 54 unboxed dolls, 1 in box, plus like...4 of the build your own monster sets.

Oh and I should also mention that the Robecca Steam doll is missing one of it's lower arm sections. The part was loose when I bought it and keeps falling off. I might be able to find it, but I promise nothing.
And the Laguna dolls keep losing their leg fin parts. But I should be able to send most of those in a little baggie if you need them.

I'm looking at that picture imagining the possibilities <3
And personally if they are missing limbs it's fine. It makes it that much easier to make a zombie girl XD
Laguna was the remake I did for my neice

It was at that point I knew I needed thinner brushes and not walmart paint XD
I used crumbled pastels for her blush on her body.
But I still liked how she came out.
The real hardest part was her hair tbh =/ MH hair is not the easiest to work with and restyle.

Very pretty!
And yeah with MH dolls you almost have to just rewig them. I wanted to learn to do that at one point, but I just have never had the money for the supplies.

I tried washing one of my MH girl's hair... because it felt awful to touch, and it still feels awful, and I don't know what else to do, because she's one that I've really wanted for a long time, and it's frustrating that I can't even do anything with her, because of her hair...

The secret is fabric softener in the water

Well actually, only a couple of them are exactly the same and only because I had bought the individual of a few before getting the full box sets. The makeup and hair are different and the outfits were also very different for most of them. For example, in the Frankie ones, I have Skull Shores, Skull Shores Greyscale, Gloom Beach, Sleepover, Sweet 1600, normal outfit, Threaderella, etc.

Yeah I was gonna say they are the same characters but from different sets

Because they come with different outfits, hairstyles, makeup or even facial expressions. Sometimes they come with a different character, or a full set of characters.

I must not have explained it very well. Thanks Sparx.
XD

Probably would have been easier to explain if I hadn't stripped them all down.

Also...I REALLY want to get into rerooting dolls (removing & replacing the hairs) because it really doesn't sound that hard, just time consuming. And I can actually get the supplies I would need for 1 doll + essential tools for like...$20-$30.

Update: I bought some rerooting needles and hair and am going to attempt to reroot a doll when they arrive (one that I wouldn't mind getting customized as one of my OCs).
Yay!

it's not that the hair texture's rough, it's that it feels oily. I honestly don't know what to do to fix it. :/

Ah yeah. That's glue residue crap (or so I've read) because they use a ton in the heads and it sometimes kind of seeps into the hair and, over time, makes it feel oily.
I don't remember what the solution is though.

Edit: A quick search turned up this which should have some solutions.

http://www.monsterhighdolls.com/m/di...opic%3A2484895

There were a lot of various sites where people have asked for solutions to the "greasy hair" problem as well as YouTube videos. That was just the first one I checked.

Thank you, Kaderin! *bookmarked and saved the site for when she has enough spoons to fuss with doll hair*

Glad I could help! Hopefully it works!

I couldn't find the doll I needed to make the character my friend wants T.T
I'll have to check a different store sometime next week D:

Awww. Bummer!
I don't know how common the one she wants is. Hopefully fairly common. I haven't really bought dolls in like 4-5 years (because I realized I was never going to display them, so there was no point in buying more) so I haven't kept up with them for a while.
Although the Venus dolls have the perfect skintone for one of my characters so I wish I had bought one of those even though I can't do any of the repainting that I would need to.
XP
I used to browse Etsy for people to make custom repaints, but they all charge up to $200-300 depending on how much you want done. And I don't think I've seen any for cheaper than $150.
I mean...I can understand charging for time, labor, and supplies...but that much seems a bit excessive for repainting such a small doll...
*shrug*

It's because it takes a lot of prepwork and it is actually very labor intensive, and it can take awhile to get everything done, especially really complicated things. Using the $150 as an example, after you take out the cost of paints, sealer, pastels (in some cases, chalk pastels are used for certain effects), and miscellaneous supplies (paper towels, water, etc), that leaves anywhere from $80-120.

Depending on the work being done, and the artist, it can take anywhere from eight to almost 48 hours for a faceup/repaint to be done. Sometimes, it's even longer. That's anywhere from four to six hours a go of sitting, hunched over a desk, doing very detailed and fine work, with a lot of risk of eye strain.

This means, depending on how complicated of a faceup/repaint the client wants, most doll artists might not even be making minimum hourly wage on one job.

I mean, I get that supplies cost money, but how many dolls can you do with the supplies supplies? Because if I used the same logic with my loom knitting or chain mail, I'd be charging $50+ for a stuffed animal, $100+ for a baby blanket, or $60+ for a bracelet. And no one's going to pay that.

That depends on the cost of the supply. Buy cheap supplies you get dolls like the one I have with lumpy paint. And Paint in general is not very cheap.
And depending on the size I can forsee 50 for a stuffed and 100 for a baby blanket, depending on the size of the bracelet and if you can find chainmail fanatics would be if you could sell that for 60.
The biggest thing is not selling yourself short as an artist. I see this happen often also with my friend who does hobby professional cake baking, where people expect things super cheap because it's a one time use item. But it takes her at least 2-4 hours to bake the cake, then up to 6 hours decorating with fine details and even spray painting details on late at night, so of course shes gonna charge 200 for a 2 tier 25 person cake.
Artist often sell themselves short just to get their product out -enter starving artist joke- so when it comes to making sure you get paid for your work, people trying to make a living off this will be charging what they feel they are worth.
It took me 5 days in between real life and work to make that one doll. Even if someone was just sitting there doing it for hours, they have to let the paint dry and spray a set before they can continue on the next layer.

Another thing is marketing. The OOAK Doll collectors are also the kind of people spending hundreds on other kinds of dolls too (Like porcelain or resin ball-jointed) So considering that 150 would be a regularly priced doll.

I mean, don't get me wrong, even though it sounds like I am, I'm not saying that $120-150 is unreasonable for an ooak doll. It just seems like a lot to shell out. It's a reasonable price, just more than I'd normally ever pay. And that's really only because I currently can't afford it. I'm not saying at all that the price isn't fair. When the costs get upwards of the $200-300 range is where I start to question it a bit...for that much, I better be getting a reroot and/or custom clothes too.

And believe me, I can't even sell a baby blanket at $60. I have tried. About $20-40 is the most that people are willing to pay. Quote a price any higher than that and you get the "I'll think about it" response.
Same with the jewelry, stuffed animals, etc.
And it's because hobby crafters, with full time jobs can make and sell stuff for super cheap prices because it's just something they do "to keep busy" and not because they need the money. Which screws the rest of us out of money.
About the only thing I really could sell for a real price are my scaled gloves and that's only because they're not super common yet, although people are getting into making them more.

And with the supply stuff, what I mean is that yeah, sure the supplies can run you up to $100 easily probably more than that even, depending on what you use. But how many dolls can you get out of those supplies? If you buy $100 in supplies, but only use 1/4 or 1/5 of the supplies (paint, etc) per doll then really the supply cost is only $20-$25 per doll.

Not to mention, those smaller dolls are harder to paint and do work on than the bigger ones. So most of your costs are labor. Especially for quality work. and like was stated earlier, gotta wait for layers of paint and sealer to dry.

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachmen...511_162322.jpg

I designed these a while ago and my boss made it into stickers finally =D
Now they get handed out at stores that we are in across western washington =D

Nice! I remember you working on that design!

That's so cool SparX!