So today I would like to direct your attention to an amazing source for BJD wigs: Usagi Hime. About 6 weeks ago I discovered this fantastic site while on what has seemed like my never-ending quest to find some boyish wigs for my 1/3 AOD boy, Balthus. I will have owned him for a year at the end of November, and yet in that time the poor thing has only had two wigs: one of which the previous owner sent him with, and the other I bought on a lark because I am in desperate need of some variety for him. I do love his new Monstro Designs wig, but I simply cannot rest until he has a fun and suitable Kanekalon type wig (instead of fur like his new one).
At Usagi Hime I found this. And it was love at first sight.
View page here.
Out of respect for the wishes of the artist I have not posted the image, only the product link.
And of course, it was out of stock.
So here is a little FAQ of my experience with ordering from Usagi Hime, website currently located here: bjdwig.com
At Usagi Hime you will find wigs unlike any others on the web. In fact, as I have read, if you DO find other locations with remarkably similar looking styles, they have been pirated from the designer for Usagi Hime. Though this does happen in the world of art and design I have to say that it remains no less unfortunate and despicable to see. When one can avoid it, it is always best to get your goods from the legitimate source and not encourage the theft of intellectual property.
Usagi Hime carries wigs in mostly unnatural / fantasy color schemes; you will find plenty of designs in blues, violets, reds, and silvers, with other colors interspersed. So if you are looking for something daring, or whimsical this should be your go-to shop! However this is not the place to find everyday hair for your doll. Even in Usagi Hime’s most run-of-the-mill styles, dark grey or gold are about the closest to natural colors that will be offered. Nevertheless, I don’t think this detracts from the brand’s appeal. The craftsmanship on these wigs seems superb, and I have read reviews exalting exactly that. The attention to detail is remarkable when you examine these wigs’ variety of wispy, spiky, and layered locks.
So the wigs are amazing. . . what’s the problem? The problem is that Usagi Hime seems to currently be a brand that has trouble meeting the demand for their products. Popular wigs sell out fast on the site, and won’t be restocked for a month, two months — the wait is indefinite. And we know how this story goes, by the time you get your product you’ve waited long enough that you sure better hope it wasn’t a purchase you’ll regret. 
And I certainly hope I don’t regret the purchase I made yesterday from Usagi Hime, because by the time shipping costs were totaled up, the wigs cost me more than I would have liked. Don’t be fooled: the wigs are slightly cheaper than other BJD wigs of similar aesthetic, but shipping sure is hefty from the site. No matter the size of your order you will pay a pretty penny to get it in the mail!
I am super excited to get my hands on these wigs though! I am very curious about the quality, though I am confident it will be fantastic, and my boy sure would love me if he could have some new silky hair. So this is where I will end for today, I will be sure to make a review of the rest of my Usagi Hime experience when the time has come.
Well, my Impldoll Iris has her first (makeshift) faceup and was photographed yesterday! I encountered an almost fatal complication when I was preparing to paint her face. I ran out of my ZM (Volks) Powder Spray. . . the foundation of my faceup technique RIGHT as I began priming her head for painting. Luckily for me, with plenty of perseverance, I eventually coaxed enough spray out of the dying can to make due and get the ball rolling. So it’s been pretty much finished, however I need to put finishing touches on her face which will have to wait for now, until I’ve ordered more spray. . . either the ZM or Mr. Super Clear. I’m currently debating which.
All this brings me to an important subject: Faceup Tutorials. Now (of course) when I was first starting out I couldn’t find one that made sense to me to save my life! And, sure enough, once I figured out a way I was satisfied doing them, I found an excellent tutorial (using a technique very similar to mine) that I feel needs to be shared with as many people as possible. So for anybody working on perfecting faceups, I strongly recommend this link.
I may make my own tutorial at some point, but for now I figured it would be best to share this since it is such a detailed account of a method which yields very professional results.
Now that THAT’S said, on with the pictures! Below I have the first images of Sophie, and finally, at long last, some really remarkable (at least in comparison) pictures of my dear old Balthus.
In these photos Sophie is wearing a wig by Monstro Designs, metallic acrylic eyes from Cool Cat (I highly recommended these eyes), and all clothing, faceup and accessories made by me — except for that fantastic hair clip! I found it in my bathroom drawer. 
And here Balthus is also wearing a great wig from Monstro Designs, the red glitter glass eyes that came with Sophie from Impldoll, and his faceup, jewelry and clothing were made by me. 
I am very VERY excited with how the pictures came out! Not only does Sophie look lovely, but I finally have some photos of Balthus that I am truly proud of. It’s weird, seeing these new pictures of him actually inspires me to work on him more and aspire to more great photos. I had been dreaming of red eyes for him, and now that he’s tried them out I feel like his look and persona are really beginning to take shape. I think that my new direction with him is definitely going to be demonic anime inspired warrior boy. And I am STOKED!
Now that I have two lovelies together I am so tempted to buy more materials to make things for them, but my terrible job is really pinching at my pocketbook. I was honestly proud that I was able to pay bills with my just cashed 2 weeks of pay and have any money left at all. Not that it’s even enough to mention. . . 
So I think I will try NOT to go to the fabric store this weekend, although I love it so, and instead I will get my creative juices flowing by sewing up little outfits from my fabric stash, and hopefully revamping the dolly love seat I made back in February. It looks a little shabby to me from the outside. (Luckily I made the cover removable!) However the foundation is very solid, and I think that with some new fabric (hopefully from the stash) I could fix the love seat up into part of a very respectable living room set. I hope it turns out well. Balthus and Sophie need a place to hang out together before taking it straight to the bedroom. Which is looking pretty cozy by the way. God I need to take pictures of all this shit.
So, I’m sitting at work, absolutely bored to tears. Naturally, I’m fantasizing about getting home from my uneventful shift and working on my new girl’s faceup, which is currently about half way done.
I figure that if there were any appropriate time to write a quick review (praise really) for my experience with the Impldoll BJD company — now’s as good as any! So here we go.
Impldoll is a Chinese BJD company producing dolls in all size categories (no 70cm though, but let’s be honest — who cares?) with interesting face sculpts at good prices (lower than Korean BJD companies, but higher than several other Chinese companies). If you care to look through their (really quite user friendly) website, here it is: http://www.impldoll.com/
Moving on.
Dealing with the Company: The website lists a standard production time estimate and sure enough, my doll was shipped at 39 days in, about half way between their estimated 35-45 day production time.
I purchased my doll during an “event” period. During these periods the company creates a page for you to chose at purchase the specifics of the gift they are offering at the time.I.E.: the event was “free head with purchase” so I needed to tell them that I wanted the ImpModel Erica head in “normal skin.” However. . . I forgot to do this. And soon enough, I began to panic. A company representative did, however, email me twice at my Paypal address (not the email with which I registered mind you) asking me which head I wanted. I had replied both times, and never received indication that they had understood my request, so further panicking ensued. It was about 34 days into production time, so I decided to try to make sure my “free head” specifications were received by posting on the site’s Q&A forum. I was VERY impressed to get a reply within 24 hours stating that my order was processed and an Erica head in “real skin” was being included. All things considered (namely language barrier) I was quite pleased with their communication during the production time.
Shipping: They shipped via EMS to the US (typical cost), I paid no customs and the shipping was very timely, sure enough, taking only 5 days to reach my local post office.
Arrival and Product: When I opened my doll I felt like a 9 year old on Christmas morning. The company went absolutely above and beyond, and luck played to my favor for once. So, I opened up the box and found that my doll had been shipped in a FREE LEATHER (well you know, the fake kind) CARRYING BAG! I was like “Awesssome! Now I can go to doll cons!” lol. Anyhow, so the free awesome doll bag contained my beautiful Impldoll Model Girl Iris, my free Erica head (both in the correct color) a FREE pair of glass eyes (and boy way it my lucky day because they were red and glitery! And I had been wanting a pair like that for a while now.) and, this was also a great surprise, a FREE pair of high heel feet (which the company normally sells for $25). The high heel feet were an especially happy surprise for me because Impldoll had a double event running before I ordered (which I had to miss due to financial complications) where they were offering a free head, and free high heel feet with the type of body I was wanting to order.
Well, I think that has to be the end of my review for now. The company is awesome and the doll is absolutely gorgeous, and so SO poseable! Aw crap, I just have to mention quickly one last thing that cannot go unsaid. (Despite my intense headache. I seriously need to get away from this computer.)
Make a NOTE prospective Impldoll BJD owners! Impldolls DO use an S Hook to connect the head to the body like other BJDs, but the way the head is made, the S Hook DOES NOT CONNECT to the top of the head (like it does on my AOD SD boy) What this means: as strange as it is to me, because the Impldoll BJD bodies pose so beautifully and organically, since the S Hook does not connect to the top of the head, only pokes up through the neck, your doll cannot be posed looking up or down! Personally, I think it’s kind of weird. I don’t know why exactly the company decided to opt out of making heads that could be posed, but they did, and that’s that. Luckily I’m not too upset by this. But to be honest, I think that’s the sort of thing a person should know before ordering a doll that is supposed to be fully poseable.
That’s all for now. I need to kick this headache’s ass before it kicks mine. I will post pictures of my new Impldoll girl later. Until next time —- @_@
Well, let’s see — I certainly have been away from this blog for a while! It’s been a long hard 2011 for me so far, but as the year draws to a close the autumn fills me with a new life, and with any luck at all, 2012 will be a brighter time.
But as usual I’ve not been completely idle. Shortly after my last post I completed a tattoo sleeve on Balthus and managed to take a few photos of that piece of work (before I removed his body paint in August).
[Pictures with tattoos, 2nd faceup by me and trimmed wig]
December came and I went home for the holidays. And a crappy holiday it was to say the least. But Balthus received his lot of eBay goodies and I’ve definitely gotten my money’s worth there. During the heart of winter I also sewed several clothing pieces for Balthus and some girly articles in anticipation of hopefully acquiring a female doll soon. In early February, when I could finally put my arms to use again after breaking my collar bone, I constructed a 1/3 sofa set for him that turned out pretty well all things considered.
[Crappy picture of Balthus with his sofa, better pictures one day hopefully.]
Some time in the early summer I removed his first face up I had painted and reworked a new faceup for him in a much more naturalistic style (though I was not yet satisfied). I trimmed his black wig into a shorter, more boyish look, and while changing out his eyes managed to ruin 2 pairs — almost certainly by spilling a solvent on them, and replaced them with another pair of acrylic eyes in a honey color that I had purchased over the holidays. In the spring (still hoping to get a girl soon) I sewed several girl’s accessories: belts, skirts and whatnot and ordered several pairs of sneakers (for Balthus and any future girl dolls) from Mimiwoo — my favorite site to find cheap BJD things. I knew I would be moving at the end of July, so money got very tight and I didn’t start any big new doll projects until August, although the next two months were very fruitful. In the time I’ve been settling down in my new place I’ve ordered a beautiful new girl doll: an Impldoll Iris (who is coming to me with a free extra Erica head!), purchased three lovely fur wigs from Monstro Designs on etsy, and bought, in a lot listing, used porcelain doll type wigs, 5 of which I will definitely have use for (I got an incredible deal on this one).
[Impldoll company photos for Iris, full body and Erica, bottom head]
[Balthus in his new Monstro Designs wig, with the honey colored eyes from Cool Cat and his current faceup, wearing clothing and jewelry made by me.]
As far as projects go I made my own acrylic eyes using the DIY eye kits from Bella Pupa, I sewed (for Balthus) a new t-shirt in neon yellow, a pair of Jnco style blue jeans, modified once more that black trench coat his previous owner sent with him, finished for him an up-cycled sock-sweater, made him a colorful fleece blanket, sewed 4 pillows (I still need too make pretty pillowcases for those), and made TONS of freaken jewelry for him and his soon to be here lady friend. I also gave Balthus his 3rd face up and, being very happy with the results, have decided that soon I will make a tutorial detailing my most successful method thus far.
[A close up of Balthus' current face, also shown: more of his new jewelry by me.]
So it’s been quite the year so far. . . My girlies, whom I will call Sophie and Dahlia should be in my arms tomorrow! I have been working on a very fun victorian-esque outfit for my Sophie, so as soon as her face is ready, her eyes are in, her hair is on and her dress is made there should be plenty of new photos (hopefully here, but certainly) on my Flickr. —> here
Catch you later!
I’ve been very bored working on my real artistic project lately, and I’ve tried to avoid working on Balthus because of all the time that gets sucked into it. I have, however, been dreaming the dream of deciding which other lovelies to acquire one day. Here are my picks:
This is Zero, by Doll Family, and he’s absolutely adorable
with this hair:
and probably these eyes:
And this lovely lady is Angel of Dream’s Quian
Hair is going to be a tough decision, but these three are the parameters I’m trying to work within:
Eyes I’m fairly set on though:
Maybe someday I will be able to sit the three of them all down together. That would be awesome.
So, today while beginning some new tattoos (the beginnings of which you will see in the pictures) I decided, for some reason to do something to Balthus’ face. Well. . . . . hrm, that went differently than I expected. Before I new it I just had to say “fuck it” and take the whole damn face-up off and see what I could make myself. That wasn’t really the plan, but what can you do. I had fun, and I think I’m getting better all the time. So here are the pictures of his new face. The more I look at it the more I like it better than his old one.
Well, yesterday after completing the tattoo I decided it was time to get a good start on the rest of Balthus’ body painting. In these pictures you can see how I added a natural color to the fingernails, genitals, and nipples, and painted hair in several appropriate places. I’m feeling very satisfied with the way this turned out and I think that with a little more work (mostly tattooing) and the purchase of some more realistic looking eyes for Balthus, he will be on his way to being a delightfully convincing photo model. He’s already looking very human though, and I love all these pictures I managed to get. Exhaustion is upon me though. So this brief introduction and the photos will be all there is for today. Enjoy!
I caved today after all the talk of tattooing Balthus finally persuaded me to take the plunge. I had seen this image on Flickr which really inspired me to see if I could give the tattoo painting a shot and learn to do it so convincingly. So I did some brainstorming and settled on testing the idea out with an abdominal tattoo which would feature an excerpt from the poem “From the Old Astronomer to His Pupil” and a filigree style design underneath. The design turned out quite nicely and I feel hopeful that I could at some point produce work as realistic as the image linked above.
To create the tattoo I used one very small brush and some low-viscosity black acrylic paint mixed with a bit of acrylic brush cleaner. The mixture was able to be painted on very smoothly and wherever I encountered an error I was able to easily erase my mistakes with the brush cleaner either applied with a q-tip or a round cotton cosmetic pad. I painted the text first and after I had begun to get a feel for it I proceeded to the design below. All the linework was painted first and then the shading was added by using a process of applying very small amounts of black paint and brush cleaner interchangeably, blending and scrubbing and dabbing with the q-tips and cotton rounds. Wherever grey residue appeared outside of the desired tattoo area a small amount of brush cleaner could be scrubbed in and swept away with a rough paper towel, leaving the skin clean again. So after a couple hours of work, I was very pleased. Here are two quick snapshots of the finished tattoo.
There will be more to come when I have the time. I have plans to tattoo him from the waist up, with full sleeves and some work on either the shoulders or chest. I assume at this point I will leave the ribs bare. Altogether I am very pleased and excited to do some more work on him soon!
Well, today’s been a little rough: school is coming to a close in the next couple weeks and I have a huge paper to write, and the final exam looks to be a terror, the book illustrations are still soooo close to being done, without being done, I have a small commission to do before Christmas, and above all, because of all THAT shit, my apartment is kind of a wreck.
However — today did contain a victory! The awesome lot of SD boy’s clothes and accessories I found on ebay the other day was won — by me! So for $31.50 total I will soon have in my possession all the crap you see below for Balthus.
It includes: 2 t-shirts, spike boots, glass & (empty) bottle, cigarette, mini stereo, Tarot book, necklace, two bracelets, tiger tail, wig, 18MM Purple acrylic eyeballs & home made earphones
I’m very excited because I will be able to find a use for everything except that weird ass tiger tail. Like I think I mentioned before, bidding on this lot was worth it just for the two shirts, the boots, the necklace and the bracelets. The eyes are cool, but I don’t know if I’ll really want to use purple on him, to be honest the purple eyes really do freak me out a bit. The glass, bottle, cig, stereo, and tarot book are also pretty funny, and I will definitely put them to use. The wig could also be used, but not on him. I’ve decided that I really love the dark hair on him.
Well, I know none of that is terribly exciting, but I’m very happy that I won the auction, and I can’t wait to get his new stuff in time for Christmas. I have a wicked migraine, so for now that will be all.
Well, hello again! Today I spent a little more time on outfitting Balthus. I realized that although I’ve made all his shirts so far very oversized on purpose, they’re not going to fit well under his jackets (the red one I made and the black overcoat the owner sold him with), so as I’d been wanting to do for a couple days I sat down this morning and made him a nice fitted grey undershirt. So now he has something to wear under anything, as well as a cute look for summer. Here it is:
Later in the day I got to another quick project I’d been wanting to attempt for him. The overcoat he came with is pretty nice, and I’m sure cost plenty, so I figured I’d keep it. It’s very classy: a black double-breasted long coat/ short trench, but altogether a little too sterile feeling for me. As I’m getting to know him I have a feeling that he’d much rather wear it if it’s a little more eccentric. So I had it in my mind for a couple days that the best solution to the problem would be to paint a neat design on the back in acrylic. I wanted it to be eye-catching, but still look like something you might find on a real piece of clothing. I bought this amazing silver liquid acrylic paint a while back for a costume, which basically flows like ink and is fantastic to use, so with that in hand I looked around for some inspirational images on the internet and settled on decorating the coat with a Chinese dragon. So here’s how it turned out. I’m very pleased. The coat is infinitely cooler than it was before.
Ooooh, I almost forgot to mention that right now I’m keeping my eye on an ebay listing which ends tomorrow, a lot of male BJD clothing and accessories: shirts, bracelets, a necklace, boots, and some other cool objects. There are a couple things I know I won’t use, and a few that I might use, but not on him, however altogether it looks to be an astounding deal for the 13 items. So, wish me luck, and maybe soon Balthus will have all sorts of cool clothes and things to add to his collection.
