I am super excited to share this! I have made a custom doll of a character in a wonderful series of books. I started this in December of 2017, so it took me about a month and a half.
I have a few custom dolls which I invented characters for (Eliza and Emily are two) but they both came about because I either did a head swap, or I bought a second-hand doll... and then in both cases I made their wigs. This is the first time I have tried to make a doll look like a character, to have a specific look (not just "hey, this wig looks neat, let's use that!"), and to fit a character that someone else came up with.
Here is the image of the first book in the series,
Earthrise by MCA Hogarth. Reese is a very striking woman, she wears her hair in braids that are capped with beads, and in the first few books her wardrobe is described as bodysuits and vests. She is the captain and owner of the space trader Earthrise, and she has as a frequent companion a Flitzbe (an alien that looks like a fuzzy volleyball which can change colors) named Alacazam.
I did not have a doll with quite the right face, and I did end up having to settle - I was not able to find a doll with the right skin tone and that narrow a nose. Also, I wanted her on a Made To Move body, which meant I could not go with as dark a skin tone as I would have liked.
I settled on ordering this doll from Amazon along with a Gabby Douglass Made to Move doll (I was hoping she would have dark enough skin to match the Zig-Zag doll I also ordered, but no such luck).
As you can see from her stock photo, she has a lovely face, but the two-tone hair was not going to stay. My doll also had a defect on her lip paint, there was a scratch in it (a big one).
While I waited for the dolls to arrive, I did a little test photoshoot with some clothing and props I had on hand, and my yellow/green top Made to Move Barbie (whose nose is too cute and upturned to be Reese).
I don't own a bodysuit, so I used the yoga pants from the Made To Move dolls, calf-high boots from a Star Trek Uhura doll, and then a long-sleeved blue shirt I don't know the origin of and a Barbie vest. The headset is from a Power Team guy, the bag I am not sure of, and I think the belt is Power Team too. I posed her in front of a bunch of stuff that could pass as futuristic, and then kept waiting for the actual doll to arrive because I REALLY liked this project. It made me think of other dolls-based-on-characters-from-books projects...
Then the dolls arrived, and I started by removing the heads (Gabby Douglass looks cute and teen-aged on a petite body). I cut off the two-toned hair (and saved it because it is nice and maybe some doll will end up with a blue and purple bob cut) and removed the glue and hair bits from the head. I used acetone nail polish remover to remove the lip paint and the scalp paint. I was hoping to remove all of the blue and purple scalp paint so I could just have a scalp the color of her skin, but I couldn't get rid of all the blue and purple. I ended up having to paint her scalp black, which is unrealistic but I had to compromise.
Then I rooted her hair with yarn I had, a black Alpaca yarn in a light worsted weight, maybe DK weight. I used My Froggy Stuff's excellent video on a yarn reroot. Each strand is knotted, and will not slip out. I rooted in every other hole around the hairline, and more sparsely over the rest of her head (and her hair is still REALLY thick).
Then I put a bead on the end of every strand of yarn. They are not glued on (though I may do that in future). I used a needle threading tool and pulled the yarn through each small bead. Then I repainted her lips. The first layer of paint was way too red, but putting a light brown over it toned it down.
HERE SHE IS!
In this photo, Reese holds Alacazam, who is currently white. She is somewhere either in port, or in her ship, looking over cargo.
And here she is examining a small snail shell (which is actually yellow, and my camera would just not pick up the detail). Alacazam is pink here, not white!
Then I changed outfits. She ends up in the later books on the planet where the Eldritch live (think space elves). They are very formal, and Reese is ... not. I do not have nearly fancy enough clothes for a ball, but I threw together this outfit thinking of the times that Reese is running about castles trying to find and help the Eldritch who is part of her crew. Thus I give you - Rescuing Space Elves Requires Pants and Boots!
The leggings and boots are the same as before, the shirt is one my mother made when I was a child, the shawl is one I got when Volks discontinued their 1/6 line of dolls, and the purple cape was found at a flea market, I think.
Yes, Alacazam is now blue! He (or it, but Reese cannot call him it) changes colors to project his mood.
And finally, I did pull out the closest thing to a ball gown I have in my clothes collection. It is still not fancy enough. It was on a dollar store doll I bought because I liked her face.
Yes, the Flitzbe is now the most soothing blue he can be, Reese is not a fan of large social gatherings or court (as in the court of a queen) appearances.
Here is a look at her hair from the back, I hope to eventually replace the clear shiny beads with gold ones, I did not have enough gold beads for her whole head of hair.
There! I am extremely happy with Reese, and am already thinking about another project, a favorite character from a friend's writing.
I can highly recommend the four book series that Reese stars in, it is very good space opera with some romance and characters that care about each other (even Reese, who is rather prickly and standoffish at first grows and changes over the books). The fourth book is my absolute favorite - what started as a short holiday story for fans turned into an entire novel about the holiday traditions of the Eldritch and gift giving and feasts. It's wonderful.
