This little girl is one of my new Non-BJD dolls. It all started with a gift. One of my customers collects dolls as well and she gave me a head without a body and two blank face plates. She said she didn’t need them and thought I could use them. The head came with rather matted hair that looked like she had tried to cut it, and the eye mechanism didn’t work.
I said thank you and put them in a box. And almost forgot about them. I knew nothing about these dolls, how to assemble them, what kind of bodies they need or even what skin color they are. But since my shop is still closed thanks to the partial lockdown I have time to work on things I put aside for years. So I dug up the box and tried to figure out what I would need to turn them into complete dolls.
I searched Youtube and found BeBedolls, a channel with all the information I needed to set to work. After hours and hours I spent watching Casie’s videos about Blythe customization, assembly and eye mech problems I felt confident enough to try to fix the mechanism, buy bodies and all necessary parts to turn them into dolls. Especially the videos about the eye mech problems were extremely helpful. If you think sticking eyes with putty into a BJD head is difficult you have never tried to fix a Blythe eye mechanism ;). But with Casie’s help and lots of pictures to remember what goes were I finally succeeded.
Betty is the first I finished. I carved her, painted her, fixed her eyes and made eye chips using my templates. I will probably exchange the glass eyes with resin ones and make better print outs of the iris templates – these are just inkjet on normal paper. I gave her the full eye-treatment, gaze lift and lids. She missed a T-bar, and I ended up using a piece of a sturdy plastic cable binder as a replacement. I have ordered a couple of eye mechanisms for the face plates and one spare, but since her mech works just fine now I will probably just change it if that changes. She has a nice new scalp with wig and a Pure Neemo S body, and I decided to call her Betty. She somehow reminds me of Betty Boop. I really like how she turned out.
I never realised you hadn’t a Blythe doll in your collection. I began mine with Blythe dolls, but I’ve sold most of them now. They certainly are fun to customise though and I think that’s why they have such a big following. You have done a great job of bringing your head to life, and I see her Betty Boop resemblance, now I wonder what you have in store for the spare faces. 🙂
Big hugs,
X
The Non-BJD dolls are all recent additions- parts in a box don’t really count ;). Up until this year I had one Barbie, all other dolls were BJD.. Are your Blythes on your blog? I will go and look for them. They are fun, not just the painting but the carving as well. I am not sure yet what I will do with the other faces, but I’ve been making clothes for them like crazy.
She’s very Betty Boop indeed, and her wig is perfect for her. You did a great job! The prison photos are very funny! And she looks very cute in her prison attire. 😀
Thank you :). And the prison attire makes for good PJs as well. They are really fun to sew for.
To be truth I’m not into these dolls but your version is really wonderful. I wonder how would this head look on Barbie curvy body – it’s a bit bigger, so the proportions may be a little bit better. On the other hand it’s hard to speak about proportions in these dolls’ case. 😉
Anyway I love her face and her look. 🙂
I am not really either, and I wouldn’t have bought one. But now that I have them here I kind of like them. And I do like the bodies, I would probably even put a Barbie head on them. They allow loads of poses and have lots of additional hands. But I am sure a curvy Barbie body wouldn’t be so different in height and proportions.
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