We have faces!! Not COMPLETED faces, but faces none the less!

I could hardly wait to do the faces on my girls. I had such visions of what they would look like. I dreamed of breezing through their face-ups in a couple of hours and - VOILA - my beautiful girls would stand before me, in the flesh - er, plastic - all done in all of their glory! Wrong! I have put on faces, taken off faces, sanded, re-sanded, carved, re-sanded. This project is more of a challenge than I envisioned. I think of gifted Winamac sculptor Casey Eskridge and his genius creations and I wonder why I can't even finish an already created doll face. Well, I have not given up. I think I will just have to be a little less of a perfectionist and live with the fact that I am not even close to a sculptor and not even much of a make up artist! But these little girls WILL have faces and just like our human faces, they will be imperfect. Stay tuned! PS Several people have asked what happened to my past posts. I deleted them - at least most of them. I am not sure if it was a good or bad decision but there you have it!

DOLLY SPRAYING - First three coats are done! Now on to face painting. Dolly making is much more fun than vacuuming (so please excuse the dust if you come to my house!

...AND THEN THERE WERE THREE!

I started with the goal of customizing my very own Blythe. On the advice of customizer Karen West, I was concurrently customizing a "practice doll" - another Blythe. I would work on practice Blythe first and then proceed to real Blythe after first practicing a technique on practice Blythe. (Both, of course, are real Blythes, although one is an older doll.) Well, I just couldn't help myself. Despite the fact that tackling two Blythe dolls as a first project should have been daunting enough, I have added yet a third! This helps me from getting so antsy when I feel like I want to proceed with something I haven't received instruction about yet. My biggest challenge might just turn out to be keeping all three girls straight with all of their respective screws, strings and other parts! The other big challenge is trying to wait for instruction before plunging right ahead without it! Below is a photo of all three faceplates, carved and sanded. They all need just that final bit of smoothing with the finest sandpaper before they are ready for their "make up" - but by and large I am done with this part of their work ups. Although they all look basically the same in this photo, there are definite differences among them, particularly their mouths. For as basic as they look, there has been a lot of carving/sanding involved on every face. Hours of work. No, I agree, it doesn't look like it...yet! As a novice, I am hoping that each subsequent step will help each girl become more her own unique self!

Stay tuned as these girls come into their own personalities!!