Creating your own Studio Muse in JOYnal!

I bought my first Monster High Doll a few years back. It was Skelita, and I thought what a brilliant substitute for the classic wooden posing doll many artists have in their studios!

And then the collecting bug hit me. Big Time. I just adore the details and thought that goes in to each doll. and their amazing shoes. The tiny hands are so expressive. Each character has a different story and face mould. Then the same company came out with a ‘spin=off’ series called Ever After High. They are not as weird and quirky, but so cute and pretty. I loved Barbies when I was a kid, but all these dolls are the same price , but are ball jointed, so you can pose them.

Then I started customising them …. and oh my! THAT is fun.

This was the original ( you can click the image to still get one on Amazon by the way – I know you want one!)

So cute but too bright… so I repainted her and now she looks she would definitely cause a few shipwrecks…

I have learned so much from working on a 3D surface.  As a hobby, it’s immense fun. But as an educational tool, customising dolls a valuable skill to learn ( So I have good news coming up…).

I love mixing the doll bodies with other heads too. My leading studio muse is Fairy Nuff. This is her charging one of my pens with fairy dust! I love making the dolls look like my drawings!

She started out as this cutie:

 

I finally got around to recording the process, and am making a tutorial  for doll customisation as part of JOYnal, which starts as a LIVE class on September 1st!

You can join me for all the online fun and find out more by clicking the image ( or here).

Are you going to join me? I hope so!

What will you need?

If you don’t have one already, you may want to get a dolly ( or two, or three!) to customise.
I get most of my dolls from Amazon. They ship quickly. You can also go look at your nearest big box store (Target, Kmart, Toys R Us all stock them).

Ever After High dolls are based on the children of Story Book characters such as Cinderella, Pinnochio, Red Riding Hood, Snow White and Alice in Wonderland!

La Dee Dah dolls are a discontinued line, but they had such sweet faces and clothes!

Monster High Dolls are the children of famous ‘monsters’ such as Frankenstein, Dracula,  Zombies, Ghosts and witches. The subcontext of the entire line, is ‘it’s ok to be different!’. They come in all sorts of colours and fun themes.

You probably have all the art supplies you need already ( soft pastels, coloured pencils, paint pens, acrylic paint, pastel pencils), but you will need Some Mr. Hobby Super Clear in Matt or Flat.  Click on the images:

 

I mainly use the Flat as it has a UV protectant and dries Matt.

These sprays create a matt surface to work on and are made especially for vinyl. You could use Matt Fixative, but it has a satin sheen to it on the vinyl of the dolls heads which is not easy to work on.
There is a gloss version too, and I use that as a first coat on the hard plastic bodies and accessories I want to customise (such as the mermaid tail above), and then I spray with the Mat if I want to customise further.
If any of that is confusing, you can just wait until the class where I explain it all.

So are you going to join me in altering books, drawing fairies and mermaids AND making them too?

Do say yes!

xoxox

Jane and Fairy Nuff!