Recently purchased a Sio2 Funan from Julia on Den of Angels and now it’s time to customize!
This was him right out of the box:
Just a gorgeous doll, even blank. But, I intend for him to be one of my OCs, Cernun, a spring spirit. So he can’t remain blank.
At first I was intending to dye him, but then I realized I liked the more organic looking color variations that comes from doing a color change with pastels. So I thought I would do it that way instead. Though last time I did a pastel color change was on my Doll Chateau Pluto, and even then I only did her legs and tail. So I had never done a color change of this magnitude with pastels…
So let’s do a test area! I wasn’t 100% sold yet on the resin wig, so I decided to try blushing the wig first:
And I really loved how it turned out. So I did the antlers and started adding flowers and butterflies to really give that Spring Spirit vibe:
Which turned out super pretty when it was finished:
Then I moved on to his faceup, which I wanted to still have those floral/spring vibes, but be a bit more subtle since his hair and antlers were so extra:
I absolutely love how it turned out, and I made him some custom eyes to fit his vibe.
And I just…
Love him so much
So now I’m working on blushing his arms so I can avoid taking him apart completely for a little bit longer.
But I will update my progress as I go. 🥰
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Photo Challenges - Why I do them & why I do them alone
Time for a new blog, my topic this time: Photo Challenges!
With the new year a lot of people attempt to do the "A Doll A Week" a weekly photo challenge, some are even that ambitious to do the 365-Challenge, a photo for each day.
Back in 2014 I started my very first attempt to do a photo challenge, I got a DSLR as gift 1 1/2 years in before and kinda wanted to do more with it than just taking photos here and there. The weekly challenge of the ADAW seemed fun. On the top of this entry you can see my very first entrance for it. As you can see it started with a quite random photo.
I can tell I didn't make the full 2014 according to the ADAW but as I checked my files I noticed I indeed took photos each week?! Therefore I failed but .. also did not. It was somehow weirdly motivating for me to see that I can do it.
2015 was the first true attempt for me to finish the ADAW, this time with more effort. Because just taking photos is boring right? Aside taking more photos I wanted to feature each doll I had, around that time that was still very much possible with 52 photos for the 52 weeks of the year.
I was prepared, this was the first pic of 2015 .. well.. no. It wasn't I took it in advance and this is one of the points I later on disliked how I approached the whole thing. I was in a flickr group for some time and the same theme was going against my own liking, that people just took 20 photos at a time, posted them (all looking alike) and were finished with the whole challenge within half of the time.
I asked myself if this was what I wanted? The whole thing started to frustrate me, as I tried to come up with cool ideas and I saw other people half-assed their entries. Of course each to their own but no passion for the project, 'cheating' with multiple photos from one photoshoot just to make it "full" that seemed wrong for me.
But I managed to finish 2015! My first year with 52 weekly photos taken. The next year started with a photoshoot as well but I didn't use it for the ADAW.
Instead I took a break to regain and started with another idea:
Names! Like this one was named "ADAW 01 - Frost Pattern" I made it into an own challenge to add creative titles to go with the photos, also I added more and more photos, not just one but multiple. This was to challenge myself more and more. Still I tried to be motivated by others and motivate them but somehow... it still was turning me off that people approached the whole thing less .. uhm.. strict? I can't really put it into words, I just can tell as I later on within the years tried to build up a guide how to do the ADAW I got so demotivated seeing others doing it that I had to put the thread in the forum on full ignore and do my own instead? It's super weird.
What really got me going though was that I started to print my photos. 2 Photobooks for one year, having my photos printed made them more precious to me. I still make photobooks and last year I reached the maximum page count for the books and uhm.. might need to do three a year if that continues.
I can tell I got hooked by photos. Sometimes it felt hard to start over though, to start with "nothing" all over again, as I tend to null & void my own progress in my mind and well.. "new year, nothing done" got me hard sometimes, that's why the first days of the new years were hard for me to find ideas.
Also the fact that I still tried not to feature a doll twice got harder and harder even given I had more than enough dolls. But you know how it is, right? When you restrict yourself you want to do exactly that what is restricted.
Did I feel drained in the process of taking photos weekly? Oh yes, I did. Especially because I decided I have to take WHOLE PHOTOSHOOTS and sometimes even posts with outtakes to share fact about the characters. Some weeks I was so demotivated.
But a thing that helped me going was ... routine. And the photobooks. I picked a day during the week I was taking photos, which for me is Saturday, and it's still mainly Saturday to be honest.
It was 2019 already and you can see I returned to taking new year's photos, 2020 was similar. But I got tired of the ADAW thing, because it was kind of still setting to close borders for me. Taking photos weekly was becoming easy for me because I did it for so long. I still kinda tried to keep up with other hobbyists but in 2020 with the pandemic I cut ties with my local community and decided that 2021 would be the first year of me not doing a 'A Doll A Week'
Wait? What? Yes, you read that correctly.
Welcome to my own challenge the ... Weekly Photo!
This might seem not much of a difference but allows me to take photos, not just of dolls but of landscapes, people, animals and that was important to me. I still mainly use it for dolls but I wanted to do an own challenge, without any link back to the 'rules' of the ADAW and without the mental connection to the community I had left behind.
With the Weekly Photo I started to thrive. No more (own set) boundaries, every doll could be featured, even 20 times in a row, no rules, no titles, no themes, just me and my camera. For the sake of being creative.
And that's what I can tell you about my challenges... do it for the creativity, do it to challenge yourself. Don't be that dumb like I was and think you have to stick to what everyone else does or that you have to do it a certain way.
Now taking photos became so easy for me I see it as challenge to use the seasons as canvas to come up with something, to learn what light/time is the best.
I can tell my photography has envolved because I dared and tried, I challenged myself, revisted ideas but didn't try to set boundaries to my own creativity.
To be honest I now see photo ideas everywhere and almost have to stop myself from taking TOO MANY PHOTOS because .. I still need to sort them out :')
Oh a little thing that still is a rule for me ... I didn't bury them all: the first photo has to be taken in the actual year. Yes, I stayed up super late to take Tamani's photos as the first set of 2024 just to be sure I have that done.
I'm not sure if this entry is helpful for someone, for me looking up the old photos (I put in one for each year of a challenge) was super interesting and with a super busy week and weekend behind me I wanted to do a lighter topic for once.
I can tell writing down really helps me to reflect the hobby and to think through some decisions.
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