Now, I’m going to walk you through blurring the background in a simple but effective manner. This is actually something I don’t like doing because it’s hard to make it look realistic. I see a lot of people overdo this effect too, and it makes the photo hard to look at. Especially when they overblur something in the foreground, which should be more in focus than the background.
Sometimes I’ll do this if my background is extremely messy, though. This is the case in this photo, where you can see my face-up materials on the desk. I want it to be less noticeable.
For the record, I already sharpened this photo. You can look back at the first tutorial if you want to know how. Here, I am duplicating the layer so that I can spotclean later. It’ll make more sense when we get to that.
Using Quick Mask once again, I fill in the layer with opaque black.
Using the white, soft, large, translucent brush I paint the background but leave the foreground untouched.
Get out of Quick Mask Mode when you’re done.
I prefer Gaussian Blur for this.
Once again, I just messed with the settings until I found something I liked.
After that, I took a large, soft eraser and cleaned up the edges on the foreground that have been overly softened. By erasing, the sharpened layer below shows through the blurred layer. This is why I duplicated the layers earlier.
The finished product, which makes the foreground more eyecatching. Now hopefully no one will notice my messy desk. :)
This is the original photo. Looks great, but I want the eyes to pop more without going in and brightening them. An easy way to make them look more eyecatching is to sharpen them in Photoshop. I usually sharpen all of my photos to add interest to them, and because I like clarity in my photos. Overdoing the sharpening can make a photo look messy or like it has a lot of artifacts. That’s why I prefer to use the masking tool to selectively sharpen bits of my photos.
For reference, I’m just using plain ol’ Adobe Photoshop CS.
Go into Quick Mask Mode, which can be accessed by clicking that button.
Fill your canvas with an opaque black and it’ll show up as a translucent red over your image.
Then grab the brush and change your brush color to white. What you paint with white will be selected, while the black will not be selected. To have a nice smooth transition from unsharpened areas to sharpen, I like to use a soft, large brush at a lower opacity and build up layers as I paint. As you can see, I concentrated on the eyes, mouth, and the heart pendant.
Click this button to get out of Quick Mask Mode, and what you painted will now be selected.
I prefer to use Unsharp Mask.
Then I play around with the settings to see what I like.
The finished product.
A comparison. The effect is subtle, but I think it’s worth the effort.
Time Spent: 2-3 Hours
Materials:
-Fabric
-Scissors
-Thread
-Needle
Here’s a free pattern for you guys(just credit me if you use it, also please don’t use it for profit):
And resize the height of the image to the size of your doll’s head circumference. Important: Remember to add 2-3 cm to your doll’s head measurement for wig room!
I used the word flap for rim to prevent confusion because I use the word rim a lot later on.
Now you cut out the required pieces:
Which are:
-2 flaps(the flap image is half of it, so fold the fabric to cut out the flap shape)
-1 hat body(same as flap, fold the fabric then cut)
-1 under strip(this strip tucks in under the hat)
-1 visible strip(this strip is visible on the outside of the hat)
First I’ll teach you how to make the folds that are on the upper rim of the hat’s body. The fold looks like this:
First you locate an edge that looks like this:
Then you fold it like this:
Another view of it:
Then you sew this fold so it will stay in place. Repeat and sew all of the folds on the hat body piece.
You basically sew all the red area. I also sewed the blue dotted line area but it was so loose that I don’t think it really made a big difference, so you may not need to do that part. Feel free to sew that area also though if the hat is too big to connect with the tube later on.
(The image is half of the pattern since you do the same thing to both sides.)
When you are done, you should get something like this:
You’re done with the hat’s body! Yay!
Now we begin working on the flaps. Place the flaps together like this, with the designs on the inside:
Then sew the outer rims and flip it inside out. You should get something like this:
Now you take the two strips and sandwich the flap in the middle like this:
Then you sew the three parts together at the top at the red area:
Now that you are done, you turn this strip into a tube and sew the outside together(design side facing inside, no designs facing outside). The flap of the hat will be on the inside.
Then you put the tube over the hat’s body:
Here’s a photo of that in action. Sew the red area.
Flip the hat inside out! There under strip will be visible but just flip it to be inside the hat. And after that you are done!
The result should look something like this!
I hope you enjoyed the tutorial, feel free to ask for more help here in this article’s comments section! =]
This is my first sewing tutorial and I learned a lot from my mistakes, I may remake this tutorial in the future so that it’ll be more clear. Please point out areas that are confusing or unclear so the remake of this tutorial will be better.
I wanted to add a bit of an oomph to an old wig that I have. So I decided to lightly curl it.
The wig that I’m starting out with is a long haired monique wig that my sister trimmed.
It’s not bad but I didn’t like how flat it looked.
So I decided to lightly curl it, and here are the results:
As you can see it’s not a big difference. I just wanted the hair to look fuller and less flat on the head. Before the curling, the old wig was essentially a junk wig because the flatness always bugged me. With the new change, it looks more lively and now I have another wig for my doll to wear.
For the materials I used:
-old monique wig
-human hair conditioner
-bobby pins
-straws
-scissors
-a bottle for the wig to sit on
First I heated the water up:
Then I rinsed the wig under the hot faucet water(depending on how hot your faucet is, it may not be a good idea to rinse the wig with your hand):
Then I applied some conditioner to the wig:
Rinsed the wig again:
Placed it on a bottle:
Didn’t like the bottle so I switched to a water bottle:
Now I took a straw:
I placed the straw against the length of hair that I planned to roll.
This way I could determine how long of a cut I needed for the straw.
The hair is then rolled around the straw and secured by a bobby pin:
Doll wigs are made in layers, so I recommend curling the hair according to the natural layers of the wig:
I roll up the rest of the hair:
At this point if you want curlier curls, I would recommend either putting the wig under hot faucet water again or pouring boiling/microwaved water over the wig. Since I wanted my wig to be lightly curled, the conditioned wet state of the wig will do the job.
I then set the wig to dry overnight.
Next morning, I woke up and this was the result:
I am very happy with the result so I would recommend people to do this if you want to make your wig look fuller.
I’m kinda tempted to try curling it again with toothpicks and boiling water just to see how curly it can get so I may do another review with tighter curls.
Thank you for reading and I hope this review was helpful!
Have you had any experiences with lightly curling a wig? How were your results?
This is a follow up post from a question that flame_angel asked.
Whether you just want a new do with a straight wig or revive the curls of an old wig, there are multiple ways to create curls for dolls. Here are 2 ways for you to curl your doll’s hair:
– Some cylindrical objects that you could use to wrap your doll’s hair around:
-straws
-toothpicks
-children’s plastic hair curlers
Just secure the straws or toothpicks with bobby pins. You could also secure the straws with pipe cleaners.
The level of curliness of the curls is determined by the heat of the water you pour on the wig. The hotter the water is, the curlier the hair will be. You could always start on a lower more warm temperature and work your way up to higher levels of heat if the curls aren’t curly enough. This gives you more control over your desired curliness. Wigs can melt at high temperatures so working your way up from a lower temperature to a higher temperature is a good way keep yourself from melting your wig. Be careful of the hot water though, try to use some other object to pick up the wigs instead of your hands or else you may get burned.
You can get hot water by microwaving water or just boiling water.
You also don’t have to use water, the wig is made of plastic so it just needs heat to curve it’s shape. So you could also use other forms of heating, like steam for example.
I would also recommend curling these wigs with conditioner.
Some more tips on using cylindrical objects for curling from griDbug and lesrees:
griDbug:
“I’ve found that childrens plastic play hair curlers work after you wet the hair with warm/hot water! You use them like normal (non heated) curlers and then leave them in to dry! ^_^ You can usually find these in play dress up kits that you get at discount stores for like $2.00.”
lesrees:
“I have seen articles for restyling hair on dolls with rooted hair. It would work for wigs too.
Cut up paper towels to use as end papers. Use small cylindrical objects for curlers. Drinking straws work for tight curls. short lengths of plastic pipe or tubing would work for waves or fatter curls.
Roll up the hair just the way you would if you were putting a humans hair into the desired style. Pour warm to boiling water over the curlers and wig. Let the wig dry. Gently remove the curlers and style the curled wig.
I would start with lower temp water and check the effect. If the wig is not curled enough, use hotter water. This will take longer but you will have more control.”
– I only recommend this for heat resisting wigs because the chance of melting your wig is too risky. You can still use a curling iron for normal wigs, just make sure your wig is really wet and the heat is on a very low setting.
What other ways have you used to curl your doll’s wig?
There are multiple ways to keep a wig on. The main reason why wigs slip off is because the wig is usually too small or too big. Every once in a while you may come across a perfect sized wig where it automatically stays on without any tricks. But for those of us who haven’t found a perfect fitting wig yet, here are 5 methods to keep your wig in place.
– the silicon’s friction against the wig will keep the wig in place.
– Use stick on velcro and stick it on your doll’s head. The velcro will prevent the wig from slipping and falling. Velcro isn’t recommended though because it may destroy the wig when it catches on the hairs.
– You can always buy some elastic and sew it on the inner rim of your wig. This method makes the wigs fit more snugly. Still, I usually pair this up with rubber bands because there is still a chance of the wig slipping if the elastic isn’t tight enough.
– I don’t really recommend this method since the tape loses it’s stickiness after a while. But double-sided tape can help wigs stay on. You can use normal tape, double-sided tape, or athletic tape for this. Athletic tape also has the bonus of not leaving a sticky residue to the head!
– Mole skin strips can also help wigs stay on heads!
– put hot glue in a circular motion around your dolls head.
– put it near the front of the wig to prevent it from shifting.
– You can cut out the fingers and put them on the dolls head. Works like silicon wig caps.
And those are the five ways that I’m aware of. Do you have any wig keeping on methods that I haven’t mentioned?
edit: edited the article with methods that people commented. =]
Photo by: Tenshi
– it restores your wig to it’s original condition, it also makes it shiny.
– Wig conditioner is best for it’s less damaging qualities but the lubrication in human conditioner works on doll wigs too.
– to control static
– Boiling works but boil the wig at low temperatures or else you’ll melt your wig! Wigs from different companies and different lines within the companies have different melting points. So always start from a low temperature because each wig is a new experience. After the boiling, leave the wig to dry when you finish styling.
– a less daring method compared to boiling the wig in a pot. Just pour the boiling water then style your wig. Once you get the wig to the style you want, set it to dry.
– a much more simple method oppose to boiling and pouring boiling water. Just run the wig through hot water under the faucet. Style it to your taste then set dry.
– a small but quick way to slightly tame wigs in outside situations like doll meets.
Notes on drying: You can set your wig on a bottle or any other cylindrical object when you leave the wig for drying.
As always, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Doll wigs are made from plastic so excessive stretching and pulling can deform the strands of hair. Always remember to:
Are there any other ways that you use to tame your wigs?
Introduction
Hi, I’m Chien, and I’ve been doing face-ups for roughly a year (in fact, this is my first one!). I’ve still got a lot to learn, and I definitely need to continue working on my technique, but I figured making a tutorial would help others.
Face-ups are great fun, though they can be rather time consuming. Nevertheless, it’s totally beneficial to yourself to learn how to do face-ups. For one, you’ll know how to fix a face-up if it ever gets damaged. For two, you don’t have to send them off to someone else to paint (which is fine, but it’s not guranteed that they’ll get it right since everyone has their own vision). When you send a doll off to a face-up artist, you have to pay for shipping and spend a good amount of time waiting, too. Having your doll in the post is quite nerve-racking! There are many other reasons to learn how to face-up, but they depend on the person.
It takes a long time to get good at face-ups, unless you have some kind of special knack for it. So don’t feel discouraged if your first one is terrifying! Keep working at it, and try new techniques.
My Material List
Zoukeimura Acrylics
Zoukeimura Medium
Zoukeimura NY-01 Brush
Zoukeimura Powder Spray w/ UV-Cut
Zoukeimura Pastels
Rembrandt Pastels
Liquitex Gloss Medium & Varnish
Soft Make-up Brush
Q-Tips w/ Plastic Wands
Keanded Eraser
Painter’s Tape
Junk Brushes
MASK!
You may substitute your acrylics, medium, and gloss with your preferred brand. The reason why I have so much Zoukeimura stuff is because I get most of my face-up materials at the Volks store near LA. You can use soft brushes instead of a make-up brush. You need q-tips with plastic wands, because the ones with paper wands might get mushy after a few minutes or they might bend when you’re pressing down really hard. Junk brushes are for mixing paint and applying gloss. In place of Zoukeimura Powder Spray, you can also use Mr. Super Clear (preferred brand by many), or Testors Dull Cote/Model Masters Lusterless.
A MASK IS ESSENTIAL WHEN COATING YOUR DOLL. Don’t get a cheap dust mask, get a proper one for the sake of your health. The gas from the sealer is very, very bad for you. Wear long-sleeves when you spray. I’m guilty of forgetting to do this. If you’re really cheap, at least wet some cloth and hold it over your mouth. Just… be careful. This is dangerous stuff.
o1. First, prep your doll head. Scrub it clean with some water and dry it. A lot of people let their doll heads air dry, but I’m too impatient for that. I use an old towel– so old that the fibers don’t come off when you use it– and wipe the head clean, then let the remaining parts that I can’t get to (such as the eyelid crease or ears) air dry. Sometimes I use a q-tip to dab it out, but that might leave fibers.
After that, you coat your doll with two or three coats of sealer. Do this outside on a mild day with no wind. Follow the instructions on the can! The way I coat is I stick the head on a paintbrush/plastic fork and move the can and head while I spray light coats. When the head is a little shiny with coating, I wait for it to dry (takes about ten seconds), and spray another coat. I do these light coats about seven times, or until the doll isn’t shiny (as in its resin was already smooth and buffed). Then I set it down and let it fully dry for ten minutes or more.
o2. Now take out your pastels. The Zoukeimura pastels are somehow softer than my Rembrandt pastels, so all I need to do is open the case.
For the Rembrandts, I take out the color I need and shave off some fine dust with an exacto knife. It’s best to shave extra for now, because you don’t want to get your fingers dirty later.
Or, if I’m feeling particularly lazy or don’t need a very saturated color, I can just brush it off directly with the make-up brush or q-tips. In fact, this is exactly what I do with the Zoukeimura pastels since they’re softer.
o3. With a q-tip, I press it on the surface until the color stays, and then soften it with the same q-tip by moving it back and forth. If I use a make-up brush, I brush it onto the surface. It’s light at first, but it eventually builds up to a nice color. If you make any mistakes with blushing, tap it off with the kneaded erase. If it still won’t come off, you may have to remove either all the blushing with a Mr. Clean magic eraser or the entire face-up with brush cleaner.
o4. Tips on applying color: tilt the head back when blushing the lips so that the pastel will drop into the lip crease and fill in more evenly. Blush the eyes the same way you would apply make-up to your own– soft half-moons. The pastel can only get so dark, so every now and then you’ll need to spray another coat of sealer. When you do that, make sure that the doll head is clean and that there’s no pastel fingerprints on the face from when you were rotating the head in your hands. Remember, after you seal it you can’t touch it!
This is how my first layer of blushing looked. After this layer, I coated the head because the colors weren’t getting any darker. The face is done with a reddish brown that I mixed, and the lips are the same color but with more red.
This is how my second layer of blushing looked. I used the same colors, but they’re more saturated now that there’s two layers of them. I coated the head again so I can add another layer of blushing.
This is how my third and final layer of blushing looked. This time, I used darker colors to add dimension to the eyes and lips. I used black, dark brown, and pink for the eyes, and used the dark brown on the lips. Then, I coated the head to seal in all the blushing when I was absolutely sure that I was done.
o5. Acrylics!
I blended black and brown to get a nice, base color that I’ll use for the entire face. Since Tim is supposed to have black hair (he’s blonde in the photos because I don’t have the proper wig), my color scheme was darker. I used a generous amount of medium to make the colors nice and translucent. This is the key to doing soft-looking eyelashes. If the color is opaque, it’ll stand out to much. If it’s translucent, it’ll be a mix of the skin tone and color, and thus appear softer on the face. If you WANT it to look dark and done with make-up, you should still avoid using opaque paint to do so. It’ll look painted on because, well, it was painted on! Either build up small layers of the translucent paint, or use less medium to think it out.
My brush.
I spent a long, long time looking for a brush I liked. This brush isn’t teeny tiny and hair-thin, but I’ve learned to control it over time. Everyone has different preferences, though. I do have a smaller brush– 20/0 spotter– but I prefer this because I can make a variety of brush strokes with it.
o6. The way I paint the lines nice and pointy is by lifting my brush upwards after I’m done with the line. Do whatever feels best for you. If you’re new to painting, it’s understandable if you start out with a shaky hand. Eventually you gain the right control to make precise lines. Brushwork is the most challenging aspect of a face-up to many people, but to me it’s the easiest and most fun part. Blushing is hard for me!
Oh, by the by, I decided I didn’t like the blushing on Tim’s face and redid it about… four times. This is the one I settled on. Annnyways! Using the translucent paint I mixed, I start with the first layer of color. Basic eyelashes are done by making straight lines along the curve of the lower lid. I like doing slightly curved, uneven eyelashes. They look more natural to me than ruler-straight, evenly spaced eyelashes. Same goes for the eyebrows– I enjoy doing eyebrows with soft, curling lines that are quite long. The eyebrows I do tend to look bushy and thicker than most face-up artist’s. Many people use short, thin strokes that are spaced far apart. The hairs I draw tend to be clumped closer together. The placement of the eyebrow should generally be on the brow line, but this can be adjusted for an effect. Higher eyebrows for an awake look, and lower eyebrows for a broody look.
Tim’s brows are darker on the far end and lighter near the bridge of the nose. The color I’m using for both the eyelashes and eyebrows are the same, but due to the nature of the translucent paint they look like different shades because of the blushing underneath.
o7. I added black to my paints to make them darker. Then I went over my lines to add dimension and to slowly build the eyebrows up to their real color (dark brown instead of the dark blonde they were with the first layer of color). I darkened the lower lashes with the darker color too.
The lines criss-cross for a more natural look. A lot of people have trouble making the eyebrows match. I find it’s a lot easier to make the eyebrows match by turning the head upside down and viewing it objectively. Also, I lined the upper rim of the eyes with opaque dark, dark brown paint. If you want to make the eyes look bigger, paint onto the eyelids for a very heavy eyeliner look. Based on the shape you painted, you can make the eyes look larger and/or rounder. I do this a lot to change the expressions on a doll, but this time I did not do that on Tim. Sometimes I’ll line the lower rim of the eyes with a fleshy pink– either opaque or translucent– for a fresher look. Sometimes I will add eyeliner to the edge of the lower rim, too. But that all depends on the face-up.
o8. My goodness! This a terribly unflattering picture of the lip lines. Usually I do my lip lines with an extremely translucent brick-red to make the lips more supple, but this time I opted for white line lip creases to make the lips less severe. I did this with a cream color and a decent amount of medium to make it translucent but not too translucent. I flipped the head upside down to do the lines on the upper lip. I also extended the mouth into a more obvious smile with the same paint I used for the eyebrows.
o9. After everything has dried, I dab a q-tip in black pastel, pinch its tip to be pointier, and shade the eyebrows and eyelashes darker. If this was a doll with brown hair, I would’ve used a dark brown. If this was a doll with lighter-colored hair, I would’ved used a peach or light brown. This is actually a risky step, since the paint could chip off from the rubbing. It would be safe to coat your brushwork with sealer before you start fiercely rubbing pastel onto it. Note: While I was adding the color to the brows, I also darkened his eyelids in an unnatural way for a stylized effect that looks cool.
1o. Ah, glossing. I use junk brushes to gloss with. I tilt the bottle over and remove the cap, and then use the gloss from the cap only. This prevents me from using huge amoungs of gloss.
Glossing is actually an optional step, but to me it makes the dolls look more alive. Some dolls look better without, though! I typically only use one layer of gloss, but if it’s for a feminine doll, I will use two or three layers of gloss for a lacquered look. Typically, people blush the upper and lower rims of the eyes with a little overlap onto the eyelashes and the eyelid. Sometimes I’ll blush the entire eyelid for a shiny look. If the doll has no eyelid crease, glossing where the eyelid should be helps define the face. This also works for the lips, too. Glossing the lips defines the edge of the lips, and some people use this to their advantage by painting outside of the lip and then glossing the excess to pull the look together.
If you mess up on glossing, remove it while it’s still wet with Mr. Clean magic eraser. If you wipe it off with just water or your fingers, it’ll leave a slightly shiny spot and that’s not good. So definitely use the magic eraser.
1o. The way I apply eyeashes is a modified version of Helene’s, except I keep the tape in and use painter’s tape. The reason why I do that is if I remove the tape carefully enough, the eyelashes are entirely reusable. Usually, if you take the eyelashes out if they’re glued in, this ruins them. I’m stingy and reuse eyelashes until they’re impossible to reuse. Eyelashes are also optional, though. Some dolls look better without them.
The gloss will look milky until it’s dried. After that, just pop the eyes back in and put the head on a body (if you have one) and you’re done!
Thanks for reading. Good luck and have fun with it!
