it's natural materials o'clock again & i made a stone golem.

a while ago, my partner's mother was moving and getting rid of some things, including a collection of rocks. i love a good rock, and when presented with a large wooden box of them, wanted to make a creature. i flirted with the idea of making something a little less stoney and a little more posable, but ended up deciding on this non-articulated sculpture. it has a metal wire skeleton, some tinfoil padding, and then just A Ton Of Rocks glued onto the frame. the face is a lake rock i found and painted some years ago, but didn't end up doing anything with until now.

i don't name any of them, purely because i'm garbage at names. gets to be a bit of a problem sometimes when i have an oc all ready to go for a story, but i'm still referring to them as "the new man" or "the troll" or "big bitch". so i've decided to free myself from trying to name sculpts.

the white bishop.

i wanted to make a chess piece bjd, but not go directly for the queen/king. the shape of the bishop was interesting, so i picked that one. the original intention was to contrast it with a black rook, but i want to tweak the proportions before i print any more pieces, so this prototype will remain unique. also i accidentally printed it way too large, which is not super feasible if i end up whole-assing this concept and making a full bjd chess set & board.

thistle is one of my favorite flowers, and i figured it would also make a nice little flower fairy. this is one of those projects where everything just lined up quickly and effortlessly; had the idea on day one, sculpted the doll in one sitting on day two, and after printing also painted her in one sitting. it's one of the reasons i love these kinds of organic shapes; they just flow. i was a little dubious about making the flower out of acrylic yarn wefts at first, but i think in the end it captures the vibe of thistle better than fabric would have.

a remake of an older sculpt of mine. i made the original while i was preparing for an art show, and due to various schedule & personal life shenanigans, was in a huge hurry -> the philosophy was "if it comes out of the printer, i'm gonna slap some paint on it and it's going into the show." i didn't like the result even at the time, but simply could not take the time to do it properly.

i've been meaning to remake the doll ever since, and finally got around to it. now he's giving the vibes i originally wanted him to & i'm super happy with this redone version.

"i'm you but stronger."

my first printer was an elegoo mars 2. i was enchanted by the print quality and didn't properly Consider the Mess of resin. we lived in a row house at the time, and had a small outdoor storage area set up for printing, but the resin smell & mess & curing problems still triggered my contamination ocd -> the printer was sold. i would only try resin printing again if i had a dedicated workspace with a fume hood.

i got the neptune 3 after that, and have been enjoying it a lot. considering how many hours of use it has seen, there have been very few problems.

i've been looking at bambu x1 for a long time but could never justify the price -> when elegoo announced centauri, essentially an x1 clone for a fraction of the price, i had to preorder. we'll see if that was a wise choice when it arrives in the summer.

FAQ

there are a few questions i keep getting in asks & comments & reblogs, so i'm making a list.

what is the base doll in [post]?

i mostly post my own sculpts -> there is no base doll. if i use any doll parts i did not make from scratch, they will be named in the post.

is the doll in [post] for sale?

i don't sell my first prints. when i'm taking commissions, i can make a copy that is more or less like the original, though sometimes i may have run out of specific decoration materials used. my print files are not for sale.

do you take commissions?

check the commission post. it will state whether commissions are open. if not, i probably don't know when they will be back; i do this only as much as my scrambled brain allows.

what do you use for sculpting/printing?

blender for sculpting, elegoo neptune 3 pro and various pla filaments for printing. mostly 0.1mm layer height, sometimes 0.2mm when i need to print a huge piece.

how do you post-process your prints?/various questions about sanding & smoothness

i go over the edges with a craft knife to remove any raggedness. i usually print on a raft to save my nerves, and that makes the downward edge of the print quite ugly. i don't do any post-processing beyond the knifework, because pla doesn't sand well and also because i don't want to. my dolls aren't resin-smooth, and for me they don't have to be.

how do you paint your dolls?

multiple layers of regular craft acrylics + varnish on top. sometimes i may use chalk pastels, but mainly everything is done with acrylics. i use makeup brushes to get delicate gradients.

can i use your designs in my dnd game?

yes. they're free to use for personal, private games, as long as you mention the source of the design at the table & credit and tag me if you post any art that uses them. you can toss me a coin on ko-fi if you feel like it, but this is in no way mandatory.

if you have any other questions, feel free to ask. i feel like i type like i'm pissed off at the world, but i actually enjoy interacting with people on tumblr.

time to play with sticks again!

i spliced the tree body together from bits of branch & bark, sculpted a ball joint onto it in air dry clay, and 3d printed the upper body to fit. the moss is made of fabric, and the green boughs are a yule decoration i chopped up and painted.

the nuckelavee is a water demon, either a horse or a fusion of horse and rider. usually depicted skinless, though this one is Black Mystery Goop and bones instead.

my partner requested i include my inspiration; they made this nuckelavee while building with legos, and i looked at it like. hm. how about i make a bjd.

at some point last year my partner asked me to make them a little mouse bjd. i also printed a copy for myself, but only got around to painting it recently. i made it match my little bird, and am just now remembering i was supposed to photograph them together. maybe in the future.

i probably won't be making more madoka characters. i like them all, but i don't think i want more dolls of them. not impossible, however; this ask has already given me some thoughts.

most characters i enjoy aren't interesting for me to dollify, but there are some i might make in the future. glinda and elphaba are another iconic queer witch pair i would love to make if i can figure out the designs.

one project i really want to do is the fool from realm of the elderlings. rote is simultaneously the book series that has altered my brain chemistry the most & the one that makes me want to fistfght the author in a parking lot because WHY IS IT WRITTEN LIKE THAT? MAKE BETTER CHOICES. i would love to make a tribute to the fool, and all the roles they played during the series. fitz would not be quite as interesting and intricate visually, but i don't think i could leave the fool alone. so my fanart dolls are either a) queer icons b) fitzchivalry farseer, icon to none but beloved nonetheless.

madoka magica is one of my favorite animes, and therefore i had to make some weird dolls with a soul gem & a grief seed for bodies. the seed is a bit obscured by homura's petals and gears, but it is there.

madoka's hair and gem were a happy accident; i printed them in a semi-transparent filament because i didn't have any pink, and then discovered that using a thin layer or matte acrylic over the transparency creates this beautiful pastel frosted effect. which i will be using on purpose for a project at some point.

i was doing a test print of this deer centaur sculpt, but got my files mixed up and ended up printing parts of two different versions -> the leg pieces didn't fit together and the doll had trouble staying standing.

i would have thrown the incorrect pieces away and reprinted, but the non-functional legs gave me the idea to do something fun with it -> i glued the joints into position, drilled a hole through the doll, and went ham with a carousel horse aesthetic.

look back month challenge, day 27: a toy that surprised you

lol surprise is not the kind of toy that would usually interest me, but when i happened to see the arcade heroes series, i immediately wanted to make a body horror astronaut out of one of them.

i no longer have the baby that lived inside, and i articulated the spacesuit to pose on its own. still, i kind of liked his vibe, and ended up customizing a clawd wolf doll into his likeness. my partner got a different doll from this series and also made a monster high custom, and we built a whole story around these characters & that time one of them gets exposed to some Bad Space Goop while in the Orbital Youth Prison doing Space Goop Cleanup Community Service. don't worry about it, they can fix him up almost good as new.

so the real lol surprise was the fact that an entire story was living inside that ugly baby.

look back month challenge, day 23: least favorite color scheme

i don't like red, pink, or the combination of the two that much. sometimes the situation calls for all three, and i think they work well here for example, but they're not colors i gravitate towards.

the base for this is a g1 draculaura, but i would absolutely love to recreate something like this in bjd form with a curvier body & articulated wings.

look back month challenge, day 22: favorite color scheme

all combos of blue/green with gold/bronze work for me the best. also, my favorite skin tone is a light grey.

the base doll is a create a monster harpy, with a lagoona head, heath hair sculpt, and wings salvaged from a random eagle toy.