What are you currently crafting for your bjd? Vol.3

I'm making a "well loved" old, rough style teddy bear (rabbit) for my doll.

Im ok with how it is so far, it looks rough like I want it to, but I might add some patches to it to make it look more worn,but we will see.

I can tell you ill never use that material again for something like that though. It frays like mad and collects hair like nobodies business ! Haha. Thread stringing sucks (I'm not hunting down small enough cotter pins to joint a bear that small) and my joints kept coming loose I found dental floss works good to keep it strung tight.

I wanted to add some clothes but I'm sick of small sewing right now lol. I like to use easy thread needles, and they like to go through into my fingers..







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@Ghostbubble ! You made The Velveteen Rabbit!

 

I was going to say the same thing. Always loved that story. I agree miniature stuffed animals are tough on your fingers. Thimble and leather fingers can be very useful. This bunny is fabulous! Love the detail you achieved around the eyes.

 

Haha ! I'm a bit embarrassed to admit I've never read that story

 

Thank you !

 

Be prepared to cry your eyes out if you do.

 

I thought the same thing! Velveteen Rabbit...! It's a very sweet story and in the public domain, I have always loved it to pieces. I had a book on tape version read by Meryl Streep and it's absolutely wonderful.

That aside: what a cute rabbit! The little blushed cheeks are so precious.

 

I refuse to count this as a double post!! Lately I've been back on my furniture train. None of my experiments have turned out QUITE like I'd want, but I did make this garden bench and dining chair:





Currently working on a different, hopefully easier style of dining chair... The difficulty I had with both of these projects is that I have plans/patterns that SHOULD be 1/6, but they are scaled to Ruruko, who is a 20cm doll! So it looks like kid furniture without any modifications. But also, I'm not good at math or planning... So we're workin' on it. Furniture drafts are so much more labor intensive than sewing ones...

 

@Idoru - those look really, really good! I feel you on not being good at math. . . or planning.
Although, to be perfectly fair to myself, I generally plan things very thoroughly, but the project usually ends up deviating from that careful plan, generally at a very early point

 

@Girrl You're right, that's really the trick—plans always end up deviating... But thank you!

I finished a new chair last night, as well (these come together relatively quickly at this scale). I'm very pleased with this one, and I have already started making a matching one. It's my first time trying something like this entirely from my own measurements and plans, and it actually turned out how I wanted it to! A miracle, haha. (But can it be repeated??)



A simpler style to be sure, but it suits.

 

If you've done it once you can do it again. It looks super neat!

 

I have been sewing dresses for my girls

 

Aaaand it's finished--a dining set for two! The table has been my most ambitious project so far, and I'm very happy with how it turned out. ♥

 

You did an outstanding job, wow!

 

Aww, thank you! ♥

 

Currently, my wip is a knitted sweater. I eyeballed everything about the pattern and plan on making a second one that's going to be more fitted on the body. But it's nice to have this boy in something, he's been without his own clothing for too long.

 

I've been dabbling in props lately. Suuuuuper simple things, but I really don't have a head for crafts so it took me quite a while to even start figuring out how to achieve them. (I'm convinced there's a difference between arty people and crafty people... Art comes quite effortlessly to me, but with crafts I'm all at sea.)

Sawed down a dowel rod to make a staff. I think a typical staff should be shorter than the person holding it, I'll cut it down later to make it shorter than the doll. Now, how to decorate it...






I want my dolls to play some classic board games like go and Chinese chess (weiqi and xiangqi), but couldn't find anything at 1:3 scale to buy. This is how helpless I am at crafts - it didn't even occur to me I could make these things myself, until I saw @MB Lilac 's tutorial for polymer clay buttons. What genius! Simple enough for me!

Making go/weiqi stones out of polymer clay. I used a cork borer to cut them out at 7mm diameter.







I still have to make the game board - I've found an old jewellery/stash box that is the right dimensions for a traditional go board and sized to my dolls. It's made of wood and was painted as a craft project (I think with normal acrylic paints), so I'll see if I can strip the paint off and get back to the base wood. Or paint it.

 

These chairs are truly pretty. It’s always so hard to find quite simple furniture that could be in a classical house. You did a truly beautiful work

I love this little game, you had such a good idea while imagining all of it! And your doll outfit is so pretty

 

I’m working on clothes mainly, but I do want to make a diorama for my minis

 

I'm awaiting supplies to make a cabin bed for Scout, hopefully with built in bookshelves and maybe a little desk!
Also making some seed bead bracelets for him

 

More than a month later, I finished my board game set for my dolls. I blogged about the project on my doll blog, but the TL;DR is...

• I stripped that storage box of its old paint using a vinegar soak method, then painted it with acrylic paint. This took the longest time because I dragged my feet hard on this boring job.
• Aside from Go stones, I also made xiangqi/Chinese chess pieces from polymer clay, and painted the Chinese characters on them with acrylic paint.
• Boardgame grids were drawn on a balsawood sheet. It's double-sided!

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Halcyon and Syr help me out. Now, I just gotta dredge up foggy childhood memories of playing these games, maybe go play them online against a bot or something. Or cheat and copy moves from references. (No, I totally didn't do that for these pics.) You bet these games will appear in future photoshoots!

 

Oh wow, that looks absolutely amazing! Great job!

 

I made my dolls their own dishes! I guess I’ll have to make more so everyone can have their own place setting…

 

Those are beautiful! They look so real.

 

OMG did you actually hand-throw those on a wheel?

 

Yes! I made them exactly how I make human sized dishes! So fun to throw something teeny tiny!

 

That’s AWESOME! They look so freakin good!

 

They're so cute! I love how nicely scaled-down the floral patterns are.

 

@MB Lilac So FABULOUS! The horse armor is INCREDIBLE - along with everything else! Great job!

 

I'm loving the horse armour. Well done.

 

That armour is incredible, MB Lilac!!!

 

That armor is as good as everything else you make, @MB Lilac

 

This is so incerdibly cool! I'm lost for words. Every time I think I've seen it all, you proof me wrong.

 

I made a book!
Botanical atlas by helgie, on Flickr
It's a botanical atlas for my Minifee Anwen, who is a herbalist among other things.
I downloaded a PDF of a beginning of 20th century (?) atlas and printed most of the pages on regular office paper, on both sides of 2 A4 sheets (an extra copy is in the background of the photos), and used green craft paper to connect it to the cover. The position of the print on the 2 sides of a sheet was not precise, so there are some white unprinted stripes on the sides of some pages, and the pages are not in order, but they all have print on them, mostly illustrations, and some text. The cover is made of thin cardboard covered with linen fabric. The book is 3,5x5 cm in size.
It was a somewhat spur of the moment project, and my first attempt at miniature bookbinding - it is far from perfect. But I like how the book came out and know how to do better next time.

 

Well done! Bookmaking is hard, I had to go through So Many failed versions before I had a halfway decent working template and yours looks So Much Better than my first few attempts

 

It's still kind of a cappucinorum situation as I ran out of wefts to fill the whole head but I figured I'd get a bit of a head start with styling a pixie cut wig while the next batch dries. Who knew trying to make a short haircut is so complicated on a small head!

 

I've been on a mission lately altering pillows and cushions to make my tiny BJDs appear to sink down into 'em.

I wanted to make a too-soft Goldilocks bed for 3" tall Realpuki. I confess I spent way too much time thinking about it when I should've just started working on it! I finally cut out a piece of plastic canvas to fit a bed I bought on Etsy and a piece of fabric about 3 times bigger than the plastic canvas. I hand-stitched down the fabric's center to the plastic canvas in a rough outline of a Realpuki, added stuffing, then gathered and sewed the fabric edges to the plastic canvas.
The result is not exactly what I envisioned (Kaka's long elf ear keeps his head up too high) but I hope it gets the idea across.


...and the next bed was too SOFT!

 

Aw that looks really good! It is a perfect fairytale look

 

Ohhh @Answer42 it looks like a bed I would never want to get out of very good, very soft, if only I was 3" tall...

 

Very good solution to your problem, the bed definitely appears too soft. This is too adorable!

 

@Answer42 Love it!

 

What a handsome knight, MB Lilac! Did you embroider that awesome dragon as well?

 

So very clever!!

 

That is a great tip and technique for emblem embroidery, eliminating bulk is a real struggle, thanks!

 

I made this piano for my dolls.
IMG_7005[/url] by Diana Brocken, on Flickr[/IMG]
IMG_6815[/url] by Diana Brocken, on Flickr[/IMG] IMG_6850[/url] by Diana Brocken, on Flickr[/IMG]
IMG_6850 by Diana Brocken, on Flickr
IMG_6815 by Diana Brocken, on Flickr

IMG_6999 by Diana Brocken, on Flickr

 

@dbfalcao What an awesome project! It look amazing and what a great photoprop it makes. What scale is it?

@MB Lilac It's always such a treat to get some insight into your process. This armor will be fabulous!

 

What a wonderful piano, dbfalcao!

Beautiful armour, MB Lilac! Do you make molds for the apoxie?

 

@MB Lilac I find apoxie a real pain to sculpt with, so I'm always impressed by seeing how smooth and nicely sculpted people can get it. The metal bits for detail are a really cool idea.

 

You make it look so easy. You're a very talented artist!