A little bit of history behind this. Last year, I became more and more dissatisfied with my beloved Vespera. Some folks who have known me, will know she was my second doll EVAR, and the first one to make it home to me, back in March 2011. At the time, I was still living with my ex-fiance, who smoked around me, and my dolls, constantly. She became very stained, and very yellowed. I tried restoring her, but to no avail. What's more, I felt that she had "outgrown" her shell. She needed to be bigger, her shell needed to match her presence, and quite frankly, I didn't want her in white anymore. I would have loved to get her in tan, but Soom normal is darker than most of my other dolls, anyway. So I gave her old shell to my beloved Myrretah, with the instruction that she could no longer be Vespera, and the more the shell was changed, the better. She ended up turning that one into Casium's brother, Mercury, but I'll leave it to her to tell that story. I have only ever parted with three dolls in my four years in the hobby, other than my Ai, and two of those were to a dear friend, and none of them I was particularly bonded to, so saying goodbye to Vespera's old shell was difficult. But we move on to bigger and better things. *pause for dramatic effect*
I bought her the Beryl body I had coveted since I first joined the hobby, figuring I could get another Ai head in normal skin, and just blush it darker. But then I heard about the resin matching service, and realized I could just have the head matched! But I wasn't sure if RS would do a match for just a head, and I really wanted an excuse to have another Gang body around. Cue finding the ONLY Feeple60 head I actually like, the 2013 Juri. It was love at first sight. Those ears, those full lips. It was perfect. And spotting one for a bargain on the Den of Angels marketplace made it seem like it was meant to be! Incidentally, the 2013 FL normal was a 99% match to the FCE Soom Beryl body I had gotten my hands on. It couldn't get any more perfect.
I sent Sun my sample; one of the Beryl body's hands. It took less than 2 months for my order, despite getting some extra parts for Casium. I think it was 5 weeks on the nose, once they received the sample. I got the tracking notice the very day RS staff went on Holiday for the Chinese New Year. WooHOO! An agonizing week of waiting for my order, and finally it was home. ResinSoul went above and beyond my expectations. The resin is an almost perfect match. I would say it's a fraction lighter, and has a slight translucency to it. It honestly makes me think of French resin, and I wonder if they use that for the color-matching, as you can get a more true tone to it. At least that's my understanding of it... I'm no expert. Anywho! As usual, all the seams were perfectly sanded, but sadly one of the Gang hands was broken in shipping. Not a total heartbreak as I had ordered spare 68cm girl hands for Vespera, so the Gang body got the Soom hands instead, and they suit him rather well. The resin also photographs a little differently, depending on the camera settings.
The slightly more golden pictures are a better example of the true to life color. The match is barely perceptible in person. There are also some mods that needed to be done to these two in order to make the hybrids work, so they are not for the faint of heart. Vespera's neck needed some MAJOR trimming to reduce the Giraffe syndrome going on. I may have take it down a little too much, but I'm going to be sueding her with real leather, as she'll be getting some pretty extensive body work. Alex needed to have his neck hole fixed to accommodate an S hook, as well. I also added magnets inside his headcap, because FL's locking mechanism is a complete and total failure on the Feeple60 line. I did a commission on a Feeple60 Luka, I believe it was, and she had the same issue.
Here's Vespera's neck mod. Pardon the mess, the art studio is always in a perpetual state of chaos, because we're always working on multiple projects.
And Alexander's mods.
And just for a little final fanservice~!
