My Home made 60cm BJD progress!!

[vkgirl911]

to kiki-chan78: the reason why i'm making my own doll is because my folks won't let me buy my own doll online due to the fact they think its much too high a price for an already assembled doll, even with a bobobie. so i'm just trying to make my own for fun. & yes i do have a craft oven which is why i'm asking all these questions so that i know what i'm doing when its time to start baking. & i'm only using polymer clay because its the most readily available material i could find for a reasonable price where i live. my local michael's craft store was completely out of DAS clay except for one last package but even that was too expensive, & i was planning to use that originally but due the SD size portion of my project i did not have enough money at the time to buy more of anything except super sculpey Living doll clay. the DAS clay only had one small package left & i didn't think it was going to be enough. i was originally going to make an air dry clay core for the body & the joints cover those in a layer of aluminum foil, bake the actual body & joints on that then for the arms & legs i was going to wrap small thin wooden dowels in a layer of aluminum foil & just bake the actual limbs onto that without an air dry clay core. as for the head i was just going to make it out of a ball of aluminum foil as the core then mold the head onto that & bake it. let me know if that's an appropriate method for me & let me know of anything i need to be wary of, thanks again! keep the tips coming they are very helpful!

[DollyKim]

Have you ever sculpted a human form before? If so go for it. Foil wrapped dowels sounds like a good idea for the limbs.

If you've never sculpted a human form before then saving up for some air dry is a better idea. You can cut air dry parts apart and 'glue' them back together with wet clay. You can 'melt' down dry clay by soaking it in water. With air dry you can start with a one piece form then cut it apart to add the joints. I've spent days just figuring out how to get locking knees.

If you don't have a doll making book this is a good place to start http://www.amazon.com/Pop-Sculpture-Fig ... +sculpture and this is the ball joint doll book I would recommend but check Etsy and Ebay to see if it's cheaper there http://www.amazon.com/Ball-Jointed-Doll ... inted+doll

And I have posts about doll making in air dry, Apoxie Sculpt, and polymer clay in my blog with different levels of success but none of it involved saving money. http://dolfielittles.typepad.com/blog/

[vkgirl911]

since i dont yet have a glass baking dish to use in my craft oven, could i use just regular parchment paper as sort of like a baking matte as long as its been cut down to fit correctly on the rack? just got started on molding some of the limbs with oven bake clay made specifically for using to make dolls but it needs to be baked in the craft oven 1st but i, like i said before, dont have a baking dish of the appropiate size & really want to get started on the 1st portion of the baking process before going any further. any thoughts?

[SoapBubbles]

I didn't have a glass baking dish for a long time either, so I think I can help you there. The options I know of are:

1. Get a disposable baking pan from a grocery store. They're fairly cheap, and you can re-use them for baking polymer clay.

2. Wrap a hard surface (oven-safe of course) with aluminum foil, taking care to keep the surface as smooth as possible. Most plates should be fine, and depending on the oven you have even cardboard wrapped with aluminum foil can work. BUT, if you use the latter-most option here be sure to keep an eye on the oven to make sure nothing starts to burn.

But since you're going to be baking a lot of clay in the future, I think it'd be a worthy investment to get a baking dish of the correct size in the end. ^^;

[vkgirl911]

To SoapBubbles: i was planning on getting one pretty soon but for now i just need to know if parchment paper is a safe material to use as a baking mat as that's all i've got to work with at the moment. so until i can get a baking dish of the appropriate size that's what i was planning to use for now. so i wanna know if that's a good (& safe) idea. is it a safe idea? let me know, thanks!

[DollyKim]

Parchment is baked in a regular oven so it might work. You can use foil to make a baking surface too.

[SoapBubbles]

Parchment will probably work, and I have baked quite a few pieces with it myself. But there was actually one incident where the parchment became STUCK on the bottom of one of my works and I couldn't remove it at all. I have no idea why that it did that when I didn't have any problems before, but after that I've refrained from using parchment paper.

[kiki-chan78]

Go with something stronger than Polymer clay. It will NOT survive the stress and pressure of being strung, and will shatter. Polymer clay tends to only useful as an 'in-between' medium when going to resin (with a *jointed* doll). Go with either Paper-clay or Apoxie Sculpt. This is a project where you don't want to skimp on materials, if not it will fall apart.

It really isn't cheaper to make your own doll. For what they are, Bobobie and Resinsouls are an absolute steal... all resin dolls, regardless of company, are hand cast, drilled and ultimately sanded to give a nice finish before being assembled. Each and every piece of that doll is hand-made. I'd agree that $200 is a bit much for a mass produced doll of the non-limited variety; but due to it's nature, resin dolls are nigh-impossible to produce in a factory and are therefore not mass-produced. The ones that come with painted faces, those faces are also hand-painted.

Making a doll takes a LOT of time. From initial conception to final form, Allison took 3-4 years to complete.







You might want to listen to Zirc's suggestion on the wooden beads and copper tubes for the internal structure/jointing. This is the technique her husband used for the doll he made.

[DollyKim]

What kind of copper tubing and where can I get some? I'm still experimenting with 1/6 scale polymer dolls, Pete and Sid are strung and doing okay, but their skin is thick and both slump. I won't go bigger and I wouldn't mass market them.

Saving up for a quality air dry clay will be worth it. Estimate about a pound a foot. Look at this topic for what works and what doesn't viewtopic.php?f=13&t=7245

[zirconmermaid]

What kind of copper tubing and where can I get some? I'm still experimenting with 1/6 scale polymer dolls, Pete and Sid are strung and doing okay, but their skin is thick and both slump. I won't go bigger and I wouldn't mass market them.

Saving up for a quality air dry clay will be worth it. Estimate about a pound a foot. Look at this topic for what works and what doesn't http://dolliehsanctuary.com/sanctuary/v ... =13&t=7245

http://www.micromark.com/SearchResult.aspx?deptIdFilter=0&searchPhrase=tubing

This is a great place for all sorts of useful items! Otherwise, I get mine at the hobby stores that cater to model railroad and radio control models. I have two nearby and have been going to them literally my whole life! (Dad collects model trains) I have seen them at Menards as well. Refrigerator tubing is nice. We get the wooden beads at Michaels or Hobby Lobby. Or at a bead store. We once bought a bag of multiple size glass beads for the tiny baby fox Gerald is working on. I hope this helps!

For a larger doll, you could even use large tubes in some places - torso and thighs. Keep an eye out for tubes. Obviously paper towel, wrapping paper etc. are too large, but other things are out there. You could even try forming cardboard over a dowel of the appropriate size. Mind you, you would likely want several sizes of dowels. The advantage of the tube over using a dowel is that the tube stays inside the doll permanently and forms the channel for the elastic. Using the tube method, you can design the joints before you make the "skin". The joint mobility is tricky and building on a skeleton keeps the doll's proportions even and symmetrical.