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April 9th 2025
Hello everyone!! This is my first blogpost, and what better way to start off than to talk about CRAFTS!!! specifially, the creation of my Sharpie + Mani dolls.
 They're both OOAK CUSTOMS, aka One Of A Kind Customized Dolls. This means they're made using another doll as a base, though this mostly applies to Sharpie. They're me and my wife's OCs! I've been meaning to do more customs, since working with a base is really fun, even though I prefer creating my dolls from scratch, usually. This was a wonderful challenge, and a great time!  Sharpie's base didn't need a lot of tweaking; I used a secondhand LOL Tween 'Rae Sands'. I washed her hair using purple shampoo (used on humans to become platinum blonde), which turned the golden hair completely white. (I did cut it off in order to re-attach it as pigtails, lol...)Mani's body was a different story...   The main reason that I'm using doll-bodies as bases, is because I want Mani & Sharpie to have joints. I find it tedious and difficult to create joints myself... But in the case of Mani, an issue arises. There's hardly any fat dolls, anywhere, much less jointed ones... Well, I repurposed some joints from another doll. It would've been nice with joints from a larger toy, but I happended to have this one ready, cut apart, since I broke it during a failed project...lol... So I wanted to put them to use. (for the curious: The doll is from Seria/セリア, here's a blog-post from a user who's showcasing the doll.) I secured the joints in place with wire, at that point she was just a very wide stick-man...!!! I bulked her up and shaped her form, using tinfoil. Then I used Milliput, an epoxy clay, to sculpt her. 
I also sculpted alterations on Sharpie with Milliput. Namely her bust, and her face; The original LOL doll has bulging eyes, a small nose and puckered lips... So I smoothed it all out, and made her a snout instead. 
They were both painted with acrylic paint and acrylic markers. Other doll-customizers/makers will know what I mean when I say, YES, this means that there's bound to be some paint chipping off.. I've come to terms with it, lol. I kinda wish I had progress photos of making their hair, but essentially it's all (painstakingly) glued on. As for their clothes, Sharpie's outfit is a mix of LOL Tween-pieces; they came with the doll, all in a bundle, so I'm not sure what individual doll they're from.
 I customized them slightly for her, covering up the LOL Tween-decorations with my own designs; the "BOOB" shirt, text on the sweatpants-leg altered to say "GAMER RAGE" instead of "GOOD GAME", as well as other lil coverups. And finally, I painted the shoes. (I've later found a pair of purple athleisure legging-pants, that the doll is currently wearing.)
I have a small collection of doll clothes to use for art-projects, but none of them fit Mani. I created her outfit from scratch!
 
I really like the zig-zag effect I was able to achieve with scissors! It's like she ripped her sleeves off, lol. The tank-top is made from cotton, and her cargos are ... some sorta scrap fabric I had. It's sturdy!
 Her shoes are a pair of doll-flipflops. They had heels, which I cut off. Pretty simple. As you can see, there's some cracking of the paint at her ankles... It's tough to avoid, and in hindsight I kinda wish I just sculpted her feet instead of keeping the ones from the doll. But it's fine.  
I'm really happy with how they came out, in the end!! Since taking the blue-background photos, I've changed up their outfits a little. I gave Mani a necklace, and styled Sharpie.  I hope you like them, too! :-D If you like these characters, read the comic about them here! (If you've read it, you might be wondering 'Where's Gravylynn?!' ... well, I plan to make her in doll-form as well, to complete the trio...!!) - xoxo Benni |
