Coraline Custom Doll
This Coraline doll is a little project i’ve been doing in my spare time since February, and i’m really pleased to finally have her on my toy shelf all finished. Now i just need to finish customising her mini-me! I had been oohing and ahhing over the Lalaloopsy dolls i’d seen in friends Flickr streams, back around Christmas you couldn’t get Lalaloopsy’s over here (I’ve recently started to see them in Toys R Us and Tesco, but they’re so much dearer than in the US) As soon as I saw Mittens Fluff ‘N’ Stuff with her blue hair and button eyes i just had to make a Coraline. So my friend Lauren was kind enough to send me a Lalaloopsy doll (and her mini version, so she can have a dolly of herself!) from the US.
I made all her clothes from scratch (you can get the patterns here) and made her hair bows from polymer clay. I didn’t make the boots (oh how i wish i knew how to make doll shoes!) just painted them yellow to match her raincoat.
I made the rainbow hair bows from some satin fabric i had scraps of, and padded them slightly so they cover the cut off bow underneath. Her stand was a large metal bear stand i bought on eBay. I had to mod this metal stand to fit by cutting off the top portion of the upright part, it’s made for a much taller bear, then bending the bottom of the clamp at 90° to make it short enough to hold her under the head.
Some work-in-progress shots….
This is how she looked when she arrived, complete with a mini-me!
Pink striped jumper: Testing out my jumper/top pattern by making one up in this stretch pink glitter fabric.
Working on the jeans: This is the first pair i made, which i decided were too baggy. I refined the pattern making the tighter and added elastic braces to keep them up.
The yellow raincoat: Complete with hood. Just needs some fastenings in the front, i used clear snap fastenings and tacked them to the inside of the front panel so they can’t be seen when the jacket is closed.
The star jumper: I got these navy glittery over-the-knee socks on eBay and used one to make the star jumper. I kept the ribbed cuffs of the sock for the neck and bottom hem. The little stars were all cut from felt and glued on using tacky glue.
The rainboots: I bought some YO-SD boots on eBay, which were close enough to how i wanted them to look. I cut the extra straps off from around the heel using a sharp scalpel and glued the hole shut with super glue. I gave the whole of the boots a light rub with fine sandpaper so the paint could grip it, and painted them with citadel acrylic paint.
The hair bows: I wanted to replace the lalaloopsy’s stock hair bows, which are moulded to her vinyl head. I started by cutting them off best i could, leaving a flat platform i could then stick the new bows to. I decided to make Black Cat and Moushka faces for the bows, so i started by making some basic shapes out of sculpey, then baking them. I did the eyes first like this so i could bake them and position them on the faces once hardened.
Fixed the eyes onto the black cat face using a little blob of sculpey. Building up the shape of the face.
I’ve baked the face again here, cut away the excess on the eyes using a scalpel, and sanded down with fine paper; leaving the eyelids as a raised bump. Here I’m adding the ‘lip’ all around the left eye. One more bake and i’m done!
The cat and mouse before they’d had their final details added.
A quick dusting of white primer to help the paint go on nicely.
The finished cat and moushka, ready for a coat of clear lacquer
