I’ve decided I want to try my hand at customising Barbie as well as other 11-12” fashion dolls. 1:6 scale pretty much. I have planned first to attempt a Ganguro girl doll. I was looking for one with the right skin tone and a Barbie with a sort of self-tanner vaguely orange tint is kind of difficult to find. I might have found a proper one but it’s a bit more than I’d hoped for a buck naked doll with messy hair. It’s not that expensive, maybe $50, but…daggum. I do NOT want to paint the face. That would be really difficult…unless I took her entire face off and repainted it. I’m not sure I can do a full face repaint, though…more of a dramatic modification while having a base to paint on. I plan to try to colour match the orange head (lol) with a similarly coloured made to move Barbie doll body, which I might actually have to paint. A least it’s not the head! Which I will be re rooting with blonde hair. If you aren’t aware of Ganguro girl subculture, it is Japanese and has been around since the 90s. The idea is to make your skin darker (like self tanner but it turns a bit orange if you overdo it, which is the entire point lol), usually dye your hair blonde, and often they wear white makeup. They really have an interesting fashion!

Here is an example. She’s so cute! If you’ve ever read the Peach Girl manga, you’ll learn that Japanese girls who tan their skin are often seen as being “bad girls” or delinquents. It was a rebellion against beauty standards. The fashion died out a long time ago, but there is still a stigma around darkening skin. More Info on Ganguro and other Gyaru styles.

I think a doll celebrating the fashion would be awesome.

I think, overall, I want to do other Japanese fashions like Decora and EGL/EGA, also maybe Vkei on a male doll? It would be so freaking cool to make a doll looking like Gackt in his MALICE MIZER days. And of course I’ll try to make the beautiful Mana-Sama if I become any good at doing this.

I’ve been watching a ton of videos on doll customisation and I have learned a lot. Re rooting hair looks tedious as fuck, but not very difficult. I watch a lot of HeXtian and DelightfulDolls. DD makes things look more doable, like I myself can do these things. I still need to learn to sew properly. I still don’t know if I will get that sewing machine (and accessories) that I wanted two Christmases ago, but changed my mind at the LAST minute…because I’m an indecisive freak lol. I might try again this year but I need to read up on it first. I used to be able to use an old fashioned sewing machine. I made us all Christmas stockings and whatnot, and they were pretty darn nice. When I was a kid making Barbie clothes, I sewed by hand…and often sewed them on the doll, so if I wanted to make another outfit I had to rip the previous masterpiece off 😅 I then discovered those tiny metal snaps, which fixed that issue. I would sit on my Grandparents couch for hours, sewing. I actually made some cool stuff after using snaps. I don’t know if I could still hand sew worth a crap anymore. Also, and this makes me ashamed, but I never learned to measure properly. I can do inches and half inches, that’s about it. Anything in between is basically Greek to me. This has to do with a certain learning disability involving numbers, and when my shop class teacher was showing how to measure, I didn’t understand and kind of got left in the dust. Clothing patterns are precisely measured, right? Even tiny ones. I’ve been trying to understand how to make tiny patterns since the patterns I’d need don’t exist. I would have to figure it out by studying a pic of what I want it to look like. How the fuk. What I need to do is take a course on SkillShare or whatever, even though it’s pretty expensive for a years subscription. I don’t think they do monthly 🙁 I feel like I try to sabotage myself by thinking about all the other things I have to learn, and it’ll make me give up before I even try because “It’s too difficult and I’m dumb as fuck”.

I’m just going to start with the more simple stuff. Maybe I’ll do the heads first while finding appropriate made to move Barbie bodies and other heads on EBay.

I’m debating on what head I want for Decora girl. Petite made to move body with a retro 80s Skipper head because it looks super happy and appropriate for that style? Already got the head in my cart. I haven’t found the petite doll body yet. Frankenbarbies 😬 hehe

Anyhoo! Man that was a lot. I never shut up, apparently. 🥴

Mom said she’d take me to Michael’s in Hickory since she has a reason to go there. I saw that they have a lot of miniature stuff. I want to do the 1:6 room dioramas. I saw other adult doll collectors getting 1:6 scale room things from there. A lot of dollhouse stuff on Amazon seems to be 1:12. I did save a fortune on Minibrands Books series 1 & 2 by buying one Etsy sellers duplicate books. I basically didn’t have to buy a zillion expensive (well, not cheap.) capsules to get a bunch of duplicate books I didn’t even want. I got only the ones I wanted for my 1:6 reading nook bookshelf that I want to start on asap 😊 I have become a little bit obsessed with Minibrands and Miniverse. Not everything is to scale, but I check before I buy something. I got one Minibrands capsule at an Ollie’s a couple years ago and thought it was super cool. I have been fond of realistic miniatures since my tween years. I only had a gaudy pink Barbie house to put them in. It didn’t look good lol

Aside from all the doll and miniature stuffs 😆 Other things have happened too haha

I’m supposed to get together with one of Moms neighbours, who is also my friend. We haven’t hung out in a while. If I have a choice of Thursday or Friday, I’m picking Friday because I do want to go with mom Thursday. I don’t really have anyone else to go out with anymore. No one from A Caring Alternative has said a word to me. I said before that things were becoming unpleasant there, mostly for me. Ambush after ambush. I don’t know where I stand with them. I canceled all my future appointments with April the Trained Therapist (well, she likes to tout that so that’s what I’ll call her lol) because she made a bunch ahead of time. I do think that sent a message. Maybe not quite the one I intended, but eh. 😬

I’ve been having anxiety spikes for the past week or so. Coincidentally, I started on Nuvigil around that time. I don’t thinks it’s bad enough to stop taking it though. This stuff is for narcoleptics and people with shift disorder. I’m the latter but I wouldn’t be shocked if I was the former. Provigil took about a month to actually kick in and keep me from flopping over from overpowering fatigue, but I trusted the process and it worked. Unfortunately at 200mg, I was so fucking anxious that I had to stop it. I’m on 150mg of Provigil atm and I will not go any higher. Nuvigil is just a newer version of Provigil. If it doesn’t work at 150, then there’s nothing I can do unless I find something else to try. I am concerned about these spikes, though. If they remain as they are, I’ll keep taking it. I hope it doesn’t get worse, because I don’t want to sleep my life away, which is what I’m currently doing. I want to use the CPAP but it’s broken. I want to get a new one, but never find the time to make an appointment with that place because they make that a little difficult. I want to start using it because sleep apnea is dangerous to the brain and If someone isn’t getting restorative sleep, of course they’re gonna be fuckin tired all the time! 😞

Moving on…

My apartment complexes maintenance man said he’d talk to the guy here who also has a 3D printer and ask if he would mind helping me level mine and whatever else it needs. The only problem is, this man has no legs. Hes in a wheelchair. He can walk with prosthetics, but I question the ethics of asking this dude to walk up these annoying stairs. Isaac (maintenance man) is a great dude. He mentioned that he knows a couple people that might be willing to put the metal 3D printer cart which has just been sitting there in its box for over two years. That would be fantastic. I would really love to print some stuff I could paint. Who knows, I could start a business.

Welp, I’m gonna lie down on the sofa with my deranged, spring loaded kitten and watch some YouTube.