Upcoming sweaters

A very delayed announcement! We have been invited by lovely Lelahel of Petite Precieuse to sell some of our pieces on their Euro/international doll shopping platform. :) We currently have three exclusive pieces with them, all SD sizes, and one of them would be made a special giveaway at the Ldoll event in France that is happening this weekend. <3


Many apologies for the lack of updates! I have succumbed to the life of a couch potato for the past month and feeling rather guilty for neglecting living a life properly. :p I blame Korean entertainment for making me recline in my chair facing a screen watching their dramas and variety shows after work and before heading off to bed. Time to kick this bad habit of passive living (bit by bit). I will still catch Joo Ji Hoon's [Five Fingers] and Song Joong Ki's [Innocent Man], though. Two of my favourite male actors in such epic dramas (though Five Fingers is beginning to drag for me, do not like petty men who can't move on >_>).

In addition, our in-house seamstress have been busy with night classes on weekdays, so there has been a delay in releasing new pieces.


Anyway, procrastination aside, I finally came up with a sweater style that could go with the cream pleated skorts my mother made some time ago. It's an off-white soft knit sweater with lace shoulders that I would like to embellish with beads and pearls. The above is a look at one of the designs I'm contemplating.

I'm torn between doing the diamond patterned beaded look with pearl accents in the middle, or just sewing on white pearls throughout the front. I do adore the latest fashion trends of heavily beaded patterned clothing pieces and am dying to try some for the dolls, so we'll see how things go. :) I am finally excited about creating again and am feeling rather thankful that my life is now going to pick up from where it got left off again.

Another issue that's been bothering me is how my dolls have kind of lost their personalities over the years. I do want them to have their own personalities and styles and I may take more photos of them for who they are, but that would take some time, I guess. Just need to stop being so lazy and just focus on the hobby more. Why do I get so distracted so easily... -_-

And Sunday comes to a near end...

The weekends are never enough for me. Who deemed the world to only rest from work for two days? Why can't we have four? :(

So today I was taking photos of new clothes for a potential buyer. :> I hope things go well and I can advertise about it soon. And I tried making a simple dolly hanger:

It's not very close up (otherwise you can see how cheap it looks lol. It's made from S hooks I got from Daiso (yay for $2!) and paper and ribbon. It would be better to wire the body and sew on a padded body, but I wanted a quick fix so I went to make my own hangers out of paper instead (with some foam in the middle). I have MSD sized ones too.

We'll see what we can do with these. Maybe I'll just use them for display, or when I upgrade it to something of a better quality, I might list them in stores. ^^

So yes, weekends are so not enough for me to do all the things I want to do. :/

Oh and I'm also working on a human accessory and art project (with shop). I've got three earrings done and can't wait to get the blog up for it. :)

Summer Rain

Time flew quickly and yesterday marked my second month in my new full-time job. I was able to work pretty actively on doll clothes back in March and April, but work sure took up much of my time and energy. So apologies for the lack of updates! I don't get a life and natural day light for photo-taking and handcrafting.

Many people had expressed interest in our tulle shorts, and we do wish to make more. After all, we've only made them in cream and blue, we have yet to touch pink and other colours. However, this round I've decided to try something more luxurious. Using lace!

Here's Kotone, my Unoa Lusis girl, wearing the shorts with our one of a kind Ribonette sweater (psst! It's still available in our etsy shop!). I call these premium shorts. Lol. Since the lace costs much more than tulle, and to tier them up in these absolutely delectable frilly way... Ah~ Seeing how much lace this used, I quickly went to the shop to purchase a few more metres of it so this won't end up being yet another one of a kind. ^^; The SD girls get their own as well, but I guess we would be trying out another design where we use a wider lace at the top and accent with the littler ones below.

On human-sized item notes, I've recently bought some earring findings to make my own earrings since I've got sensitive skin and it gets so frustrating when I can't wear my favourite earrings for long. Here are just some of the materials I've got:

The silver ring with the zirconia stone would be made into a long necklace for the dollies. I've got two of these. Can't wait to string them up. <3 The big ribbon I got for the dolls as well, but seeing how they're pretty big, I might make them for humans instead. So all these got me excited about starting a jewelry shop for humans! It's in the planning stages now, I'm still thinking of a name and designs I can sell. I do want to sell art prints as well. :)

So sorry for the lack of updates! Hopefully we'll put up a lovely frilly release next!
Cheerios!

Shopaholic tendencies

Ahh, I'm using the new interface on blogger now and it feels so clean and new. :)
Okay, so previously I said I wanted to make a more serious collection, but I keep steering towards more casual styles yet again. The recent release of dresses are more lady-like and more of 'Going Out' styles. I still want to make a set of 8 to 10 pieces that can be mixed and matched (like the fun editorials in Japanese magazines, where the model wears different variations over a week), and yes, this has nothing to do with themes. In addition, mother has so much skills in her, it feels like a waste making simple clothes like t-shirts and cardigans. I would like to get my mother to sew more outerwear (and yay, there's plenty of fabric for outerwear)!

 Anyway, while I'm going with the flow, here's a photo of the most recent haul of trims and fabric I got:

It's so hard to find pointelle knit fabric in shops (and rather expensive on etsy), so when I saw these two in the form of cardigans in a shop having a sale, I just went ahead and bought them in the biggest size possible. Oops, more limited edition pieces. :p The lace trims I got from a shop selling trinkets when I was on the way to catch The Avengers with a friend. (The movie's fantastic, by the way. I think Pepper and Tony Stark are made for each other!) I was so thrilled to find elastic lace, they would come in useful for socks, but then, how many socks are already available in the market? :x Will need to figure out more uses for elastic lace. Oh oh, and I love the 'wheat' look embroided mesh lace in taupe. It would make a lovely slip dress with a red cardigan. <3 I only got a metre of it, and I think I would like to go back and buy another 4 more metres so I won't regret not having enough.

Right now, the ideas in my head range from white lace shorts to cream biker jackets and lace embellished cardigans. I cannot tell myself to stop buying fabric until I have used up a significant amount from the stash I have at home, because it doesn't work! ;A; I cannot resist beautiful things. Oh pah...

A more serious collection

I borrowed some books on fashion design recently and decided to go a little more deeper into the designing of clothes. Our brand takes pride in making quality clothes that are special, and I felt certain pieces from the previous collection didn't hit the mark. It was more of making dolly sized clothes that I would want to wear under a casual atmosphere, but I guess lovesprung's muse has her casual days too. (I'm not saying I'm the muse here~ :p) We will make more unique pieces with interesting accents!

Following a book's guide, I am now working on 6 looks for the next collection. I took photos of my dolls nude so I can draw the designs on tracing paper above for more accuracy that my mother can follow when sewing. Usually, I just draw from scratch on a 'fashion design illustration' way, but the body proportions were off, and it was rather hit and miss.

Here's a peek at a white chiffon jacket with a peplum waist design. You can see the inspiration I got from the gathered chiffon trim at the top. I would like to have a printed chiffon dress underneath the jacket too, so there's the white chiffon sample fabric atop the green printed chiffon (from our 2009 collection! :D I was digging through our fabric and this caught my eye again):

And the reference photos of my SD10 model that was behind the sheet of paper (my Unoa model's printed at the back):

Hopefully with this method, it can possibly save us more time to create more interesting pieces with more details! :))

Seaside feeling

I've been wanting to do a nautical-themed collection for a while, and after acquiring this soft navy suede fabric perfect for preppy blazers, I have been excited about getting my mother to sew some new outerwear for this year. Here are the fabric and cords I have collected over the years (not a lot, but the key fabric to be featured):

Designing and creating clothes can be such a wonderfully fun process. X3 I get to scour magazines and websites for beautiful designs created by real designers and be inspired by them.

Also, thank you to all for viewing the previous collection on Etsy! Mother is still working on the Birdsong dresses (and they are all sold out!). Here is a shot of the completed socks. <3

Recently, I decided to give momokoDolls another chance. Some time in 2009 I had bought two of them (a Lacy Modernist and a WUD002), but I didn't feel inspired to make clothes for them (other than a maxi dress for WUD002). I have been looking at Momoko/Fashion Royalty clothes for the past few months and felt my interest stirring again. I still have a soft spot for miniature things :p

Here's my So Cute Marine girl which I got off eBay without her clothes (I was also lusting after a Safari of Dry Wind (cold version) girl for her cute hair but alas, my funding is not enough):

I love the colour of her hair and her makeup looks sweet. I think I should stick to Momokos with nude lips. I was afraid she would look stoned/dumb because her eye makeup is clear and clean (no think lashes/eyeliner), but she looked fantastic with back light! I shared two more photos of her on Flickr, so do check her out properly there. :>

She's wearing this tank top I made (I altered a pattern from one of the DCR books so she'll have a nice scoop neck showing off some cleavage), but the straps were to thin so you can see some ugly serged parts. I tried to make her a pair of grey jersey shorts too but they didn't fit well because I used patterns meant for stiff cotton instead so they were too big and loose. It was embarrassing making this mistake with my mother around to see it. -_-; But she taught me a great way to sew shorts that fall nicely on legs. So yay to that!

April's first release coming up at 12noon!

A third part of our Spring Summer 2012 release will arrive in our Etsy store in less than an hour's time. :>

There's a preview up on our Facebook page, so do pop by and take a look before the store begins its sale.

The pieces in this release are pretty varied. Two sets will be available for both SD and MSD sizes, both include dresses in gentle colours of mint and white. I came across the above bird print fabric recently and couldn't resist getting some. I also found another black chiffon with multi-coloured birds very similar to one of Marc Jacobs' bird-printed fabric! :D

There will also be a one of a kind skirt version of the Galaxia dresses for MSD girls. This fabric is my ultimate favourite! For its amazing softness and pretty digital prints, it was a wonderful find (though a wee bit pricey). I can't stop touching it! Haha, many times I have wanted to wear what my dolls are wearing. :)

Do also expect a ooak white dress set for the MSD girls. We actually had this made last year but I kept forgetting to release it together with the earlier collections. x_x;; Finally, it will be out! It has this delicate embroidered initial sewn on the front of the dress. I've gotten hold of some embroidered initials from a Yahoo!Japan auction a year or two back but didn't have any ideas of how to best utilise them in designs. So here's the first one that got made!

The rest of the items will be from our 2009 collections. Mainly jackets for the SD/SD13 boys. Oh yes, we used to have boys in our midst and my mother made amazingly detailed and real-life jackets for them. So grab your chance to purchase the last few remaining jackets she made for your fashionable hunks. <3

Packing in progress

Thank you to everyone who visited our Etsy shop on the day of our big release last Friday! :) I apologize for not being able to post a thank you note earlier because I caught a bad bug Thursday night.

My family members had fallen ill one by one, and I thought I would be the last one standing... Lol. It was a fever and a flu, and the fever didn't go away until Sunday morning (but it returned in the evening). The flu gives me a blocked nose that makes it hard to sleep at night. *grumbles*

I could only safely begin packing work today when I'm finally recovering (working a little makes me tired very quickly, but at least my fever went away, I hope). Mother has also started preparing the made-to-order items. There are some packages with ready-made items that can be mailed tomorrow. ^^

Can't wait to start preparing the next collection!

Excite, excite! Can you feel my excitement?

Hee hee, I'm just barely keeping myself from bubbling over with great excitement. <3

I've prepared 32 draft listings of all the items we'll be selling and the date and time are out (Do note it down on your calendar)!

Etsy store here!

Previews available on Facebook.

The packages I've been eagerly waiting for have finally arrived today, too!

(I'm still waiting for another two :p I've been a bad girl, shopping online so much.

If I may hint, one of the packages will hopefully rekindle my try at making smaller modern clothes again)

So here're the goodies that reached me~

The adorable macaron charms were made by Jocelyn of AiClay. I just tried to figure out a necklace for msds with a 1:12 sized charm, and I must say, it didn't work. The chain just wasn't dainty enough. Maybe I should try a ball chain, however, the clasps I have are solid brass and heavy, they kind of pull at the back and the necklace will flop up. :( Back to the thinking room on what kind of necklace I can make (other ideas that came up were suede/lace/ribbon replacing chains)

In addition to the macarons, I got pretty lace for more projects! I am so lucky to have so many materials that inspire me every day. There is never nothing I can make. XD I guess I can keep designing things to make and bother my mother to help me realise these ideas for a long, long time.

Lastly, my Unoa heeled sandals arrived from eBay! They're meant for 22" American Models. I was so crushed that I lost three other auctions for awesome black shoes. ;_ ; I hope to get more realistic and affordable heels for my girls in future! Alas, my wallet cries in pain, so now I'm doing my best to save money once more. There is still the need to get a new Mac because my 5-year-old MBP is getting old and slow. ;o;

Here's another shot of my Narae in her hot heels:

On our way~

We've been making gradual progress on the upcoming collection. I know, I've been talking about it for two plus weeks now, but our progress has been pretty speedy. My mother caught a cough recently, but she has been nice enough to help me with a few more designs. ;_; She's resting right now, and she needs to spend time revising for an English exam this Friday. She is such a hardworking woman!

Here's a look at one of our not-so-limited (meaning not just 2 pieces ;) blouse:

This is the slim msd version, awaiting buttons/beads to be sewn onto the front. The SD version is also done, just waiting for me to pick out the matching button details. :) The use of eyelet fabric and lace for this blouse was inspired by Mercury Duo's Spring/Summer 2012 collection, which was also part of this season's lace trends. I love lace, and I love spring. There's always beautiful lace come spring time!

And here's a very bad photo of a possible coordination of the eyelet blouse with the polkadot skirt (and an older piece: candy floss vest).

I have been preparing our Etsy listings with the completed pieces. Right now we have 6 items in the 2 sizes we offer. A one-of-a-kind dress and shorts, limited edition shorts, blouse and cardigan. Then for non-limited items, we have a cute lavender polka dotted pleat skirt and the above eyelet lace blouse. I still want to make more knit cardigans/sweaters with lace details, tank/spaghetti-strapped tops, hopefully some lace socks, tote bags and macaron necklaces!

Not to forget some pretty dusty mauve collars with rhinestone accents! These can be worn under the peterpan collars of the above eyelet blouse too:

It feels great to have time to create things. Oh boy, I was also hoping to draw some accompanying artworks to release with this collection. I wonder if I can get over the barriers within me to make that happen. ;_;

Narae open-eyed (Itzel) is here!

Yaay! What a wonderful surprise! My open-eyed (N404) Narae faceplate with headback arrived today! So fast, just 6 business days from ordering, D-Storic sent her to me so quickly. Now I am sooo tempted to get another body when they're having a sale for them. ;o;

They packed these two items in a cute little gift box. <3 Now I need to scramble and find a suitable faceup look for this new girl and come up with a name! XDD

*add on: 7:30pm

I gave her a quick faceup. She looks unlike any of the open-eyed girls I've seen. :c Lol, but it's a good thing. And I finally applied lashes onto an msd-sized doll! Not very well done, but at least there are lashes (though, not very firm ones).

Here some evening mobile photos!

She looks Russian princess-ish in the blond mohair. I love her with short hair! Now I need to go look for more short hair styles. @_@

I've named her Itzel, meaning Star of the Aurora Sky. To match with Mitzi, who's Star of the Sea. <3

Inspiration

Just today, I was matching up the clothes that were completed, namely the contrast collar blouse and mesh lace shorts. I found that the shorts would look nice with a cute little ribbon bow belt and some pearl accents.

So I went ahead to sew on some pearls and will be getting my mother's help to sew on the striped red canvas ribbon with bow centre onto the shorts. <3

It has been a while since we released non-limited runs of clothes. I hope we can make some basics that are priced inexpensively so more people can afford our clothes. :) Most of our releases have been limited due to the limited amount of material we have. For instance this lace we used for the mesh shorts, it was only enough for three pairs for each size. I seldom buy materials in bulk, but when we do, we get to make basics! Hee.

Oh, earlier this afternoon I was searching up Unoa on Yahoo!Auctions and found this amazing Japanese unoa owner who sews modern clothing. She is called Atri, and she is such a diligent designer. Quite a few of the designs I have wanted to make for dollies (and have yet to touch on), she has already created them. *-* My new dolly fashion idol!

She makes beautiful lingerie sets too, with pleasant combinations of various prints.

Her clothes are presented in a neat, professional way. I can't wait to make peter-pan collared sweaters! I have also been researching on various collar types to try making dolly-sized detachable collars. I myself have collected three collars for my own wardrobe, sequined, pearls and velvet. I was still wondering what sort of fabric we may use so the collars will not pop out too much due to the small size. We shall see! :D

Progress!

My current favourite album to listen to is Ellie Goulding's Lights. It's been my crafting mood power on album, plus Sunday Girl's random numbers. ^^ Music paints the world a different 'filter'. Hahaha.

Yay, one more new item to share with all of you (it's not completed yet without snaps at the back collar). Contrast collar sleeveless blouses! Two for SD and MSDs. One of my favourite blouse trends these months is the contrast black collar on milk white fabric. These close with a zipper at the back.

A picture of my mother using our trusty serger. It has been with us for so many years, possibly a vintage model already. The modern machines are usually white and have plastic coverings. The older machines use metal and are so heavy to move around. x_x

The pieces before the new collars were added. Mother tried sewing on the collar a certain way in the beginning, but they didn't work out, so she had to unpick and redo these.

She spent so much time on these four pieces because the fabric was tough to manage.

I have been spending bombs collecting materials to fulfill my ideas of dolly sweets deco necklaces and hair accessories! I've just ordered beautiful hand-made 1:6 and 1:12 sized macarons from AiClay in three pastel shades, and various findings and ribbon connectors online. I've also finished designing our label and am looking for a clear stamp maker online. It'll be 1" long and I can stamp our label onto the inside back of our light-coloured clothes! About time, I'd say. ^^;

I really can't wait for everything I've ordered to arrive! That would probably take another two weeks. It would be nice if I can release many things at once, so I guess I can't release the three new clothing pieces this weekend. I get so excited sometimes and want to release new things whenever they're completed. It would be better for customers if they get a wider selection of items to buy together.

So mother is off from work for the day and once I finish sewing on the snaps on all the cardigans and tops, I can try to make some cute tank tops! It's been so long since I last touched the sewing machine, and I do miss it. :)

Picking the right typeface

So I had the plan of rebranding the dolly label near the end of last year. After reading various books on branding, I realized that Angel.Candy-Rock wasn't consistent in its brand design. I did not know anything about brand concept, my target audience etc. as well as logo design. It was created at the beginning as a casual 'for fun' thing.

Now that I know what is lacking, I have sat down to properly write out what I want this doll fashion label to be. The new name 'lovesprung' was born, and I opened a sub label under it called 'piccola fenice' (which means Little Phoenix in Italian. My mother gave herself this alias in Mandarin: 小鳳 :) to house my mother's designs.

The last logo concept I tried to do for Angel.Candy-Rock was this:

I'm a big fan of shabby chic, or furls, folds, elegance. It was a cute logo, but I felt the name itself no longer matched the style of clothes we are making. I did try a Bodoni style of lovesprung initially, for lack of time in finding a typeface that matches the feel of the brand as closely as possible. After a while, I didn't like it anymore. I am worried that my fickleness will prevent me from ever settling on any set typeface for the brand. :(

Currently, I am using a very modern and straight typeface for lovesprung (with the love sprouting out literally). It was a cool concept, but I'm afraid it still felt cold to me. So I started looking again for a proper typeface today, and I found a free font called Derivia by Ekloff fonts on dafont.com. I'm not a professional typography artist so I do not know how to make pleasant and healthy typefaces. I can only use ready-made free fonts and alter them a bit. So sadly, there is no 'blueprint' pictures of how the font was formed (like on behance). Lol.

In progress using nifty Adobe Illustrator (I didn't like the shortness in its arm/ear?, so I extended it longer and overlayed a bigger spur? Haha... Now you know I didn't have any basic foundation in typography to properly identify the different parts of a typeface):

Not-so-final version (I think I might want to close up the g) with the original typeface with wider tracking (space between letters) above. I thickened the overall weight of the typeface:

The maker of the font says of this typeface:

"An expressive serif font with a small x-height. It has a serious, yet quirky disposition. Capital letters based off of "Livia," a free public domain font by S.G. Moye." (I didn't use any capital letters so... hee)

I was considering another typeface that looked a little handwritten, but it came off too casual. The maker of Derivia saying it is 'serious, yet quirky' helped me solve my problem. It's fascinating how typefaces give off different personalities. I will have to start applying this logo onto new packaging (I'll be ordering a custom stamp to stamp the brand on clothes soon!) and update banners and such. It is a time-consuming task to undergo rebranding, when one requires consistency in all materials. @_@

Shopping day

Spotlight had a special sale today and I wanted to get this snow leopard fur fat quarter listed in their newsletter, as well as some gold/hardware beads to try out some dolly bracelets. I was planning to use the fur as a rug for their room, but sadly, when I reached there 10 minutes after opening, there were only the dark pelts left. Hopes of having a cute furry floor under their day bed were dashed.

I did manage to buy two packs of different gold beads and a ball of Perle string.

Then I went to Daiso (somewhat on a small spree lol) and bought a 10 compartment bead storage box (to store the new beads as well as incoming rhinestones. I still need another one, 10 compartments were not enough x_x;) and some cute sweets stationery. After visiting Rui at her workplace, she told me about this adorable white wire-design chair that was sold at a store opposite hers. It's meant for jewelry but big enough for both MSD and SD dolls! What a lovely find! I can't wait to use it in dolly shoots. ^^ Thank you, Rui!

Here's a picture of some of the dolly-related buys (the book's for order recording for 2012 ^^):

As I have more time right now, I've been working with mother for the past few days on our upcoming new pieces. There is a light yellow floral cardigan for both sizes where I'm sewing up the pearl accents for. I got these blue-gray beads from my mother's pill box:

It's really vintage beads judging by the year stated on this bottle, which was 1983. o_O So I decided to store the sequins and pearls in the same bottle, but organized the other little seed beads into my new bead storage box. Here's after all the finger picking (phew!):

I cut out border stickers from my stash of cute paper stickers I got from Gmarket to identify the beads. The Koreans and Japanese make such adorable, crafty stickers I find it almost too wasteful to use on anything.

And here's the work-in-progress shot of the upcoming floral cardigan (it's hard to get nice floral-printed jersey fabric from the fabric shops, so I bought this pair of Uniqlo leggings... ;) :

And a preview of our cute little lace-trimmed high waist shorts (I'm still undecided as to whether I should add on little sparkles or pearls or just leave them as they are):

That is all for our first post on the dolly blog! ^^= Thank you for reading!