Synthetic hair care guide and upkeep: Synthetic hair, Doll hair, and Wigs, OH MY!

Hey guys! So today I'm going to show you tips that I personally use for my doll's wigs, personal synthetic wigs, and other upkeep grooming. SO here are my tips!

Tip number one: How to remove scraggly hairs that are out of place. Those strands of hair that are unruly! So you hot boiled permed your doll or wig to straighten it or curl it but you find those fly aways hard to lay down. Well you're in luck my trick to remove them completely is to take your Iron. Yes your Iron that you use on your clothes, take that and put it on the polyester setting. WARNING: Always do a strand test to see if the hair will melt or not but I have to say 95% of hair that I have bought have not melted but ALWAYS do a hair strand test meaning take a small strand of the hair and place it on the iron n see if it melts. Be careful and do not burn yourself. I am no liable for you ruining your hair so please be careful. Anyways Once your iron is set to the polyester setting take Heavy starch, Yes the stuff that makes your shirts kind of stiff and spray it on the hair. Use as much as you want but do not over wet the hair, It is starch. It should be semi damp but not dripping. Then Iron it. This will remove the fly aways, clumps, and frays. It also removes how Dense the hair seems, like it won't be stiff anymore. Try it you will thank me I'm sure.

Tip Number two: Styling! I NEVER use a hot water perm of any of my dolls or synthetic hair. The hot water dries out the hair actually. It also strips away color. Seriously, you can't die black synthetic hair but you can strip the color from it by allowing it in the water for too long. I did this on accident once and turned a whole wig silver fox grey. OMG I was so upset You can use this method to strip color from the cheaper kinds of hair by simply taking a large pot of water and have it boiling. Then take a colander and place the hair in there and leave it there. For a longgg amount of time but always check it. I swear. My black hair wig I was wearing turned white. I was livid! Anyways. Back to Styling Ha, got side tracked sorry. Anyways, Curling the synthetic hair I braid the hair. Not just any kind of braids. Each kind of braid makes a different kind of style. A small braid makes a kinky curly look. A thick braid makes beachy waves but a Fish tail braid makes Body movie stair like curls. Now before I style my dolls hair or personal wigs and extensions I always straighten it with the iron first. A curl that's got terrible ends makes it look unkept and just...dry and ugly.

So straighten it, Pick your braid, iron those braids, and then unbraid it and marvel at the fabulousness you just created. For BIG bouncy round large curls take a nice piece of hair and twist it. Seriously like just twist it, then gather it in a circle, The circle is crucial it decides how big you want the curl. If you gather it small, the curls will be small, gather it big and the curls will be big. So. Use the iron to iron over the gather u have in a circle. It will hold. The reason why the iron is best then hot water perms besides the reasons I mentioned is that synthetic hair is just fiber. Synthetic fibers made in a lab and melts under certain conditions. Certain fibers withstand the iron's heat because it is some of the same material we wear on our clothes so an iron with the right setting doesn't cause the hair to melt.. So far though I have only tested this theory over 150 times. And so far, It's not failed me. Now I have come across some fibers that I find at sally's the beauty supply, their hair is expensive but can't resist any kind of heat. It's bad quality thin hair at that. So I stay away from the synthetic hair there and go for quality and less expensive hair at a regular beauty supply. One brand I can say is the best is Equal. Look for it. I LOVE that hair! I even used it on my dolls.

Next Let's talk about Layers for doll hair. It lays so much better when you lay the hair. I can't stand choppy doll hair. Layering the hair after you do my methods...Trust me...YOU will thank me. Ha.

Tip Number three: Hard Itchy, cheap textures. BLEH I hate this. This can go away using the same methods above but I will add a tip. Fabric Softener along with the above methods. Add about a tablespoon of it in a medium spray bottle ((My bottle is 7 inches tall with sprayer included)) next add 4 table spoons of plain hot coffee. I know its weird, You can just add hot water if you'd like but the smell mixed with the fabric softener is very pleasing to me. Heavenly scent. This also removes mildew smell from older wigs that you failed to wash. Next Fill with water all the way to the top. This should make the mixture luke warm. Now spritz it on the hair till it's damp not dripping, and just use it along with the starch and iron method. It leaves the hair Soft and conditioned. Now These are my Tips, Use them as you like and if you make a blog about this please credit me :)

Follow these tips and your hair, doll's hair, will look amazing and kept. Lastly though, when using my methods to make sure your efforts are even and flawless. Go slow, Do a few pieces at a time like you would your own hair. That's it for now, Hope to see you soon.

How To make Polymer Clay Doll Shoes Part one: Mary Jane Heels!!! :)

This is a mini series that will be continuing on my youtube channel. We will start off with High Heel Mary Janes. I will place a template for the soles of the feet at the bottom.

UPDATE: Taking a Break to continue to fight for USA IMMIGRATION REFORM 2014

I found myself talking to an idiot today about immigration reform. So I wanted to share what I told
him. This blog is for my crafts and artwork but I wanted to let you know I am dealing with Immigration personally and that is why I've been slow on crafting because This issue is happening in my backyard so I want to inform you about the issues. I find that NO ONE knows about this issue, no one knows about the hunger strikes going on in front of the White house, or the horrible things Immigration Customs Enforcement is doing to people. I think Americans don't know this is happening to people because if you don't know an immigrant going through this (immigrants don't even know how bad it is until they are going through this) you will never know about the deaths in Ice custody, about the deportations, about the unlawful use of immigrant bodies, even about the abuse and flaw to the system that says "Who needs to be detained" Well according the the President and the Law "The gang bangers, the threats to society people who did crimes of moral turpitude" Well the Majority of people being detained are mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, grandparents. They simply got into Ice custody by misdemeanors such as: driving without a license, arrested while working, dui, and etc. hell I know about a case where one got in from jay walking.  Now the law says only crimes or moral turpitude this means crimes such as :

• rape
• murder
• homicide
• multiple homicide 
• man slaughter
• crimes of passion
• domestic violence
• involuntary man slaughter
• Fraud, theft, embezzlement, and certain kinds of thievery.

The majority of the people who are in mandatory detention have not committed any of these crimes and should be let out of detention on bail and let out of our tax payers money. Seriously we pay 2.4 billion dollars for this. Now the main points of my outrage is below, I was responding to a racist white man who called my race trash, who called my sister in law (who is mexican) trash, and who called my fiance' trash. Then he told me "It's not a race thing."So I told him this:

Racism really has everything to do with power. "it's not a race thing" Yeah I don't see any white guy getting deported in fact even british people can come here legally and smoothly vs. all the bullshit u have to do from a country where the majority of it's people is of color. In fact the countries these immigrants come from are so poor they cannot afford the application to get citizenship (1000+ the stupid paper costs around 2 grand i'm hearing now for certain countries) not only that the wait time is super long (Months to 4 years) and meanwhile their families are starving if they chose to wait any longer some of them would of died so hell yeah they'd just cross the boarder and find work. Let's bring the race card? If you feel racist, then maybe you are because u feel bad. (And there's nothing wrong with feeling bad about racism, it's wrong we all know that) You recognize all your privileges and advantages you have over people, (its called white privilege btw) that the protests telling immigrants (when you yourself and your ancestors are all immigrants) to go back, is ridiculous and to say that it has nothing to do with race or power is ignorant and you simply just don't want to feel like "the bad guy". Also to clarify what racism is, it is one race having all the privileges, all the advantages, all the opportunities, all the power. Sadly in the US, that title belongs to white people i'm so sorry that your race runs a lot of shit and have a lot of power. They will do anything and everything to keep that power but slowly its slipping out your fingers as people like myself get educated, informed, and organized. But don't worry The minority will treat u much better then what your ancestors, grandparents, your parents (if baby boomers I dunno how old u are) did. Now once u just say "yes it's racist, yes I'm an immigrant, and yes trying to tell other immigrants to get out of my stolen country is racist and I support immigration reform because who the hell do I think I am to tell these hard working people who have jobs we american people don't even want in the first place. And once these people are legal they can be paid actually living wages such as minimum wage vs the 1.25 they make hourly working for oh yes rich white man trying to save a buck on labor (This is already a fact btw) " It's a race thing." Own up to your shit. Your ancestors enslaved my people, ripped away civil rights, persecuted a lot of colored people and you're doing what you were taught is wrong but in different even more demoralizing ways without even thinking about it. Now if you still haven't realized how ignorant you're being and maybe thinking "We are paying for the immigrants" Trust me you do not pay any of these peoples bills hell the majority of them have used their adult children to pay taxes and contribute to society. In short. Support immigration reform if you're worried about pay, did u know our taxes pays out 2.4 billion dollars to find immigrants and detain them. Yes 166 dollars per person out of the 11 million people each to keep them detained. Even if an immigrant who is in ICE's custody says they will volunteer to leave, they will keep them here for 1-3 years tops for the hell of it because the private companies who are keeping them are making money off of them thats why they call it "Immigration machine". NOW there's the information you need to know if you still don't give a fuck, fine, continue to be racist. But when you stop and look at that "Immigrant" as a human being, then hey...welcome to the human race and you aren't being racist and thanks for joining the rest of the minority of being a decent human being. 

Obama stopped deportations which is the first step to change! :) Takes for all the support. Also Please take the new steps to come out of the shadows if you haven't already

More coming soon; FREE PRINTABLES

So this month and a little of last month I had spring break and Honestly, I've been dealing with very personally family issues that's affecting my artist life. I've been very depressed over it but none the less life goes on right? I hope all of you are doing much better then I have been doing and I hope you will all understand that I'll be taking a small break and continue to update once a week after my situation gets better. BUT videos? Ha, Well here's what I have planned next, A doll review video on a few chinese brand name dolls. Also a finished factory loft doll house update and room tour. Yeah I know I finally finished the loft and I have no pictures to show for it yet lmao. Let'sssss see I also made a recipe fore sheabutter cream spicy muscle cream. Anyways I hope you guys enjoy this free Mokos and Poki Gable Box.  <-----Just click the link to get it This free gift was to celebrate my store turning 3 years old and I never got around to sharing it soo TAAADAAAA
Anyways When everything clears up in my life that's causing me to be so depress, I'll be back (slowly though) See yeahh!!

How to Make Giant Strawberry Pocky Themed Polymer Clay Tools

So in the middle of shooting another tutorial video Saturday I realized my shabby tools aka: a pencil, a bobby pin, and anything else I use besides actual tools, look terrible. SOOO Why not make my own tools? I searched youtube and found terribly presented tools...I'm going to be using these tools every video. I can't have something ugly than what I was already using so I decided to get to work.
I have polymer clay that I don't use often so it was the perfect starting clay. For the handles I used cornstarch clay I will have to warn you so you don't make my mistakes. Even though the recipe for cornstarch clay calls for you to bake it at 175 degrees F for an hour this will not work on these tools if you make your handles as thick as I did. Bake it at 200 degrees F (TRUST ME) for 2 hours and 30 minutes. If you do it at normal time it will break because, the inside of the clay won't be baked all the way through. Now if you don't want to listen to me and use polymer clay for the handles you are welcome to I just don't like wasting polymer clay which is why I only used them to make the tips of my tools. I don't make a needle tool in the video but to make it use polymer clay for the strawberry part to stick the needle in. Trust me, it works and you'll love me for it.

Things you will need:

• Cornstrach Clay Recipe: 2 tablespoons baking soda 1 tablespoons cornstarch, small amounts water until it is thick and shiny. Heat in the microwave for 60s in 30s increments to stir in between until it is a dough like consistency.If you want to add color add generous amounts of soft pastels and other substitutes while mixing the dough or after just kneed it in very well. 
• Soft Pastels or Chalk Pastels (Makeup if you don't have either)
• My template :)
• Small amounts of Polymer Clay
• Silver metallic craft paint
• White craft paint.
• Floral Craft Wire 
• an OVEN
• Optional: pink and red craft paints for added detail

Here's the video of everything you need to know and here is the template I made for my box you can download it here.

I didn't put the file in pdf format this time but for awesome display purposes I'm going to place it as a picture here below because *sings* It's my blog and I can do what I want to POST what I wanttt too.
Also Remember I'm on instagram at SeasonalFrostbite If you want to show off your work, get featured in my videos just go on instagram and type @SeasonalFrostbite Or #SeasonalFrostbite I love supporting other artists. If you don't have instragram I'm also On facebook just like the page and post a picture saying "Fan art" :) I'm looking forward to seeing what you can do! Thanks guys!

How to make doll food miniatures: Fast food: Chick-Fil-A sandwhich and waffle fries

So I decided to do a tutorial video for this week. Yayyyy!! Ha, I hope you guys will subscribe to my channel on youtube. I became an official youtube partner today which apparently anyone can dooo! I'm excited because I can further edit my videos and share my work and products with you on etsy. First off In my video I promised free printables to help you create your own miniature chick-fil-a meals. I will put the links to these files here.

I'm sorry the steps are so fast but it was all i could do to shorten the video. I desperately need a new video editor to make my life easier. OI! Anyways I hope you guys subscribe like and comment. See you soon! Oh and Just in case you guys don't have adobe reader. Here's the free template I made as a picture! :)

10 Uses for Knock off Monster High and Ever after High and how to buy them.

  Okay, I've been trying to explain to young kids using the internet on the importance of the knock off doll and why it's not copyright and why mattel does NOTHING about these knock offs. To be honest I have nooo idea except some minor concepts of where these knock offs come from, china. Mattel makes their dolls in china. Thats packaging, doll rooting, doll clothing, factory painting, and etc. If chinese factories chooses to make a knock off of doll well....they kinda can do whatever they want. Ha, can't blame them I'd do it too. Plus I LOVEEE KNOCK OFFS! Getting what you want and saving money. Now, I'm going to show you 10 things you can do with these knock offs because they are usually lame.

Use 1: Doll clothing. Usually the doll clothing knock off doll comes in aren't that ugly and aren't that well made but it adds variety to your doll collection. The knock off shoes can never go wrong luckily. They tend to be better made then the doll clothes.

One of my repaints is a knock off clawdeen. She is wearing midnight magic doll dress and a knock off draculaura jacket

Use2: Doll parts. If you saw my last post I use and reuse doll body parts. You can build new dolls of your own. Personally reuse the heads of the knock off dolls to repaint them, reroot them ((knock off dolls are not rooted fully)) and sometimes cutting them which goes to use number 3.

Use3: Experiments. If you saw my last post you can see how I made a monster high boy custom using two knock off dolls, monster high draculaura and midnight magic doll pippa. You can cut up the dolls to make their feet articulated by making extra parts or bake them to melt them I dunno but I can tell you I have done this plenty of times.

These dolls are made with pretty cheap plastic which you can cut off their parts with scissors really easily.

Yeahh..I cut off the knock off monster high dolls feet...to make them betttterrr!! I'm a mad scientist MUHAHAHAHA! *ahem* Sorry...

Use4: Practice. Yes, you can use these knock offs to practice your mad scientist skills like I do lolz. You can practice doing faceups and repaints on them until you get really good. OR you can practice making them articulated with your tools like my favorite tool, the dremel4000. Here's a short evolution of my repaints.

My first repaint, sucks I know

She was a midnight Magic Pippa doll.

Yeahh this one was my 3rd one, sucks too

It got better..sort of..

Eventually I got the hang of it thanks to practice on my knock offs and I got to work on a real monter high doll.

And this Tyler was born after All these practice dolls.

Use5: Models. I use the knock offs to model doll clothing I'm making, usually the dimensions of the dolls are the same as the doll they are mimicking

Use6: Collection Filler. Add them to your collection...simple enough right? Lolz, they make great cheap additions, I'd recommend the Midnight Magic dolls you can get at family dollar. Perfect filler doll right there.

Use7: Ruler. If you want to make furniture like I do for dolls then you're going to need a size guide/model to measure how tall or how big to scale your furniture.

Use8: Donor Doll. Usually the doll hair in knock off dolls have a very nice quality,You can donate the dolls hair to your future reroots. I have found when you pay 30 dollars for ever after high dolls the quality of the hair is so terrible I have no idea why it costs 30 dollars especially if she only has one outfit.

Use9: To give to a child. Trust me, kids really don't know the difference. Meaning 5 and up. They usually don't care, just make sure the knock off is pure solid, they will never know the difference once they are playing with it. To be honest I have given away knock offs but I repair the things that make them noticeably different for example: I had to articulate the hands on my dolls.

Use10: Take pictures. Ugly or not these dolls are a great find to post on instragram for likes. Who doesn't like a good knock off?

How to Buy

Best places for finding these knock offs are at Family Dollar and online in wholesale stores such as aliexpress. I ususally get mine from these places. There are key quality things to look for when buying knock offs. Key tip, Search for the doll in aliexpress by using the brand's name.

• Price, Sometimes the dealers are trying to trick you into believing its a monster high doll so the price is stupid high like 30-40 dollars. You should only pay 10-20 dollars for knock offs and they should all come with more than one doll. for 10 dollars you can get 4 knock offs and so on. It's like buying in bulk! :)
• Quality based on price. Now they may be knock offs but they do have quality. Some knock offs are 8 for 4 but the dolls are not articulated while some are 17.99 free shipping for 4 dolls but are articulated in some areas then you have ones that are the perfect matches to monster high and are around 20 dollars for two. Go with the for two if you are looking to replace doll parts.
• Look at the pictures closely. Look for the doll poses. Are their hands bending in the pose they are making? Are their legs visibly articulated, are their heads sitting on their head correctly? When I got my Monster High knock offs I didn't do these things and ended up with Dolls with terrible neck articulation ((I had to fix this)) and knob hands instead of articulated ones ((Fixed this too))
• Search. When searching type in the brand's name to find them. They will be obvious knock offs, and yes they have started making monster high and ever after high hybrids. I'd show them here but I don't own the pictures So I won't. 

Now you're all set for getting your dolls happy shopping!!!

Finished Project. How to make a custom Monster High Boy out of Old doll parts and cornstarch clay.

This project was a lot of work but it only took me a day to build the body.
You will need:

• A 5 dollar midnight magic doll
• A knock off monster High doll OR a real one which ever u like to cut up
• floral wire
• doll hair
• A really strong glue such as E-600
• craft paint
• satin finish coat
• dremel4000 
• cornstarch clay
• caulk

The first thing you need is a doll design. I designed mine after a pullip. Once I've done that I started to work on my Torso. See, The dolls I've told you to have on hand to recycle are female dolls. The monster high boys are way to bulking for my taste so I figured I could make my own. I made some cornstarch clay and added soft pastels to the mixture to get color in the dough. I wish I hadn't deleted the videos of this process, its a longgg storyy. Sooo Let's put on our imagination caps. 

Using my dremel4000 I cut off the arms and legs of my two old dolls. If U cut carefully into the dolls torso you can take off the arms without damaging the Midnight Magic doll arms and just pop them into the torso, Of course I used my dremel to sand and get the parts to fit perfectly. 

After baking my parts needed I added cornstarch clay feet and ankles to make him taller and as you can see I attached  the parts to the doll. I used the E-600 glue to close cracks for the cornstarch clay created when I sanded the torso and other pats down and also to smooth out the areas where I attached my homemade doll parts. 

I used tape to hold down the parts I glue until they dried completely, Here is what the doll looks like before I painted it. As you can see this is a knock off monster high draculaura doll, head and a midnight magic doll arms. 

I did the doll facial lift I showed you guys before and moved on to painting the doll body and WAAALLAHHH. Custom Monster High boy

here's the doll finished, rerooted, facial lift and ready for clothes

My girls loveee their new playmate lolz. I think I should make more boys. 

I'm sorry this post wasn't as detailed as I planned but my camera just sucked...really sucked...Better luck next time...Hope you don't mind. 

How to make a dollhouse out of Cardboard and Caulk: Factory loft update

So assssss you should know if you're reading my blog and stuff I have been working on this dollhouse working with cardboard and caulk so todayyyy I have updates. I have been going through a lot of stuff that's preventing me from finishing up furniture thats for sale. I'm moving so slow I'm wondering If I should get a sweat shop LOLZ. Anyways here's what we got so far.

So With the bricks I painted them then took white craft paint and dry brushed it over the bricks to look more realistic and I painted the walls the same way to get the factory affect.

I added wood flooring from scrap book paper and painted the rest to look like concrete.

Here Are my dolls to scale :D 

I also added these wooden beams to the ceiling. 

Can't have a factory loft without metal vents

But thats all for today!! :) I'll update again soon

Doll facial lift

So i been making a monster high boy doll using knock off monster high female doll parts. The doll head came out great even though it was intended to be a female doll. I wasn't happy with the overall shape of my dolls head. It was too round. I wanted a more pointed slimmer face like an anime character almost. So i got to work and started cutting the dolls head open. I cut v shapes out of the head and pulled the v shape together and tied it with floral wire. Ha kinda like a doll face lift which is why i named this post that. Here are the before and afters...
Down side to doing this is the holes that were left but we can fix this easily.

Update: On how To make a Dollhouse our of Cardboard and Caulk

Here's a quick update to my dollhouse, there's more videos I have to post But I'm just getting it out of the way now

New Monster High doll repaint/ Knock off Monster High dolls

So a few months ago I bought a set of knock off monster high dolls to practice doing repaints on them and to save money at the same time. Funny story though my official monster high dolls costed way less then the set of four that i purchased for 17 bucks (shipping was free). I ended up getting official monster high dance class dolls for 5 dollars at walmart, WHAT a steal. I even managed to get a Draculaura doll scaris edition for 5 bucks too. What I got were Laguna Blue dance class, Rebecca Steam dance class, and Draculaura.  Anyways back to the knock off dolls. They made great practice dolls and editions to my collection once I repainted them. Now for knock offs, they aren't fully articulated correctly, their hands were nubs so I tried to articulated them myself with simple floral wire. It worked for the most part. the limbs are so wobbly that it i couldn't stand it. Anyways For repaints on the heads the knock off dolls were PERFECT. Here are my results of a knock off Clawdeen Wolf.

Here's a pic of the knock off before i repainted her. I really suck at doing before and after pictures because...well...I just don't possibly due to laziness. Now here is how the doll came out. 

As you can see...she
is DOWN RIGHT
SUPER CUTE. It almost puts my repaint of the Offical Laguna Blue Dance Class doll repaint ,also known as Tyler, to shame. The cheaper dolls have lots of bald spots so I added more hair to the bald spots. Also the body of the doll was way to light to match the dolls skin so I even repainted that.
I made her some jeans and a sweater and she rocks it sooooo well that I took a mini photoshoot in my studio.

Tyler and her new doll friend. What should we Name her?

The new doll in her amazing homemade outfit. The jeans needs something though...

You can see how I had to fix the hands here..

Bagel Lovvvesss the new doll.

I felt like her outfit needed a purse so I made one real quick out of this left over leather pink fabric. I even drew on
seem lines and pockets to my doll jeans 

Our free printables look great with 1:6 scale dolls

I posed the dogs to look up at the camera.

So thats the doll! Hopefully we can come up with a nice name? Comment to recommend some. Tomorrow Our new tutorial will be on how to make doll jeans :). I'm thinking of making a video of this one. what do you think?

Tyler: New girl Where did you get your jeans!?!