taking time to breathe...

I'm glad to say that everyone really seemed to like the shorts that I decided, basically on a whim, to make; and I managed to save up enough money to buy my first dslr, a Nikon D3100 ;3;

I mean I'd already saved up quite a bit before my fujifilm point and shoot started to crap out on me, but I never thought that I'd manage to save up the rest of what I needed as quickly as I did; so I'm very grateful to anyone who purchased anything at all from my shop the past several weeks 'cause I wouldn't have been able to do it without them.

I've had several requests from people for SD size dyed shorts, and I most definitely want to work out a pattern so I can include them in the next batch. But for right now I'm going to be taking a bit of a break to work on some personal projects 'cause I feel like I've just been so busy the past several weeks trying to make things to sell so I could afford a new camera that I just keep shoving stuff that I want/need to do for my own dolls off into the "I'll get to it later" pile.

So for the next couple weeks or so I'm going to put new things for the shop on the back burner and give myself a little time to just take a break and get to work on some things that I've been putting off for far too long, like clothes for poor Egg 'cause she's seriously lacking in that department even though I already bought a whole bunch of fabric awhile back to make her stuff.

I mean I may still make some things to list here and there, and commissions will still be open as always; there just won't be any big updates like there had been with the legwarmers and the shorts.

but yeah...

list of the things I'm planning to try and get done.

various clothes for egg (she kind of needs a little bit of everything)

bathing suit for lena

printed and solid color jersey shorts for lena (and probably some to sell)

various clothes for livi (she needs some more summery tops)

extended list that only applies if I can get some msc ordered, and the humidity goes down.

new faceups for pan

new faceups for avery

repaint ava (stupid testors is getting sticky :/)

paint ava's twin (base doll is skull shores frankie) that I'm going to sell/auction

maybe open up egg and start working on her, but idk 'cause I didn't want to open her until I can start her reroot too.

I'm also going to have to spend some time learning how to use my new camera when it gets here probably sometime next week.

I'm very new to the whole dslr thing, and frankly have no idea what I'm doing.

the only times I've used a dslr in the past I basically just had it handed to me and I did nothing but push the shutter button, so it was kind of just like a really expensive point and shoot xD

so it may take me awhile to get the hang of it and figure everything out, but I'm really excited to learn; and it'll be nice to have more control over the photos that I take 'cause that was why I'd always been planning to upgrade to a dslr when I had the money to spare anyway, the upgrade just happened a little sooner than I thought it would.

if you wanted a pair of those rainbow shorts...

be sure to head over to my etsy shop!

they've all been listed now, and 4 pairs of the rainbow ones are already gone; so be sure to check them out now so you don't miss out on the pair you want.

each pair is one of a kind. even though some of them have similar color patterns, no two pairs are exactly alike.

I'm not sure yet if/when I'll be making more, it'll all depend on how well these go, and how quickly I can get a pattern made for SD size dolls 'cause I want to be able to do both sizes next time if I do decide to make more.

and don't forget to go "like" the fan page for my shop on facebook 'cause post updates there as things are listed so you can be the first to know.

you can find a link for that in the sidebar ^_^

overdue update...

so I said that I'd post a blog about the rainbow shorts when I actually got to work on them.

I'd fully meant to do more blogs throughout the process to show progress pictures and what not, but if you follow me on flickr I had been posting stuff there (and on instagram within the last couple days 'cause I got my fancy new droid xD)

I went into it thinking it was going to be super simple, but I also didn't originally plan to sew 29 pairs of shorts xD

if you read the last blog you'll already know some of this, but whatever.

only 23 of those 29 pairs got bleached and dyed, while I left the 6 extra pairs as the light denim color that they were to begin with and just distressed them.

I spent about 15 hours the first day cutting out the pieces for and sewing all 29 pairs.

the next day I spent about 8 hours doing as much distressing as I possibly could.

the day after that I finished with the distressing and rinsed/dried them all to make the frayed bits look better and more actually worn.

the next day I got started with the bleaching which took something like 4-5 hours 'cause for whatever reason the bleach I bought sucks and just didn't seem to want to take the color out of the denim in a timely manner.

that night after I'd finished with the bleaching and had given them some time to dry part of the way I applied the dye to all of the shorts and let them sit and dry for nearly 48 hours before I rinsed and washed them.

it was kind of more work than I'd figured, but I'm really happy with how they turned out in the end 'cause the parts where I thought the colors looked really muddy actually don't look bad after they were washed since you can't really see where each color set when they're still covered in dye, so in some of the places where I thought too many colors mixed it wasn't actually bad because not all of the colors set where they bled.

I'm hoping to get pictures taken of all the pairs that will be for sale within the next couple days 'cause I know some people are waiting for them to be available already, it's just going to take a bit since I have to take pictures of the front and back of every pair since they're all different.

I'm also hoping to get an SD size pattern worked out 'cause some people expressed interest in them, and I don't generally like to sew fitted  things for dolls that I don't have in house; but I think if I can get a friend to help me with the measurements I'd need, and trying on a test pair or two then I can manage it.

anyway...

enough babbling, here are some shots of the finished shorts!

this was when the dye was still wet.

lena wearing the first pair that I decided I was for sure keeping. 

instagram spam of a bunch of the finished pairs.

some of those pictured will be for sale, but some are pairs that I'm keeping for myself.

and I'm eleanoranne on instagram by the way if you happen to want to follow me on there ^_^