tsubasahome: (custom doll)
I finished rerooting my Ghoulia and set her hair today. Her hair's not dry, but here are my latest comments on the Restoredoll Nylatex hair.

Pros:
It's pretty.
It comes in a variety of colors not available in saran(dark pine green, aqua, eggplant purple, etc)
It's easier to work with than nylon using the needle-knot method, ie: it doesn't try to untie itself unless you make the plugs very big.
It's really, really, really cheap. Alarmingly cheap. One $5 package was more than enough to reroot my Ghoulia.
Doesn't stain as far as I can see.

Cons:
It's not as easy to style as nylon. If you use water that's too hot(as in boiling) it will damage the coating on the hair. I had to boil water, let it sit for several minutes, and pour it over the head to set it. If you treat it like saran you will ruin it. It's best treated as kanekalon.
It looks better than it feels, the texture is a bit stiff. However, it does feel nicer than most MH dolls' default hair, and it feels nicer than the drier colors of saran, like Pinky Pinky and Nitro Lime.
It's slightly prone to tangling in the package, and the hank of hair is a little big for the package, so it's kind of messy to take out and put back.

Would I use it instead of saran? Not if I had a choice. However, it's a great buy and I don't regret having tried it. At least not yet. ^^;;
tsubasahome: (custom doll)
I'm almost done rerooting my Ghoulia with Fantasy Forest Green Nylatex hair. After some more research, more questions about the hair have popped up.

First of all, the name Nylatex may not have anything to do with the content, was it put out by Nyla Textiles(which is a fiber/knitting company from the UK)?

Second, I think the coating on the hair is polyurethane, and it's supposed to weatherproof it, make it less vulnerable to sunlight, etc...at first glance, boiling water didn't seem to affect it, but now that I look at it, it changed the color! Avoid avoid avoid boiling water! I'm going to have to do some more tests to see how steam affects it!

Well, it's not like I hadn't been warned... ^^;;;
tsubasahome: (custom doll)
I've thrown my hands up and given up on using a rooting thread. It's too much of a pain. I wonder if the problem I've been having with glue coming out of the rooting holes when I have no choice but to glue my knots(like when I'm using nylon) would be remedied if I used a glue not soluble in water, as it seeps out during the setting process.

I've started rerooting a formerly junk Ghoulia with the Nylatex Fantasy Forest Green hair. The hair seems colorfast, it's a little stiff out of the package but oddly seems to soften up as you work with it. I still think it feels like Pullip hair. It's not bad hair. Costs half as much as saran and it comes in dark green. I think the hair itself is prettier than DH nylon--the luster is more subdued than the super shiny fake luster the DH nylon has. Fantasy Forest Green is not a matte color, I wonder if any of the colors are matte(I generally don't care for matte/milky colors).

I was reading some patent information on a "new" type of doll hair(I think the patent was abandoned) and it's interesting what the industry refers to as "bad" qualities of certain fibers. Too fine, too shiny, doesn't flow together on the head, bad curl memory...I had always preferred doll hair that wasn't super shiny like nylon because I think it looks more natural and apparently excessive amounts of shine is caused by the hair only reflecting light in one direction and is considered a flaw. And apparently, none of the existing types of hair pass the curl memory test!

It also cast some light on why saran is/was used on so many dolls. I read somewhere that it's because it's cheap, in reality saran is widely used because of its superior fire resistance, making it safer for children's toys. Of course, it will burn, but the idea is that removing the source of fire will cause the hair to stop burning. They have saran listed with a flame resistance similar to that of wool. Nylon, on the other hand, is allegedly as flammable as cotton. I've never tried burning either, but it's interesting to read. I read all this in various patent documentation, searching for the fiber composition of the mysterious Pilot hair(the answer is "none of the above")

I think Nylatex is nylon coated with another material(probably latex) to make it waterproof.

I wonder if the safety standards for kids' toys has been lowered these days?

;_;

Dec. 21st, 2012 08:26 pm
tsubasahome: (custom doll)
I dunno if I was distracted by stress or what, but I totally almost cleaned my cat's teeth with a glasses cleaning cloth instead of a dental wipe. 0_0
tsubasahome: (custom doll)
In the wake of all my commissions, I decided to take the plunge and order myself a package of Restoredoll Nylatex hair in Fantasy Forest Green. I had asked Kathy about how it is to work with compared to saran, and she said it can't withstand heat as much, so I guess I will be steam setting it as well as boiling it... The hair costs about $5 an order, and each order is one XL skein. So it costs around half as much as saran...? It does look like a lot of hair.

Naturally, as soon as it arrived, I had to cut it open and have a look. It's...pretty. Sparkly as opposed to shiny like DH nylon(which I am not using anymore, as Black Magick turned a commissioned doll head chartreuse in spite of its supposed colorfastness and I hate working with it as it is) The texture is a bit stiff but this is good for us needle/knotters out there...it's easier to work with than nylon as it doesn't untie itself when you knot it if you keep the plugs a reasonable size. It feels like it would probably burn so I will be careful when I set the hair. I can't see it replacing saran as my mainstay but it comes in dark green and saran doesn't.

Oddly enough, Nylatex feels a lot like the hair used on Pullips, at least the ones I used to have(Xiao Fan, Nero, and Principessa).
tsubasahome: (Default)
One Saturday Night. by tsubasa_ozora.rm
One Saturday Night., a photo by tsubasa_ozora.rm on Flickr.

I love it when he sits up like a person!

tsubasahome: (Default)
I've been finishing up a lot of commissions lately, and I recently put the finishing touches on a Roller Maze Ghoulia I rerooted with hair in all shades of pink, purple and white. I'm waiting for some more commissions to show up, but in the meantime I'm rerooting a Dead Tired Ghoulia I had originally planned on customizing and selling on Etsy with black hair in the first step of her transformation into Marceline from Adventure Time. ^^;;;;; Obviously, in the show Marceline just has black dots for eyes, but I'm going to give her red eyes like the original artist's more realistic drawing of Marceline. I was originally going to give her silver lips but I think I will have them done in red instead, as the drawing had red lips and red eyeliner in addition to red eyes. 0_0

I've been watching a lot of streaming anime these days. I can't believe I actually sat through all of Guilty Crown. That show is complete garbage! After a while Lauren and I were just watching it to make fun of it. The only character I even remotely found interesting was only in the show for about ten minutes, and then was unceremoniously dispatched in the last episode. The rest of the show was garbage, and the lead couple made me sick. They could have at least had Inori's dubbed singing voice sound remotely like her speaking voice. Like we're supposed to believe this girl with her brain-dead baby voice has this husky singing voice...I don't even know why she was a singer, anyway. Nothing in the show made any sense.

I also watched all of Tiger and Bunny, which I enjoyed quite a bit in spite of my intense dislike of Barnaby. Sure, it wasn't perfect, but hey, I just watched Guilty Crown!

I live!

Oct. 30th, 2012 06:26 pm
tsubasahome: (Default)
Man, that storm sucked. I guess that's a pretty juvenile way of putting it, huh? We spent from 3 to about 9 huddled in the basement as the power flicked on and off, and then eventually stayed on. Took a look outside to survey the damage and it doesn't look like we've lost anything more than some medium-sized tree limbs. Central CT really dodged a bullet. Only 16% of our town lost power at the height of the storm. Eastern CT and the coast were not so lucky. I don't know how those areas are going to recover...they had already been walloped by Irene and people were just picking up the pieces. The damage reports out of NYC and NJ are even more catastrophic. It's a part of the country that you'd never think would be vulnerable to a hurricane hit because the typical cyclone track has the storms moving NE away from them and more toward Long Island, but I guess having the storm phase with a trough and get flung back into the coast is the way to do it...if it had remained tropical it probably would have been a tighter storm and not affected such a large area...

Hey.

Oct. 27th, 2012 10:31 pm
tsubasahome: (Default)
Just in case anybody needed to contact me for any reason(not that I can really think of any) I just wanted to let you all know that due to Hurricane Sandy, I'm likely to be missing from LJ, and the internet in general, for the foreseeable future. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that I will not lose any piece of my house, or be without power for longer than with that October blizzard last year, but who knows? According to pretty much every media outlet, we're going to die.
tsubasahome: (Default)

My birthday is coming up on the 14th, so I sent this rerooted Dead Tired Draculaura to nonaptime as an early birthday present for myself. I just got her back yesterday and boy is she beautiful!

On a sad note, it seems like my grandmother is not doing too well. We don't know how much time she has left, but we're going to try to see her tonight. It's really hard to deal with...but she's almost 90 years old and I knew she wasn't going to live forever.

tsubasahome: (Default)

Obviously not the first doll I've ever rerooted, ha ha! But she's the first I put up in my Etsy shop! Take a look if you're interested!

https://www.etsy.com/listing/111577010/rerooted-mattel-monster-high-spectra

Hey kids!

Oct. 6th, 2012 01:07 pm
tsubasahome: (Default)
I'm busy trying to cobble together an Etsy Shop. I'll post the link once I get my first item ready. Stay tuned!
tsubasahome: (Default)
Keeping with my plans with possibly opening up an Etsy shop for my rerooted Monster High dolls, as eBay is too aggravating, I've picked out hair colors and styles for the Abbey and Spectra. I'm planning on rerooting a Lagoona with a blend of Sky Blue and Azure Blue saran hair, and I held the color up to Spectra and it looks really nice(it's the same color Lauren used for her rerooted Maya, so we had some lying around), so I went ahead and did a five skein special order, with 3 skeins of the blue blend to share between Spectra and Lagoona, and two of the same color blend I used on my own rerooted Maya Sylvie to use on the Abbey. Naturally, I'll be keeping the Lagoona for myself. ^^

The new Made in China Spectra has glue in her head, but it's not the same glue as the Made in Indonesia dolls. Rather than seeming like rubber cement, it almost feels like white glue. I've already started on the Spectra, but I think I will not put up the dolls until both are done, since it would be weird to have an Etsy shop with only one doll. ^^;;;;
tsubasahome: (Default)
...of opening up an Etsy shop to sell some rerooted Monster High dolls.

At this point, I have a 1.0 Abbey, 1.0 Spectra, and possibly Classrooms Lagoona and Skull Shores Frankie at my disposal. I don't have hair for any of them, so this is something that's going to have to be in the future...but I wonder if I would have better luck trying Etsy than eBay.

After all, a lot of people sell custom MH dolls, but I'm not seeing a lot of reroots.
tsubasahome: (Default)
Hey!

I updated my rerooting commission page, and added some more stuff to my trade list(odd stuff, I know...) I also took a few things down. I may make more changes later.

http://www.tsubasahome.com/rootingservice.htm

If anybody wants me to do a commission, now's the time...we're staring down a $2,000 bill for the replacement of our well pump, which bit the farm last week, LOL!

If anybody reading this has something to trade that's not on my list, please don't think I'll bite your head off if you ask me about it...I just had a bad experience, that's all! I have no problems negotiating with reasonable people who don't get sarcastic on me from the first message on. I'm not that difficult to get along with, honest! I just have my breaking point, just like anybody else. ^^;;;;

Hey!

Sep. 16th, 2012 12:46 pm
tsubasahome: (Default)
Hey! by tsubasa_ozora.rm
Hey!, a photo by tsubasa_ozora.rm on Flickr.

Does Iobelle not look like she's a person with a rose for a head in this picture?

tsubasahome: (Default)

I rerooted her over the past couple of days. She's Lauren's doll...she was originally planning on parting with her because she was so garish, but I think she looks much better with hair that fits in with the color scheme of her makeup, rather than the skunk-do that sticks out weirdly at the temples that she originally had.

tsubasahome: (Default)
Well, yesterday was...interesting. With the MOD risk and 10% tornado from the SPC. I haven't seen anything that awful around here for at least two years, and I hadn't even seen it coming. ...we didn't get much of anything, while just to the west of us in Fairfield County got like five tornado warnings. =_=;;;;; The storms passed just to the north of us and we just got some showers and the dying remnants of a squall line that didn't even produce any lightning.

Every time I think I've seen everything, something like this comes up. They'll MOD risk us for just about anything now! This was almost as bad as last July where they said they'd put us under HIGH risk for what amounted to sub-severe storms! The only result is us having a lot more gray hair!
tsubasahome: (Default)

I rerooted her with a blend of Restoredoll Sky Blue and Snow White saran hair. She's going to be for Lauren. ^__^ Once Retrograde Works opens some slots for September, I'm going to try to grab one and have her repainted.

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