Workshop updates: Artist cast dolls

Hello my little rebels,

Today I want to talk about the [arduous] casting process of my dolls.

As you might have noticed, since March 2020 (due Covid-19 and the temporary close of my casting company which was located in Wuhan, and months of confinement in Spain) I started making resin cast of my dolls at home with the help of my couple. We invested a lot of time and money trying different materials (silicons, resins and pigments) and doing some research to find which ones give the better results. We don’t have a professional vacuum casting machine, but we use a pressure casting pot to reduce the air bubbles as much as possible.

Mixing resin, preparing the mold and casting one single doll head takes about 1~2 hours (depending on the resin type and room temperature). After taking it out of the mold, resin needs more time to full cure (you can leave it for a week or accelerate the process with heat), that also depends on the weather and room temperature.

Most of the time the casts are not perfect, and we have to repair some bubbles with more resin, or discard the doll if the defect is on a noticeable area.

For some reason that we can’t understand yet, our molds get damaged with only a few of castings, and we use high quality platinum silicone, which is quite expensive. That makes us to have to make several molds for a single doll preorder, which is also very time-consuming and expensive. And delays the production a lot since the original doll has to be repaired and prepared for molding each time (for that reason is possible that there are small differences in each batch of dolls).

When the dolls are fully cured, we cut the resin gates and start the process of sanding and gluing the magnets. We sand the dolls by hand so it is quite slow, and I’m trying my best to don’t leave any sanding marks, so I take about 1 hour to with each doll head. After that I clean all the dolls to remove all resin dust, and repeat the process if necessary. Dry them well, and pack them or prepare them for faceup process.

 

Honestly, since we started casting dolls at home, we don’t have any free time, and we always take more time than we thought we would. So that delays the next preorder release too. I work 7 days a week, all day, and I feel I never have enough time to have everything finished in time.

Don’t get me wrong, I love to make my dolls at home because that allows me to have much more control over all the process and the quality, and to offer much more colors without depending on minimum quantities. The bad part is that it is a hundred times more time-consuming.

 

I’m currently working on Kaylar dolls from October preorder. Peach and white resin dolls that were pay in full have been already shipped, except the ones who ordered faceup option. Grey, red and chocolate color dolls, are now being made. We had to re-make some dolls due to problems with the previous mold. And now with the winter and the cold weather we are having some more troubles with some of the colors. So  the productions is being delayed.

 

Kai’s release needs to be delayed a bit until I finish sanding all Kaylar dolls and have time to do their faceups.

 

Thank you so much for your support and for letting me improving and keep creating dolls :)