Makie Labs is moving... to the USA!

I usually respond to the queries on facebook anyway, though comments seem to have died down now the refunds have come through.
It was a bit of a mess.

I try to avoid it now though as I find it really sad to see such radio silence there you know? I miss Makies and desperately want them back, their absence hurts my heart.

Jenna nobody wanted you to leave and I'm sure you could come back when you feel up to it .
Re Tammie being admin ,she and I were chatting and saying the group needed someone online more often than Marti is and the next thing she was admin so she must have messaged Marti I guess .
Discussion about the future of Makies has revived again amidst the happy creative posts as a clearance company bought the stock and has put it on ebay .....one V1 doll is up to £200 already and it's got another 8 days on the auction

I'm wary about the clearance sale purely because I can see it causing a lot of grief. Particularly if one rich person manages to win the majority. I can see hurt feelings, jealousy, a lot of ill will.
I'm just.. wary of it.
I mean the fact the price of one is at £200 already and another is almost £100 doesn't bode well for us regular joes does it?

Looks like it's accessories only for me and most of the rest of us schlubs.

Anyway, i'll probably rejoin the group when I feel up to it. I just can't be bothered with drama and in fighting right now. Or high and mighty holier than thou poopy from people telling us to "not be negative blah blah blah". I just.. no. It ticks me off. The whole thing was needless, nasty and triggery and i'm hiding for a bit because it was flat out uncalled for. I'd already made it clear I was feeling fragile, but obviously they're sooo much better than me right?
Screw them. I'm mad, i'm offended and i'm hurt. I left because I could see it escalating very rapidly and I knew my mental state was such that it would throw me over the edge and into a spiral of self loathing. Not.. worth it.
It was pretty clear who their complaints were directed at, it wasn't exactly subtle. I felt attacked, so I fled.

It'll be a while before my ego heals.


We'll see how I feel after all the drama blows over. I probably won't be back till the lab reopens at this rate. Too much hurt, too much bickering, too much censorship. I can't deal with it. I can't sit somewhere that won't allow me to voice my feelings about something i'm so passionate about, and worse, a place where i'll be accused in an underhanded manner of "making things worse" for the thing I love. It's not the first time i've been scolded like a child but certain people and made to feel like a piece of rubbish, not the first time it's been implied that something is magically "all my fault". Wow, if only I had such sway to be able to dictate the fortunes of a company right?

If "nobody" wanted me to leave, which I really don't believe, why'd they drive me out? No, pretty sure at least a couple of them are glad i'm gone, taking my "negativity" with me.
Sod them. I'm not going to fake being happy just to make a few self righteous individuals more comfortable.

If anyone wants me, i'll be here or on flickr. If you want to continue to discuss it, pm me. I don't much want to clog up the forum with my tedious angst. It's kinda embarrassing and reeks of melodrama.

Yes Nat I was...and Think I might still do it plus darken dye one of my dolls for this...

Anyone think I am insane?

@Miss Heny - haha nope! Having made a hybrid myself, I've found it a really fun and rewarding experience, and well worth it. I eagerly await a project thread from you!

Thankfully there is a cheap Barbie Pegasus on eBay...but I do admit I wish there was a posable centaur 3D body one could print for this.

There's a 3D printed centaur doll on etsy. I must admit I personally don't care for its sculpting though, the forelegs are just the hind legs repeated, which makes no sense (to me)

I'm curious to know how you're going to handle it! The Barbie horses are usually solid with either no or extremely little articulation, right? How are you going to remove the head, and how are you planning to attach the Makie?

There is a OLD Pegasus Barbie release in earlier 2005s that is fully jointed including the head so all  I'll have to do and hack it off at the neck joint, open up the hole a little and use apoxi to smooth things haha.

I did this with a moxie doll horse lol I need to mount the head still 

Yea nat I own horses IRL I would get upset with how wrong that is XD (the 3D centaur doll leg joints)

the liv horse is fully articulated and a bit chunkier than the Barbie horses, that could be a good starting point. They come up fairly cheap rather often.

As for centaur bodies, only ones I know of are resin and tend to be MSD sized which isn't that helpful. The small ones are really freakily disproportioned.

http://www.amazon.com/Barbie-Magic-Pegasus-Brietta-Light-up/dp/B0007WX1IO

Okay not for THAT price but this is the horse I am talking abut lol

I have that horse somewhere... the kids keep stealing it.

Willing to sell it cheap? :lol!:02.23.2016 JK

haha if I find it i'll let you know. I haven't a clue what they did with it. They keep stealing my toys. Doll scooters and skateboards are particularly prone to getting nicked but they totally stole all my g1 mlps too. Bah.

If not I'll be buying the one on Ebay for 20+ shipping lol want to make Lorena more of a true tan... any suggestion nat? I know you did the ink dye stuff..

Are you talking 3DP nylon, or IM plastic? I've only worked with the 3DP nylon. I think I'd recommend other's dyeing tips and guides first. The use of Rit is well-documented.

I used alcoholic markers as a dye. It certainly takes, but you must be certain of the colour first, there's no second chance. It is possible though. I used it to make strawberry milk hands suitable for my coca makie.

3DP I have photos of the doll I am talking about on one of my old posts if you like I can PM her to you and we can stop Hijacking this thread XD

Haha, well I'm not really sure I can help...! Beyond what's already on the forum I mean. There are Rit dye tutorials on here already, which I think would be much safer for you to follow.

I did do ink dyeing, but that's because I knew exactly what I wanted, how I wanted. I did customisation work based on what I specifically and personally wanted to do, based around my own play style with dolls (as in how I'd handle or display them). That kind of confidence (or arrogance, depending on how you look at it...!) only comes with working with certain mediums for a very long time. I've been a professional marker artist for years (that sounds weird, but it used to be my job to instruct marker techniques), so I had no issues diving right in.

I wouldn't want to recommend it in case it goes wrong? Any medium can react with things, including alcoholic ink. It could react with the sealant, it could react to you handling it (hand oils and stuff), etc. I haven't extensively tested markers with different materials/sealants, because I personally didn't need to, but that means I can't actually vouch for it.

But Rit dye has been extensively tested by people on this forum! There's quite a few posts on it, and there are people who have had dyed makies for 2 or 3 years now who can vouch for whether it's colour-fast or not (protips: Alcoholic marker ink is NOT. It WILL get sun-damaged, probably quite unevenly as certain colours break down faster), and what it does or doesn't react with.

By all means, if you want to do ink dyeing anyway/feel confident and assured in your skill with ink, give it a go! But I wouldn't want to recommend it given that it's a riskier option - basically, please don't hold me accountable for anything that goes wrong.  Fair warning that Rit is probably the safer option purely because far more information is easily available!

While I'm here, though I might just make a thread for compatible/potentially compatible resin things: Have you considered the centaur body by LUTS? The Honey Delf one here. It's limited, but from what I gather it does come round something like yearly, it's not really gone forever. Plus there might be second-hand ones. Honey Delf should probably be the right size, it's YOSD/1/6, and I personally think it's probably the best BJD horse body I've seen. Yes, it's chibi-stylised, but it's way closer to the ordinary natural shape of a horse than most of the BJD centaur bodies I see. I actually really like it, I think I'd like to have one myself eventually. The articulation and posing ability look pretty good, and again, fairly natural even for a stylised thing.

I'd maybe try watered down acrylic or something to make a kinda of "ink"  lol. I'm yet to test that and whether it streaks, i'll get my white spare parts out later maybe and have a go. See what happens heh. Because if it does work you could get a much more certain colour than dye which is notoriously unpredictable in what shade it'll become.

Whoops, edited my reply just as you posted P_M! 
I suspect that watered down acrylics would be very very likely to streak. You're essentially making a watercolour, which watercolours are deliberately blotchy and streaky (that's part of their charm). Perhaps if you used a very broad brush, you'd minimise the streaking, but I think you'd also have trouble with pigment pooling into particular areas - especially on the face. Depending on the quality of the acrylic paints, it may also speckle.

Definitely test that on a spare first, it seems like quite a risk!  However, I'd love to see pictures of your test process to see how it comes out. If it works, it'll be a very cool easy way of doing it.

Miss Heny - Buying appropriate inks shouldn't set you back too much money if you wanted to try it that way. It's not free, but 1 or 2 pens will probably see an entire Makie done, if that's what you decide to do. Just 1 would probably be enough.

I suppose I may as well go ahead and recommend what I use (full disclaimer that I'm no longer working for them, so this isn't a sponsored post lmao, I just do like them a lot). Windsor & Newton ProMarkers (formerly of Letraset), they're inexpensive and have a huge range. They've renamed the colours/switched around the packs since the changeover so unfortunately I'm not entirely sure which one is the one I used for Gil. It might have been Caramel or Cinnamon, but I don't know for sure.

In the UK, you can get them in any art shop. I don't know about the US/worldwide, but considering what a big brand Windsor & Newton is, I'm sure you'd be able to find them.

Anyway, again, I don't want to vouch for any processes in case they go wrong. XD Always test on spares.

Haha sadly that Lut body doesn't allow for a haired tail and that is what I really want! 

I may look into rit dye tan and dunk my eye clip thingy into it first to see what happens hehe

You could remove the LUTS tail part, I believe, and then simply use a wig fibre weft in place of it. I should imagine that the tail will be attached either via stringing or magnet, and both are easily removable. Just an option though, anyway.  It's hard to find good fantasy parts for YOSD/1/6, it's nice that LUTS have developed such a good looking body. Personally I quite hope Resinsoul produce more 1/6 parts in future. They've done great hooves for their larger bodies (that actually look like fawn legs and not like weirdly misshapen human legs that happen to end in stumps), so I hope some 1/6 ones happen eventually. Gil would be getting those instantly.

Oh.. Then it time to sell off some dolls lol.


I would have to get some dye anyway to skin tone match the tans :3

I've had pretty decent success with chalk blushing to get colour, but it would take quite a while and a lot of layers to do a whole doll.

As for paint, maybe an airbrush? lol. Someone a while ago did darken up a pocahontas makie using acrylic watered down, if i'm remembering correctly. Didn't post a step by step though which was a shame, but the photos looked pretty excellent. I'll run some experiments heh.

Ooo exciting, it's like the old days!

Yea haha.

I been tempted to take he Rit dye remover I got on my eye piece and see if I could lighten up the dye job first then darken it.

Hey Nat what is the normal price for the centaur if it doesn't have the chocolate horse body?