Custom Ever After High doll

Yes, one of my favorite holidays has come to an end and the Great Pumpkin was a no-show, but happily I had quite a few Trick-or-Treaters come by (last year I didn't).  It started off slow, slow enough that I dragged Chloe out to take some pictures.

Chloe is a leprechaun, by the way.  I've made that clear on Den of Angels that she's supposed to be a leprechaun and not a witch, but I haven't made it clear here.  Chloe is a leprechaun, and while she's not any keener on winter than her friend Johnny is, she does love Halloween...provided the Trick-or-Treaters come, which they didn't at first.

 "Le sigh...Mother, it's growing cold out here."

Chloe always calls me "Mother," for reasons I'll never know.  Anyway, the Trick-or-Treaters did eventually show, after I'd put Chloe back on her shelf and dragged out my computer, and within an hour my candy was gone and my Halloween was over.  Of course we still have Day of the Dead in full swing (plus All Saints' Day if any of y'all are Catholic), and Day of the Dead is what we're going to discuss today.  I've had this post in Draft Limbo since my birthday on October 6th, but the doll in this post has a Day of the Dead theme so I decided to hold off until now.  I've been in the doll hobby since I was eleven, but unless one counts the ball-jointed dolls that I own I've never purchased a custom-made doll.  The ones that I like are usually the higher-end ones that were way out of my price range, and in some cases I tend to prefer the original product.  I don't care much for those super-customized Blythe dolls, for example; they're cute, but I prefer the subtle edge of the original Blythe face.  We'll revisit Blythe in the future, as I finally have one...sort of.  Today is for Monster High and Ever After High though; I bought a customized Ever After High doll from a Facebook friend.  My buddy Alyssia Brown makes these drop-dead gorgeous repaints of Monster High and Ever After High dolls, with themes ranging from pop culture to fan art to fantasy.  Here's what some of my favorites look like (pictures used with permission).

There hasn't been a creation that I haven't liked, but those will give y'all an idea of what Alyssia's work looks like.  Recently she did a line of sugar skull dolls, and being a Day of the Dead fan I knew I had to own one.  Meet Morrada Calaveras.

Yes, her name is Morrada, the feminine singular Spanish word for "purple."  Being based on a Mexican entity and clothed in purple, that seems fitting.  The last name "Calaveras" is not original, being Skelita's last name.  I own two Skelita dolls, the first-wave doll and the Art Class doll, and since they share a surname I've chosen to pretend that Morrada is Skelita's cousin.

Comparing Morrada to Skelita in-depth wouldn't really be fair since one is made for mass-production and the other is an OOAK entity...but I'm going to compare them anyway.  I like Skelita a lot; indeed, of all the characters Monster High has had I like Skelita the most of all, with her half-moth, half-skeleton cousin Bonita Femur coming in at a close second.  Now that I think about it...is Bonita Femur Skelita's cousin, or could she possibly be her half-sister???  Both are listed as daughters of skeletons, after all, though sources don't say if they're both children of the same skeleton.  Anywho, Skelita's style and aesthetic is merely based on Day of the Dead and the resulting sugar skulls, while Morrada IS a sugar skull, more or less.

Alrighty, nitty-gritty time.  Morrada is a repossessed Ever After High doll, and judging from her tan plastic and the tiny tufts of caramel hair still faintly visible she was probably once this Ashlynn Ella doll.  My hypothesis is further supported by Morrada's fixed arms, and by the fact that I can feel a molded bodice under her dress.  Hats off to Alyssia for finding a good way to repurpose and hide the craptastic bodies that Mattel bestowed upon these dolls.  I got this doll for a discount because of those arms, by the way; neither Alyssia nor I are big fans of the new bodies Mattel has started using, but Alyssia made it work and I applaud her for that.  Morrada's sleeves are a feat, but I'm going to pull my fascination away from the sleeves now and focus on the head for a minute.  Specifically the face.

Oooo boy, there's a lot to talk about.  This painting puts even the best factory paint job to shame.  It has the hollow cheeks, missing nose and sunken eyes that all skulls have, whether they're sugar skulls or regular skulls.  These features are all painted in, just like Skelita's blackened nose is, but Morrada's paint is clearly more ornate than Skelita's.  For one thing, Skelita's forehead is devoid of paint, while Morrada's forehead has both a two-toned cobweb and an ornate cross.

I love the details on the cobweb; the cross pieces each have a dab of white paint, and the threads of the web are highlighted in silver.  Both of these touches do a good job of emulating a dew-covered spider's web lit by the sun, an effect that can't have been easy.

Morrada's forehead and temples are further accentuated by these black and silver scrolls.

Skelita also has these scrolls, but not as many as Morrada does.

Morrada's eyes are...well, they're a sight for sore eyes!

The irises are this gorgeous shade of magenta, and they're heavily decorated with silver, black, and purple "makeup," plus some deliciously devious eyebrows.  Alyssia even put in a fleshtoned strip of paint under Morrada's eyes to simulate lower lids.  By comparison, the average Skelita has simple little flower shapes and small dots around each eye.  Both dolls also have some shadow on and around their eyes; the first wave doll has blue shadow and blue flowers, as do most of the other Skelita dolls.

Art Class is the oddball of the bunch, with lavender eyeshadow and pink flowers.

To set the stage for Morrada's mouth area, I present a deliberate digression.  Here's what the other sugar skull dolls looked like; again, all pictures are used with Alyssia's kind permission.

Each one is different and very special.  I reserve a particular fondness for the one in the middle, as Alyssia found a way to make Madeline Hatter's painted gloves work with the rest of the look, but these are all great and all found homes quickly.  Why do I bring this up, you ask?  Because Morrada is the only doll with honest-to-God teeth showing, rather than lines that simulate teeth.  And what fabulous teeth!

Those can't have been easy to paint.  Teeth are not unheard of on made-up humans, but dolls...well, they're not unheard of on dolls either, but they're not as common as lips with lines.  While the other three sugar skull girls have an ethereal, slightly innocent look about them, Morrada is all sass.  She's downright fierce-looking in fact (I'm talking the good kind of fierce, of course), especially when compared to the saccharine smile of Skelita Calaveras. Not that I don't love Skelita's face, of course!  She just pales a bit in comparison to Morrada.  The paint jobs vary from wave to wave again, by the way.  My first-wave doll has bubblegum-pink lips...

...while the others range from darker pink to brick red.  All Skelita dolls have lines on their faces and lips to simulate teeth, however; this is accurate for sugar skull makeup.

Let's go up now, to the hair.  The hair threw me for a loop.  It looks simple enough, being black and lavender yarn with a side part...

...but I actually thought for a minute that Alyssia had rooted the head with this!  If any of y'all have ever unraveled a strand of yarn, then y'all have likely noticed that when unraveled yarn becomes very delicate and easy to pull apart.  Thus why there's no possible way that this could be rooted.  It's glued, but look how perfectly it's glued to Morrada's head!  It blends in perfectly with her scalp, thus why I thought that Alyssia had tried to root it.

Compare that to my Ashton Drake doll's sloppy glue job.  It's very difficult to see where Morrada's original hair was cut off, but if I look very, VERY closely I can see it and it confirms my hypothesis that this doll was once an Ashlynn Ella, as the roots are caramel-colored like Ashlyn's.  These roots are not noticeable at all from any sort of normal distance, and they're only barely visible in the photograph above.

Topping off the style, right at the part, is a single purple silk rose with two little green leaves.  Sometimes sugar skulls sport a big crown of these flowers, but I prefer the single one myself.  It looks like the simple styles that everyday Mexican women tend to wear.

I'll have to be extra careful with this hair; the absolute last thing I want is to accidentally pull a chunk of it off like I did with my Little Apple Doll's hair.  In my own defense I suspect that Mirari's hair was poorly rooted, a problem that I won't run into with Morrada, but better to be safe than sorry.

Regarding clothes, I'm not sure where this dress came from.  Sometimes Alyssia makes her dolls' clothes and sometimes she re-purposes existing clothes that came off of other dolls she customized, which I think is clever.  This dress is definitely re-purposed, but I don't know where from.  All I know is that it's got a lattice pattern printed on, with skulls and drips added in.

The skirt is cut in a tattered manner.

Apparently this is a halter-top dress, as I can see Morrada's bare back shining through that vinyl.

The vinyl belongs to a vest, one that looks eerily like the vests worn by Amazing Nails Barbie and her crew.

At first I thought this WAS a modified Amazing Nails Lea vest, but having looked over Monster High dolls and their various outfits, I discovered that this belonged to Ghouls Night Out Spectra Vondergeist.  Knowing Alyssia like I do, GNO Spectra probably became Siouxsie Sioux; her Siouxsie dolls are pretty popular, and I happen to be one of their many fans.  This one has been my favorite so far, since I like the Star of David (photo is again used with Alyssia's consent).

Back on topic now.  Morrada's sleeves are separate pieces of black and white striped fabric, and as I said above I have no idea how Alyssia managed to pull this off.  The sleeves are extremely fitted, and there are no loose threads anywhere in sight.

I wouldn't be making this big a deal over these sleeves if Morrada's hands could come off...but they don't, and look how splayed her fingers are!

Dig that nail polish, by the way!  Another nice little detail that Alyssia threw in.  But still, I'm at a complete loss for how she did these sleeves, because that fabric has zero stretch.

The footwear made me chuckle a little, because I recognize these boots.

I'm 99% positive that those are the original Clawdeen Wolf's shoes!  If so, then they certainly work well with the rest of the outfit.  They're not ill-fitting on Morrada's feet, though Monster High feet and Ever After High feet are a little different.  As for the tights...are these Apple White's?  C.A. Cupid's?  Some Monster High doll's?  Anyway, they're stretchy black fishnet tights, the kind that my sister and I used to wear.  Alyssia was a little miffed that these tights have a few holes in them, but no biggie.  She noted that it added an extra bit of "tatterpunk" flair to Morrada's outfit, and given the tattered hem of the dress, I have to agree.  Besides, it's not like the holes are super-obvious!  For the sake of completion I'm showing the holes, but they do not detract from this doll at all, nor do they bother me.

Par for the course with fishnet tights!  LOL, my sister and I both wore these on a fairly regular basis during our adolescence, and they always managed to get holes somehow. 

I'm not going to undress Morrada because I don't want to damage her hair...or her clothes...or...well, I just don't want to mess her up.  But just for fun, here's how she compares to my other Ever After High dolls.  If I had an Ashlynn Ella I'd compare Morrada to her, but I don't have one and I'm regretting that a bit now, because Ashlynn had lovely coloring.  But anyway, here's how Morrada looks with C.A. Cupid, who is the closest to Morrada in terms of skintone.

At first glance it would be very hard to tell that Morrada has any sort of relation to the other EVH dolls, but if one looks at the shape of her head that'll give a hint.  The shape of the hands do as well.

I have no complaints about Morrada, and I highly recommend Alyssia's work.  She's not doing sugar skulls right now that I'm aware of, but she's got some other fabulous ideas in the making.  She has unfortunately had to stop doing commissions due to the time it takes to make them, and that's a bit of a shame since I was thinking of commissioning the protagonist from A Bad Case of Stripes.  But since I just bought Morrada I'll be content with her for now.  Getting those stripes properly lined up would be a fairly tall order anyway.  Alyssia's store can be found here if anyone is interested in her lovely repaints; she's very personable and does her best to make her creations beautiful and her customers happy.

Now, a change of subject to discuss a newcomer in my life.  Nope, I'm not pregnant, but I will be getting a new child today.  Some of y'all may remember my gripes in the past about winter weather, and how I feared for the well-being of my crested gecko Horatio.  Well...Horatio died about a year and a half ago, and I haven't had any other reptiles in that time frame.  That's coming to an end this evening, as I'll be getting a bearded dragon.  I'm super-excited, because I've been wanting a bearded dragon for a long time.  Yes, my cats and my chinchilla are wonderful and I love them, but I've still been wanting a beardie.  When I get her settled in tonight I'll share an update.

Happy Day of the Dead,
RagingMoon1987