monster high | mareymercy.

As promised, here are some Monster High dolls I’ve shot lately:

One thing I love about Monster High is how the line helped push fashion dolls beyond the typical Barbie look of idealized female bodies and faces. Lines like Monster High and Bratz revitalized the market and took fashion dolls in all sorts of cool directions. Now we have stylized fairy tale dolls, zombies, mermaids, and all sorts of shit for kids to play with and adults to collect.

Lines like these also pushed Barbie to go in new directions, and you can now find Barbie mermaids and fairies, among others, although Mattel hasn’t been bold enough to create a monster Barbie. Yet. Barbie also has introduced a variety of body types and skin tones that are much more diverse and can speak to a larger market of kids looking for fashion dolls that really represent who they are. But I will always be a bigger fan of the lines that find the top and go way over it. It’s the equivalent of my self-portraits.

Frankie with edited makeup by me, and a restyled outfit because I didn’t much like what she came in

Then there’s my first Lagoona doll, whom I attempted to give a short bob and pretty much destroyed. I started to look for a doll wig on Etsy to cover her botched bob, then realized with Lagoona on sale for $9.99 it would be easier to just buy a second one, which I did. Then I went ahead and bought a doll wig for the first one anyway. I haven’t taken any shots of the original Lagoona yet, so I’ll share a stock picture of it before showing my modified one, doll wig and all.

This is how she comes out of the box. I adore the 80’s inspired dress!

I’ve actually come to like my restyled version more than the original, which is why there are no pictures of the first one. That wig was only about $7 plus shipping on Etsy, and I did have to completely cut off the rest of her hair to make it fit, which was fine. I would eventually like to add more wigs to my collection since I have two dolls whose hair I had to remove and replace with a wig. Why not have a variety of looks for each of them? but $7 for a doll wig is really economical; most of them start around $20 which in my case is usually more than I spent for the doll, so it’s hard to convince me to make the purchase, even though some of them are incredibly drool-worthy.

I think this one speaks for itself:

Another thing I’ve had fun doing is trying my best to “remove” the doll’s makeup in PhotoShop and then using this old makeup program I have to change up their look.

I don’t really do anything with these makeup photos, but playing around with them on the computer is still fun.

Posing is still an issue for me because I try my best not to let the stand show. I’ve tried this several ways and they’re all time-consuming, so eventually I may give up and just show the stands. There are definitely doll photographers who do this and it’s not nearly as noticeable or distracting as I thought it would be.

Probably one of my most photogenic Monster High dolls.

Etsy is a great place to buy wigs, and Poshmark is a great place to find used dolls. I got Electrified Frankie for about $15, which is pretty great considering how much use I have already gotten out of her. But I’m still trying to control my spending right now so I haven’t been on the site much lately. What I really want next is this amazing Bratz Gay Pride duo I found on Amazon:

How amaaaazinggggg is this?! I may convince my husband to consider this a Valentine’s Day present because everything about this set is awesome. First of all, I am really loving Bratz right now. Those faces photograph perfectly. And the statement these two make is absolutely worth the price tag. Plus those are some FABULOUS furry accessories.

Speaking of Bratz, I will be sharing their photos in my next post! Stay fabulous everyone!

It’s been a minute since I posted anything – you know how it goes.

It’s been quite a while since I’ve seriously engaged in photography. As I’m sure I’ve already mentioned, I just got bored, and I had no new ideas or subjects to pursue. So I dropped it, for the most part, and focused on other things: rock painting, paint pouring, and knitting. But recently – and I can’t even recall why – I became interested in rebuilding my Madame Alexander doll collection, which is something I do from time to time, and in pursuing that I came across the most amaaaaazing doll photography happening all over the internet. Not MA, so much, but mostly more modern and anime-looking dolls, with which I fell in love immediately. Especially the Monster High dolls and all of their spinoff collections. There was only one thing to do. Buy the shit outta some dolls! Let’s go!

What I love about these babies is that they come attired and made up exactly like I used to do myself. Only, these bitches require no application time on my part! And I’ve never enjoyed taking pictures of other people; it’s an art form I like to engage with in solitude – which is part of the reason I started putting myself into costumes, so I’d look different each time. Well now I’ve got the perfect models to work with – they do exactly what I say, they don’t engage in small talk, and they have no ideas of their own. My dream models – where have you been all my life?

Okay, okay, I know where you’ve been. In stores. On Amazon, mostly. And I have been snatching you up! In fact, I have one more shipment coming today and then I have recognized I need to calm the hell down with all this purchasing. Fashion dolls are NOT going anywhere, and I’ve already got a backlog going. So I’m going to work through the ones I have before buying any more – but man are these tempting!

I have so much to learn – which is what has all my gears cranking again. It’s the learning curve that I enjoy; getting excited over trying new ideas, and constantly coming up with ideas of things to try. The possibilities, at the moment, feel endless.

Oh sure, I know I’ll reach an end eventually, but that usually takes me about ten years, so we’ll see how far this goes. I can already tell I’m going to have to recycle a lot of these as I do not have the space for the endless supply of new dolls I’m sure to encounter, but that’s OK. It’s all part of the process.