Meet Monomono

According to an Amazon review I found quoted many places:

Monomono is my all time favorite Dal doll. Although in theory I think she has too much orange on her face, in real life she is absolutely beautiful. She has beautiful brown and gold eyechips. She also has a fake fur wig, which is not to everyone’s taste. She looks wonderful rewigged in shades of brown. The “Monkey King” theme of her stock outfit, complete with cloud skateboard, is clever and amusing. She wears a checked underwear set underneath. Dal dolls are articulated, and their eyes move from side to side with a lever. Unfortunately, she is the Dal most prone to breaking her feet (especially her left foot). Don’t let that keep you from buying this beauty, however.

Monomono is one of the first three Dal dolls ever produced. She is not for small children.

Monomono is the doll I’d intended to buy online from DollyTeria but bought my eyelid-less Pullip by mistake.

I visited DollyTerria on Sunday my way to see a friend of mine for a craft session. We both had projects/commissions we’d been putting off so we planned to meet, craft, and get to know each other better.

Monomono’s damage:

Someone attempted to give this little monkey-god elf ears.

There’s a tutorial (no longer available) but whoever made these ears didn’t color the two-part Apoxie clay itself, instead choosing to paint the clay after roughly sculpting.

This made my job easier as there were three layers of color for me to gauge the difference between paint/sculpting medium/original ears.

Monomono comes with every part of her “stock” except her golden staff and her belt sash. Her eyes had been changed but nothing else seemed amiss.

I opened her head so I could file at her ears with files/diamond files, and sandpaper without putting her face at risk. The apoxie was softer than the plastic but sanding and checking took a few hours.

You should be able to see the dry cover paint, the light blue apoxie, and the light plastic color starting to show in the inner fold of an ear.

Ear unveiled!!

I like the reddish gold colors in the face so I’m keeping it as is.

I thought I’d keep the eye chips the reddish color but knew I needed to clean them as there seemed to be some brown gunk around the edges.

When I opened up the eyes the eye chips turned out to be stuffed animal eyes with the inserting pole cut short and, um, a flat surface built up with tape that had aged and discolored.

When I removed the tape some of the red iris came out with it…new eyechip time!

And the eye sockets were nasty and needed much scrubbing.

I had extra eye chips, when I fixed Art Gallery Dal I bought a set of two colors. Dark purple chips were sanded on the edges and inserted into the eye gimicks.

I then took off the Monkey King costume to try on a used Ricca-chan dress I’d also picked up at DollyTerria

Remember that odd fact in the review about Monomono’s left foot coming off?

Well then! She has her underclothes but…Yup. One foot. I guess I’ll be picking up a Dal-sized Obitz body in Akihabara soon.

As for the wig…this is a fake-fur wig. I’ll totally be making a pattern from it to try my hand at making my own.

At first I hated it. Then I looked online at Monomono photos and it grew on me. It started to feel more like messy bed-hair and less like fur…and I started to grasp Monomono’s personality

It reminded me of this childhood photo of myself, one I use to prove I’ve never been able to wake-up morning-ready.

To understand how I write and talk we need a quick side-adventure. Much of my word-use and humor comes from my parents. They divorced when I was 3 years-old but both raised me with joint custody and kept on good terms with each other. Here they are both adding their comments to this picture the last time I posted it on Facebook.

Suffice to say I think I’ll be playing around with the fur wig for a bit. I’m thinking of making her a sleepy morning doll…or a doll who wears her disheveled mornings until lunchtime…and sometimes refuses to get out of her monkey outfit…like me.

I’ll be opening her head again to give her new lashes and to install her on a two foot body later.

I did recently see a steam-punk Dal someone had fixed with a prosthetic leg. If my skills were higher I’d think of giving her a cute similar leg.