Kawaii

Meet the new robo hammy, Jacques Toupee!

I could not be happier with the newest hammy addition to our family. Ever since Fru passed away a few months ago, I've been keeping an eye out for the perfect hammy. This time, I decided to try something a little different by looking for a robo hammy, a breed even tinier than my past cuties, Fru and Yukimo. Just a little under two inches in length... please meet Jacques Toupee!

Little Toupee joined our family this last Wednesday, November 24th. He's the first boy hammy I've had since I was in grade school, which is pretty cool-- and different for a change. Quite a few of my friends have had boy hammies and I've seen how calm and friendly they are. As much as I loved Fru and Yukimo, they had the tendency to display a bit of attitude every now and then. ^__~ Because of that, they could be snippish if they were in a mood. Just like I predicted, Toupee is incredibly sweet and I haven't detected one ounce of "snippishness" from him.

There's a rather funny story behind his name. I had gone to the pet shop with Mom and Kathleen last week and we looked at all the hammies in the cages. The cage that Toupee was in contained three adorable brothers who were almost identical. We all commented how cute they looked because, well, they looked like little old men! The patterns in their fur made them look like they had fluffy white beards and bushy white eyebrows. >w< So cute. Shawn and I returned to the pet shop this week and he made the same comment. After we decided which hammy was the perfect one for us, I realized that he would definitely have to be named something that reminded me of a little old man.

I did a lot of research on names and concepts associated with cute little old men, but I never intended our adorable new hammy to be named after a fake hairpiece worn by older men. *sigh* I was joking around with Shawn and randomly said "Toupee!" in a (really bad) French accent. He laughed, so going along with the joke, I added, "Jacques Toupee!" Shawn thought the name was hilarious and started calling the furball Toupee. -____- I begged him not to call our new cutie that, but sure enough, the name caught on. The next day, Beth, Kathleen and Mom geeked out about the name as well... so now our hammy is called Jacques Toupee. xD

So far, Toupee has shown off really adorable personality traits. I originally chose him out of the group of brothers because he was so calm compared to the other robos. Robo hammies are known for their speed and the pet shop employees constantly told me that "robos are not meant for holding." I have a lot of experience holding hammies (which they didn't seem to believe) so I wasn't too worried about the problem with their habit of running super fast. Toupee was the first hammy I held from the group and he slowly walked around on my lap, sniffing me and just staring. His brothers zoomed in and out of my hands at top speed. Toupee was also notably smaller than his brothers; as if robo hammies weren't already small enough, he was about half their size! Toupee's small body size and his calm demeanor were what really drew me to him. I'm in love.

Jacques Toupee loves tunneling in his cage and he's already grown used to my scent. I can put my hand next to him in his cage and he'll jump right on it, fully aware that it's time for an adventure outside of his home. I'm so proud of Toupee... and I still have so much to learn about him. ^__^

And the Blythe customization craze begins...

About two or three months ago, I almost had a heart attack when one of Pinkachu's pull strings snapped off while I was giving her new eyechips. There was no way around taking apart her head to put a new (stronger) string on. With Shawn's help and his natural talent to fix everything, we dove into the repair process. The minor surgery ended up being the beginning of a beautiful new craze for me: Blythe customization.

I had tried my hand at customizing the dolls back when I first started collecting Blythes-- so around late 2004, early 2005-- but I didn't have a passion for it back then. Blythes were still a rarer hobby and there weren't many tutorials around for customization newbies, so a lot of the customizing that happened among collectors was done purely by trial and error. Now that Blythe collecting has picked up quite considerably, it's easy to get tips and tutorials from those who have had a decent amount of experience taking apart Blythes and doing detailed work on them.

When Shawn and I had to take Pinkachu's head apart, I was both scared and excited. (Pinkachu's original customizer did such a fantastic and perfect job with her makeup; I didn't want to mess up anything!) Her stock doll is My Little Candy, which is an Radiance Blythe mold (RBL). The RBL mold was created more for customization use, so lucky for me, my first experience with taking apart a Blythe wasn't too difficult. Fixing her up gave me the drive and a bit of nerve to start thinking about customizing my own Blythes. I loved adding my own custom touches to Pinkachu; creating an entire Blythe with so many ideas pent up inside me made me giddy!

I immediately started looking for a stock doll that I knew would be cheap(er) and easy to come by. I chose to search for a Simply Lilac because I liked the idea of working with a doll with fantasy colored hair. I put the word out within the next few days and a Twitter friend contacted me to let me know she would sell hers to me. The dolly arrived and I dove right in to the customizations.

I completely took apart her head to familiarize myself with all of the different parts inside. I then started to sand matte her face so I could start fresh with makeup. After reaching this point, I had to put aside my new hobby for a few weeks. One of my kitties (Ed) had an infection and the vet bills started to pile up for me. The next stages of the customization process required me to put larger chunks of money towards tools and whatnot, and I decided that Ed was much more of a priority (obviously!).

After about a month of medication, Ed's infection went away and she was back back to being happy and healthy again. With those bills out of the way, I can now continue to work on customizing. I'm currently learning how to carve and paint lips, which is something I've wanted to learn for the longest time. After I master that part of the process, I'm going to start learning how to airbrush makeup.

I'm a huge, huge, HUGE perfectionist so I think all of the steps during the customization process will take me a while to reach my own standards. In the end, I think all the time and money put towards the hobby will really be worth it. I would love to start my own customization dolly business and I think blogging about my progress will be a great help along the way. ^___^