Would you purposely buy a body with different resin colour than a head?

Heh I actually just did this. I'm putting a new peach skin head on an old yellow body.
However... I have an airbrush so I'm not too scared of mismatched colors because I can hide it with that.
I also am wanting to try to dye the yellow body with a bit of pink Rit dye to see if I can revitalize it.

If you're new to faceups, I would try to get a color that matches as close as possible! That's typically what I do regardless. The only time I don't is in my most recent case-- snagged a limited head in whatever color I could get secondhand.

Also good luck in your faceup adventures! If little 15 year old me could do it 11 years ago with no experience, you can too!! It's my favorite part of owning dolls

 

I'm currently in a similar predicament where a doll I wanted for a certain character of mine wasn't available in the right resin color - I wanted tan while it was only available in white and ns. I just plan on airbrushing the head to match and then doing the faceup on top of the matched colors. It's not my favorite thing to do but I've done it for a few dolls and it always ends up pretty well. In a situation where I couldn't do that though, I would probably put a high collar outfit option to hide the immediate color change between the head and body, or paint the faceup in a way to make it make sense (i.e. a geisha style character, or some other character that wears a lot of face makeup). There's a lot of ways to work around it if you need to.

 

I would prefer to have an entire doll in a less preferred color than to have the head and body mismatched.

 

If I were making the choice, I would buy a WS body (as long as the head isn't very noticeably yellowed). I like WS a lot, however, and I would prefer to have her consistent just for freedom to do whatever I want with the faceup (simple or heavily made up, etc.).

That said, it is a lot easier to make a lighter head match a darker body. There is also the possibility of giving the head a light dye bath to better match pink/peach.

Maybe it would help to think about what kind of style you have in mind for her? What type of colors you'd like to dress her in, what color eyes and wig, etc.? This helped me to make a decision about a doll myself - I was torn between white and pink/peach but I eventually realized that the character I had in mind was too human to have pure white skin. She needed to look alive and natural with many different colors. So I chose the pink skin and I'm very pleased with it!

 

Congrats on getting your grail!

This is about a vinyl doll and not resin but when I received my Mariko, she had yellowed significantly on her bust and head. I replaced the bust piece since I wanted a different one anyways, but I couldn't replace the head. I did send her out to get a faceup. While I did not mention the yellowing to the artist (so she likely wasn't blushed for color matching), the yellowing was actually lot less noticeable after the faceup. I think the pink blushing on her face made it hard to notice and "evened out" the color.

My point being, I think with some blushing, I think any skintone difference will be a lot less noticeable! So I'd go for whichever skintone for the body feels best to you or you like most and blush to even out the coloring. Alternatively, you can dye the head like other people have suggested!

Good luck on your first faceup as well! I think it would be worth practicing on a dummy head or the headcap before you commit to painting your doll. Also to my knowledge, sealant can alter the color of whats beneath it (I saw a color matching tutorial on body blushing that said MSC will whiten your doll), so be sure to do research on whatever material you are using.

 

I have *just* received a WS body that I bought for an NS head . If I'd found the body in NS I would have preferred that, but:

• It's a body I like a lot, and the neck fits perfectly.
• I had the opportunity to buy it second-hand in Europe, so I'm taking an existing body off someone's hands and I don't have to worry about customs.

The body's WS is nice and creamy. It's clear that there is a colour difference, but the doll will be fully clothed in medieval dress with a veil and everything, so... it's really not going to be striking. Only her hands will be bare, and because they aren't stark white, they are really not going to draw anyone's attention.

I have a very white head on a creamy white body, too. I decided to live with the colour difference because I discovered that I cared more about bodies that I love handling than about a better resin match with a body that is a pain. These are 68 cm dolls, 'easy' bodies are relatively rare . They are also wearing ample dresses, veils and long hair, so there is not much opportunity to get annoyed at a bad resin match.

 

I have a white skin Luts body with a normal skin luts head that I blushed to match it. It's not a very good job. I used water with watercolor pastels to paint the head, and it came out streaky and textured, but you luckily can't tell unless her wig is off, and it doesn't show up in photos. Blushing a white skin head a different color will be a lot easier than the reverse. The hardest part will probably be color matching rather than the actual blushing part. It's possible, though, even if your skills aren't quite there yet, so don't worry about that aspect too much. It often sounds more daunting than it is.

I think some good things to ask yourself when making this decision are: How willing would you be to update the faceup at some point and have to blush it all over again? And would you be willing to pay for a faceup should it be something you turn out to not want to do?

I say this because my girl's faceup needs updating, but she very often gets dropped down to the bottom of my to-do lists because blushing her took a long time. Even though she looks fantastic in white skin, it's something I sometimes regret just because it's easier not to have to blush her to match, lol. Personally I'm not willing to pay for a faceup, so I'm going to have to do it myself eventually, but it's definitely something to consider in advance.

 

I bought my new NS DIM Luts Larina head a WS Luts body on the MP because it was the exact body I wanted for her at a good price. DIM NS is pretty pale anyway. I did a layer of ivory acrylic paint dabbed on with a cosmetic sponge because I don't have an airbrush, sealed it and face upped over it. It worked out fine. If you really want the pink/peach doll, go for it-taking the head darker is easier and depending on how dark the body is, you might be able to accomplish it with just pastels.

 

I don't have much to add that hasn't been said, but I do have the same issue with 2 dolls. I'm going to try dying the white heads to get closer to the body color and make up the gap with the face-up. But I have yet to overcome my fear of doing face-ups!! I have 5 heads awaiting face-ups! I thought maybe it I start with manicures on my spare hands and feet, if I make flubs, it's no big loss, try again. I also found an old spraygun I'd like to play with on some other projects first. So thanks for asking the question as all the responses are wonderful to read!

 

Yeah, blushing light colors like white to peachy skin is relatively easy. Fairyland white to normal for example, perfectly fine with a couple layers of pastels.
Only problem is that it takes more time to do a faceup as has been said, and finding the motivation to redo a faceup where you know you first have to clean AND re-match it before even getting to the "real work".... it's much much harder than redoing a faceup that automatically matches! All those layers...
I have hybrid dolls that are 10+ years old and even if they near matched it's not the case now, due to different yellowing rates. One still has a nice light ns head, while the body has become more off-banana than off-white.
Shape and function/movement persist, but color doesn't last forever so...match away

 

I also don't think I have anything particularly new to add - I've been gaining interest in a lot of companies that, it seems, either release in only one color OR just make heads and not bodies. I thought I'd be a real stickler for color, but as I find that I CAN'T get colors from the same companies, I've personally decided on settling for any body color that's darker than the head - the faceup ends up darkening the face to a degree, and since the head casts a shadow on the body, it's not as noticeable vs. a lighter body with a darker head.

White doesn't really stay super white once you do blushing (depending on the colors you use, I suppose) - here's a pretty white resin doll I did recently, peep the color difference between her face and neck lol

 

Yes, I did it on purpose once too I had a WS boy head abd it was a hard to get limited, so I wasn't too fussy. But I don't like WS resin generally, so I got him a NP body. It worked awesome, because the faceup was pink'ish.
One other time (or two or three) I had darker heads (pink or yellowed natural) on WS body. None of those worked out fine as I could never bother to blush-match the body.

 

I bought an older head that was WS and had a body that was NS, so it forced me to try something new and dye the head to match. I’d never dyed any kind of resin before, but it turned out so nice, especially with a faceup.

 

I have a fairly large collection from my many years in the hobby, so by now there’s not a lot of things I haven’t done to create my unique characters as far as body and head combinations go. One of my more striking differences was with an old Luts event head I’d found in amazing condition with an original company faceup I really liked. Her head was originally purchased as an alternate for one of my characters, but I completely fell in love with her head and just couldn’t bear to alter her for that purpose. So I decided to get her a body of her own on the second-hand market (for instant gratification) but the only one available at that time was in Realskin Brown (her head was normal.) But the body was absolutely perfect otherwise, and the price was a real bargain, so I went for it despite the resin color differences in hopes I could blush the head to match. I finely crushed up some art pastels and proceeded to work with a soft brush right over the existing faceup…and it worked!

 

I have purposefully got a mismatched body and head so I can dye it and match them, I find lighter heads are easier to dye match to bodies because it's less pieces lol

 

i have an older, yellower ns head on a newer pinkier ns body and it doesnt bug me too much as the doll wears long sleeves and stuff anyway and if it does start to bug me i can blush or dye the head a bit pinkier to match

 

She's lovely!

I have a DZ white head I just received last month, if you'd like a current pic (it's kinda cloudy here today, so it might not be perfect lol but it'd still be under natural light). I'd definitely say theirs is a creamy white and not a pure white.