Everybody is talking about the gorgeous Odile sculpt for good reason, but I wasn't truly desperate for these dolls until I noticed that they have the Belly Button body torso instead of the current standard Barbie torso like previous mermaids have! No idea how Angel Kent managed to bring this body back into rotation but I sure hope to see it on other dolls soon!
deets of my custom work on her below
Initially I planned to just reroot her because her hair (while saran) was way too short and choppy for me, but I was too inspired by the beautiful sculpting of the tail and bra, which are so reminiscent of other iconic Barbie mermaid lines, to leave it at just that.
Eventually I'll do all four of them like this, but I'm still waiting on the other Odile to ship and I have to find a replacement head for the green Millie because I hate the closed mouth Millie sculpt lol
Reroot was done with six different shades of saran hair mixed into multiple different blends in order to create a smooth gradient from purple to light pink
I hate the stiff, stubby pose of current standard Barbie arms so I dipped those in boiling water and reshaped them to have a more elegant pose lol
For her body I settled on painting over sections of her bra with watered down pearlescent acrylic to give them more of a shimmer effect, and drybrushed her tail with the same acrylic
The sleeves are made from transparent vinyl in a similar style to the Barbie Mermaid Fantasy sleeves (moreso the prototypes) and lightly brushed with white pearlescent acrylic and ZM Shine Pearl to give them a more organic look- also made a fin extension with the same material just to make her look a little more 'deluxe' lol
I might be the only one who ships these two and that is because of their interactions in Fairytopia. I'm sorry, but Laverna baked for her and Topaz loved those cakes 😤
By the way, Mermaidia by @crowkeeperthesimmer is GORGEOUS!!!!!!!!!! It's so detailed and beautiful and the color palette is just 👨🍳💋 like everything is so perfect. Y'all need to download this world right now!!!!!!
I'm probably gonna do glamor shots later because wow, it's just incredible. 😍