It's been a stressful few weeks. This time of year is always chaos for me. I have three birthdays and christmas to organise, and it's just ARGHGHHHH from november all the way into new year.
Also I freaking hate christmas time anyway so it's stress coupled with massive depression because it's cold, it's dark and it's fricken christmas time makes me grumpy and not wanting to go out and do stuff.
But i'm not dead and I am still doing stuff, honest!
This is a break from my retrospective which I still have to finish but ran out of steam on. Finding all that info and trawling back through memories is a lot of effort and I kinda burned out so i'm taking a break. I'll get back to it at some point soon.
So this is a "what other stuff i've been doing doll/toy wise" sort of entry.
Let's get into it.
So first news, I FINALLY ordered the Impldoll Trista that's been on my wishlist since er... last november? Yeah it only took me a year and like 7 bjds to finally justify buying her lol.
I was waiting for their annual event which is usually in september but they delayed it by a month for some reason so I was sitting on all this birthday money till October and man, you try sitting on that much cash for 3 months and not spending some of it!
Suffice to say, I have only paid half the order so far. The second half will be paid up on december 1st and i'm not likely to see the dolls I ordered till jan/feb sort of time realistically.
Impldoll is apparently pretty quick but with their event and the festive period and having ordered through a dealer this time, I know it'll take longer. I've settled in for the wait.
Anyway the event meant that if you spent over a certain amount you got to pick a free smaller doll. Because Trista and the other deer taur Sam are quite pricey I qualified just buying Trista, so I picked out a smaller 1/6 doll as my "freebie", which eased the sting of that huge price tag a little.
I'm nervous because my order was a little complicated and it's my first time ordering through a dealer rather than direct from the company themselves. I was worried about customs fees and didn't want to risk it, and weirdly it was slightly cheaper to order via the UK dealer (go figure)
Anyway, i'll post about them when they get here.
The ones she came with were 14mm and just way too big for her, they made her look doe eyed which while cute, wasn't what I was looking for with her.
these are 12mm and make her look a bit older and certainly less worried.
She still has a liv wig because finding a 5-6 size wig that's not insanely babyish and doesn't have a £10+ SHIPPING fee is impossible. I really do object to paying £12 for a wig and then another £10-15 on top of that just to have it stuck in an envelope and posted. It's ridiculous.
So she'll keep the liv wig till I find something appropriate for a less extortionate postage cost.
I also finally got around to giving her a more complete outfit.
She wears Barbie/Sindy clothing which is quite useful but not so helpful when you have a very specific fantasy look in mind. there's astoundingly little in the way of medieval fantasy clothing that isn't just princess gowns available out there.
Drives me nuts.
Her tunic thing is a really simple no sew top, it's basically a rectangle with two arm holes cut into it. Her skirt is Sindy. Her jacket is an altered and partially resewn EAH Hunter jacket (I have loads of them for some reason) and I actually found the beads, I have a huge long string of them I found in the road and well, yeah... i'm a bit of a magpie and just pick up things discarded in the road okay? I have a box of "junk I found in the gutter" lol.
She also got bought a Mandolin a while back. Why a mandolin? because I couldn't find a 1/6 scale LUTE.
I have a crossbow coming, hoping it'll work too because dang I love me some medieval weaponry.
for some reason it's coming via painfully slow post, I mean i'm pretty sure the seller was UK based so maybe they're walking it to me, medieval postage for a medieval weapon huh?
Anyway,
I've been trawling charity shops a lot the past few months. Our local ones only one really gets toys in and they haven't really restocked much in a while. So I went further afield into the posh suburb where their charity shops are full of lovely things but quite a bit more expensive on average.
I was there anyway looking at a school so I needed some retail therapy after that stress.
This is what I came home with that particular day.
So,
Fara Kids has a lovely big basket full of doll clothing for 50p a piece. that's a little pricey for a lot of stuff but it's lovely to rummage through and it does have some interesting stuff. I picked up a barbie dress, some orange denim jeans that are slightly too small for Barbie (skipper size maybe?) but amazingly made, a vintage 70s dress and a cool puffball style tartan skirt.
The lady let me have them all for £1.
Also in that store they had two Zelfs for £1:50. The purple werewolf here and another kinda pink butterfly one. I couldn't justify the butterfly one so I left her, but the werewolf one I decided was worth the splurge.
They also had a pile of dolls. Mostly Barbie dolls and similar all in pretty "meh" condition and £3 each. Way too much for naked ratty barbie dolls but amongst them was an almost complete MC2 Adrienne Atomms!
She's missing her glasses and accessory but that's about it. In fact her whole outfit was still tacked together with the packaging tabs so I have to assume she was just never played with.
I wanted her outfit and for £3, well worth it for clothing alone. MC2 clothes are gorgeous.
The next few shops didn't have much till I got to Oxfam. First I found a Roller Maze Frankie for 50p (Bargain!). Missing her skates and knee pads but complete with her stand? Weird.
and then I noticed a giant horse next to me.
It's an Our Generation horse. Now, i've kinda wanted one for ages but they're extremely expensive and postage on something so massive is always quite eye watering as well. The giant horse was £2:50 and I hefted the thing up and took it to the till.
What I hadn't considered was that I still had a 30 minute bus ride AND a 20 minute walk home.
and the horse was too big to fit into a bag.
Oh well. I carried the thing the whole way home. It's not that heavy it's just really awkwardly shaped and yes, I got a lot of stares from people bewildered by why I was lugging a giant plastic horse around.
Good thing I don't care what people think huh?
The reason I wanted the giant horse (Who's bridle I think is upside down in these pictures, I dunno, i'm not a horse person and it's a pretty oddly constructed mass of pink) was for my bjds. These horses are designed for 18 inch tall dolls but always looked massively out of scale with the chunky our generation dolls. However as my MSD bjds are the same height but a lot slimmer, they work a lot better.
The saddle and bridle have GOT to go. I'm thinking something simpler, less pink, you know, a bit more realistic. With smaller stirrups.
also this isn't my doll, this is one of husband's Luts dolls. He had her next to me so I put her on the horse lol.
The horse is a bit grubby, she's had a clean but she's obviously been played with. Still £2:50 for something that's a good £50 new? bargain. I'm very pleased because honestly I could not justify the full retail or indeed the second hand price for a horse that was mostly going to be used only occasionally as a prop for my dolls.
These horses are a bit bulky and a bit cartoonish but given my dolls are hardly super realistic, I think it works.
Once I have worked out a new saddle etc for this girl i'll get some pictures of my fantasy dolls with her.
I admit I know like nothing about horses, I never liked them and growing up had zero interest in horse toys or learning about ponies unlike many of my friends (what is it about little girls and horses?) so i'm having to research what the hell a bridle or a saddle are supposed to actually look like as well as how much taller than a person a horse SHOULD be. I mean sure i've ridden horses, but when I say ridden, what I really mean is I sat on top of a horse while it grazed in a ditch and glared at me every time I tried to encourage it NOT to stand in a ditch eating grass. Horses are jerks.
Still, every D&D party needs a horse right? It's not medieval fantasy without some random horses.
So I stripped Adrienne out of her outfit and gave it to my Makie Pixie. Pixie is a little chunky for the whole ensemble, the belt didn't fit her and the dress doesn't totally velcro up but it looks cute so I can live with that.
I also dehaired Frankie because I have a PLAN.
See, RM Frankie I always kinda liked the face of but her hair was just eugh. The way Mattel blended the black and white hair made her hair look grey and dull and ugly to my eye, not even the flash of green could save it. However, her green lips and green and pink eyeshadow reminded me an awful lot of the reboot science frankie
Now, there's a lot of problems with this doll. She has a static body. She has painted legs. She has a terribly cheap half print dress but goodness did I think her hair and makeup was fabulous.
RM Frankie has almost the same face, only you know, better because it's pre-reboot and she's articulated. All she needs is a lovely white ponytail and she'll look gorgeous.
She's hanging out waiting for me to buy some white hair to reroot her with. I'm cheap and lazy okay?
(and as it turns out, the reboot doll's actual release doll doesn't even have this hair style anyway. So HAH, I avoid disappointment AND get to make a doll just how I want her. Take THAT Mattel.)
Also in my journeys I picked up this lot from our local charity shop.
I dunno why I grabbed Cloe, her blue hair just appealed to me okay?
The alpacaso was 25p and who can resist that? Alpacaso are adorable (see my review from last year? or the year before? I don't remember)
The little clone doll had a stabby face and made me laugh.
And a g1 My Little Pony. Her name is Tuneful apparently. Aside from some frizzy hair she's in pretty good nick for a girl who's approaching 30.
The clone has no markings at all and a very hollow cheap body. Her hair is soft but thinly rooted. But gosh her chubby little grumpy face just made me smile okay?
Sadly my youngest got a hold of her and bite her hand so she now had a chewed hand. I was NOT impressed let me tell you that.
still, despite this injury her face cracks me up so i'm naming her Stabitha and she's gonna hang with my angry Sindy doll "Stabby"
I assume the dress is original to her, it's a cheaply made little shift thing.
I also got this from the charity shop.
Yes, it's a facehugger, from Alien. It's bright yellow for some reason. But the real reason I bought it becomes apparent when you turn it over.
Because a plushie facehugger is weird enough right?
And extremely friendly smiley face hugger is just the ultimate in fucked up gloriousness. I mean, I couldn't stop laughing at it. The lady at the till was concerned about me because I was giggling so badly and kept shoving it into people's faces all "LOOK AT IT!"
they didn't understand why it was so funny.
clearly they've never seen Alien.
Husband chuckles when he walks past it too.
It's a fine addition to my "why does this exist?" plushie collection.
Apparently it's a kidrobot plush and came in a loot crate or something, whatever that means. I kinda assume it was probably the same person who owned the alpacaso right? Collectable plushies? seems a bit random to get several at once unless they came from one person.
they also had a totoro for 25p but middle son stole it and now sleeps with it. *sigh* and a sackboy plush which I didn't buy, several pokemon plush which I again, left there and a bunch of other video game related ones. So yeah...
I love the 25p plushie box.
Also in the charity shop I found a genuinely mangled doll in the doll box.
One of the volunteers doesn't actually seem to check stuff before they put it out, resulting in broken dolls being put out for sale quite regularly. Drives a few of the other staff bonkers.
Anyway, this one was a Draculaura doll who had had her face er... redone in sharpie/permanent marker (AIEEEE) which of course had BLED into the vinyl.
Her eyes were painted over with nail polish.
Her shoes had been decorated with nail polish and her outfit was some rag that had been hastily hacked up and shoved on her.
poor girl was a mess. I picked her up to get a better look at her and her head came off, taking half the neck with it. Looked like at some point the neck had broken and this lovely customiser had superglued it back together.
Eep.
Anyway, the shop let me take her shoes and arms while they trashed the rest. I mean the poor doll was so mangled I don't think it was worth trying to save her.
Her arms were fine though and went to a collector in dire need of a pair of arms and the shoes? I cleaned all the nail polish off to find the original paint intact underneath. They're Dot Dead Gorgeous Drac's shoes and they're pretty dang cool.
Meanwhile over at TK Maxx the Frightmares that the UK never saw finally appeared.
I noticed the yeti one on a shopping trip and lamented online the lack of the carousel candy one who I had really wanted and nearly forked out to import several times.
Well a lovely friend up north found one for me and posted it.
EEEE
So here's Merry Trotabout, at long last!
I have a weird fondness for the frightmares. I mean, as monster high toys they're pretty crap but as generic bizarre little toys in their own right? they kinda appeal to me. I was, remember, the kid who didn't much like ponies so mutated centaurs is kinda more my thing.
My only real objection to them was how expensive they were, £12-14 for a toy so small was absolutely extortionate, especially for what you were actually getting.
£6:99 is a far more reasonable price and I wonder if they'd have sold better had they been under £10 in the first damn place.
These are very much a product that makes me think of my childhood. The 90s was FULL of demented bizarre toys like the frightmares, mostly plastic, molded everything, small figurines with bright colours and funky patterns. I would have been ALL OVER these had they been available when I was like 8. Particularly if they weren't part of the Monster High brand. See I think that was another of their problems, putting the MH brand on something so distant from the MH dolls was jarring and weird to consumers right? And it led to inevitable comparisons between these and the mh dolls, which isn't really fair as these things are more a direct competitor to My Little Pony, Zelfs and all those sorts of toy.
Which also makes their price point make no sense. They were priced like dolls when they should have been priced like Zelfs and ponies.
Anyway,
I wanted this girl because she makes me think of some sort of pastel goth merry go round, which makes me smile.
I really like the art on the boxes, it's sort of a shame the toys aren't quite so expressive but they actually do have quite pretty little faces.
But the art is just fun and very Monster High.
What's interesting/curious about this is the languages. Looking at the box initially I thought "is this an EU release?" but I actually believe it's Canadian. The phone number on the box is for Mattel Canada and most everything is in English then French with only some stuff translated into whatever the other two languages are. So i'm thinking these are Canadian releases. Random.
Now what I hadn't realised with these was that Merry is actually mint green.
In photos she looks kinda blue but nope, she's green. A little bluer in shade than Frankie, but similar. It's a pretty colour, but not what I was expecting.
Also her eyes mess with my brain. I THINK they're the same colour but in both the art and the doll herself the way they're painted means that they often look like one is green and one is blue instead of them both being a sea green colour.
I don't know why this keeps happening. Either i'm going mad, it's an optical illusion, or her eyes really are slightly different shades to one another.
Her hair is candy floss pink with green streaks and tied in pigtails. She has black skeletal wings, a unicorn horn, a ping curly horse tail and a grey body with candy as her uh.. cutie mark...
what else are you supposed to call it? that's a cutie mark lol.
She has drippy eyeliner and very ornate eyebrows.
She's neat, I really like her.
She's a cheap little thing but man, she like all the frightmares is just weirdly nostalgic feeling for me.
And yes... I clip clop her over things <_< because i'm a grown up really ahahahah
So I will no longer purchase new Mattel products of course, but older stuff? Heck yeah.
I wanted this two pack when it first came out but just couldn't quite justify it. Cleo has blue hair man, BLUE HAIR and I waaaanted that. Also Deuce's shoes make me smile.
Anyway, I searched for deboxed versions for a long time and could never find a pair of a price I was willing to pay. they kept selling for close to retail which for deboxed dolls I thought was a bit excessive. I'm really stingy okay?
Anyway, a brand new in box set came up on ebay, I put in my max bid and won.
SCORE.
The box has slight shelf wear but who the hell cares? I don't intend to keep the crappy plastic box.
It took me ages to get around to deboxing though. I kept getting distracted and the plastic box just intimidated me. I hate these plastic boxes, they're a pain to open.
The back of the box has crystal buildings because for some reason the BYBY line is all crystal themed. I dunno, I mean i've watched the movie and I don't get why everything is crystal, boo york wasn't all crystally in the film.
that wobbly spire thing is cool though.
turns out it's TWO booklets. Two diaries in fact. But eugh, EU versions... lame.
The bow on the skullette for Deuce's diary amuses me.
These "diaries" are pointless. It's like "We went to boo york." "oh no, Cleo and Deuce broke up" "oh we're back together again, no worries"
I mean what is even the point?
Does the US version have proper diaries because if so, i want em!
The skullette is apple shaped, because new york is the big apple, get it?
yeah.. it's a bit random isn't it?
Tucked behind the board at the side that says "boo York" are the stands. They're actually quite nice stands with a silver crystally base, silver stand and a clear plastic clip.
Ooo clear plastic clips? Fancy.
It took a while to get the dolls out. They were pretty ridiculously over packaged.
Particularly Cleo and THIS wtfery.
Okay, so I get why there's a plastic thingie under her headband, it's to prevent paint transfer in the box right? but WHY THE HELL did they decide to pin it to her head and then hide the plastic staples UNDER her hair style? Seriously, her hair is actually styled OVER THE TOP of the packaging so it's really really hard to remove the staple.
they're super short so really tight up against her hair, there's this roll of hair over the top of it that you have to push up to even access the staple thing and then you have to oh so carefully snip and hope you didn't get any hair.
This made me angry.
terrible picture, but it's a cool headband thing. It has a winged god on the front with blue detail painted in.
Cleo herself has really striking makeup too with a heavy eyeliner, eye of horus sort of thing going on and then bright blue and gold eye shadow.
Her earrings are copper coloured bandages.
Her dress is really pretty. It has a mesh upper with copper bandages across it and then the dress itself has this sort of stained glass effect with more slashes of metallic.
She then has these weird wrist cuffs that are linked with a long bandagy bit so she's basically manacled herself lol.
her shoes are also copper coloured with a long jewelled tendril running up each leg and a sphynx on each shoe. I thought the tendril might be a snake but it isn't, maybe it's a tail? I dunno.
Her shoes are quite strange, they have a very flat bottom with a large cleft through the middle so there's basically four feet to each shoe.
the flat base means that Cleo can actually stand completely unaided, no need for a stand. How awesome is that?
Look at her, standing on her own like a champ!
The soles of the shoes have a crystal effect.
Cleo's hair is very dark blue with copper streaks of tinsel through it. It's very different to anything we've seen previously.
it's quite choppily cut though, and sticks out a lot. Hmm.
As you can see, her hair is most definitely dark blue.
We've never seen fully blue hair on Cleo, in fact, we've not seen many Cleo's with blue in their hair at all. It's usually green or gold or brown. Blue looks nice on her and feels quite appropriately Egyptian Mummy.
What I do find disappointing is how pale this Cleo is.
Now, all the BYBY dolls have this slightly shimmery skin, it's a design choice they wanted so whatever, it makes them all look slightly sweaty in some lights lol.
but there's really no reason why making the plastic shimmery should have made it several shades paler.
My much older Cleo's are a lovely rich tan colour, similar to the general Barbie tan. BYBY Cleo is however, really quite er... white.
I'm not sure I really approve of this whitewashing, whether it's intentional or not, it seems pretty shortsighted to bleach the skin tone of one of your ethnic minority characters.
They did the same with Nefera's BYBY doll, and yet BYBY Clawdeen? Still brown.
So why?
She's a beautiful doll certainly, but I can't help but think she'd have been all the more beautiful had they not bleached her!
What gets me is why on earth was there so much controversy about Clawdeen getting made grey or purple, but nobody kicked off about the De Nile sisters getting skin lightening treatment? They're also supposed to be people of colour right? being you know... Egyptian...
Anyway, Cleo doesn't come with a huge amount. Her headband thing, earrings, dress, ribbon thing and shoes.
She hasn't got a necklace or a belt or even a handbag. I don't mind this so much as the handbags always just got lost and the outfit works without them, but maybe a little clutch might have been nice just for somewhere for her to keep her phone lol.
Viewed in isolation though, she IS a beautiful doll. I just find her skin lightening to be really quite disappointing.
It makes me a bit uncomfortable, and I wonder if it's been something Mattel have been doing for a while and I just haven't noticed.
Hmm.
It's also worth noting that my Cleo has an errored arm. Her left arm doesn't seem to have a wide enough peg at the end of it, so it doesn't click into the socket of the upper arm and instead just slips out when any pressure is applied. Kinda like the original Monster High dolls from year 1, who didn't have stoppers on their arm pegs. She DOES have a stopper, it's just not big enough and so whenever you try to bend her elbow the whole lower arm comes off. It's very very annoying.
Deuce has RIDICULOUS glasses. I mean good god these things are hideous and silly looking.
Poor guy.
I love seeing a return to the relaxed snakes from Dawn of the Dance though. I like this look on Deuce.
Deuce's outfit is odd, I can't decide if I like it or hate it lol. He has this scale print jersy with a snake scarf print and a dark grey shirt collar poking out from underneath.
His pants are snake skin effect leatherette.
mm leather pants, haha.
Then he has these bizarre copper shoes that are half high top sneaker, half roman sandal. These legitimately crack me up. They're utterly impractical and silly but I kinda dig it at the same time lol.
Like Cleo's shoes they have a crystal pattern on the sole as well as some crystals on the toe and around the top.
Hmmm why are you two so sweaty? What HAVE you been doing kids?
His leather pants are a bit difficult to get on and off.
Even his earring is copper coloured, which is a nice touch.
Deuce can stand on his own too, so yay no need for stands! I kinda wish all the dolls could do this.
At least alongside Deuce Cleo still looks tanned.
Cleo's arm band things make her a little awkward to pose because they restrict her arms a bit, the ribbon is quite long but having this loop just gets in the way a little, for me anyway, when trying to play with the doll. It feels like it'd be a massive trip hazard in reality.
I don't much like Deuce's glasses, but they'll have to do for now. I kinda feel like they look less ridiculous when they're raised a bit. Actually wearing them properly Deuce just looks silly.
Still they're a wonderfully colourful pair and I do like the use of copper instead of the usual gold, it makes a nice change of pace.
Cleo looks beautiful while Deuce very much looks like a guy who's been dressed by his girlfriend lol.
In a way, I kinda wish their stands were also coppery or black, because the silver just doesn't quite look right to my eye when neither doll has any silver on them.
I'm glad I finally got around to opening them. Aside from the weird shiny skin and disappointingly pale skin on Cleo, I do think they're a nice set. Cleo's dramatic makeup suits her, she looks amazing in blue and copper and it's amazing to finally get another floppy snake haired Deuce. They don't use the floppy hair nearly enough imo.
I always wished they'd changed more up with the boys. Unlike the girls they're always pretty much the same doll just in different clothing which is disappointingly lazy. More variety in hair styles would be awesome and sure, it's harder when that hair is molded, but Deuce particularly had a lot of potential for new styles to try out and get creative with. Snake manbun? snake ponytail? Snake dreads? Slicked back snakes? SOOO much fun that could have been had. Man Mattel, why you gotta squander potential?
Anyway, I don't regret this purchase. It's an older set (2015?) but if you can find it for about retail, it's worth it.
Both dolls have just enough I think to stop them feeling unfinished and incomplete.
I also finally crossed another Living Dead Doll off my wishlist.
It's a short wishlist but Captain Bonney was a MUST have. She's a freaking pirate man!
She was an exclusive doll released quite a few years ago in the US so she's not easy to find in the UK, but a lovely person in one of the facebook groups i'm in knew I was looking for her and when they found out a friend was selling off some of her collection, put us in contact with one another to broker a nice deal.
She's deboxed but complete, which is how I like my dolls to be honest. I can't justify paying a premium for a box i'm just gonna want to open anyway. I like to fondle my dolls hahah.
And Bonney is definitely a doll worth handling out of the box. She's got a lot of tiny little details.
For starters, her sword actually comes out of the scabbard. Wth? this is awesome
The scabbard itself is quite nice too, it's held to her belt with a chain.
She also has painted on rings on her fingers and a big ol' jeweled ring that's molded to her hand too.
Her jacket, as you can see, is a sort of velvet material and sooooooft.
She has a pouch for her treasure (it's empty alas) and a teensy little flintlock pistol too.
Under her coat she wears a pretty plain blue tank top and leatherette pants.
One hand is a hook.
Her pegleg is shaped like the sulfur symbol, the logo for LDDs. Clever.
In one ear she has a dangling jolly roger earring.
The other is a load of hoops.
And under her eyepatch she has a glowing empty socket. Sppppooooky.
Her hair is yarn and soft and lovely to touch. She has sort of molded on lumps and bumps on her face like a few of the ldds and quite a lot of her accessories are actually made of metal which is interesting, as many companies avoid the use of metal these days due to the greening it causes. I suppose on a ldd you could just claim it was gangrene hahah.
I love her and i'm so pleased to finally have her. She's an awesome doll.
And finally... my project to see out the year.
So, for whatever reason I was looking at Sindy dolls on Ebay and up popped this huge bundle of tlc dollies.
I kinda had this desire for some project dolls, I get a real sense of satisfaction restoring old dolls and this bundle seemed ideal. Most of the dolls were in okay condition, just needing a bit of hair care or reroots, which I can totally do.
Sooo many dolls.
So, in total the bundle contained 10 1987 Hasbros, 3 Smirky sindys and five 80s pedigree girls, along with two random heads.
The Hasbros are generally pretty decent, their hair is soft and shiny and just needs restyling. A few have quite wierd styles I can't quite work out yet though.
Some have discoloured torsos, a couple have chewed feet or hands.
The pedigrees need a bit more tlc.
One Smirky has her legs separate from her body. This is actually a fairly easy fix, it's just fiddly.
One girl is missing half her foot.
A couple of them have really badly chewed hands and missing fingers. All but one of the earlier pedigrees need a reroot.
There's also a spare pair of legs in the box.
Sooo, time for some switcharoos.
Remove some legs here, take off some arms there, swap the worst heads onto the most stained and damaged bodies and "voila",
two dolls used for parts resulted in a pile of complete and mostly intact dolls all ready for their spa treatment.
I didn't have a matching blonde, but I had a blonde that was CLOSE.
Now her head is rock hard so I had to get a heating pad and warm her repeatedly, do a few plugs, heat, plug, heat, plug.
It was tedious.
thankfully she only needed about 20 plugs replaced.
This girl also had quite damaged hands so I swapped her arms out with another doll. Interestingly, I learned that the Hasbro dolls make pretty good arm donors. The sockets are slightly smaller so the plug that goes into the body is a bit smaller but it fits and stays in place with no real obvious gapping. Unless you tug on the arm and really examine it, I don't think you'd ever know those weren't her original arms.
Husband claimed this girl, bah.
The next two were one of the floating heads and the redhead, both of whom had such badly cut hair they weren't salvageable. Both also had lost most of their lashes so those needed replacing too.
Blue haired Sindy was rerooted in two different fibers, some light blue hair salvaged off a pixie punk doll and some nylon I had in my "leftover hair" box. She was a pain to do as she was originally probably an active or a basic sindy, meaning her hair would have been tied back into a ponytail and is therefore really thinly rooted. There weren't many holes so I had to add more to give her hair actual volume and it's been ages since I rooted bangs so I had a lot of trouble getting it all to work.
I haven't rerooted a doll from scratch in quite a while so she was a real pain to get right. Much gnashing of teeth occured.
Her lashes were also a problem because the little holes they were rooted into had over the years torn leaving one large slit in the vinyl, and the lashes I rooted in kept sinking back into her head arghhh.
Eventually I pretty much filled her head with glue and just hoped for the best.
She got put onto an old modded Liv body that was in my cupboard. I'd spraypainted it brown a while ago so I spent a while sanding and stripping it and then repainting it flesh toned. It's not perfect, especially around the legs, but oh well.
to get her head on I used, of all things, a lego wheel. I didn't have any washers as suggested by sindy people, but I did have a lego tyre that looked about the right size. it works a treat, so you know, if you have spare lego tyres? hahah. Washers are probably cheaper.
Anyway, the washer/tyre makes her neck socket narrower and thus holds it onto the neck fairly securely.
The other doll I did as a punk because i've always been inspired by the punk sindys done by people like Toypincher. I wanted to have a go myself, see how it was done.
She needs another layer of flock, as it dries it goes a bit patchy boo. In hindsight, I should have painted her scalp white.
But ho hum, such is life.
This particular head had earring holes stabbed in already. Pedigree sindy dolls never had earrings for some reason, but a lot of kids stabbed pins into their lobes to give her some.
I don't have anything appropriate in my stash right now, but i'm on the lookout for anything that might work.
This body is missing a finger on one hand but hey, it's not too bad and sorta fits with a rough punk gal look right? hah.
She needs some boots.
things I learned doing this reroot? In the future, don't pick a doll head with a big hole in the back (active sindys often have a huge hole in the back of their head from the little plug thing that held their hair in style in the box or something). I had to fill in the hole with glue and flock and hope for the best.
Paint the scalp before you flock
root lashes AFTER the rest of the hair. The constantly flexing of the head while you do the other stuff can cause the lashes to drop back into the head.
wait for the glue to dry, even if that means waiting a day between stages. It's worth it.
Still, for the first two proper reroots i've done in ages, i'm fairly pleased with these girls.
I repainted both of their lips and reblushed their cheeks as they were both looking a little faded. They're ready for their new lease of life now.
3 heads rerooted, 2 to go... and one of the 2 left is another hard head with about a bajillion plugs so i'm not looking forward to that. Maybe i'll just flock her whole head ahahaha.
I'll keep you posted about what I end up doing with the rest of this huge bundle of dolls.
So yeah, no fanfare, that's my wrap up of what i've been up to since i've been not posting here.
We're hitting crazy season for me as I said at the start, so posts are bound to be a bit sporadic. I'll try to get that retrospective finished but we'll have to see if I hit any goldmines to write about. Otherwise, it's unlikely i'll see anything new till christmas. Eugh, christmas.
Deep breaths... I can get through the festive season without beating my head against a wall and crying. I CAN.
Those customized Sindys are epic. I don't know which one I like better. Can't wait to see what the other two look like.
ReplyDeleteI love the custom Sindy's! They look great. Definitely post and share when you have time.
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