Princess And Me 18inch Doll Ariel Make-Over

Greetings and Salutations Doll Friends!

First off, once again, I have accidentally left this post in my 'Drafts' without meaning to... Writing a blog is a sort of multi-faceted thing. There is finding things you want to write about, photographing them, writing blogs, updating Pinterest board, updating Facebook page... I love it all but it does tend to sometimes make you miss a 'step' in the process of getting a blog posted. Hence, my missplacing drafts sometimes. See, as I take the photos, I am pretty much writing the blog in my mind as I take photos... So it's almost as if it's done already but it's just a matter of getting it typed out. I am rambling here... My point is, I posted this draft a couple of weeks ago and am just now getting here to tell you the story. 

As many of you know, I find orphan dolls at thrift shops quite often... Which I love to do, especially when I can take a doll that has been through Toy Box Horrors and bring her back to her lovely self. One problem a person who's good at finding dolls such as these, though, is that often times you find duplicates of dolls you already have at home... Hmmm... To buy or not to buy? I am sure you know the answer to that question when I ask it of myself is usually 'to buy!!' Usually, if they are dressed, the outfit alone is worth the cost of the doll... I don't really want to have a lot of duplicates in my doll house though... I have enough dolls as it is without having two of any of them. You know?

So that combined with my recent sort of 'obsession' with re-wigging dolls became the subject of this post. Here is Ariel with a wig I tried on her after I shore off her regular hair...

You see, I already have a Princess and Me Ariel and didn't 'need' another one. This one I found at Goodwill had on this great dress (I am adding it to my Halloween Costume cache!) and was in good shape... She only cost $1.99!

But only needing one Ariel, I instantly knew I would see how she looked with alternate hair!

Her hair before was in ok shape, I could've sorted it without too much trouble but knowing it was coming off, I just left it in it's pony and sheared it off with scissors. 

This wig was just a 'try on' that ended up being glued on to another doll... (see upcoming post) Ariel is currently wearing a strawberry blonde wig but I apparently forgot to photograph her in it so stay tuned for an update of this post to include a photo of what will likely be her permenent hair!! I thought she looked pretty great here with the short red hair but I bought this wig for a different doll and so she couldn't keep it. I like the strawberry blonde wig she is currently wearing but haven't glued it on yet so I must still be ambiguous about it. (I know I've committed to a wig for sure when the glue goes down!) 

That's it for now doll friends!
Till next time!
XXOO
Heather

TollyTot 20" Doll Ariel Joins the Doll Posse!

Hi Doll Friends!

Just a quick post here to show you my latest 'haul' from a thrift store. 

I got all this for $4. The dolls were 99c each and the doll bed was also.

I didn't know what to make of the Ariel doll. I'd never seen anything like her before. I am not going to lie, there are only two reasons I bought her. 1) I have a flat out weakness for Ariel. She is my favorite Disney princess and has been since my best friend in High School memorized The Little Mermaid when we'd basically live at each other's houses when we were teens. Then 2) I was going to steal her dress for my other dolls at the very least. 99cents for a sparkly doll dress is pretty good. 

Except for when I got it home, I realized it was attached?!?

It had 'lights' in the dress and when Ariel spoke when you push the button in her chest, they light up. Kind of creepy I thought! I thought I'd probably get rid of her because who wants a doll with a dress you can't take off. Pretty sure the prior owners had the same thought... Till...

I opened up her back panel and realized you could remove the dress by taking out the cable. We also took out the batteries because I am not a fan of talking dolls. As I looked her over, low and behold what do I find but that she is a TollyTot doll! TollyTot's are some of my favorite of all the 18" dolls ever made! I am loving her more and more as I look her over. 

Words

PS

Stay tuned! Belle is a recent find too!

PSS Did you notice the first photo had a one eye'd doll with a green dress? Well, look how amazing it looks on Lilly, my HeartforHeart doll! I have learned to always look at the dresses on dolls even if the doll itself is in bad repair. So pretty!

New Dresses for the BFC Ink and Disney Princess Dolls!

Greetings and Salutations Doll Friends!!

I was recently reading a great doll blog that I've found recently. It's all about finding and making doll items on the cheap. It's called Dolls on a Dime! Just the name is right up my alley! Recently she had this post about finding second hand porcelain dolls and taking the dresses off of them for the thinner variety 18" dolls. In her posting she mentions Disney Princess and Me dolls but the idea works well for BFC Ink dolls I discovered. 

See? Aren't they beautiful??!!

Here are the 'donor' dolls. I plan to re-donate them to Goodwill, where I bought them for $3.99 each. 

I was surprised at the big difference in size of the 'donor' dolls and how well they worked anyway.

This smaller doll was purchased for same thing but it didn't work out so well... More on that later. Let's just say it wasn't made very well, the dress and wouldn't have made a good play dress in any case. Luckily she was only $1.99 and so it wasn't too big a loss.

The dress donor dolls were very pretty but I have always disliked porcelain dolls. I think a doll is made to be, first of all, a plaything. So, a very fragile doll doesn't make any sense to me. So... I didn't feel to badly about taking the dresses because apparently I am not alone in my sentiment about them because they are at Goodwill all the time. 

This one had a mark on her neck...? Seymour Mann doll. Don't know much about porcelain dolls but her dress was made very well!

There was only one problem with one of the dresses. The sleeves were too tight to get over the hands of my dolls.

So I simply opened up the seam with a seam ripper and 'hemmed' the edges so it wouldn't fray and it's perfect. 

Belle looks like this dress was made for her!!

Even if it is a little long.

The BFC Ink Dolls fit the dresses really well too!

Here they are wearing them in the Library of the doll house.

And playing chess!

That's it for now friends! See you next time! 

Belle's Big Wig Transformation!

Greetings and Salutations Doll Friends!

For those of you who've read past blog postings here, you may remember that Belle, our Disney Princess and Me doll, has gone through quite a transformation. First, we cleaned her up after finding her at the Flea Market. She was a mess when she arrived! We have since had a couple of attempts at improving her over all condition. One of them was the subject of a recent post about the hot water dip method to tame frizzy doll hair. It was our last ditch attempt to fix her hair. Unfortunately, she'd lost a lot of hair before we got her I imagine which can happen if you roughly brush a dolls hair and, well, you saw how she was! Poor Belle! So after the hot water dip didn't make such an improvement that I thought she looked respectable, I decided to try my first re-wig on a doll with hair plugs that isn't the standard kind of 18" doll, like I did here. I was determined to try because I thought she deserved a nice thick head of hair!

So here are the last photos of Belle before I began to cut off her hair. 

Notice how she has a lot of cut hair. Or perhaps it is how her hair plugs were originally put in so she could have the cute little bun on the top of her head like she did when she came new. 

So here we are sort of mid way.... You may want to put down an old sheet on the area you are working, under your chair and whatnot. I didn't and I am trust me, the little tiny doll hair fragments are not very easy to clean up. Learn from my education and put a sheet down so you can shake it off in the yard later! I cut my dolls hair off over a big trash can so that most of it fell right into the trash! I still ended up with little bitty hair fragments all over both me and the doll but... Small price to pay for beauty, right?

Belle felt a bit sick during the process and I told her to hold her head over that bucket! Just kidding! I put her like this when I went on a break and laughed at how it looked like she was really not feeling well. Poor Belle!

So here she is, mostly hair free! She is still pretty in my opinion and looks very Sinead O'Conner or Annie Lennox, both of whom I thought looked amazing with closely cropped locks. 

I thought it was kind of fun that she had Belle written on her skull. Just in case she needs to be identified at the doll morgue or by archaeologists in a future land excavation or maybe so they know which head mold to put on her at the factory. Who knows?!

She had very interesting hair plugs, there was this strange 'patch' in the middle where her bun hair was located. It was much more densely plugged in that area. There is still a lot of hair to be taken off in this photo but it was the last one I thought to take. Just remove as much hair as you can!! Whatever hair is left will make it harder for the wig to stick was my thinking so I wanted to remove as much as possible!

Here she is all cleaned up after she got her hair removed. There was a lot of little hairs all over her!! I put a hat on her so she wouldn't be cold! 

Here she is, hanging out and waiting for her new wig to come in the mail!

This is obviously after the wig arrived! This is how I slathered the glue on. I put it on as thick as possible but not till it might drip or seep up through the wig cap. Learned that one the hard way!

She had a trickier hair line that my first hair-plugged doll re-wig. She has a widows peak and wigs don't have those. So I had to be very careful about getting the wig as close to the hairline as possible in all areas on the forehead. I think she lost a little bit of her forehead, if you will, in this process but there was no going back now! 

Here she is with the wig on, drying. She looks a bit rough because you want to let it sit 24 hours before you brush her hair!

Well, that's it Doll Friends!! Thanks for stopping by and see you soon as I have several blogs in the works! One is about transforming a girl doll into a boy doll! So, stay tuned, same bat-time, same bat-channel!!