Consuelo Heart For Hearts Doll Thrift Store Find!

Greetings and Salutations Doll Friends!

In my recent post about my Heart For Hearts doll collection I included my most recently found Heart For Hearts 'Consuelo' at the local Thrift Store for only 75cents!!

Here is what she looked like when I found her. Well, other than the shorts... She was wearing just the top but to me it seems almost worse than being entirely naked, just being halfway so! So I slipped on the pair of shorts to give her more dignity. As you can see, she is still wearing her price tag on her top. 

She'd been rather poorly treated!! Poor dear!

But for 75cents, I didn't care a toot! I snatched her up and brought her home immediately. 

As you can see, she was pretty dirty when I got her... She also has an ink mark above her right eyebrow and ink can be pretty hard to remove. I figured if I couldn't get it off entirely perhaps I would paint over it or something, making it a 'scar' because they happen right? 

She also had some ink on her foot... Less of a big deal because if it doesn't come off I can always turn it into a cool tattoo or something. Right?

So to clean her up I pulled out my trusty Norwex cloth and started cleaning her up... As usual, everything cleaned up with just the cloth and water other than that pesky ink stain. I've heard of a trick you can try using Oxy-lotion (think acne products) and dab it on stain and leave in the sunlight. I've never actually tried it because I've never had an ink stain on a doll in such a prominent spot before. So I'll try that... Am a bit worried it'll bleach out her skin in that spot and look just as bad or worse but again, there is always the 'scar' back up plan. 

I also washed her hair and 'hot dipped' her hair... It looked like she might've lost some of her hair due to rough treatment and brushing so it was a little on the thin side...

But she came out lovely!! Again, I need to work on the ink stains but.... Still, she's so pretty! For her name I am thinking of Sonja after a mentor I had in High School who she favors. 

Well, it's Monday morning and time to start getting the famiy moving!

Christmas is less than two weeks away! Where does the time go?

Till next time!
XXOO 

Heather

HeartsForHearts Dress Upcycled from Baby Sized Tube Top!

Hello Doll Friends! 

I've been posting about how to make Upcycled doll clothes for Amercian Girl (and other 18") Doll clothes. However, I've been wanting to make some more clothes for the HeartsForHearts dolls in our collection because their wardrobe is rather sparse. So I looked through my big bag of clothes I purchased for Upcycling and found this tube top.

As you can see, it's a Children's Place 18mnth sized tube top in really great shape. I got it for like 50c at a thrift store. I picked it because it's a cute pattern on cloth and I get a kick out of my dolls wearing fashion forward items from Children's Place and such. (They even have some Polo Ralph Lauren!) So having decided my source item, I set to work.

All I really did was to wrap the doll in the top to see how much I need to make a 'tube dress' for her, pin it an sew a zig-zag seam down it, since it was for a small and thin doll, I was able to make two from the original item. I forgot, in my sewing enthusiasm, to take photos, but I literally just make two smaller, thinner tubes out of the tube top after measuring the appropriate width on the dolls. I cut the straps off the original item and ended up with four short straps. I sewed two of each of them together to make two long straps. Then I attached them to the top by a loop that was actually left as the lower portion of the strap when I cut it off. Naturally your tube top might not have straps or the loops but you can use ribbon to make straps too and just stitch it on in the right spot in the middle of top so you can have tie straps like the ones on this one. I've shown some examples below of my using ribbon on two dresses. 

So here they are:

I love them! I love that I could make two from it too, so my two HeartsForHearts girls have twin dresses! 

Perfect for Violets violin solo!

I've made other fashions that fit the HeartsForHearts dolls too using much the same methods as I use for the 18" dolls. On these I used ribbon for the tie straps and added imbelishment to cover my stitches. 

Like this yellow dress. It's a bit long but it was just a tube top type item too, originally and I let it long because it also fits our Disney Princess and Me dolls and was originally made for them.

The orange dress on Violet in this photo is another one I've made using ribbon as straps.

So that's it for now! Thanks for dropping by! See you next time!!