One Little, Two Little .... Four little Indians!

A lovely dolly friend of mine asked me if I would 'restore' her two childhood dolls, so I thought I would record the process that I went through to bring the dolls back to 'life' again.  They both needed restringing, one girl came here in bits and the other was really only held together by her clothing!  The dolls have great sentimental value to my friend so I wanted to do the best I could with them for her.  She had said that if necessary I could cut the clothing off but I wanted to save as much of their original outfits as I possibly could and only replace if it was completely necessary.

Both dolls are made of hard hollow plastic; the first doll has joints at her neck and shoulders but her legs are molded to her body and therefore don't move.  The second doll has a bigger head and is jointed at her neck, shoulders and hips.   Both dolls are wigged with what I believe is artificial mohair wigs styled into two plaits.   Both dolls have 'sleep eyes' meaning their eyes will shut when the dolls are tilted backwards, although the mechanism on both dolls was a little 'sticky' but both still worked.  And finally, both dolls had the cutest little funny faced babies in their papooses on their backs!

I decided to start on the doll with the molded legs first.   The elastic in her head and arms had completely disintegrated so I wanted to deal with that first before working on her outfit. Obviously to get to her joints I had to remove her outfit, which sadly was stapled into her body with metal staples which had gone rusty.  Pulling these out did leave a lot of small holes and pieces of metal still stuck in her torso, but I guess the outfits weren't really meant to be removed!!  

Back view of the poor headless girl, showing her papoose and her leather top and skirt, plus little leather moccasins:

 

Below you can see a close up of the papoose and the metal staples keeping it attached to the doll.  The baby sits inside this and his head and arms prevent him from falling through.  Unfortunately you can see that the metal has rusted onto the leather of the outfit:

Here you can see the dolls head and her little baby.

The baby is hard hollow plastic and has molded hair.  He is naked and doesn't have any joints....this little one doesn't even have any painted on features, poor little fellow!

 

The back of the skirt.  The belt was stapled at the back and glued around the skirt.

Here you can see the front of the skirt, which has a leather 'sash' decorated with sewn on seed beads.  The skirt itself had two square beads stuck to it but these were discoloured and damaged so I removed them.

Below, the back of the skirt with the belt removed:

Below is the dolls body once her clothes were carefully removed.  Her arms were only held on by her top and fell off immediately when she was free of her restraining leather top! 

 

I didn't remove the shoes as they were glued in place, so I started by cleaning them using a gentle leather cleaner.  Below you can see that I've started cleaning the white moccasin, with the left one still to do!

 

The soles of the shoes, the one on the right has been cleaned with leather cleaner:

Once the moccasins were clean, I restrung the arms using thin BJD elastic:

I removed her wig so that I could straighten the plaits and retie them with new pieces of leather:

She has a pretty little face even without her wig.  I carefully cleaned her inset eyes using a cotton bud and warm water:

Using the leather cleaner, I carefully cleaned her skirt.  Here you can see the difference between the clean and uncleaned leather!  The top part below is still to be cleaned in this photo!  I found it really satisfying to remove all the years of what my friend told me was actually nicotine!  (The dolls had been displayed by a relative who was a heavy smoker before my friend got them back again!)

Here you can see the back of the skirt after cleaning.  It's not perfect and I couldn't get the rust spots off, but I was pretty pleased with how clean it came up!

I did the same with the top but sadly as the dirt came off, so did the surface of the leather.  It seems it was really only the staining that was keeping it together, that and being actually on the doll....

And sadly,  it literally started disintegrating before my eyes :(

So I used the original top to draw up a pattern and then made her a new top using soft cream leather.  As you can see, it's not an exact match colour-wise but it's as near as I could get it.  I replaced the discoloured beads on the main part of the skirt, with some small oval shaped wooden beads.  These covered the marks left by the old beads which had been glued on.

My friend asked if I would make little 'nappies' for the babies....well I made a little leather 'nappy' with a fringe!!  I think he likes it!!!

I decorated the papoose with a tied leather strip and then attached it to the back of her top with a few stitches:

Using a bit of soapy water, I cleaned up her bead necklace which had got a little dull over the years.  Then she was all ready to face her audience:

Next came the little girl with the bigger head.  She arrived with her arms still attached and the elastic band that held them on was actually in quite good condition bearing in mind it's age but I decided to replace it with new elastic anyway:

Her outfit is really cute but it was stained, but as it was suede I didn't want to chance cleaning it up too much with the leather cleaner, I just gave it a light clean over to get rid of some of the surface nicotine:

The same applied to her moccasins, which were glued to her feet.  I gave them a very light wipe over so as not to damage them:

I cleaned her face and eyes with warm soapy water to remove as much dirt as I could:

As you can see below, she also has a little naked baby.  This one has black dots for eyes but they were completely in the wrong place!

This girls outfit was also stapled to her body with metal staples but fortunately they hadn't rusted as much as the other girl's had....

I had to remove all the staples and then the outfit came off.  Parts of it were glued together but the glue wasn't holding too well so they came apart easily:

Firstly I restrung her arms, again using BJD elastic:

I thought you might like to see the Magic Eraser that I used on the doll!  I managed to use up nearly one whole Eraser cleaning the two of them up!!  Thank goodness my friend was able to rescue the girls from her relative!!

Here is the sweet little girl with her new stringing: (I think she looks happier now that she's all back together again!!)

She also got new hair ties.  I would have liked to replait the hair but was afraid that it would fall out as it was shedding a bit:

I replaced the fringes on the front of the skirt as they were really shabby and stained and then reattached the beaded 'sash':

I cleaned up her beaded necklace and the redressed her:

I then gave her baby a little fringed nappy too.  I also gave both babies eyes in the correct position and repainted their Mohican hairstyles.  Notice that one baby has a suede 'nappy' and the other has leather....this is so that they can be placed with the correct mother!!  Although I'm sure their mothers can tell who's is who's!!! 

"Mine is longer than yours!"

 

Now that the girls are ready, their babies tied safely in their papooses, they can head on home across the prairies with their trusty pony!!!

I hope you've enjoyed seeing my 'restoration' project as much as I enjoyed doing it.  Thanks so much for visiting.

I hope you all have a great week ahead....I'm off to Barcelona on Friday so hope to have lots of photos to share next week :)

Big hugs Sharon xx

Bring out the old!

Over the last couple of days I have been having fun with a couple of my old BJDs (ball jointed dolls), dolls that I've had for quite a while but have been neglected.

The first of these to get some attention was Samantha, my Hana Angel by the company Elfdoll in South Korea.  I don't think that Elfdoll are still trading these days but they used to make some great dolls, lovely sculpts and great quality.  Over the years I have had several of their dolls in various sizes but now I have just the three, and Hana is the tallest of these at 20cm tall.  Hana Angel has been with me for many years now, she came here back in June 2009 when I received her in a trade, however she had actually been with me prior to that when I bought her new from Denver Doll Emporium in June 2007!  I sold her to a lady in California and then regretted it straight away so when the lady decided to sell, we traded and I got Hana back again, however this time she came on a newer body!  Some years later I replaced all her faceplates (she comes with three faceplates showing different expressions) by ordering directly from Elfdoll.

So yesterday I decided to change her body again. This time she has 'grown' a little and is now using a resin body which I bought last year.  It is the perfect colour match to the resin of her faceplates and I really like that although the body is almost identical to her original, the legs are a little bit longer.  Here she is in an outfit that she's 'borrowed' from another doll:

I think what I really like is that whereas before, Hana was a difficult size to dress, being the height of say, Riley Kish, but skinnier, now she can wear clothes designed for Blythe among others, so there is a whole lot of patterns and ready made outfits available for her!

Today I decided to tackle another of my 'oldies but goodies', my very first BJD ever, Narsha by the South Korean company Dollmore.  I bought Narsha back in August 2006 and when she arrived I was just amazed at her, she was pure white and made from French resin which is so translucent, it's really beautiful.  However, French resin does have it's problems and one of those is that it yellows when exposed to UV light.  I knew this when I ordered her, but being new to BJDs and resin, I didn't know that French resin also yellows in the heat.  I was so careful with her, I took her everywhere but always she was wrapped in a dark cloth so that she'd not be exposed to any sunlight....but of course she was being exposed to extreme heat instead and it was only a matter of months before the beautiful white glow became a yellow tint!

The changing faces of Narsha by Dollmore: (top row L to R: when Narsha arrived looking all white and pale pink; when Narsha had been here just a couple of months you can see how she now has the slightest tinge of yellow appearing in her resin.  Bottom row L to R: Narsha returns from Ravendolls with a new faceup;  Narsha looking beautiful with her lovely Raven faceup.

However, I still loved her and in May 2008 I sent her away for a new faceup to an artist that some of you will know, a lady called Raven in the US.  When Narsha came back I was overawed by her beautiful new look but the new look didn't stop the doll from continuing to yellow and as a result I lost a lot of interest in photographing her.

This morning though, I decided to make the effort to give Narsha a good clean up and see if I could make her look better.  I took her head off and thoroughly cleaned her body and head cap with paint stripper.  It's strong stuff and not for the faint hearted, (always use outside or in a well ventilated space) and definitely needs to be kept well away from the face plate.  The yellow remained of course but it looked better as she was cleaner.  I'd noticed that her face paint had started to fade a little and the varnish that Raven used around her eyes feels sticky on one eye, and also her acrylic eyes had cracked which I've found to be quite common, which is why I prefer glass eyes.  So I removed her eyes, and replaced them with some soft silicone eyes because these were the only ones that fitted her eyesockets well.  Eventually I would like to replace these with some brown or hazel ones of the same type.  I reblushed her, adding lots of new blush to her cheeks, chin, forehead and the bridge of her nose.  I haven't sealed it but will redo as and when necessary.

Narsha now has a different darker wig which hopefully doesn't clash so much with her 'skin tone' as her blond one did.  She managed to get some of her clothes back from the Little Darlings who seemed to steal everything when they arrived. 

I'm really pleased with how much better she looks now.  She is still dear to me even after all the time she's been here and all the changes that have occurred to her.  (Sorry about the repetitiveness of the following photos!)

I'm enjoying revamping some of my older dolls and bringing them back to 'life' with a bit of TLC.  I hope you've enjoyed seeing them :)

Have a great weekend everyone and I hope your week ahead is a great one!

Big hugs Sharon xx