Doll hospital, continued

I've been working on  the rescue dolls little by little over the past weeks - also reorganizing the playroom so that all my sewing stuff can be in there. It's slow going.

#26 really just needed a cleaning - and some hair care. She still has some small green markings on her torso and her hair is not great, but I'm still astonished by how gorgeous she was just to begin with.  One wipe-down and she looked ready to be played with. This is a beautiful doll.

Before

After

I also need to do more work on Kirsten, who appears to have had some haircuts in strategic places around her scalp, and her wig is dry and brittle - but her eyelids cleaned up very nicely.

Before

After

Next: Nellie. This picture really doesn't do justice to how grimy she was.

Nellie and Pink Lady were the two who I unstuffed and threw into the washing machine because it was just that bad. I cleaned her face multiple times, getting layers of dirt off. I also washed as much of her hair as I dared - which was really just the ends.

Here she is now:

There are some lingering stains on her body, but for the most part the washing machine worked nicely. Nellie turned out to be astonishingly orange.

 

Here she is with Larkin (my custom Grace). Together, either Larkin looks sallow and drab or Nellie looks incredibly pink/orange. It was interesting to compare their coloring; Nellie's hair is lighter, her freckles are much more faded, and her eyes are a deeper blue.

Finally: Pink Lady, who I've tentatively identified as Just Like You #33 based on her face mold, blue eyes, and strawberry-blonde hair with a left side part. You will recall she got her name because of the gigantic pink stain on her torso.

Pink Lady and Nellie with their respective stuffing

• The problems just kept mounting the more I worked on her.
• She was entirely filthy, even her eyes. 
• Her eyelashes had been cut unevenly in spots.
• The pink stain issue, of course. This was mostly resolved with a trip through the washing machine and some rubbing alcohol; I think it was paint?
• A large section of her hair was matted with gunk that would not come out even with washing . . . I don’t even want to speculate on what it was, but after it dried and was relatively cleaner, I noticed a persistent foul smell. Even the wig cap itself seemed spotted with dirt.

At that point I decided to just strip off the wig, since her eyes were fairly dirty too and I wanted to try an eye swap. The wig came off very easily (the easiest wig I’ve ever removed) and there were brown spot-stains on the inside of the wig cap and imprinted on the head.

At this point I was ready to throw out the Biohazard Wig, but as an experiment decided to try throwing it in the washing machine. There wasn't anything to lose at that point.

I put it in a pillowcase and washed it on the delicate setting. It came out very tangled and frizzy and dry. The smell had gone and I couldn’t find the dried gunk in the hair, but the spots were still evident on the wig cap. I ended up pitching it - it just grossed me out too much.

The spots did clean off the head with the aid of some Magic Eraser.

As all these issues kept popping up, it became clear that Pink Lady was the one I was going to keep for my customization experiments. Although I love #26 (especially #26) and Nellie, I don't have room for them. So I used Pink Lady for my first eye removal (which ended up being more my brother's first eye removal). I think the eyes benefited from cleaning; they were full of sand and dirt. Since I wanted to try out heterochromia, I put one eye back in and replaced the other with a green eye.

Before

After

At this point I don't think I'd notice the pink stain if it wasn't pointed out to me. Unfortunately, you can tell pretty easily that the eyes are from different manufacturers (even without the snipped-eyelash issue). However, I think she's up for some new looks and experiments. I want to try a brunette wig on her.