Total makeover for a composition doll

This is 'Elizabeth'.

She is a family doll who has arrived for restoration.

She has many issues!

There is no useable paint left on her. One foot is broken off. Happily the foot piece was saved.

A close up of her surface.

Someone tried to spruce her up at some point with painted on features/hair and what looks to be a coat of varnish?

Elizabeth may have started life with a wig?

One clue is finding a staple under the thick black DIY hair paint.

And another clue is remnants of glue with a cloth weave imprint.

Dolls of this era were made and sold with molded painted hair as a basic model. The factory made pricier upgraded models by plunking a wig over the molded/painted hair and putting on fancier clothes.

To get Elizabeth repainted successfully, all her surfaces need to have the cracked and blistering stuff removed. You need a stable base to work up from. 

So here is one arm untouched and the other arm taken down to a stable base. The base in Elizabeth's case is her basic composition layer.

In the factory, this base of composition would have been dipped into a glue-like compound that was meant to smooth things out for paint. This compound was quite prone to cracking and blistering over the years.

You can see some big chunks of this layer at the top of this picture that were peeling off of the underlying composition.

This is progress.....really!

These are Elizabeth's eyes.

They are actually in pretty good shape. I am just going to clean them and fill in a sparse area of her eyelashes.

The eye construction is a less common sort. The visible parts are celluloid domes that are glued onto wood spheres to make eyeballs.

The other doodad in the picture is an expansion bar which holds the eye mechanism inside the head.

This is Elizabeth getting some fillers applied and fingers rebuilt.

Finally the many layers of filler/primer are done and she can head to the paint booth.

Here is Elizabeth finishing her journey through the painting process.

This is my high-tech drying rack :-D

After painting is done, her eyes get re-installed.

This is how they look inside the head.

And then, she gets reassembled.

She owns a lovely christening dress.

It is perfect for her!

3 vinyl dolls and their issues....

A large box arrives containing 3 vinyl dolls who have various issues to fix. They are much loved dolls whose young owner has agreed that it is time for her babies to see the doctor!

 

First out of the box is 'James'. He has an obvious issue with his body. He will get a new cloth body.

He also has wonky eyes that do not show in this photo. They do not open and close properly and the 'whites' are yellowed.

Here is one of his eyes extracted and taken apart. The eye did not open and close properly becaise the weight had detached. The yellowing is rust stain on the plastic.

The weight will get glued into the spot that it is supposed to be in. The rust stains are permanent.....so they get painted over. Then the eyes get reassembled and reinstalled.

James is done.

Now out of the box comes 'Emma'.

She has a tear in her body.

She has the exact same eye problem as James. These eyes do not open and close properly.

So out come Emma's eyes.

They are the exact same eyes as James has. With the same problem in that the weight has come out of it's mount. The weights get glued back into place and then it is time to reinsert them.

Here is a good way to remove and replace vinyl doll eyes. Vinyl softens with heat. If you fill the head part way with boiling water and wait a few minutes....the vinyl will be pliable and the eye procedure will go much more smoothly.

If you have a part that cannot be treated with boiling water safely, a hairdryer can be used to heat and soften the vinyl.

Emma's eyes now work.

 She has had a good bath and her torn seam is repaired.

Last out of the box is 'Ella'.

She has been here before.

She had a brand new body made but now.....

Her new body did not withstand all the loving she got.

Now she is going to get yet another body!

Ella gets her new body.

They are all ready to go home.

Plastic/vinyl repair

This is 'Strawberry'.

She has arrived to get some new fingers and to (maybe) get her hip fixed.

She is missing a few fingers.

Her hip has gone wonky at the top.

Unfortunately the problem is that the vinyl has partially torn and the torn section has warped out of it's usual spot.

Vinyl is a plastic. Aging plastics often stiffen and warp as part of their aging process. Trying to work this hip too much may well tear the hip right off.

So I start with the easier stuff and work on recreating fingers.

First a wire support gets epoxied into place.

Then finger number one gets built.

I do one finger at a time so it can harden and cure  before I start another one. Less chance of messing up a still maleable finger while I sculpt it's neighbour.

While the fingers are getting replaced I try a few things on the cracked and warped hip.

First I try heating the plastic and molding it back into shape. That seems to go well...... but within a couple hours the plastic has warped itself back to square one.

So, I repeat the process and clamp the plastic while it cools. So far so good? I even splint the leg. And keep things in place like this for a few days.

After removing the clamp and splint it looks like a normal hip.

1 hour later.....

The hip has returned itself to it's previously warped condition!

This is time to leave this hip alone. If the hip ever fully tears away and the leg detaches itself from the body, that would be the time to do more invasive work. For now, clothing will hide the odd contour.

But at least she has all 10 fingers now!

Who painted Sasha???

Here we have 'Sasha'.

She had been painted by a neighbouring child with nail polish. Lots of nail polish!

She has arrived for a clean-up.

Sasha is missing an iris. The artistic nail polish wielding child has managed to paint her empty socket too! 

Sasha starts her cleaning process.

Less nail polish is certainly an improvement.

Her unstuffed body has had a bath and is lying on the deck to dry.

Worried comments from the neighbours are anticipated!

Marks like this have not come off with her bath.

So all the remaining marks get coated with 10% benzoyl peroxide. It is sold as an acne treatment and is a good bleaching agent.

Sunlight helps the process so the basking on the deck continues......and the neighbours keep wondering.........

Then some new eyes are found.

She is cleaned, restuffed and ready to go home.

A Schoenhut doll with previous 'repairs'

This is 'Barbara'.

She was made by the Schoenhut company and is about 100 years old.

She has arrived for a complete renovation.

This is Schoenhut's 'Miss Dolly' model.

She is suffering from peeling/chipped paint. She has had a very thick repaint somewhere along the way. Both her original paint and the repaint are having issues.

UV light can show different details.

Here UV light shows the repainted areas as darker than the original paint and bare wood.

This is under UV light again and here some of the repaint has been removed from the middle of the torso.

Here are Barbara's legs after the overpaint has been removed. Happily that is a lot of her original paint that has been uncovered. The yellowish areas are patches where her original varnish has yellowed with age.

 Here is her face without the overpaint and wads of old wig glue. That is her original eye colour now and you can see remnants of her eyelashes and lip colour.

The nails in her head are the tacks that the factory used to tack on her wig. They can be re-used to secure her new wig. No more glue! Ever!

After all her repaint is removed she gets her bare wood parts sealed. I use a clear gesso for that.

Here Barbara is part way through getting her missing paint and gesso filled in.

I use a flesh toned epoxy putty for that.

Barbara has completed her paint job.

And here she is modelling an old human hair wig that suits her quite nicely.

She heads back to Arkansas like this.

Here is Barbara back in Arkansas with a lovely new dress and hair bow. 

The return of a Maplelea doll

This is 'Jenna'. She is a Maplelea doll who had her left hip repaired a couple years ago.

Now she has a total avulsion of her right hip.....ie the whole hip joint has torn off.