a little plastic surgery

not for me - for my little plastic one! I've been customizing my little girl over the past couple weeks and I finally got her all back together. I tried to take a bunch of progress shots, so if you're all "ugh, she's taking about that doll again" you might want to just tap out now! :)

Here's her "before" shot

Then I opened up her head. The first of several kind of horrifying steps. I mean how often have you used the phrase "then I opened up her head"? There just aren't a lot of situations where that's an appropriate thing to say!

Weird look into a head!

Gaa! then unscrewed the whole shebang!


Unscrewed and took apart many small things which I smartly put into a little box so as to not lose them! look at me, thinkin' ahead! These pictures also helped me quite a bit when I had to reassemble and I was like "uuuh, there how did this thing go again?"

Then I sanded her face so she'd be matte instead of shiny - that right there made a world of difference to her look! I had to go to a woodworking shop to get the kind of sand sponges I needed and there i bought this overpriced set of files which I used to carve her mouth - sound scarier than it ended up being!


Took her eye mechanism out which required some tools and serious manhandling. I assured her that this hurt me more than it hurt her, because it really did! there are a surprising number of pointy surfaces there!

The hardest damn part was yanking out these damn eye chips which are apparently attached with the will of the devil, or something similarly powerful! this is a gluestick stuck to the eyechip and yes, it's the most recommended method. I couldn't make that up! you ought to see pictures where folks do this without taking the head apart - just picture a doll with two glue sticks jutting out of its eyes! none of this is pretty (until the very end!) I replaced her eyechips with amazingly lifelike Ana Karina chips (she's on Etsy) - I just did 2 sets because they're pricey! I left her original pink and pale blue chips but pulled the green and blue ones. Unfortunately the chips didn't entirely come out - bits chipped off and stayed in the little recessed ledge where the new chip would sit down in. there was a lot of cussing, chipping, prying and filing done and I still didn't get the stuff all the way out. Consequently, the new chips don't quite sit flush which causes her eye mech to not roll as freely as it should. that's a bit frustrating.

Ok, at this point I kind of got lax on my picture taking! I replaced her eyelashes, painted on new lips with a wider shape and used high gloss finish over them, then redid her eye makeup and blush with chalk pastels, painted on freckles, and miraculously got the whole works back together. I'm so much more in love with her now - I didn't even think that was possible!