My Child Doll Restoration

A very nice girl in Canada sent me these rather tragic My Child dolls.

Both were very stained, with gerying faces and hands. The dark-haird one even had some food substance all over her face, neck and chest. I decided I needed to save these poor gals, post haste!

I stripped them down and prepped a cocktail of detergent and fels naptha paste, which I applied with a toothbrush to all the messy spots.

You might recall this post where I show my new method of spot-cleaning my stuffed animals using a Waterpik flossing system. I wish I got a video of how easily all the gunk came off with the water pressure. It was amazing! Dirt just vanished away, like counter crud in some sort of infomercial. If I find another dingy doll I promise to make a video, it was fun and cool and not hard on the dollies at all!

Here they are, wet but clean!

After they dried I applied new makeup using watercolor pencils. Don't they look pretty!

Click on the image to see!

Time to do their hair!

I scrounged up an outfit for the knot-top and washed the original jammies blondie came in.

And voila! New dolls!

I put them up on my little white shelf along with my other two My Child Dolls. I have given them names too!

Here we have: Ebony, Robbie, Allie and Erica.

I must say as a side note, I have had the most horrible couple of weeks at work and just in general. I am so grateful I have toys to help get me through. They are faithful friends who always help get my mind off things.

Blinky & Ursa - Before and After

I can't even begin to tell you how horrible of a week it has been. Not only am I STILL sick, my camera broke. Since part of my livelihood relies on my camera I will have to buy another one at about $600. Ouch! For now I will have to use my crappy cybershot. But this isn't a blog about my problems. Let's talk about toys, they never fail to make me happy!

I purchased Blinky and Ursa recently for about $17 shipped--which is a good deal considering it was a complete set with some extras.

Here's what they looked like when they arrived:

If you click on the image you can see how sort of sad they look. Both had a lot of playwear. So I put them  through a Mr. Clean Magic Eraser treatment (never fails to get stuff off!) and then I worked on Blinky's hair. One of the problems I generally encounter with certain dolls is the bangs sticking straight up. Lady Lovely Locks dolls are famous for this. I have worked on several ways to try and get them flattened again and was very happy to discover (after much trial and error) a method that works every time.

First, I fixed Blinky's pigtails. Then I wet the bangs, put gel in them and placed a band aid on her face, but made sure the bangs were not near anything sticky. This is important because you want the bangs to dry but not stick to the glue on the band aid.

And here's what they look like all clean and dry!

Rainbow Brite Custom Restore

You might remember a few weeks ago I went thrifting with my sister and bought this Dress-up Rainbow Brite doll.

 

She was quite dirty. Her hair was covered in something I'd rather not think about. Her dress was spotted and soiled, as were her legs.

If you buy a RB Dress-up doll like this in mint condition it would cost around $30-$40. Some sellers have them priced around $80. I thought I would try to salvage her as best I could.

First, I washed her dress and her body. The thread on the hem of the dress was destroyed and there was no longer a rainbow belt decal. Her shirt and shoes were gone.

I ran over to the craft store and bought some ric-rac in rainbow and a few rainbow-shaped buttons. I sewed those on. Her hair was a chore. I had to do a lint shave and cut off the scraggly ends. Then I went on eBay and found some shoes for $5 shipped.

Here she is, all fixed up:

Isn't she purdy! Are you now resisting saying, "DOUBLE RAINBOW ALL THE WAY?"

The only thing I'd like to change is the undershirt. I had to make do with a piece I found at an antique store and I'd rather have a red shirt like the original doll. Oh well!

Sea Breeze After the Salon

Remember how I found Sea Breeze for fifty cents at a thrift store last week? This is how she looked:

And here she is after a little loving care!

She cleaned up rather well! Now I have a cute and mint Sea Breeze, hooray! Now I want to find her comb!