A while ago at Goodwill Josh found an old Barbie Doll and he wanted it. I picked it up for a buck eighty eight and it was pretty well used.
My kids are going to see Barbie's, likely in their ahem *natural form* but I'd like some of their Barbie's and dolls to be imperfect- on purpose. That all types of people are acceptable. So, I started in on this Barbie. I named her Betsy and here's what I did:
My next step, I knew I wanted to put some weight on her. That waist line isn't for real. A friend of mine has remade some dolls with her daughter. They used clay. I didn't have clay. Again, I did this on the fly. I did however, have hot glue!! Ohhh yeeeeaaaahh...
Once her new body dried and hardened I decided to treat her hair. I combed it out and hopped over to the sink. I got it wet and gave it two rinses with conditioner (Suave cheapy stuff) and then make a mix of coconut oil and more conditioner and let her hair sit for a while. That helped smooth some of the craggy ends. I have read you can restore synthetic hair with fabric softener. My experience with that was so so but maybe I did it wrong. That's likely.
So I painted her face! It was tedious and didn't turn out as precise as I had hoped. Kai did pick me up brushes but they weren't giving me the tiny lines I needed. I ended up using spaghetti noodles of all things! I used acryllic paint for her eyes and some nail polish for her mouth. The nice thing is you can fix a lot of the mistakes with acetone and the skin on the doll is pretty forgiving in that things wipe off easy. The difficult part was just getting the lines precise. Spaghetti worked for a first try but if I make more i may invest in some little tools. Also, I am going to see if going over her eyes with clear nail polish will help keep them nice and also make them shine. I'm going to test it out first though. I'd rather not have to redo her eyes, they took forever.
She didn't come with any clothes so I decided to make her a little dress. I always have a scrap of something around so I made her this little wrap dress and a belt that can be tied a few different ways (used to be a headband). I can't sew well and didn't feel like finding my kit so I just hot glued it. (I can hear my Grandma rolling in her grave!)
I want to learn to crochet and maybe then I can make little doll clothes! This however worked for tonight!
Meet the new Betsy!
Got any tips or tricks to share? Let me know!