My first restoration doll "Dora" in detail

Dora in Detail

This was my first little girl that I gave a full makeover to. I won her of eBay, she came to me from the USA, Now anyone who loves My Child dolls is going to cringe when I say this, but I'm not really into the original outfits, I like to make my own, mainly because they are brighter. So I sold her outfit on eBay, had to make it some panties first, because they were missing. Opposite is a picture of how she looked when she first got to me, She was a mess, original hair part was missing, her fringe was all pushed back and she was missing most of her original make-up, overall her skin color wasn't too bad and she only needed a light cleaning.

First I soaked her and then scrubbed her skin all over with a fine tooth brush to remove the piling, then I gave her a really good rinse to remove any soap residue if you leave this on the skin it tends to attract dust. Squeezed out the excess water, I then wrapped her in a towel and left her to dry.

Once dry the next big step was to give her a face lift, and a tuck under, she had a lot of loose face skin, I carefully stitched up into the hairline using invisible thread, her fringe would eventually cover it and you couldn't tell unless you pushed her fringe back, then all the way under her head, pulling down into the original neck seam line, I find that starting in the middle of her head at the front and working around to the back seam, pulling needle from thread, re-threading with a new length and going back to the middle again and going back around the other side, then finishing of both threads at the back, this stops any bunching occurring at the back of the neck.

Then is was on to the hair, I drowned her hair with conditioner and began to gently comb it out, I don't use a brush as it tends to make the hair frizzy. Once it was all knot free and smooth I washed the conditioner out, I then find the part line. (More information on parts and how to re-weave them will be on my blog later) I then painstakingly re-weave the hair part, once this was done, I spent a good deal of time combing out the bangs (fringe) that goes all the way around her head, I then carefully combed the piggies up and smoothed them out, applied some Velcro rollers all over and let her to dry. Once dry I removed the rollers and carefully combed her hair into place.

Make-up was next, initially I used some of Mum, she has a great range of prisma color pencils, lol. I now have my own set of colors suitable for restoring My Child makeup., and a steel sharpener, I have to hide from the kids. I carefully restored her brows, eye shadow, lashes and lips, I leave the cheeks as is, I don't want them to look like painted ladies!!! The photo opposite gives a better close-up detail of her face and hair once completed. All the hard work is nearly done, check her over to make sure all her arm, leg, bottom & belly button stitching is in place, a couple of her elbow ones were missing re-stitched the, I recommend only using good quality cotton thread, its less likely to break when you are pulling it really tight, ie; Gutermann.

Last but not least was making her pretty little dress, I got some patterns from America, they are modelled off the original outfits, again I only use good quality cotton fabric, there is some stunning quilters prints out there now, I sews beautifully and the dress come out looking really professional. I finish all my seams and Glenn says I am a bit fussy, LOL.

Job completed, time for some posing for the camera, and if I haven't bonded with them, its hard not to they are all so cute, this little girl wasn't to stay, brown eyes....I then listed her on bay, and low and behold she sold, I was very happy and she went back to America, so after a short holiday/spa/surgery trip to Australia, she winged her way back to the states. This photo shows the full bodied finished view of this sweet little girl, Dora.