Boil Baby
To set the stage you need to know a few things.
In February of 2022 I started buying filthy dolls on Yahoo Auctions Japan for the express purpose of cleaning/restoring them up and selling them. They quickly took over my home.
In September of 2023 I made the choice to return to America the following March after 21 years in Japan.
I had to flip a lot of dolls: custom, stock, and restoration/cleaning projects.
In November 2022 I was tempted to literally throw away a few…but I told my friend Ebony and she told me her son would be interested in any super creepy rejects…I showed her a picture and she said he’d LOVE it… This gave the inspiration to finish a doll….in a super creepy way…and I gave it to her son.
The doll I started with.
Let’s really take that in.
This sad Madame Alexander doll…what did I think I could do with it?
I was cocky. I’d done well so far. I thought I could revive this doll!
This image depressed people. Folks online asked me if I was somehow getting dolls from tragic fires and accident scenes.
Not to my knowledge.
I could not remove the stains. I could only manage to make them lighter.
Much of the outfit dissolved when hand washed.
I could fix the eyes…but eventually I didn’t.
I couldn’t fix the crier and gave up instead of sourcing a replacement.
…..but when Ebony told me her son would love this doll I knew this would become…FRANKENBABY!!!
Yes.
I got synthetic dye and set to boil dying this baby. And because he was gonna be a Frankenbaby it didn’t matter if the dye was uneven or the stains were still there.
Just a girl in a kitchen putting vinyl babies into pots. Nothing to see here! My mental health was FINE.
Just green wasn’t enough. I primed this baby doll with MSC and tackled the face.
I repaired the sleep eyes mechanism BUT instead of painting the whites to repair where they had chipped, i leaned into it and removed more white.
Awwwwww yeah.
I was gonna throw that trash out? FOOLISHNESS!
I used what I could of the original outfit…and we were good to go!
And look how happy her child was!
The valuable lesson I could have learned was to be more selective in the projects I take on and purchase….but what I learned was that I can make it work.
Oh, ADHD LOVES the stress of deadlines and random restrictions!
This also gave me the strength to tackle and sell the doll that somewhat started me down the Yahoo Auction Japan path that started the whole Doll Onslaught of 2022
But more on her transformation NEXT week.
