Re-doing an American Girl Kaya Doll

I've mentioned in a couple posts previously that we recently acquired a Kaya doll on Craigslist for $20.00. A pretty cool deal! Fun, too, because she's our first American Girl "rescue" doll . . . meaning that she was not ordered directly from the company by us. She came in her original outfit and re-braided braids, but her hair was a bit matted and rather dry. She is also very loose and cannot stand on her own (not to mention that one leg hangs down a bit longer than the other because of the loose strings). That's a real challenge, right? Well, Elizabeth needs to re-string two of our older dolls, so she plans on doing all three together --- but in the meantime, Kaya needed help. The picture at right shows her as she looked when we got her.

First, we took the old dress off, and renamed her (Leonore, called "Leo"). Then, I decided to trim the ends of her way-too-long hair, as they were very frizzy and matted. I brushed out her hair, trimmed those ends and braided it down her back. It was an improvement --- but not enough.

        Click on photos below to see full size.

Poor little Leo stayed like this for a couple of weeks. She's Elizabeth's doll, but Mom and I were just itching to do something better with that hair. Leo looked like a little girl with too much hair, making her kind of frumpy. Hair-dos are a bit limited for her, because her wig has quite a few bare spots around the edge, which makes pulling it back less than beautiful.

Well, after cleaning her with backing soda on Sunday (see yesterday's post), I really wanted to do something with her. Elizabeth has trouble envisioning things, so just voicing ideas wasn't working. So, I decided to try and find some other AG dolls with shorter hair to inspire her approval for a hair cut! Finally, I came up with a picture of GOTY doll "Chrissa". Elizabeth liked that and said short hair would probably be cute. So, I took the braid out, brushed her hair out and started looking. Mom and I voted to cut about another inch off right away, because it still looked a bit played out. One thing definitely wrong with Leo was the crimp in her hair from all these years in braids. We went online and looked up how to straighten AG doll hair and watched a number of tutorials. A really great one showed how to do a Hot Water Dip to straighten the hair. We took the doll right out to the kitchen and did that. It worked amazingly! Leo looked tons better just with her hair straightened, but now it was time to do some cutting.

Here are pictures of the result, and I think it couldn't look cuter! Mom and I did the cutting together, and Leo can now wear hair ribbons, headbands, barrettes and anything like that. Here are some more pictures to show her re-done.

Click on photos below to see full size.