I tell you, that was a lot of work. It couldn't even be done all in one session, and I worked away over the weekend. Here's a photo that shows the limbs while I was working on them. The second leg has been partially cleaned, and you can already see the tonal difference from removing the dirt and grime (not to mention marker)!
You do not need to press the body once it's washed. They do come out wrinkled, but we have washed numerous AG bodies, and they will look perfect once they have been re-stuffed.
With nothing to lose, I decided to see what I could do about the eye. Having done a preliminary baking soda paste clean on the head, it was obvious that some kind of glitter make-up had been rubbed all over the face at one point. Apparently, the oily base of the make up had gotten into the eye socket and was a hard goo all over the plastic rod that holds the eye. There is only a very small opening between the eye ball and the inside socket, so I folded a small piece of paper and stuck it inside the socket. It came out covered in nasty goo. Yuck. So, I folded up another tiny piece of paper and stuck it in again. More goo. Yuck. But this seemed effective! So, poor Caroline's head sat in the living room for days. Every time I had a few minutes available, I kept sticking paper in that eye socket and coming out with old goo. After a while, the eye was working about 75% of the time. That seemed good enough for me to start Oxy treatments on her face.
Click on photos below to see full size.
Click on photos below to see full size.
That left her poor hair . . .
Now it was a question of deciding on a new wig. I really didn't care for Caroline's platinum blonde hair. Little girls don't usually have hair like that, and it makes her a bit washed out, in my opinion. I plowed through photos of a bunch of custom Caroline dolls and realized that I didn't care for dark hair on this doll --- her eyebrows are too light to hold it. So, it really left blonde or light red. Mom and I had a lot of fun one evening going through wig options and settled on a gorgeous one called "Caramel Posy" from LollyLueStephens on Etsy/eBay. The wig arrived quickly, and I couldn't have been happier --- but more on that later, because I'm getting ahead of the story.
I went onto one of my AG forums and asked for advice, and someone was kind enough to write in about a very successful method she had used on her #4. She had fixed the lips on that doll eight years ago, and they still looked perfect! I wasn't going to argue a success like that, so it was off to the craft store paint aisle for some "Gel Medium".
Elizabeth is the painter around here (I'm hopeless in any classic art form.), so she was volunteered to do some lip re-touching. Armed with a white plastic palette, super tiny brush, a cup of water, acrylic paint and the gel medium, she set to work. She just used a drop or two of the red paint in some gel medium to make a deep pink color (you need it a little darker than you think) as seen in this photo:
First, Elizabeth tied her head to the body. You can see how much better (and cleaner) she looks already!
I've renamed her Georgiana and call her "Georgie". She has a few scars on her vinyl, but nothing that you would notice. She counts them as beauty marks! As soon as I glue her wig in place, she will have a pretty clip in her hair. I think I'll print out a little "before" photo of her and frame it to stand next to her in a display! She has been a really fun project and challenge!
If anyone has any questions, don't hesitate to leave a comment or send a note through the contact form.