A few dolls...

Here are a few pictures of dolls I'm planning to restyle.

This is Jewel Secrets Whitney. I have always thought she was one of the pretties dolls ever, with her knee-length dark hair and sweet Steffie face--and she has wonderful eyes--but I could never understand why they made her lips such a pale pink. To me it detracts from the beauty of her face, to have her lips nearly invisible.

But I have been realizing that re-painting a doll's face is something I can actually do. I can make her look the way I think she should look. I can paint her lips a deeper shade of red.

Another thing I'd like to do for Whitney is find her a new body. I've decided that I really dislike the bent-arm body that Barbie dolls got in the 80's. And I've learned that if you know how, you can put Barbie heads on new bodies. It's not as easy as when I was little--we just popped the heads off and popped on another one--but it can be done. I'd like to give Whitney a body with jointed arms.

Here on the right is Midge of the All-Stars. She came to me from eBay when I was collecting variations of Midge. She wasn't in her original clothes--she was wearing this strapless print dress, which is nice enough, but the overall effect was rather dull. I do like her freckles and green eyes, though.

Today I took another look at her and took down her ponytail. I think she looked prettier right away. I'm going to try to get her hair to fall more naturally, and I might try to do something with those frizzy bangs!

And again, I think those pale-pink lips just don't do anything for her face. So I'm going to get a tiny paint brush and re-do her lips.

And I'm going to try to find a body for her that doesn't have the dreaded (for me) Bent Arms.

Now here is another Midge.


I like this Midge very much--though I wouldn't mind if she had freckles. (Of course, I can always add some if I decide to.) The main thing I want to do for Camp Midge is to find a body without bent arms. Which may be a bit of a challenge, since she has a rather unusual suntanned skin tone. I would rather have straight arms than bent, but what I would really like is jointed arms. So we'll see what I can find.

But other than that she is a really nice doll--I love her reddish-gold hair.

The last doll I have a photo of tonight is also a Midge. The Diva face is one of my favorites, though I don't always like what they do to it in terms of painting.



The last Midge is Hawaii Midge. She has nice straight arms, though I'd be glad to give her jointed arms. I like her red hair, I like that she has freckles, and I like the vivid lipstick.

But somehow I'm not crazy about her expression. I don't know, she looks vaguely smug, or something. I don't know if it's the Hawaii Midge dolls in general, or just this particular doll.

I'm thinking I may just repaint her face.

But not right away.

But if I were going to repaint anyone's face, I think it would be this one. Just to get a more pleasing expression.

So--this week I'm going to Michael's for acrylic paints and a couple of tiny, tiny brushes.

And then we shall see what we shall see.