Britney the doll has... dandruff?!

(A short post in which I contemplate what to do with a thrift store doll. Also complaining. As usual.)

A while ago I got this Britney Spears doll from the thrift store. I've always regretted not buying one when I found them at a surplus store years ago. This one had none of her original clothes and was in a pretty sorry state, but she was cheap and you can always use another unique face mold. Or at least that's what I tell myself to justify these little purchases. 

Anyway, that sorry state I mentioned proved harder to amend than anticipated. Her face was covered in some sort of dried glittery ...stuff. I managed to get most of if off with the Twin Pines stuff, but there's still some in the harder-to-reach areas, like behind the ears and around the nose and eyes (se pic). 

I could probably get that out if I gave it another go with something small and pointy, but the real problem is her scalp. Not only does the face goo continue up in the hair, getting stuck in and between the plugs, but there's also a bunch of weird black stuff stuck to her head that reminds me of cigarette ashes or fragments of dirt.

Ew.

I'm not sure what happened too her. Maybe some kid buried her in the garden? It's not stuck very hard to the plastic - you can just scrape it off with the fingernail - but the hair plugs are in the way and prevents you from cleaning it out completely. 

I should probably cut her hair off, but the thing is I like it. It's just thin, coarse nylon in a pretty boring (possibly home made) haircut, but that's pretty much my favorite kind of doll hair. Big fantasy hair is just unrealistic and annoying in my opinion - plus it throws off the doll's balance completely. And I don't have any suitable hair to reroot with, so she'll just go on the neverending reroot list (which is just as much of a dead end as the neverending repaint list by now) until I feel like I can afford to order some. 

For example, poor Lelia here has been bald for like two years now.

I don't know. At this point I'm leaning towards cutting it off anyway, if only to see if I can figure out what the heck that stuff is. 

Britney with her two daugthers, not!Taylor Swift and Nose Stain Skipper. 

Clearance find: Justin Bieber playsets!

I'm not sure why, but when I got back into dolls as an adult I had some kind of idea that big toy stores only do well-coordinated, chain-wide clearance sales nowadays. Now it's slowly beginning to sink in that this is obviously not the case (see e.g. the legendary Dreamhouse Doll Deal of last month), and so I'm trying to keep my eyes a bit more open for unexpected offers. (This also means I feel like I have to check ALL! THE! TOY! STORES! lest I miss some once-in-a-lifetime deal, but I'm trying to keep those tendencies under control.)  

Anyway, yesterday I went to check if Big Well-Known Toy Store had any Bratzillaz fashion packs left, and came home with two Justin Bieber playsets instead! Not what I had planned, but the price was too good to pass up. Now, I'm about 20 years too old to have any interest in Bieber or his music, but if there's something I do like it's 1/6 scale props and dolls with articulation, and that's why I had been eyeing these sets for a while. I'm not sure where I saw these dolls first, perhaps in this photo story by Limbe Dolls. I thought the articulation looked promising, but perhaps not worth paying full price to get a closer look at.

(This is one of those long Fairy Tales About Shopping With Pictures so I'm putting it behind a cut.)

Wibbley-wobbly timey-wimey blogg chronology

I didn't realize blogger dated my posts according to when I first saved the draft... Well, at least I know why the comments went into moderation on that last one. 

Tutorial tip of the day: Retrograde's Elissabat repaint

I just found this video. Not a step-by-step tutorial, more of a short documentation of her MH Elissabat repaint. Still, there's lots of information in there, and I found it really useful to see how she works (mostly pastels and watercolor pencils).


ETA: She has a blog too! Retrogradeworks.blogspot.com, go visit!



(Tutorial tip of the day will not be a recurring feature, I just wanted an alliterative headline.)

Wild Girlz spooky horse and carriage

Speaking of Wild Girlz and their accessories, I just saw this spooky carriage on Flickr: 

It says Wild Girlz, but I'm not sure it's the same Wild Girlz - that doll hardly looks like a big-headed clown at all. I guess there's only so many different combinations of spooky/scary/goth/mystic/magic + girl(z) you can name your clone doll. Anyway, I thought it was pretty cool!