Ashley Barbie Doll

I like making and/or customizing doll just for the sake of making them so I love it when someone actually likes having a doll made of them because it gives me a willing victim subject. One of my best inspirations is my friend Ashley. Not only does she appreciate a good doll tribute, but she pretty much looks like a doll already.
I had made a couple of dolls of her before but then she changed her hair color and made it a point to mention she did not have a current doll so I already had it in mind when I spotted this about a month before her birthday a couple of years ago.

The most important thing that it already have Ashley's exact hair color and side part so I didn't have to worry about having to dye or even worse, re-root her.

 Although her makeup and outfit definitely had to go. She also has a bit of a tan where Ashley has none, but we won't get too picky.

I re-did her makeup but I don't have any closeups of that, I'll try to get some next time I'm at Ashley's. The fun part and what I wanted to talk about here was how I made her outfit anyway.

 

You can kind of see her new makeup in this pic and the beginning of the dress.  I realize I should have taken more pictures of the process bit I will make up for it with really detailed instructions.

          1- get an black sock from your stash of single socks. If you don't have single sock stash then make that your step number one. Socks are great for making doll clothes. The knit is perfectly to scale with Barbies and other dolls of that size and if you get a patterned one, the patter will often be to scale too.

I have this issue where my fingernails are super brittle and they often break down to the skin so I have to put band-aids on the tip of my finger so it doesn't keep getting snagged on everything and rip the whole thing off and yet my big toe nail is so incredibly powerful that it shreds the tip of many a sock long before the rest of the sock is worn out. What I'm saying is, I'm glad I found a good use for all this sock bits I end up with.

      2- Since the socks are so stretchy, you don;t really need to have Velcro of snaps on the dress. I just made a simple pattern by tracing the outline on the doll on paper and going from there.

Then I sewed it by hand because I get easily frustrated by my sewing machine. Plus really, why would you bring out a sewing machine for that little thing?

      3-  I was copiying an actual dress Ashley has, so next I had to "screen print" the design. I drew the misfits logo on a piece of paper and then went over my drawing with white fabric paint. I like slick one that comes in the little bottles since the bottle gives you great control for little details. Here's a pic of all the tools you'll need.

      4- Then I took a little sponge square and and place it over the whole thing very carefully to pick up the paint. This serves two purposes 1) it blots out some of the paint  2) it makes a negative impression of the design so that when you press it against the dress you get a positive image.
Also remember to cut another piece of sponge to place inside the dress so the paint doesn't bleed to the back (or the table you are working on)

Here's a picture of the finished dress on the doll

And now for the shoes. I got lucky on this one too, because I already had a pair of boots from another Barbie that looked a lot like a pair that Ashley has, even if it was the wrong color

So I just painted them black and  a bit of varnish to seal it and that was that. Oh and I did touch up the eyelets a bit with a silver Sharpie.

And now here she is, the finished project.

And a picture of her in her box. I just spray painted it black and then added the name with white paint.

  And here is a photo of Ashley for comparison she's doing her Barbie doll pose.

The one correction Ashley had was that the doll did not have any of her tattoos.  But that was easily remedied with a few Sharpies. I also painted her molded undies with some black acrylic paint.

And here are some of the actual tattoos for comparison. It's not perfect, but it's also not bad for something that was done quickly in the middle of a party

My Oldest doll is a mystery

Right off the bat I will tell you that we will be revising this doll again sometime soon when I am able to take better pictures. I just really wanted to post something today and she is pretty cool even with the less than stellar photography.

I'm not sure who this doll is or when she came out, but she is definitely from the same era as the first Barbie, so that would put her around 1959. When I first found her I thought she might be a Bild Lilli ( the doll that Barbie was based on) but upon closer inspection I'm leaning towards the idea that she is a Barbie knock off. Someone once suggested she might be a Suzette, but after doing some research I found that Suzette doll were younger looking, with a more rounded face. The name stuck with me and we need to call her something, so let's call her Suzie from now on.

When I found Suzie, many years ago at a thrift store, she was pretty darned disgusting. She was filthy, her face paint had mostly rubbed off and her hair was a knotted mess. I wish I would have takes some pictures for a "before and after" and maybe I did and don't remember, it was a long time ago. I cleaned her and redid her face paint. Her eyebrows are original and I used whatever was left of her eyes as a guideline to repaint them and did her lips completely. I know they are a bit crooked but she was my one of my first repaints so I don't think she came out too bad. The hair was beyond salvaging so I just removed it all and rerooted her with some thin, bright red yarn that makes her look like she has tiny red dreadlocks. I did this mostly because I just happened to have red yarn and why not? 

She was naked when I found her but as you can see, right now I have her wearing a reproduction of Barbie's Solo in the Spotlight outfit. It fits her perfectly, but not the shoes. I have never been able to find shoes that fit her right.

 

By the way, in person the diffence in color between the head and the rest of the body is way less obvious. 

Here are some photos without her dress so you can see what she looks like:

As you can see she has pretty much the same body as a #1 Barbie. She has a hard plastic body with a rubber head and five points of articulation (head, arms and legs).

Here she is next to a Barbie reproduction so you can see what they look like side to side. As you can see Barbie is a bit taller and it;s not just because she has shoes and fluffier hair.

Here a 3/4 profile view.

And lastly, here's Suzie with a stewardess outfit I found at a dollar store. It does a good job of looking like a 1960's stewardess uniform as long as you ignore the velcro closure, the shoes kinda fit her and it even came with a suitcase. Not bad for a dollar!

If anybody has any idea to who this doll might be, I would love to hear about it in the comments.

That's all for now. Next time we see Suzie, I'll take some photos by sunlight so you can get more detail and less blur.