Performing Surgery, Improvisation, and Modification

So the title of this post is what it says above. After I blogged about my new found treasures here I had to clean them and perform some minor surgery. (only one doll head was harmed in this process ;) Read on to learn about the procedures as well as some improv clothing and outfit mods!

A big thank you to Andrea for confirming that this was a vintage Bubblecut Barbie!  I did a little light cleaning on her and then dressed her in something deliciously vintage.

The 1965 Matinee Fashion. No reproduction outfit here, this is the real-deal from my mom's collection. I even have the shoes! (marked with Japan so you know they are vintage.)

However, in the production, one shoe did not get a place cut out for the toes so unfortunately I can't put them on the doll. It's terrible because these shoes fit the doll like a glove. It's like they were made for her!

Anyway, I fluffed up her hair but didn't spend too much time on it because she was going to have a hat on anyway. She looks awesome.

I did have another doll that was wearing Matinee Fashion before I got the Bubblecut doll. This is one of the two dolls that I had when I first started playing Barbie. I thought she looked like my Aunt Gloria so I named her "Margie." (The mind of a child.... :)

My mom told me about some of the clothes she had for Barbie that she made herself but there was no sewing required. Remember them? I dressed her in the Sew-Free Fashion Fun "Patio Party" dress. Unfortunately I do not have the top or the purse but the dress is so cute.

I had to modify it by placing a straight pin in the side as the glue is starting to pull away a little and I had to find a way to keep the top on the body. I also added some 60's Cat Eye sunglasses.

Added some cute white Mary Jane's and a fun green purse. Complete outfit!

Another Sew-Free Fashion Fun, this one is "Hootenanny."

This one is in better condition than "Patio Party." The glue is not pulling apart from anywhere on this dress and I have all three pieces of the outfit. I had to put it on a doll!

Cute white open-toe heels complete this look.

I have a mod Barbie doll. This is the second doll that I played with growing up. She is the original Twist 'n Turn Barbie. I have a post about her here. In that post, she is wearing the My Favorite Barbie American Girl swimsuit. I desperately wanted to dress her in her original clothes: the white mesh coverup with the neon orange bikini underneath. I had the bottoms but was missing the top. So I had to improvise.

Would you have been able to tell that this was not the original top had I not told you? Looks pretty close doesn't it!

 

So exactly what did I use for the top? I had an orange top that has a checkerboard "Nascar Flag" pattern on the front. I simply just made the back of it the front and no one is the wiser. :)

I also had these cute little slippers. One is missing the pom-pom but that can be easily fixed. Anyone know what doll these came from? I think they are vintage but they don't seem to fit the doll very well.

So now I needed a  Barbie to wear the American Girl swimsuit. Well, I had this random mod doll head and I needed a body to put it on. Remember Gift Giving Barbie from the last post? Well, this is where I did some surgery.

First I popped off her head and I had to cut it so I could get the little neck ball out.

Then I put the neck ball in the vintage mod Barbie head then put that head on the body.

Okay, so it doesn't look quite right. But the neck openings on mod dolls seem to be smaller than Barbie's from the 80's or 90's. I guess it will have to do for now.

I have the teal open-toe heels that she came with but I love these ones from the 1959 Sweet Dreams Barbie. So cute with the little pom-pom. I do have the babydoll outfit but I'm missing the bottoms.

Okay, more surgery. Remember Skipper from the last post? She had a little problem.

The necks were cracked so the heads would not stay on. I seem to have a terrible time finding Skipper dolls so donor bodies are just non-existent. So I had to make some modifications.

Notice on this head how there is an inner lip?

I just cut that out of the Skipper dolls head so the opening would be big enough so I could push the head on the neck. I can't move her head easily but I really don't need to be moving the head anyway.

Oops! Pushed on a little too much!

There, that's better

I dressed her in a cute little cheer outfit. The top really didn't fit a Barbie too well so I thought it was perfect for Skipper. I also put some cute pink flats with it.

The top is dirty but I tried to get that stain out of it. I really did do laundry yesterday.

The other Skipper neck was not very broken yet so I was able to put the neck ball in and have it stay on. 

Remember Frankenstein-hair Teresa? My wonderful reader told me that she is the Barbie of Swan Lake Teresa doll. Well needless to say, she was in need of a makeover.

First, the wash with mild shampoo.

Then after rinsing, work conditioner (without oil) through the dolls hair and let sit for a few minutes. The only conditioner that I had without oils was Suave Aloe and Waterlilly.

Teresa recommends Suave

Then, gently work a comb through the hair starting from the ends. After I while I got tired of using the Mermaid Barbie pick so I grabbed one that I use for my hair. It works much better.

All done combing.

Rinse and let dry. Her hair is now a beautiful red color. Gorgeous!

As of this post, her hair is still wet so I will dress her and place updates at a later date. I do have the perfect outfit for her.

Another doll I got yesterday was identified as a Fashion Fever Drew doll. Don't you love the freckles? I fixed her hair as I saw pictures of her sporting two small braids. Explains why her hair was wavy in a couple of places.

So I fixed her hair just like in the pictures I saw.

I'm pretty sure that she is this doll as she has some red strings attached to her head which I'm sure were used to keep the sunglasses on her.

www.flickriver.com

The freckles for some reason make me think of a girl next door look so I dressed her in a cute gingham top with a denim skirt.

The top is supposed to be a crop top. However, since dolls are molded different and these are fashions from the 90's, they don't fit as well. Unfortunately, Drew's bum is too big so the skirt had to go almost up to her bust so I could get it fastened. Still cute though.

I added some classic white kicks to complete the outfit.

So that's it for today. Check out my updated post on this recently identified doll!

~Fun times putting outfits together~

SCOOOORE!

One big bag o' Barbies!

Today's thrift store finds. This thrift store is one big pile of goodness. And I mean piles. You have to dig especially in the toy section. But when there is good stuff to be found, I don't mind! When I can score a big pile of dolls I know that it hasn't been picked through.

What they had their toys in was one of those deep bin-type playtables. So sometimes I had to go in blind and just reach my hand down to the depths of the bin. If I felt hair, I pulled it out. Once it was a small flocked pink horse. A few times they were other dolls. If I could verify that it was a Barbie doll, it went into the bag. The difference with this store is you pay by the poundage! At $1 per pound this bag o' Barbies was a whopping $2. I have not taken a good look at these dolls yet so here you are dear readers, please share with me the excitement that is in this bag.

First doll, newer Barbie, still has the rubber bands around her chest, she must have had some kind of necklace on. Her eyes and lips are glittery. She has the larger face.

Oh the hair!

Another newer Barbie. This hair is not a result of her being placed up against the backdrop. You hold her and the hair is straight up, no joke. I'm going to have many days of fun playing with Barbie hair.

The hair makes me giggle

Teresa doll. Get a load of this hair! I wonder if I will end up ripping all of it out when I try to get a brush through it.

Serious Frankenstein hair

This is a doll face I have never seen before. Freckles! But her back and head both said Mattel. Her back is dated 1999 China and the head is 1998.

Hair not too bad

Ah, a Barbie from my generation. All the Barbies that I played with growing up had this head mold.

Wild hair!

I know which doll she is though. Her earrings and face match that of my 1985 Gift Giving Barbie. 

Other finds that I threw in the bag - Mattel McDonalds toy. I have all of the Barbie toys but I think there is one recent year that I missed. You pay by the pound so why not?

An Esmarelda dress from a Hunchback of Notre Dame Disney doll

A cute coat! It has a pink plastic tag that says "Barbie" however not genuine Barbie.

A quick google search showed me that this is from a 1996 Fashion Avenue Boutique collection. It goes with white pants, white boots, and a white fur muff. It's missing one of the silver caps on the lower right button. Oh well, still super cute.

Lastly, I have this bag. 

I saw one face from in the bag and I didn't care what else was in there. I was DEFINITELY taking this one.

*squeal* Vintage Barbie!!! I could not believe it. I think she is an original 1962 Bubblecut Barbie! Nail polish intact on all 10 fingers and also intact on three toes on the right foot. I think she might be the one shown below.

www.vintagebarbies.net

Here are a couple photos of her markings. Right cheek says "Barbie (R) Pats. Pend. (c) MCMLVIII By Mattel Inc. The bottom of her right foot says "JAPAN"

I also was excited to see that I had not one but TWO Skipper dolls! Both are the 1987 head mold. I never had a Skipper doll. I have some smaller clothes and I was debating whether or not to purchase a Skipper doll so I could have a reference size. But I could not bring myself to purchase a new Skipper as she now has brown hair and does not look like the Skipper dolls that I grew up with. Well, now I have two! However, she does have a small problem...

Unfortunately her head is off. The neck is broken resulting in the head "ball" not staying in anymore.

And this one also has the same problem.

I even found a cute skirt :) For me, not Barbie ;)

Old Navy, super cute, $4

The Help! Lots of help I need today.

If anyone can help me verify that this is a vintage 1962 Bubblecut Barbie that would be great. Then I can go faint ;) I checked this website and it seems to me that the markings are definitely there for her to be an original not a reproduction. http://www.vintagebarbies.net/2identifyyourbarbie.htm

How do I go about cleaning this doll? I read one website that said you can wash their hair with baby shampoo. She is very dirty and will need some more cleaning than just a general wet cloth wipedown. I'm okay with just throwing newer Barbies in the sink but this one is more delicate.

The Skipper heads. Anyone have this issue before? I know my 1985 Gift Giving Barbie has the same issue, the cracked neck so the head "ball" does not stay in the neck anymore. Hot glue? Any other ideas?

The freckled doll. Is she a Fashion Fever doll? The freckles make me want to think that it's a Gillian doll but then the mouth and eyes point toward the Drew doll.

The Teresa faced doll. She has curly or wavy red hair. All the Teresa dolls I own have brown hair. Is she another Barbie friend with the same head mold?

Are there any other dolls that came with the same earrings as the 1985 Gift Giving Barbie? 

I hope you enjoyed sharing some excitement with me. I'm going to have to go to that thrift store more often. I'm sure there is more good stuff to be had there.

~SOOOOOOOO excited! Vintage! Vintage Vintage!!~

The story mentioned in the "Really Rosy" Barbie post

So I mentioned here that I had a story about how I got my Really Rosy Kayla Doll. Here goes!

Spanish 2 my senior year in college early 2004. We had to do a skit in Spanish as a group project. My group and I thought it would be fun to have a child's "playtime" skit and figured the class would get a kick out of it. So we decided it would be fun to buy Barbies and "play" while having the Barbies speak entirely in Spanish. So one day we all went down to the local Fred Meyer to purchase some Barbies.

Hip Barbie, Cali Girl (Cali BOY!) Ken, and Really Rosy Kayla. We wanted the classic blonde Barbie and one dark hair doll. Then Cali Girl (Cali BOY!) Ken. I think because he was the only Ken they had! Hip Barbie did not come in that wedding dress, we bought it so she could get married to Ken.

The whole skit was supposed to be that Ken meets the two girls, Ken wants to marry the blonde Barbie, Kayla gets mad, then the girls who are playing get mad at each other (each girl wanted Ken to marry THEIR doll), then mom has to come in and break up the fight. Skit over and we hope that our professor gives us 100%. Out skit was hilariously funny especially when we were acting out the scene were Ken meets the girls.

*I say in a deep man voice* "Hola Barbies"
*my two group mates say in a high pitched squeaky girly voice* "Hola Ken!"

After the presentation my group mates did not have any use for the dolls so them knowing that I loved Barbie dolls gave them to me. I don't even remember which one I bought. I think it was the Ken.

Fast forward to a few weeks ago. My mom bought a doll at a garage sale and she was nude so she put a dress on her. I was going to put on some knee high yellow boots I have and display it on my shelf. Cute right?

Well, look what I found when I removed Hip Barbie from her box.

I had the dress! Complete with shoes (never even removed from the plastic) and the purse she came with. I didn't even remember she wore that dress! After college when I stored her I just left her in the wedding dress so finding this dress was a treat.

Here is Hip Barbie wearing the entire ensemble.

I think that she will have to go on my shelf and the other doll I have will get to wear something different. No two Barbies should ever be dressed the same, agree?

~Anyone else have a problem calling that Ken "Cali Girl" Ken?~

Palm Beach Teresa - is she rare?

A trip to Goodwill yesterday landed me this lovely Teresa doll. She has painted on clothes which didn't take me long to locate her.

This is Palm Beach Teresa from 2001 and the catch-phrase for these dolls are "always dressed."  There were a lot of these dolls. The whole gang is here!

ebay.com

I was searching through the toys (around a little boy who was dragging out everything from the shelves, gotta love the lack of parenting!) and I saw a hand sticking out. I knew it was from a Barbie doll. I was even more excited when I saw that it was a Teresa doll.

(FYI - I love Teresa dolls because we share the same name, spelled the same way, with no H)

She had no price and I was a little taken back when the clerk told me she was $1.99. Her left arm is loose and she squeaks at the leg joints. I couldn't bear to put her back so I paid it and went on my way.

She needed me

I wasn't too keen on the choice of attire and was thinking about dressing her but I think if I wash her it will brighten up her dull looking painted-on swimwear. Plus there is something about dressing a Barbie doll in non-original clothing. It's just my thing, I love the original clothes if I have them.

Doesn't look too dull in the pic but trust me on this one!

The Help! I've been checking completed auctions on Ebay and there is not an abundance of these dolls but sellers have them listed as "rare" and have them priced very high. A couple of them have sold recently, one deboxed went for $7.00 and another NRFB for $3.99. Some NRFB are priced around $35.00! So help me, is she really as rare as sellers are making her out to be? If she indeed is, then $1.99 isn't such a bad price after all. ;)

~Barbies on a budget!~

This one is throwing me through a loop RESOLVED!

9/8/12 - Yay! Found out who she was! The 2004 Birthday Wishes Barbie. With the Mackie head mold, not the Goddess mold that I thought before.

barbie.mattel.com

So first off I fixed her hair.

Then I knew I had a beautiful aqua colored dress. For Christmas one year when I was a kid my parents went to Costco and bought these really fancy dresses for Barbie (They are not Genuine Barbie fashions.) Beautiful isn't it? It matched her necklace perfectly and was really the only dress I had that matched.

Ah, love her :)

~Original Post~

 Beautiful Goddess head mold, red hair.

The Help! Who is she? A wonderful anonymous poster helped me on a couple of these, maybe they have ideas of this one? I'm running out of search ideas on Google and can't find her anywhere. She has on a three strand aqua pearl necklace. I thought she was one of the birthstone dolls but she didn't match any. Also note the hair style. I'm thinking she might be from one of Barbie's new movies. (Fairytopia Mermadia, The Island Princess, The Glittering Castle, etc.).

Also she does not have pierced ears. The hole in her right ear was from something weird that was shoved through her earlobe. I bought her from a yard sale and she was very distressed and very dirty.

~Fixing her up, making her pretty again, what is her name~