The Walking Red

I'm still presenting dolls that I've been working on for longer than I've had the blog idea, but the first pictures I took of this Denver Catherine nicely capture the creepy, zombie-like appearance that she had in her auction photos:

2002 My Twinn Catherine with eyes removed.

Here are some snippets from her auction so you can see what I mean:

Grr, argh!

She had this crazed, un-dead appearance with her pink eyes and pale skin:

However, anyone who knows me from Toy Box Philosopher knows that I simply cannot resist a redhead.  And redheaded My Twinns are fairly rare.  This Catherine also has the very pale skin tone that can be tricky to find.

Perhaps you can imagine why the moment she got to my house, I heated up her head and popped out her eyes.  I didn't need those spooky orbs staring at me in the dark.

Here she is shortly after that procedure:

Her wig was in pretty bad shape, but I was determined to salvage it because it's hard to find new red wigs in this size:

The wig came off easily and went off to be boiled, brushed, and conditioned.

Here's Catherine's head without the wig:

I bought this doll shortly after I bought another My Twinn Catherine.  That doll's name will stay Catherine, or "Dog Bite Catherine" as I tend to think of her.  Poor thing.  So, I decided to name this girl Ashley to distinguish her from the other Catherine.  The name works nicely because collectors call this face mold "Catherine Ashley." 

Ashley's face was in pretty good shape, with faded freckles and bright lips.  She had some makeup and glitter stuck in her mouth and around her eyes, but there was no damage to the vinyl:

A previous owner had given her some very heavy black eyeliner, and this was a hard stain to remove:

Once I got the black coloring off of Ashley's eye sockets, I was eager to give her some proper eyes.

I tend to gravitate towards green or blue eyes when I'm working with a redheaded doll, but for Ashley I wanted to try brown eyes instead.  

I started by inserting some acrylic Eyeco eyes in deep sable:

I left these eyes in for a few days, but I couldn't get used to them.  They're a little beady.  My husband said they look like Chihuahua eyes.

He's right, but is that a bad thing??

I also wasn't loving Ashley's super-bright lips.  Compared to the lips on some of the other girls I have hanging around the house, these just looked unnatural:

So, I scrubbed the color off of Ashley's lips and popped in some Tiger Brown acrylic Secrist eyes:

These aren't perfect eyes, either, but I think they have a softer effect on her expression.

My first attempt to re-paint Ashley's lips left them looking almost exactly as bright as they were originally:

Try again.

So I started over!

I like the color of my second attempt a lot better:

I gave Ashley some new freckles and painted over her faded old eyebrows with some brighter red paint:

Then I added lashes:

While all of this painting was going on, the cleaned and conditioned wig was drying thoroughly for several weeks in my work room.  

The wig is very straight, which always happens when I boil wigs, but it's nice and soft and easy to manage now.  And the color is beautiful!

Ashley's body is in pretty good shape.  She has snags on her back:

Here's a better look:

And she has the more generously-stuffed body that is typical of the dolls from 2002 (the last year of Denver production):

There are some marks on Ashley's cloth torso that I was not able to remove:

And a few marks on her vinyl here and there that were stubborn to my cleaning efforts:

The most noticeable stain is this pen mark between two of her toes:

I tried and tried and was unable to get that stain to budge.

I don't spent too much time looking at my dolls' feet, so I decided to stop battling minor stains and declare Ashley complete!

Here she is:

And here's a GIF of her transformation.  I wish I'd kept her pink eyes in place for one picture, but this will have to do:

I'm pretty happy with how she turned out, but her hair looks a bit too straight and her eyes are not quite the perfect brown doll eye that I keep hoping I'll find some day.

I dressed Ashley in the last of the three versions the of Carole Anderson's striped dress.  I really like the fall color palette of this dress with Ashley's red hair:

I experimented a bit with pulling Ashley's hair back:

She looks lost to me in these pictures, though:

So, I brought a little My Twinn terrier dog into the photo shoot to liven things up:

I also tried pulling Ashley's hair back into higher clipped ponytails, like this:

I like this style best.

As an aside, one thing I noticed as I was looking at Ashley's photos is that I didn't set her bottom right eyelash very well.  I re-did the eyelash later, and while it still isn't perfect, this is how it looks now:

Slightly better.

Here are a few more pictures of this cute redhead in her best hairstyle:

To me, the things that made Ashley special from the very start were her wig and her beautiful pale complexion.  I'm happy to have preserved this pairing in her makeover.  She really didn't require very much attention overall.

Here's a summary of everything that was done to Ashley:

-wig was removed, boiled, and conditioned with a product that is designed for synthetic wigs

-new Secrist Tiger Brown acrylic eyes

-new eyelashes

-new face paint, including lips and eyebrows

-mild cleaning of vinyl parts with some focused stain removal efforts on the feet and eye sockets

Ashley has pulls and a few small stains on her cloth torso.  She also has some staining on her feet, including an ink line between two of her toes.  Her armature is a little squeaky.

If you love redheads as much as I do, Ashley might be the perfect girl for you!

Ashley is sold. Thank you!