How to Ruin Pearl

I've been working on this doll for so long, I can't even remember when I first bought her.  It was some time in mid 2018.  She's a Denver-era Pearl, so she was ridiculously expensive on eBay, but at the time I'd never seen a Pearl doll in person before and really wanted to get my hands on one.  She reminds me of someone I love.

Sadly, since I've had her around for so long, I only have this screen shot from her auction as a glimpse of how she looked when she first came to my house:

Denver-era My Twinn Pearl.

This Pearl is a white-bodied doll from 1997 (my favorite body), but she came with several brown stains on her cloth torso.  She was also ridiculously dirty, with dust in her eyes and dirty smudges all over her vinyl.  Her face paint looked lovely in the auction photos, but in person I noticed a lot of extraneous red tinting all over.  I have no idea why.  Maybe a child tried to put makeup on her at some point?  Her wig was nice, but very dry and dirty.

I'll briefly catch you up on where I was with Pearl a few months ago when I got the idea to start this blog:

-I tried--and failed--to salvage her original wig.  I never have much luck getting wigs with bangs to look good after boil-washing.

-I carefully cleaned her face, working around the original eyebrows, which had little flecks of brown in them--almost like somebody had splattered paint nearby.

-I cleaned her cloth body with diluted bleach and managed to get all of the stains off.

-I cleaned her face and tried to repaint it, but I managed to make her cheeks even more red, giving her a clown-like, overdone appearance.

-I finally wiped off all of my paint and then coated her face with Remove-Zit, hoping to get all of the red to go away so I could start from scratch.

When I began to take pictures for this blog, I had just finished cleaning the Remove-Zit off of Pearl's face:

The Remove-Zit got rid of most of the face paint, but it left behind some red areas on the lips...and it caused Pearl's face to have some blotchy paler areas for a while (the same problem I had with Stain Calamity Kate).

I was not in a good mental place with this doll when I took those pictures.

But, the good news was that Pearl's eyebrows and beautiful dark brown eyes were still in tact and her body cleaned up beautifully.

Determined to fix her face (or at least get it back to something like its original state), I stripped away the rest of her lip paint and then got started re-painting, trying really hard not to overdo things this time around.

You can do this, Emily!

I gave her a very soft, natural lip color and some modest blush: 

Ahhh.  Nice and mellow.

Then I went to apply her eyelashes and....well...

Nooooo!

They're way too long for her.  She looks like a llama.

And that's bad because...?

I guess Pearl has shallow eye sockets?  Hm.

I forged ahead because I'm often startled by how a doll looks when I first put her eyelashes on.  Maybe Pearl's lashes would grow on me?

I hope they don't grow on her.

I gave her a lovely custom black wig (from a shop that I cannot endorse) and figured she was done!

With the stains removed, Pearl's body is actually in excellent condition.  She has very little pilling on her cloth torso and no squeaking in her armature:

Look at how pristine her back is!

After my first photo session, I reheated an area of the wig to try and remove some glue residue, and somehow managed to fry one of the eyelashes in the process:

I couldn't get used to the eyelashes anyway (they make Pearl look like an alien) so I wasn't too sad about having to remove the lashes and start again.

I wasn't really sure what to do about the lashes, though.  I searched online for some shorter lashes, but came up empty.

So...I decided to trim the lashes myself.  This did not go smoothly--as you might have guessed.

After mangling two pairs of lashes and throwing them away, this is my third attempt:

It's not wonderful, but it's also not terrible.  And eyelashes cost about $4 per set...so I had to be done.

While all of this was going on, I realized I wasn't super-happy with how Pearl looked in her pictures for reasons other than her eyelashes.

First of all, I think I set her wig too far back on her head.  Also, her face paint is way too washed-out for her vinyl color and her jet-black hair:

At first, I tried to convince myself that the wig was fine and just focused on giving the lips a tad more color.

On my first attempt, I smeared an area along the bottom lip and had to start again:

Color within the lines, Em.

Reset...

Somewhere in this process, I lost patience dealing with the long hair of the wig, and removed it again.

With the wig out of the way, I finally got the lip color that I wanted, without messing up the shape of the lips:

But with the darker lips, suddenly the eyebrows looked too faint to me!

Either I'm impossible to please, or this doll has a very firm "one step forward, two steps back" philosophy!

So, I got out my black paint and enhanced the eyebrows:

There are still some dark spots in the eyebrows, as you can see, but I just think of them as little moles.  I couldn't get them off without ruining the eyebrows:

The darker brows hide these spots even better than the old paint, though, which is nice.

I was finally sort-of happy, if you can believe it:

Here's a GIF of the first pale/long-lashed face paint attempt and the second:

After the face was done, I tried to re-seat the old wig in a better position on Pearl's head.  But Pearl has a pretty small head and so the wig just wasn't fitting her properly.  Nothing I tried looked any good.

So...I tossed that wig aside and traded it for a better-fitting, perfectly-made wig from Doll of a Kind.  I absolutely love that shop and endorse it with all of my heart:

Here's Pearl finally completed...after about a year of trying:

This wig fits her so well, and it's the perfect length.  I also like that it doesn't have any fancy curls that make it tangle too easily.

Pearl has a beautiful face mold.  I can see why she's sought-after.  I'm not sure if I did her any huge favors with this makeover, but I'm at least happy with her lip color, her darker eyebrows, and of course the wig.

I'm at the bottom of my pile of turtleneck dresses from Doll Clothes by Carole at this point, so Pearl got the green dress by default:

This green isn't the greatest color for Pearl's yellowish complexion, but the darker stripes look nice with her hair:

Here are some of my favorite portraits of Pearl:

I tried clipping her hair away from her face for a few pictures:

Oh-and here's a picture of the back of the wig, which I forgot to show earlier!

I've had such mixed feeling about this doll for the last year, it felt amazing to just relax and have some fun with her!

I have a red My Twinn brand sweater that I wanted to try on Pearl:

This isn't my favorite item of My Twinn clothing, and it doesn't go very well with the green dress (!), but I think Pearl looks absolutely gorgeous in red!!

This sweater has been washed and soaked (to remove the excess color from the yarn and lessen the likelihood of staining) and will come with Pearl to her new home.

The girl needs to wear red.

It's rare to find a Denver-era Pearl, and this doll came to me with so much potential.  I've learned that tampering with these older dolls doesn't always turn out the way I hope it will, but I did my best to persist with Pearl until she regained some of her original charm.

Here's a list of everything--or a summary of everything--that was done to Pearl:

-stains were spot-cleaned from the cloth torso

-vinyl was cleaned

-face was cleaned with Remove-Zit and Formula 9-1-1

-face was repainted (several times!) including new lip paint and enhanced eyebrows

-new eyelashes, trimmed by me (a little clumsily)

-new black wig from Doll of a Kind

-new custom outfit from Doll Clothes by Carole

It's funny, when I list everything neatly like that, it doesn't seem so bad!

Pearl's eyes are original, and her white body is in pristine condition with no squeaks and very few snags.  She has a yellow-tinged complexion that I have not seen on many other My Twinns.  She's not Oompa Loompa orange like Lucy was, but there's a lot of yellow in her coloring.  The pictures show this pretty accurately.

If you've been looking for a Pearl to add to your collection, maybe this dramatic girl is for you!  Her rare face will make her a bit more expensive than the other dolls I've sold so far, but I'm still pricing her at less than what I paid.  She's ready for a new life.  Here's her Etsy store link.

I have just one more doll to show you in this first series.  I decided to add her into the mix at the last minute--to offer more price variation to the dolls I'm selling.  She has a face that might be familiar to some of you.  Watch for her post later this weekend!