Snap Decision Safiya

I feel very fortunate to have been able to work on this lovely doll.  She is extremely rare.  I found her on eBay (with her sister, Orla the autumn fairy) at a $200 Buy it Now price.  By some lucky chance, I saw the auction shortly after it opened.  I knew, looking at those two beautiful black dolls, that they would sell in mere minutes, but $200 is a lot to invest at one time.  So I had to make a tough, split-second decision on whether or not to buy them.  My main concerns were if they'd be restorable (they were in pretty bad shape), and if I'd be able to find materials that would do them justice.

Needless to say, I clicked that tantalizing Buy it Now button, and it was definitely a good choice.  Orla is currently off ruling the fairy realm in another state, and this girl was able to reach her potential with the help of a custom-ordered ZaZou wig.

Meet Safiya (sah-fee-ah), whose name has African and Arabic roots and means pure and wise:

1997 My Twinn doll with the Catherine face.

I want to show you the pictures from which I made my $200 decision.  This seller is no longer on eBay, so I couldn't get permission to use them, but I'm hoping it's ok to share these little screenshots:

Here's Orla:

And Safi:

One thing you can see in these photos is that the orange in the dolls' vinyl is accentuated under flash and up-close.  I had this same trouble photographing them, but realized just recently that a lot of it has to do with the fact that my camera overexposes darker vinyl when I'm shooting up close.

I lowered the exposure in Safiya's pictures, but you'll still notice that her complexion appears different in the closer portraits.

Here's how Safiya looked right out of the shipping box:  

If you look closely in this picture, you can see that somebody lovingly added a tiny braid to the left side of her hair!

Safiya, like Orla, has a white cloth torso.  Based on dolls I've seen, I'm guessing that all My Twinn dolls had white torsos at first, but at some point during 1997 the company introduced body fabric that matched the dark vinyl.

The nice thing about white fabric is that it's easy to clean (bleach!), and Safiya's torso certainly needed cleaning: 

Her fabric body was filthy.  However, she has nice, strong ankle joints with no elastic, which I'm always relieved to see in these white-bodied dolls.

Safiya's armature was extremely squeaky and stiff, though.

Here's a closer look at her cloth body.  It's hard to see all of the dirt because none of the stains were very dark:

And here she is from the back:

She had a big patch of dirt and staining over her right shoulder:

Safiya also had plenty of scratches, scuffs, and dirt all over her limbs:

Some of the marks on her vinyl were clearly deep stains that would not wash away.  These scared me a bit:

In fact, many of the deep stains were on Safiya's face, which was especially scary:

She had several dark marks over her right eye, some of them going right through the eyebrow:

And she had a greenish stain on her forehead that reminds me of a paw print:

It took me a while to get up the courage to try and restore Safiya.  She was going to need every trick in my book, including a body disassembly, full body cleaning, armature lubrication, deep stain removal, full face paint, and a new 13" wig that would look realistic (something that didn't exist on the market a few months ago).

But, this sweet face inspired me to stop procrastinating and get to work:

I removed Safiya's wig and set it aside.  I'm still hoping I can restore that wig some day, but I worry that the elastic in the wig cap is too loose at this point.  I also pulled off some of the old eyelashes.

I removed Safiya's head from her body so that the body could be taken apart and put into the sink to start soaking.  I use a mild bleach solution with a little bit of detergent for this step, and then let the fabric soak for about 20 minutes.  I rinsed really carefully and then let the body air dry.  I put the foam core into a delicates bag and washed it in the washing machine before letting it air dry alongside the body.

While the body was being cleaned, I sat down to take a closer look at the head:

In addition to the two larger areas of staining on Safiya's face, there were smaller stains all across her forehead and on her chin.  Maybe some of the forehead stains show up in this picture:

Safiya's eyes were a beautiful chocolate brown.  I think they're the same color as Aurelia's eyes.  

Her eyebrows had a slightly funny pattern in them, with lots of short hairs that stick up near the bridge of the nose.  It almost looks like the inner section of the eyebrow was added at a different time from the rest of the brow:

The left eyebrow had an area of paint that had been rubbed away:

I decided that I would need to repaint the eyebrows, which made it safe to completely scrub Safiya's face.

The eyebrows faded considerably after I cleaned the face, but I left a little bit of the paint in place to serve as a guide for the new brows:

After cleaning away whatever I could with water and a Mr. Clean Magic Eraser, I slathered Remove-Zit all over the deep stains that remained.  There were a lot of them!

Poor Safi ended up with Remove-Zit over most of her forehead, and some on the left side of her chin, too:

After about a week, I wiped away the Remove-Zit to see how things were going:

I could still see the paw print stain on Safiya's forehead, but it had definitely faded:

The dark lines over her eyebrow were fading noticeably, too:

So, I applied more Remove-Zit to the areas that were still stained, and let her sit for a while longer.

Somewhere in the midst of this process, I realized that if I cover the head with plastic wrap while it's being treated, the Remove-Zit doesn't dry out and seems to stay effective for longer.  I wish I'd figured this trick out a few months ago!

Here's the head after the second stain treatment:

Now the stain on the forehead is very hard to see...

...and the dark lines over the eyebrow are completely gone:

I did one last treatment of the stain on Safiya's forehead, and this was the final result:

I can still see a faint area of darker vinyl, but it's hardly noticeable.  I decided it was good enough, and hoped for a tiny bit more fading over the next few days.

After all of the Remove-Zit was wiped away and I'd cleaned the head with Formula 9-1-1, I let everything sit for about a week so that the swelling in the vinyl could subside.

When the vinyl had recovered from all of that stain removal, I had a tough decision to make about Safiya's eyes.  Her original eyes were beautiful, but slightly buggy and (as with all dolls with the Catherine face mold) slightly wonky.

My final assessment was that the eyes didn't need to be changed, but I wanted to change them anyway.  Safiya is a rare doll, and I wanted her to have the best of everything.

So, I gave her some absolutely gorgeous dark brown glass eyes by Hand Glass Craft:

That picture doesn't show off these eyes very well (it got suddenly quite sunny near my work table), but they're the best brown eyes I have ever found.

Here's a close-up of one eye:

I love these eyes.  The irises are slightly larger than they were on the original eyes, so Safiya looks a bit less startled.  Also, the depth and shine of glass eyes is impossible to replicate with acrylic or silicone.  As a bonus, glass eyes slide into place like a dream, so there's never any damage to the surrounding vinyl.

Fortunately, I was able to remove the original brown eyes without scratching or damaging them, so I've set them aside to use on another doll.

The next big decision I had to make was whether or not to repaint Safiya's lips.  The original lips were a nice color, but had some small areas of rubbed paint.  I figured that since I was already repainting the eyebrows, I might as well do the lips, too.

So I stripped away the factory paint:

I actually liked how Safiya looked with bare lips, so when I repainted them I tried for a subtle color:

I also added a bit of mottling to Safiya's cheeks, and then repainted her eyebrows in bold black:

The last thing I did was cover Safiya's eyes and spray her with a light coat of Mr. Super Clear sealant.  I was hoping that this would dull some of the shine on her eyebrows and lips, while offering protection to her new face paint.

Here's the completed face:

The lips are still a bit shiny, but I like how they look.  This picture shows their true color well:

Finally, I added some new black eyelashes:

This was one of the smoothest face paint jobs I've ever done.  I was so nervous to work on Safi, but somehow everything just worked out well on the first or second try.  Phew!

With Safiya's head complete, I turned my attention back to her body.  Somewhere during the stain removal process, I added WD-40 to the armature and let that sit for several days.  After the lubrication had dried a bit, I wiped away all of the excess and then reassembled the body.

Once the body was back together, I tackled the stains and scuffs on Safya's vinyl limbs.  Her fingers were the worst:

She had dark stains on the tips of her fingers, and lots of scuffed, whitened vinyl.  It looked pretty awful:

So, I added some Remove-Zit (and plastic wrap!) and waited for the magic to happen.

To my surprise, after only one treatment the stains on the fingertips were gone!

I cleaned the Remove-Zit off of the hands, and then sanded down some of the larger scuffs--like this one on the tip of a finger:

Here's the same finger after some sanding:

The back of the left hand was also pretty badly scuffed:

So I sanded that...

...and then sanded it some more:

I didn't tackle every single scratch and scuff on Safiya's body.  For example, this area on the side of her arm still looks the same:

The scratches were too deep to buff out with fine sandpaper, and I didn't want to risk ruining the coloring of the whole arm by getting out coarse sandpaper.  Also, the scratches are on a part of the arm that is very rarely noticeable.

She also has some scuffs on the backs of her legs like this:

I buffed the leg scuffs a little bit to reduce the shine, but they're not completely gone.

So I would say that Safiya's vinyl parts are vastly improved from their former state, but they are still not perfect.  She carries some scars from her old life.

After weeks of work (and a lot of waiting), I was so excited to be able to put Safiya's head back on her body, put her beautiful new wig in place, and then stitch up the back seam!

Here she is:

Her wig is from ZaZou Custom Dolls and is called "Asha."  It is a gorgeous textured wig with a mix of medium brown and reddish tones.  It also has an ombre effect so all of the hair fades into a bleached blond at the tips:

I took this picture of Safiya outside because it shows off the red tones in the wig really well.  They're hard to appreciate in other photos:

I braided two small sections of hair on either side of Safiya's face, to remind me of the cute braid that I found in her original wig.

The mix of colors in this wig is youthful and fun and unlike anything I have ever seen before.  I'd love to have this style of wig in pure black, too.

The texture is achieved through lots of tiny crimps in the hair:

Safiya's wig and complexion go nicely with this rare linen floral dress from the My Twinn company:

Safiya is barefoot in all of these pictures, but she will come with some new light pink sandals from Deb's (which arrived after the photo shoot).

Since I did so much work on Safiya's body, let me back up for a second and show you a few pictures of her without the dress.

Her white cloth body has only the very faintest shadows of any stains or marks:

And her back is in great shape, with just a few small snags:

And her hands look almost back to normal:

Safiya is very photogenic, although I struggled for quite a while to get the photos to demonstrate her actual coloring.  She tends to look darker from a distance and lighter up close, and the orange tones in her vinyl are accentuated in the close-ups.

I tried some different ways of tying her hair back away from her face...

...and ended up liking my usual style with two clips the best:

In fact, with her hair pulled away from her face, I though this was a good time to do the comparison GIF!

This hairstyle also allowed me to show off Safiya's eyes and face paint a little better:

I tried putting Safiya's thick hair into a single ponytail:

This style looks nice on her, and helps show off the color of her vinyl:

I tried to replicate the high ponytail and braid from her original wig...but that was a bit of a failure!

I like the drama of Safiya's hair being swept back on one side only:

But mostly--as usual--I like the wig best when it's down:

Because of the crimping in this wig, the hair strands hold their position really well.  This allowed me to add some implied movement to the hair, as if it's caught in a mild breeze or something:

It's also fun to just clip and drape the thick hair into different positions to frame Safiya's sweet face:

I had a lot of fun photographing this doll, so I'll end with a small collection of my very favorite pictures:

Safiya was a dream to restore and fun to photograph.  The only difficult thing about her makeover was trying to make the photographs match her appearance in real life.  The original photos were very overexposed, and so I had to lower the exposure manually in order to get something like the actual skin tone.  The initial overexposure caused some loss of detail in the pictures, too, so it's just not my best photography work.  Still, I hope the beauty of this doll shines through.  She is truly a treasure.

Here's a summary of all the work that was done on Safiya:

-her head was removed and washed

-her body was disassembled and each component was washed by hand

-her squeaky armature was lubricated with WD-40

-her body was reassembled

-stains on her fingers were removed with Remove-Zit and scuffs on her hands and fingers were lessened with sanding

-deep stains on her head were removed using several treatments of Remove-Zit

-her factory lip paint was stripped and her face was scrubbed with Mr. Clean Magic Eraser

-her original eyes were replaced by premium dark brown glass eyes from Hand Glass Craft in the United Kingdom

-her face was re-painted, including lips, blush accentuation, and eyebrows

-her face was given a light coat of Mr. Super Clear sealant

-new black eyelashes were applied

-she was given a special-order wig from ZaZou Custom dolls

-she is dressed in a used My Twinn floral linen dress that will be accompanied by pink sandals

Safiya has a few remaining scratches and scuffs from her former life, and a few small picks and snags on her cloth body.  She has some staining on the bottoms of her feet that I didn't bother to remove.  A shadow of the dark stain that used to be on her forehead is still faintly visible if you look really hard.  Overall, she's in good condition and has been very thoroughly cleaned.

To me, Safiya is the most beautiful doll I have ever restored.  I love her kind eyes, her dark complexion, and her unique wig.  I'm also a sucker for a good makeover story, and Safiya is probably the doll I'd vote "most improved" from any of the girls I've worked on so far (although Daria is certainly in the running!).  I hope you like sweet Safi as much as I do!

Safiya has sold.  Thank you very much!