Cassiel

I'm already feeling a bit frazzled by too many Ariels!  Everything was fine when they all still had their original wigs and eyes in place, but now that I'm starting to dismantle each doll and remove her eyes and paint...well, it's getting hard to tell everybody apart!  I've labeled all of the Ariel bits that are strewn around my workshop, so at least nobody will get matched up with the wrong body parts.

I didn't want to add to this confusion by naming all six of the dolls Ariel (kind of like Dr. Seuss' Too Many Daves...), but I did want to choose a naming theme that would acknowledge this celebration of the Ariel mold.  So, I decided that all of the girls should have names that end in -iel.

The first doll I'm going to share is the one I've been working on the longest.  I bought this girl in February and have been gradually fixing her up ever since.  She's a 1997 Ariel who I re-named Cassiel:

1997 My Twinn doll with the Ariel face.

Angel names end in -iel quite a lot, and so, unintentionally, a few of the dolls in this series share their name with an angel.  As an example, Ariel is the angel of nature.  Ariel also oversees the healing of animals and plants, which I find especially wonderful.  I've always been fascinated by angel names and personalities.

The archangel Cassiel is the angel of tears and solitude (pretty gloomy)...and is also an old bearded dude who rides around on a dragon.  Not a great namesake for this particular doll.

Perhaps a better angel association for the name Cassiel is that it can be interpreted to mean "angel of Saturday."  This is a bit more cheerful than the archangel's persona...and a lot less bearded.

In any case, Cassiel came to me in terrible shape.  Because she has the sweet Ariel face, though, she still looked lovely:

You can see that her wig was thin and ratty and her face had some mild scuffs and stains, but the worst issue was her body:

She has a 1997 body with a white torso, only a few squeaks, and tight ankle joints (yay!).  But her vinyl limbs were horribly stained.

Here she is from the back:

Her fabric torso was in decent shape, but it had some mild staining and a lot of picks:

Let's zoom in a take a closer look at Cassiel's vinyl staining.  First, here's her face:

She had some small marks on her cheeks, the darkest of which were on her right side.  She also had a ring of staining around her neck (I've seen this pattern a lot--it must coincide with a specific My Twinn outfit):

Cassiel's limbs were spectacularly stained:

Most of the marks were deep ink stains from clothing, but she also had some scuffs, pen marks, and nail polish smudges:

The fabric torso was not in terrible shape, but it did have some areas of discoloration and a few drops of what looked like glitter glue or nail polish.  Here's a particularly bad area:

I took Cassiel to my worktable so that I could get to work on the stains.  

Here's her right arm:

I was touched by the little cluster of pen-drawn hearts on this arm.  I can picture a young child--perhaps dismayed by the staining on the doll--drawing the hearts in an effort to make the whole mess look cheery and intentional.

Very sweet.

A part of me wanted to preserve those hearts but in reality, the messy business of removing stains does not allow for much precision.  So I coated the whole arm in Remove-Zit and waited for the stains to dissipate.

The hearts actually disappeared first (somewhat sad, but not surprising), and the deeper stains began to fade more slowly:

I did several treatments over the months, not always taking pictures in between Remove-Zit applications.  

Here's the stage when I felt like I might be making real progress:

Almost done!

I recorded a similar transformation on the other arm, too:

The whole process takes a crazy amount of patience.

One of the worst arm stains was on the left elbow:

But it slowly...

...slowly started to disappear.

The legs were not in quite as bad shape as the arms, but they were still heavily-stained:

But I was able to get these stains to fade over time, too.

Once all of the stains were difficult to see, I took the body apart and washed the cloth torso in a bath of bleach and detergent.  I like to do this after using Remove-Zit because that gooey stuff can get onto the cloth body if I'm not careful.

After the body was clean and dry, I set everything aside so that the vinyl could recover from the intensive stain removal therapy.

While the long-term work on the body was progressing, I was also working on the head.

Cassiel came with purple-blue eyes (not my favorite thing) and a light spray of freckles over her nose (one of my very favorite things!):

As a reminder, her head had a few areas of staining, with some colored marks on her right cheek:

And some darker stains on her left lip, cheek, and ear:

And of course she also had that dark stain around her neck, which--forgive my dark mind--I always think of as the garrote stain.

That needed to go.

I removed the eyelashes...

And the eyes...

And I washed the face and applied Remove-Zit to all of the problem areas.

The smaller stains came out after only one or two treatments:

You can still see the areas of swollen vinyl where the Remove-Zit used to be, though.

The stain around the neck was more stubborn.  Here it is after three treatments:

Finally, all of the stains faded to barely visible or invisible and I was able to wash the head with Formula 9-1-1.

I stripped away all of Cassiel's factory paint and then washed the head again.  Once I was happy with everything, I set the head aside for about two months, giving the vinyl some time to recover.

Around the time I was finishing up the unicorn girls,  I got Cassiel's head down from the shelf and began to work on her again.

I had a very clear vision in my head for how I wanted this girl to look.  My vision started with Eyeco's sable brown eyes:

In the interests of trying to achieve something different with the eyebrows, I used this photograph of a real little girl's eyebrow to model my design for Cassiel's brows:

I penciled in the rough shape:

And then painted over it with acrylics:

Incidentally, I'm not sure why Cassie looks more yellow in these pictures all of a sudden.  I think the lighting was bad.  She has the typical pale-but-not-super-pale skin tone.  An 02, I suppose.

Once the eyebrows were done, I gave Cassiel some blush, lip paint, and freckles.  The freckles are plentiful, but very soft and faint.  I also painted the color of her lips inside the molded shape of her mouth in an effort to make the mouth look a little different from a typical Ariel face:

Here's a close-up of one eyebrow:

And here's a close-up of the mouth:

Last, I gave Cassiel some new auburn eyelashes and a beautiful ginger wig from ZaZou Custom Dolls.  

Here she is waiting for her eyelash glue to dry:

I have to say, the Ariel face has eye sockets that are so easy to work with!  I love the solid, thick eyelids.  I also love the overall size and shape of these eyes.

Anyway, I'll show you a few pictures of Cassiel fully assembled but without her outfit.  This way you can see how her body looks now: 

No more stains.

There's only a very faint mark on the front of her torso now:

And there's no staining on her vinyl neck:

Her back still has a lot of pulls in the fabric (and the seam is a little wonky), but there are no stains:

Any remaining marks on her vinyl limbs look like very faint bruises at this point.

In this shot maybe you can make out a faint dark mark just below the back of the knee--that's a typical leftover stain:

Cassiel's arms look good, too, with only some very faintly darker areas.

Cassiel also has a few small scratches on her vinyl limbs, but none of these were noticeable enough for me to photograph or fix.

I didn't want the outfits in this collection to influence how different the girls look in the end, so I chose to dress them all in the same very simple white peasant dress--no shoes or other clothing extras.  The only difference in outfits will be the color of ribbon that's tied around each girl's waist.  

Also, if I can get my act together, each outfit will have a tiny birthstone necklace that matches the ribbon.  Cassiel's birthstone hadn't arrived in time for me to photograph her with it, but she'll have a November (topaz/citrine) stone that matches her ribbon.

Here's Cassie in her dress!

This wig is the Marina style from ZaZou Custom Dolls.  The wig is not as bright red as it appears on Etsy, but it's a beautiful light red or ginger color.  I originally thought that it might be the perfect wig for a Princess Merida doll, but it's definitely not bright enough for that.

Here's the back of the wig--it has the same wonderful curls as the Sekira wig that Rani is wearing.

I'll admit that I wasn't crazy about this wig when I first saw it--mostly because the color was more muted than I'd expected--but I've since fallen in love with it.  It's beautiful, and it's wonderfully photogenic on Cassie:

She reminds me of Raggedy Ann for some reason.

Here are some more portraits of her from different angles:

These curly wigs add such wonderful playfulness to a doll's personality.

But Cassiel has a serious side, too.  I can see her walking barefoot along a Maine beach, lost in thought:

While her hair was down, I got a front-facing shot to use for her comparison GIF:

And here's the GIF itself:

And a still version of the after shot:

I think Cassiel's new look is completely different from her original look.  I just hope that I can get the other five Ariels to look this different from each other!

I clipped Cassiel's hair back for a few photos because I love how this hairstyle shows off the curls (and the ears!):

I also took Cassie outside for a few shots--before the tropical storm hit on Tuesday night!

The sunshine definitely brings out the red in her hair.

Every week we seem to have a different assortment of wildflowers in our lawn.  This week we had some delicate little yellow flowers that Cassiel was obsessed with!  

She begged me to arrange a few of them in her gorgeous hair:

The Ariel face is an absolute joy to work on, with those nice lips and well-formed eyes, but I don't think I pushed outside of my typical artistic boundaries quite enough with Cassiel.  I guess I'll have to get a little more daring in the makeovers to come!  I really like Cassie's new soft appearance, though, especially after the grueling, messy stain-removal process that she had to endure.

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

-her head was separated from her body

-her eyelashes and eyes were removed and all of her vinyl parts were cleaned

-a scuff on the tip of her nose was sanded down

-all stained areas were treated with multiple applications of Remove-Zit

-the Remove-Zit was cleaned away with Formula 9-1-1 and then washed with soap and water

-all old factory paint was stripped away

-the cloth torso was washed and the body was re-assembled

-the vinyl was left to sit for a few months

-her head was treated with Mr. Super Clear sealant

-she was given new Eyeco sable brown acrylic eyes

-she was given new face paint, including lips, blush, faint freckles, and eyebrows

-she was given new eyelashes

-she is wearing a new Marina wig from ZaZou Custom Dolls

-she is dressed in a white peasant dress from Doll Clothes by Carole.  The dress is accented with a satin ribbon and will include a crystal birthstone necklace.

Cassiel still has some very faint staining on her vinyl limbs, but you have to look closely to see it.  She also has some minor squeaks in her armature and many picks on her fabric torso.  It's still possibly to see that she used to have a big scratch on the tip of her nose (but I only noticed it in the sunlight). In order to preserve the curls, her wig should be styled with care and never brushed.

I re-dressed Cassie in something more seasonally appropriate and thought you might enjoy the pictures!