Transplant Madelyn

Thank you for all of the lovely messages in the last post!  It's really nice to be back online.  A lot of things have changed in the past few months, and so it feels good to return to some of my normal routine.  

One thing that's not normal is that my doll studio has been relegated to an unfinished basement.  This is nice because I have a lot of open space all to myself, but it's a drag because I get interrupted by things like a broken furnace and water leaking in from outside!  The furnace is fixed now, and we've installed a sump pump to keep everything dry, so I can focus on things like fine-tuning my lighting set-up...and maybe some day building myself some walls that aren't made out of old moving boxes.

Until I get the lighting situation improved, though, I have to apologize for slightly murky photos.  You'll probably be able to tell which pictures were taken in Maine and which were taken here at the new house.  We can at least start with a clear picture of this bright-eyed Jessica:

1997 My Twinn doll with the Jessica face.

This doll was originally intended to be a giveaway that accompanied the Little Women series.  However, another thing that's changed for me is that I can no longer offer giveaway dolls.  Life is expensive, and I need to be better about covering my costs.

However, I will occasionally offer discounted dolls--like this one--who will appear in my Etsy shop on a first come, first served basis like all of my regular dolls.

I found this doll at the Goodwill for what I thought was a decent price--I think it was around $40.  The Jessica face is fairly rare, and of course Denver dolls tend to be well-made.  However, this doll had the dreaded loose ankle syndrome that's caused by the elastic joints in some early white-bodied girls:

She was also very dirty, with an extensively-stained cloth body and dirt-encrusted vinyl parts:

You might be wondering why the back seam is already open on this doll and why her legs look wrinkled and lumpy.  

You might also be marveling at how well she stands on her own for a loose-ankled girl...

...well, all of that is because before I took any pictures of this doll, I decided to try and find a permanent cure for loose ankle syndrome.  My idea was to do an armature transplant: to dissect the elastic-strung joints and see if they could be replaced with normal armature.

If my experiment had failed, I would have simply found this Jessica head a new body, but because my experiment was a success (hurrah!) I went back and took those "before" pictures for the blog.

Now, let me take a minute to show you how I fixed the joints!

The first thing I did was snip the thick elastic band that runs through the ankle joint.  You can see that there's a satin ribbon on either side of the elastic:

Here's the cut elastic and ribbon on the leg side of the joint:

The elastic is set securely into a plastic holder that was glued to the armature of the leg:

I detached this piece from the rest of the leg, taking a few links of armature with it so that you could see how everything fits together:

The foot side is on the left of this picture, leg side is on the right.

With that plastic piece removed, the leg was left with a normal string of armature--albeit a short one:

And the foot, after I scraped out all of the remaining elastic, was left with a big hole:

As an aside, one other thing I noticed while I was taking this doll apart was that the foam in her legs was filled with white stuffing.  This is not how most of these dolls look when they come apart:

Leg stuffing!

Anyway, next I added some armature links to the leg to make up for the removed elastic contraption. 

I purchased new armature specifically for this project, but even though it was the correct size, the links didn't fit securely with the existing armature.  I ended up using armature from a My Twinn body donor.  The body I used had irreparable discoloration, so this was a good way to recycle some parts.

Last, I used my super-strength hot glue to secure the end of the armature into the hole in the foot.  Here's how it looked:

I'm not sure how well the hot glue will hold up over time, but if the foot ever falls off, a stronger glue like E6000 could be used to put it more permanently back in place.  For now, it feels very sturdy!  And it moves and acts like a completely normal My Twinn foot joint.  I find myself forgetting that I ever did anything to change these legs.  It's pretty exciting!

With that repair out of the way, I dismantled the body and gave all of the parts a thorough cleaning. This included soaking the cloth torso in bleach and putting all of the foam and stuffing into the washing machine.  I also scrubbed the vinyl limbs with Mr. Clean Magic Eraser.  I left everything out to air-dry for a week or two before reassembling the body.

Finally, I was able to focus my attention on this girl's face. I also needed give her a name.  I actually had some trouble naming this doll until the very end when her wig was in place and she was all dressed.  At that point, the name "Madelyn" jumped into my head and wouldn't leave, so she's Madelyn now!

Madelyn came to me with a dirty face, a matted wig, some rubbed paint, and missing eyelashes:

She also has beautiful (though faint) artist brows.  These are not very common on the earliest white-bodied dolls, so it was an exciting find:

My plan was to clean Madelyn's face thoroughly while trying to preserve the original eyebrows.

I removed her wig and brought her into my studio for a closer look:

She had pretty hazel eyes with some minor fading.  The worst thing about her eyes was that the lashes seemed to have been glued into place with super glue.  It's hard to appreciate this in the pictures, but the eye sockets were rimmed with an opaque white substance:

Madelyn's lip paint was in good shape overall, but the upper lip was crooked in a way that bugged me:

Most of her face was covered with dirt smudges and areas of missing blush:

I removed her remaining eyelashes and washed her whole head with soap and water, being very careful around the eyebrows:

You can see that there's a faint halo of darker (dirtier) vinyl around the eyebrows.  This is because if I had vigorously cleaned any closer to the brows, I would have damaged them:

Once the head was as clean as I could get it, I removed the old eyes:

You can see the glue residue around the eyes a little better now:

I sanded around the eye sockets as best I could, and then I stripped away all of the factory paint--again, being careful to preserve the eyebrows:

The eyebrows are untouched, but again--you can see a faint halo of darker vinyl:

Because Madelyn was originally intended to be part of the Little Women series, she got some lovely Hand Glass Craft glass eyes.  These eyes are a beautiful blue-grey color, but the pupils are a tad larger than I'd like, so they were in my seconds pile:

That was all I managed to accomplish back in Maine before the process of moving completely took over my life.

When I finally got my work table set up here in New Jersey, one of the first things I did was to paint Madelyn's face.

The lighting was so bad here at first, though, that I had to dramatically overexpose my photos just to get things to show up.  Sorry about that.  Here's Madelyn's painted face:

With some very unflattering light.

I gave her a slightly smaller lip pattern than what she had before:

And I also gave her some light freckles:

No surprise there.

I made an attempt to fix Madelyn's original wig when I was back in Maine, but it faded badly in the boil wash process, and so I ended up not using it.

Instead, I chose a medium blonde Monique wig for her.  I'll talk about Monique closing shop in another post because now I'm too depressed about it.

The color of the new wig matches Madelyn's eyebrows better than the original wig did.  I even gave the hair a trim so that it was distinct from all of the long, curly wigs that seem to saturate the market these days.

Here's Miss Madelyn with her clean body, new face, and sturdy ankles!

Most of the stains are gone from her cloth torso:

I used some of Madelyn's extra stuffing to fill in around her chest and arms where the original foam seemed a bit thin.  You can see these areas if you look closely.

Madelyn still has some areas of darkened cloth on her body that did not come out with bleach.  The worst of these spots are at the seams between her cloth and vinyl limbs:

Madelyn also has a faint dark mark along the right side of her lower jaw:

And of course she has the darker area around her eyebrows:

Last of all, she's wearing the reject pair of boots from the Little Women collection, and the left shoe in this set has a small black stain on it:

The extra Little Women dress that I had on hand did not suit Madelyn's medium complexion, so I put her in this cute seamstress dress that I found on Etsy:

The colors in this dress go nicely with Madelyn's hair and eyes!

the dress also matches the cream-colored boots pretty well...

...and I added some light peach tights that coordinate nicely:

Again, the lighting is not great in my new house yet, and so the colors might be a little off in these photos, but I think they capture Madelyn's complexion pretty accurately.  She has a medium, slightly golden skin tone:

Here's her comparison GIF:

I really liked Madelyn's original look (as I often do with these older dolls) but I think the updated hairstyle suits her, and I like the extra sparkle she has in her eyes now.  I feel like perhaps she knows a little secret that she's just dying to tell everybody!

I didn't go nuts with photography this time, mostly because I'm still figuring things out, but I hope Madelyn's sweet little self shines through well enough with this modest collection of photos:

I really like this length of hair.  It's long enough so that you can have some fun playing with it, but it doesn't look messy or get out of control very easily.

As Nikki said in the comments of the last post, the Jessica face mold is prone to having a comical, shocked expression.  I like Madelyn because her original eyebrows give her a calmer demeanor than many other dolls with this face.  She's only mildly surprised.  Amused, perhaps.

My biggest victory with this doll is that I managed to successfully transplant new armature into her ankles--completely eliminating the lose ankle syndrome.  She's been happily (and sturdily) standing on my little display table for the last few weeks with no tipping or wobbling whatsoever.  I am excited to be able to repeat this repair on the few remaining loose-ankled girls that I have in my stash.

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

-her elastic ankle joints were removed from the armature

-new armature was snapped on to replace the missing ankle joint mechanism

-the ends of the new armature were glued into the feet using professional strength hot glue

-the body was disassembled and thoroughly cleaned, including a diluted bleach bath for the cloth torso and machine washing for the foam and stuffing.

-all vinyl parts were washed with soap and water and scrubbed with Mr. Clean Magic Eraser

-the original eyes were removed and glue reside was sanded away from the eye sockets

-most face paint was stripped, leaving behind the original artist eyebrows

-the face was coated with Mr. Super Clear matte sealant

-new glass eyes from Hand Glass Craft were inserted

-the face was repainted, including blush, lips, and freckles

-the head and body were re-attached

-new eyelashes were placed

-a new Monique wig was glued at the front and back, and then the hair was trimmed into a long bob style

-Madelyn is wearing a seamstress dress paired with tights and boots.

Madelyn was a very dirty and beat-up old doll when I got her, so she has some remaining defects: a faint mark on the right side of her jaw, some darker shading around her old eyebrows, some mild staining on the seams between her cloth and vinyl parts, and a black mark on one shoe.  Other than that, she has only a few shiny areas and snags from being old.  Her glass eyes make her an inappropriate toy for very small children.

With her shiny eyes and cute hairstyle, this cleaned-up girl is ready for a new start.  Because of the experimental nature of her ankle repair, she will be my first bargain doll of the year (Madelyn has sold--thank you!).

With Medlyn off to her new home, I'll be starting photography sessions with the first princesses (finally!) and getting ready to tell you about a cute new doll brand that I've been playing with.  For those who like guessing games, this new brand is actually old (discontinued), in the slim 18" play doll category, has an armature like My Twinn, and does not share clothing with American Girl very well (unfortunately).  Also, I never talked about these dolls on Toy Box Philosopher.   That's not much to go on, but somebody might come up with it. 

Thank you for coming back for a visit, and I hope all of you are enjoying the first few days of spring!