My Way Lucy

I'm still working away on the princess series (both of the Belle heads are painted), but I've also been enjoying some non-princess dolls during the last few weeks.  Among them are two 19" My Way Kids.  If you're new to the blog or new to the My Way Kid brand, you can find a lot more information about these dolls in this post and in some of my other recent entries.

I'm slowly figuring out the best way to clean, strengthen, and improve the bodies on these little ones, which is a challenging but rewarding process.  The bodies aren't made as well as My Twinn bodies, so that can be frustrating, but I do think they have some nice features and I enjoy their easy-to-handle size.  What I really love about these dolls, though, is working on their cute little heads!  There's something about the face molds in this line that always makes me smile.

Today I'm going to share another Cutie-faced doll with you (Mila also has the Cutie face).  The Cutie face is the most common--as far as I can tell--and so this mold is probably the easiest to find.  This girl started out as a red-headed imp with zig-zagged bangs and faded eyes:

My Way Kid doll with the Cutie face and medium vinyl.

The name Lucy popped into my head even before I started working on this doll.  Even though I've already named a My Twinn doll Lucy, I decided to use the name again.  It's a four-letter name (which fits my naming scheme for these girls), and it works well for a redhead.

Here's Lucy before I started working on her:

You can see that she has the oddly skinny waist typical of My Way Kids and that she needs a doll stand to balance.

As an aside, I've been using my new grey screen to try and moderate the color balance in my pictures.  I'm not exactly sure how to use this tool, but I've been placing it in front of each doll I photograph, like this:

And then I lock the white balance while the camera is focused on the grey square.  It seems to help, so I will continue to use it!  Thank you very much to Lilium for suggesting that I get a grey card.

Cute Lucy was in decent shape when I first got her.  I love the short red bob of her original wig, but these wigs are not very high quality, and the bangs tend to be quite uneven.

Here she is from the back:

It's hard to see from the zoomed-out photos, but her cloth torso had many spots of brown staining on it.  The fabric also smelled of mildew.

Another big problem with Lucy was that there was a gaping hole at her neck seam where the cable tie attaches.  This is unsightly, especially because it's at the side of the neck and not at the back:

It's so disheartening to see things like this because some of the dolls don't have many issues at all, while others have some really glaring flaws.  It's clear to me that the quality control was not great with this line.

But, like I said, the faces are so cute and easy to work with that I find myself unable to give up on them.

I separated Lucy's head from her body so that I could give the body a thorough cleaning.  I do this by opening up the back seam, pulling out all of the stuffing, and then washing the stuffing in the washing machine.  I also hand-wash the cloth torso in the sink using a mild bleach solution.

While the body was drying, I began to work on Lucy's head:

The wigs on these dolls pull off very easily:

The eyelashes are a bit harder to remove, but they tend to come off without too much trouble.  Lucy's eyelashes didn't have any super glue on them, which definitely helps.

Lucy had light brown plastic eyes that looked faded to me.  They also had some glue residue leaking in around the edges of the socket:

I opened up the back of Lucy's head so that I could remove her eyes:

Once the eyes were out of the way, I thoroughly cleaned the head and stripped away all of the old factory paint.  I then gave the head a base coat of Mr. Super Clear UV cut sealant.

The first eyes I tried on Lucy were these light brown glass eyes:

I tried hard to like them because they cost $15, but in the end I couldn't get past how orange they looked:

These eyes might have paired well with a different skin tone, but I didn't like how they worked with Lucy's medium complexion.

I tried these dark brown eyes instead:

These aren't quite as dark as they look in that last picture.  They're a nice, rich brown with some visible iris detail:

I used hot glue to secure these eyes in place, and then I re-attached the pate and glued that in place, too.

The Belle princesses don't have any freckles, so I've had some serious freckle withdrawal lately.  To help cure this, I gave Lucy a generous dose of freckles and some red eyebrows:

You can see where this is going.

Last, I gave her a fiery red wig with bangs.  I also glued on some new upper eyelashes.  I use tacky glue to secure the eyelashes, and so you can still see some of the white from the wet glue in this picture:

Lucy has been reunited with her body in those last few pictures, but let me take a sec to talk more about what I did with the body.

For both Lucy and the other Kid I'm working on right now, I removed the entire ring of fabric at the neck:

I re-sewed this band of fabric by hand, positioning the gap at the back of the neck rather than at the side.  I did two layers of stitching to make it strong.

The new seam looks ok from the front:

But there's still a pretty big gap at the back:

Sigh.

I covered this gap with a small hand-sewn patch:

I don't think that this patch looks very good.  I might try to find a small heart patch or something cute like that for future dolls.  I think that would make it look more deliberate and less like a mistake.

While the body was disassembled, I also used hot glue to reinforce all of the places where the armature attaches to vinyl:

And I used vinyl glue to reinforce all of the fabric-to-vinyl seams.  I do this because the stitching that holds the fabric to the vinyl often looks incomplete or loose.

I put glue between the fabric and the vinyl (which you can see in the picture below) and I also put a line of glue along all of the stitching so that it can't move or loosen anymore.

The other thing I did was to let out the seams along Lucy's waist.  I've started doing this with all of the My Way Kid dolls because I think it gives them a much more natural-looking torso shape for a young child.

The one down-side is that letting out the stitches in the waist often leaves behind a few subtle areas of disturbed weave in the fabric of the torso:

All of this is fairly tedious work, but I feel like it makes the dolls much more durable.  I don't quite have my technique figured out yet, but I'm getting really close.

I did my best to re-shape Lucy's ankles, too.  I do this by setting her feet in hot water, and then putting them into ice water while flattening the feet against a hard surface.  Now she can stand on her own in some situations...although still not very solidly.  These dolls are really best with a doll stand.

Here's Miss Lucy all put together again and standing on her own:

She has a nice wide torso now:

But she looks a little funny from the back because of that odd patch:

I was excited to be able to use one of the new outfits that Julie from Fairy Tale Blessings made for these dolls!  Remember that Julie uses one of my dolls as a model, so she's designed the clothes to fit a doll with the waist seams let out.

Lucy's hair is very bright and fun (not necessarily a natural red), and so I wanted to give her an outfit with a similar kind of brightness and whimsy.  This mix-and match concoction was perfect for her!

I paired this outfit with some pink suede boots, and Julie even made coordinating hair bows!

I wish I could remember where exactly this wig came from.  I buy my wigs from a few different Etsy shops, but mostly from Doll of a Kind and ZaZou Custom Dolls.  I think it's from ZaZou, although the pictures on Etsy make the color seem quite different.

Lucy's ankles were reheated and reshaped, but I still added some foam wedges to the backs of her boots so that she can pose and balance a bit better.

I send all of the My Way Kids home with a name bracelet.  Here's Lucy showing off her new bracelet:

The bracelets are made with colorful glass beads and acrylic letter beads.  The beads are strung onto colored elastic and tied together.  Nothing fancy.

I love how the blue hair bows look with Lucy's outfit, but I took them out for a little while so that you can see the wig more clearly:

The wig has some curl, but it's pretty easy to manage.  It can be brushed (I brushed it several times) but I think it looks a little better if it's just finger-combed.

I got a little carried away taking tons of pictures of this colorful girl! 

Finally, though, here's a nice portrait of her...

...so that we can see the comparison GIF:

I also took Lucy outside for a few pictures because the daylight shows her off in a different way:

Our yard doesn't have a lot of color right now, but Lucy has enough color of her own to make up for that!

She's my little flower child.

I really appreciate those of you who have adopted one of these Kids already--before I completely figured out my methods for restoring and improving them.  Your support means a lot!  I feel like I'm finally closing in on a good system for working with these munchkins, and I'm having a really great time doing it!

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

-the head was removed from the body

-the back seam on the body was removed and all stuffing was taken out to be washed

-the fabric torso was hand-washed in a mild bleach solution

-the vinyl-to-fabric seams were reinforced with vinyl glue

-areas where the armature attaches to the vinyl were reinforced with hot glue

-the band of fabric around the neck was removed and re-sewn so that the seam is at the back

-the body was re-stuffed with the original stuffing

-the back seam was re-sewn by hand

-the pate was removed and the old eyes were taken out

-old eyelashes were removed

-the head was cleaned and all factory paint was stripped

-the head was coated with Mr. Super Clear UV cut matte sealant

-new brown glass eyes were placed and then secured with hot glue

-the pate was re-attached and glued with hot glue

-the face was repainted with artist grade acrylic paints and then re-sealed with Mr. Super Clear

-new eyelashes were placed on the top only

-a new premium wig was glued at the front and at the back with hot glue

-Lucy is wearing a wonderful two-piece ensemble made by Julie from Fairy Tale Blessings.  The outfit also includes pink suede boots and two ribbon hair clips

-Lucy wears a hand-made beaded name bracelet

Because I have not yet perfected my techniques, Lucy has a strange rectangular patch on the back of her neck. This reinforces the fabric in that area and also acts to conceal the gap in her neck seam. Overall, she's cleaner and more durable than she was when I got her.

I have two more non-princess dolls to show you in the near future, and I'll continue to work away on the two Belles!  I hope everyone is having a fun, healthy, and not-too-hot summer so far!  I'll be back again soon with an interesting My Twinn girl.

Lucy has sold.  Thank you!