Tutorials

1. Root the eyelashes closely together to avoid gaps, make the eyelashes very long (you’ll cut them later)
2. Use an elastic + boil perm to set the long eyelashes up against the face
3. Use nail scissors or sewing scissors to trim the eyelashes down to a slanting shape – no longer than 3mm at the shortest part (so it will look like eyeliner not lashes at certain angles).

Model: Myscene Madison custom “Blue Moon” who’s going to get a boil perm soon. Sorry about the sloppy photos, it’s just to show the technique. She had a wonky eye placement and the eyelashes are meant to minimise that.

Froggystuff posted an excellent quick doll wig tutorial, see it here.

Here’s how to make it seamless:

After following the previous tutorial,
¤ Use an elastic band that you can sew through (flat) or around (thin)
If the elastic is too long, cut it to size and sew the ends together roughly.
¤ Pin it in several places to the head (push the pin through the elastic and into vinyl of the scalp)
¤ Sew it to the hair (use a matching colour thread)
¤ Turn it inside out and place it on your doll’s head
¤ Cut a fringe (bangs) if the elastic is too visible.

You now have a seamless wig that should hold nicely even when shaken!

To make a head band for your doll you will need:

• Wire from a used spiral bound notebook or thick beading wire.
• 4mm and 3mm plastic beads
• Wire cutter and Round nose pliers (optional)

1. Cut 12cm of wire for a bratz head, 9cm for a barbie head, 20cm for a pullip head.
2. Make a loop at the start of the wire, string on your beads and make another loop to close it.
3. Bend the headband to fit your dolls head. You’re done!

Models: Maggie – Bratz Nighty Nighty Meygan and Dahlia – Fairytopia Barbie

Notes:

• To straighten out spiral notebook wire, just jam a piece under your foot and use pliers to gently pull it straight.
• You can also wrap your wire with ribbon or yarn for different effects.
• If you have beading wire but it’s too thin and flexible then fold it in two and twist it tightly to make thicker wire.
• You can use bigger beads for Pullip heads but for smaller dolls, anything over 4mm looks out of scale.

Note: I’m not certain that this is the exact original hair style because my Tiana arrived with her hair messed up but it’s what i’ve been able to piece together from people’s photos.

You’ll need lots of elastics and clips, a brush and something fine to tease out hair strands.

Step 1:
Seperate the parting hair from the rest (look at how it’s rooted and tease out all the strands that don’t belong) then seperate the left hair from the right and attach an elastic around each bunch.

Step 2:
Seperate the jet black hair from the rest (you can tell what belongs and what doesn’t because it won’t be the same length)
Tie elastics or clips around the left and right bits of hair
Take the all black hair and make a tight pony tail.

You should now have 5 seperate pieces of hair:
Left and Right parting hair
Left and Right normal hair
and all Black hair ponytail

Step 3:
Tease out 4 strands of jet black hair right at the bottom of the neck and re-tie the black hair ponytail. Keep those 4 strands clipped aside.

Step 4:
Pull the left and right bits of normal hair into a pony tail above the black pony tail and tie with an elastic.
Clip the 2 (black and normal) ponytails together, out of the way, so you can work clearly.

Step 5:
Take 2 of those 4 little strands of black hair from the neck and wrap them around the left bunch of parting hair, pull tight and then attach it with an elastic close to the bottom of the neck.
Do the same for the other side.

 

You’re done!

Monster high head size comparison with Barbie and Bratz.

You can also see the neck hole size and the big annoying neck anchor:

For a mid calf length reroot of Draculaura, I used 75% of 1 RD hank of Wild Lavender and less than 2 RD hanks of Sherbert Pink but she’s rooted very thickly.
I think you could probably reroot a monster high doll with 2 RD hanks.

Use a cotton wipe with acetone or nail polish remover then tidy up with q-tips/cotton buds.

I’ve done this several times but never thought to take photos!

Often, rerooting by using just the factory plugs is not enough. The doll may have been originally created with bigger hair, curls or a specific hairstyle so the factory root pattern will match that.
A versatile reroot will allow for all kind of hairstyles on a doll so you’ll need to create your own holes to fill in the gaps.

This is Dresden after rerooting her factory plugs. I had to add 15-20 plugs more to fill in all the gaps.

Original doll (thick kanekalon curls) vs full reroot (fine silky saran):

Another example is Formal Funk  Jade, a doll designed to have a tight pony tail hardo. When her hair is down, she has no parting so her hair looks thin when loose.

I gave her a side parting and filled out her hair a little with approx 50 plugs of hair.

Found a Barbie “Mini B” set on ebay for cheap so I thought I’d see how it matches up to Lil Bratz and the Pocket Lil Bratz.

The doll is well painted with a cute grin, her hair is 2 tones of saran, the dress is real fabric, of fairly solid material. She doesn’t quite fit on her stand so her legs go sideways and are stuck that way. Only the head turns. She came with a surprisingly detailed dog, a tiny clip-on phone (printed paper on plastic) and a brush. The mobile phone themed case is adorable in pink and yellow and has a nice solid snap shut. The clip and string don’t feel like they’d last long in play.

The doll has a tiny flaw to the eye but excellent facial screening (properly aligned which is rare on small dolls). She’s smaller than a Q-tip (as seen in background).

So overall:

• Pros – excellent design and quality, cute face and accessories, solid snap shut,
• Cons – fragile clip, more like a figurine with the 1 pose and lack of redressing possibilties.
• Compared to Lil Bratz – Lil bratz have detailed clothes, shoes and 4 movable limbs. They are almost twice as big as Mini B and can be coaxed to stand alone. However it’s a gamble as to whether you’ll get a well aligned facial screening when buying online.
• Compared to Pocket lil Bratz: The pocket bratz still has more movement (arms move, bends in middle) and more detail. There are a limited amount of pocket bratz playsets where as Mini B and the Peekaboos have many.

• Bitter Chocolate Saran is very close to black and is used on many early Jades.
• Sable matches most Yasmin’s dark browns.
• Rosewood Auburn is used on Lana, Phoebe, Roxxi and Katia as well as Bowling Meygan.