Playing Dolly Doctor: Catrine, Mulan, and Lagoona

Once again I find myself pushing back reviews to do something that sprung up.  What sprung up this time?  Well, my best friend has a daughter who had a ton of dolls.  This weekend she sacked up a bunch of them and gave them to me.  My job was to comb through the sack, pick out what I wanted, and then...well, she told me to throw what I didn't want away.  I didn't, and now the items in the sack are waiting to be trundled off to the local Goodwill.

Since these dolls were playthings, you can probably imagine what they look like.  Yep, their hair's a mess, their clothing is gone for the most part, and they look like they just walked into the teeth of an F4 tornado.  Anywho, I picked out what I wanted, and hereafter will be a series of posts showing before and after images of these dolls.  I kept about sixteen of the dolls, so this will take awhile.  

My first three victims for THE PLASTIC BAG OF DOOM are first-wave Catrine De Mew, Mulan, and second-wave Lagoona Blue.

The three dolls are in good shape for the most part, though Lagoona is missing part of one arm and her leg fins.  No worries, it'll just give her character!  I can say she got her arm bitten off by a moray eel during her last foray into the sea.  No, these girls just need some spa treatment, which is what THE PLASTIC BAG OF DOOM is.  THE BAG is a large Ziploc bag.  What I do is I take a doll, wash her hair with whatever I have on hand.  Since doll hair is usually plastic my choice of soap is dish soap like Dawn.  I wash their hair and bodies and I comb out the tangles.  If the tangles are bad I use a salad fork, and if they're just regular tangles I use a doll brush.  These dolls' tangles fell into the regular group, so crisis averted.  After that I put in some conditioner.  Never use the leave-in stuff; it just goms up over time and you have another mess on your hands.  After the conditioner I put the dolls inside the Ziploc bag and leave them for a few hours.  According to Doll Reader this creates a sauna-like environment so the kinks can straighten out.

Since I got a late start on this little project I left these ladies in THE PLASTIC BAG OF DOOM overnight.  After taking the dolls out of the bag I rinsed the conditioner out of their hair, dried them off, and combed their hair.  Air-drying took awhile, as usual.  

Mulan's hair is tied back because it's still kinked from the original style it was in, and Lagoona, like all dolls of her character, has some flyaways that I'm going to have to play with in order to control.  But for the most part that was simple and fun.  Pretty easy, right?  Well, these three weren't so bad, but the next group may not be as much fun.  I've got Rapunzel, Merida, and a Bratzillaz waiting in the wings, and all three of them will be nightmares.  Thank God that Bratzillaz doll has short hair!  LOL

Yours truly,

RagingMoon1987