Another Boy Doll Joins the Family

Before

A month or so ago, my husband picked up this doll at a thrift store for $0.50. It had clothes on, and he reasoned that the clothes were probably worth that much, at least. Unfortunately, he was wrong. I ended up throwing them away. (And you know I don't throw much away.) BUT the doll itself had some potential for another boy doll, even if it would only provide me some more practice and have to be thrown away in the end.

Before

But before I go into all of that, you really need a better look at just how bad this doll was. You can see that some little girl must have attacked her with scissors.

Before

Before

Even the bangs had been trimmed, since the Springfield dolls' bangs are usually almost down to their eyebrows.

So the first thing I did was try to even out the haircut.

I started with electric hair clippers. Mine have numbered plastic attachments, and I used a #8 so it would cut the longest possible but still appear boyish. (I didn't mess with the bangs. They were more than short enough.)

After that, I took a deep breath and started evening it out with scissors. I'm not that great with cutting real hair with scissors (which is why I have the electric clippers in the first place), so I didn't have high hopes for the doll.

After the haircut

 You might be able to see a bit of "scalp" at the bottom of the haircut. After I took this picture, I went over that section of his scalp with a dark brown Sharpie marker so it would blend in better. (The rest of the scalp under his hair was already colored like this, since it's one way the company can get by with less hair.) It worked great because he has no more skin showing under his haircut.

After the haircut

I worked quite a bit on the transition from the bangs to the rest of the hair, but it was worth the time. It made all the difference.

After the haircut

See? He's looking better already!

But he still has those hideously unnatural bright pink lips and his eyebrows are too thin for a boy. (If I could, I would go back and give Alex boyish eyebrows, but I was terrified of it at the time.)

New eyebrows and lip color

This picture is a bit washed out from the flash, so his eyebrows look a bit too dark. But check out the next few pictures for what he really looks like.

I did the eyebrows and lips with regular acrylic paint. If you make a mistake, you can wipe it off while it's still wet and redo it. I did his eyebrows at least three times before I was happy with them.

Just a little note about the eyebrows: Some people have completely removed the eyebrows with acetone, but I left his on (and just painted over them) to give me a guide for where they should be. It really did help.

For his lips, I mixed about half red paint and half white. It still looked too girly, so I added about two drops of brown, and it was just right.

All done - and dressed!

Here he is, modeling a shirt I refashioned (i.e. upcycled) from a baby boy shirt we found in a thrift store on $1/bag day.

All done!

I really like how he turned out. I'm amazed that he's even cute! :)

He'll be officially joining our doll family on Easter, when he'll be the special guest. (My kids don't know about him yet.)

I hope you enjoyed this peek into the transformation process.