New wig fun

 So, back when I ordered the big lot of 4 MAC dolls on ebay, one of them was a Marian-era Alison. I already have an Alison doll, who is mine from my childhood, so I didn't really want a second one. In addition, there are three different kinds of MAC hair, and the Marian-era have the worst. The majority of the MAC dolls had wigged kanekalon hair (kanekalon is a modified acrylic fiber that you find in a lot of human wigs), but for a time near the end of the brand's life, they had rooted saran hair. Saran is just not nice hair to play with, and when it's rooted then it either comes out all the time or is very difficult to style. When Charisma bought the doll line from Marian, the only real thing they did with this line was to swap from rooted saran to wigged saran. The diameter of a saran hair fiber is much smaller than a kanekalon wig fiber, which makes it much more prone to tangles and other problems. My Megan is a wigged saran Charisma doll, and Alison #2 was a rooted saran Marian doll. The other four are all wigged kanekalon, and nice and robust.

I was going to take a picture of kanekalon hair next to Megan's saran hair, but it's too much of a pain to detangle and rebraid the saran. Just trust me, it's worse. Anyway, I say "was" a rooted saran doll because it doesn't have rooted hair anymore. A while back, I cut all of it off and replaced it with a doll wig I got off ebay. This created Riley, my Magic Attic Club original character. 

Anyway, upon realizing that maybe I'm going to get back into this hobby, I just kept feeling like I wasn't getting everything I wanted out of that character. So, I was at work, hiding in the bathroom because a customer I hate walked into the door, and I had an idea. So I bought a wig.

For the curious, Magic Attic wears a 11-12 wig, and a 10 is too small. 

Add some darker eyebrows and a few freckles, and I still have a Magic Attic Club OC named Riley, but he's going to serve a different role in the story. Not sure what it is yet, but there's no official Magic Attic Club boys, so we'll figure something out.

I forgot that, right before I put these folks away, Toys Were Us happened, and I bought a TON of Journey Girls clothes for them. In my head, they were all still dressed in the best of the 90's and early 2000's. So, here's a picture collection.

Just six dolls...for now.

Something fun about each of them:

Heather: The part in Heather's hair actually has a skin top. It's not a changeable skin top, but if you look, there's a little line of fake skin to make it look like her hair isn't a wig. My sister had Heather at the same time that I got Alison, but I don't know what happened to her Heather and all her accessories (though I have a few of Heather's accessories with my doll stuff...my sister is just a year older than me and we had a pretty established "your side/my side" "mom, she's stealing my stuff!" situation going on, so this is a bigger crime than you'd think...oops)

Alison: This is a pre-Knickerbocker Alison. Knickerbocker released Rose when they bought the line, and I know that I had this Alison before Rose was released. I remember that my sister and I didn't like Rose's face. I was six years old in 1997 when Rose was released, but my Alison has the jean jacket meet outfit, so she's definitely the 1996 model. Among various things, this Alison went to the Magic Attic Club doll hospital at one point when her arm fell off. She's missing her left index finger and I have no idea where it is, but I believe it was lost back when we lived in the house that we moved out of in 2000. Safe to say, short of taking an arm off another doll, she's just going to miss her finger. She also is going to be wearing a hat almost 100% of the time, because she's got many bald spots, and parts where budding hairstylist me felt she needed some trimming. Emotionally, I can't re-wig her, because child-me put so much effort into destroying playing with her hair.

Megan: This Megan has the Marin face sculpt, which was the last change that happened to the doll line before it was ended. I'm really glad I have this sculpt, actually, because it means I have more variety in the faces. I may or may not have big plans for her hair to not be...like it is...She's got wigged Charisma-era saran hair, but crap is crap, folks.

Rose: My sister and I had a firm "they changed and so now it sucks," mentality about a lot of our interpretation of MAC things, so when they announced Rose, we decided we didn't like her. That's really a bummer, because looking at her now, I really like her. I'm also a little embarrassed to think about how we just mentally bullied the new girl out of our play pretend games just for being new. Even back in 1997, I felt her face sculpt was a bit too different from the other four girls, and she didn't fit in with the line as well. Having Marin-sculpt Megan does help a little bit with the "everyone has the same face" issue. If there's any kind of makeup or vinyl color difference between Rose and the 2003 "Rosa" rebranding, I might get Rosa as well, just to stop this from being quite as monotone of a group of kids. On the other hand, the idea that you can just change a doll's heritage just because their vinyl is the appropriate color. Anyway. What do I care, I'm going to buy Chloe Jane the Face Stealer, so.

Riley: Fun story, my sister (who had Heather) has a baby named Ridley, but this doll was Riley before Ridley was even thought of. This wig is an Edward by bbeauty designs and I'm definitely going to order from them again. After all, I've got big plans for Megan's hair. All characterization plots that I had for Riley before will remain. I just wanted a boy in the group. I'm sure that the MAC would have gotten a boy doll eventually, if they'd carried on. Or they'd have burst into flames instead of wimpering out. Who knows. I filled in Riley's eyebrows a little and gave him some freckles with watercolor pencils, but I have to be careful to not smudge that off since it's far from permanent.

Keisha: Oh, Keisha. I can't wait for my restringing kits to get here so that we can get her back on her feet. I'm going to grab some Testors Dullcote at the craft store and, while she's in pieces, I'll spray all her shiny spots with that. I can hit Riley's face while I'm at it. The shininess is definitely some kind of solvent being used to get tape or writing of some kind off her body. Her hair's definitely been cut but I'm having trouble finding a wig that matches this hair texture. Based on how the hair is, I'd guess this is an older doll, but I'm not really experienced in that. It's wigged and it's not saran, her body is the old no-bellybutton body, and her hair's textured and not braided. I'll see if I can maybe trim her hair a little so it doesn't look quite so "a child cut this all off".

That's all for now, going to go on tumblr and explain to people how sewing machines work again. Sleep well.