Eye bleach follow up

 I found an easier way.

Cw for some eye scream here. 

How to remove Magic Attic Club eyes and replace them. 

The Magic Attic Club dolls have fixed eyes. They eyes themselves are separate pieces of plastic, pushed into the vinyl from the front. 

Doll eyes are pretty easily available. From my experience here, Alison, Heather, Keisha, and original sculpt of Megan use 16mm eyes. Rose and Chloe use 18mm. I assume that the later sculpt of Megan uses 16mm eyes, but I haven't checked.

So, to change the eyes, we just have to get access to them. If your doll's hair is rooted, you're going to need to shave and wig them.

On 24-year-old dolls, I found that the wig can be pushed off with pretty much no effort. 

The vinyl was really hard to cut with a razor knife, so I had to heat and then stab. 

There is a little ridge on the backs if their heads, which I assume is where an original access hole was during construction. I found that it was easiest to go in the area around that, instead of trying to go in the seam or inside the little circle. 

I used a flathead screwdriver to follow my knife, to keep the space open and let me make better curves. 

Heat, knife, follow with the screwdriver, repeat. 

Inside you can see the elastic and the head cup, as well as the backs of the eye sockets. It's not a ton of room to work with, but it was plenty to get done what I needed. 

There's enough room to get in there with a knife and cut a hole in the back of the socket. It doesn't need to be pretty. It just needs to be big enough that the eye can push through it when. It's heated up. 

The eyes aren't glued in, so you can heat them up and push hard from the front, and it'll pop out. 

As you can see, Rose's eyes are quite a bit bigger than Alison's. You can see that both eyes are only yellow where they were exposed, and the rest of the sclera is still white. This means that I can just put Rose's eyes in rotated 90 degrees, and keep the original eyes while losing the liver failure aesthetic. 

Once the eyes are out of the way, you can clean out the rest of the eye hole. I found that the best way was to clear the vinyl on the back of eye socket all the way, but to leave it just a bit smaller than the back. This will hold the eye a bit on its own when you put it back in. It also helps make sure it stays in the right orientation. 

Once I stuck the eye back in (left), you can't even see the yellow area. 

I don't have pictures of the rest, but the answer is hot glue. Get the eyes aligned, hot glue to hold them in. Glue the dome back on. Glue the wig back on. 

I'm confident that hot glue won't hold the eyes in if someone is really determined to pop them out from the front, but I'm guessing that the number of people in 2024 who are interested in un-yellowing a doll's eyes but is too young to understand that you can't try to push the eyes out is probably a little low. 

Fabric Softener Foils and the new Wardrobe

So here's Ali's cute bath robe, which was a craft fair find, and in her hand's the tint brush I used.
Like most of her non-MAC clothes, the bathrobe's built for an American Girl size, which is a fair bit bigger than the slim body of the Magic Attic girls. I usually pin it in place like you see here, but I'm going to sew a snap there in the future.

I really with I knew who made this. I remember it was at the Lincoln Craft Fair in Lincoln CA and about ten years ago, but don't know anything else about it. It's got matching slipper slides, which I'm going to put some clear strap on so Alison can wear them without them falling off.

Tint brush hadn't been used on human hair before. It's brand new. If it was one of my old used ones, it would have made her hair pink from the residual dye.

Foils go on fast when your hair's as thin as hers. It was about three per layer, and the final product is 16 foils for a whole head.

As we went up, I found a spot where her hair had been pulled out or broken off.

Almost done, and looking pretty, Ali.
The foil I'm using is standard kitchen foil, and they're keeping her robe neat and tidy and keeping the softener from drying out. It's several hours later, now, and it's still moist in there.

And, since I don't want the foils to make a stress point that can rip her hair out (which is a much bigger concern with bleach and human hair, but it doesn't hurt to worry), here she is with her pretty and oversized towel turban.

The downside of this method is that I don't get to soak the top of her head. If this does good things for her lengths, I'll try painting the softener on her scalp and see if that helps too. For now, time to wait and see.

The major upside is that I don't have to leave a doll soaking in water (which doesn't feel like a good idea), that the foils keep everything neat, and that I can use pure fabric softener without adding water.

I know that I did at one point soak Alison in a lot of water, because tiny me definitely took a bath with her more than once. Unlike some of the really nice dolls that my grandma gave me, I don't feel bad about the fact that it definitely caused damage (I think that's how she lost her left index finger). These dolls were built for being played with, and knowing that she fulfilled her purpose and made little (and present!) me happy writing stories and playing and dressing her up and brushing her hair until it wore out doesn't make me sad at all. Every time I see a MAC girl on ebay that says "never been played with," I just want to buy her and play with her a little bit. Every doll built for play deserves that. Wearing a few pretty outfits with different hair styles and sitting with other dolls and enjoying fake tea.
I know they're not alive and they can't feel that, but I think caring about something inanimate gives it a little echo of a soul, and honoring that echo isn't a bad thing.
Toy Story and all that shit.

Speaking of pretty outfits, though, Toys R Us put the Journey Girl's Wooden Armoire on clearance today, and I bought one. I'm going to buy a second tomorrow and stack it on top, because I don't have enough space in this one for even half of Alison's clothes. As for now, I just put all of the made-for-Ali MAC clothes that I have in it. The coat hangers that the wardrobe comes with aren't my favorite, so I got some from the Springfield Girls, because I get 20% off and there are two 60% off one item coupons at Joann, and they carry them. Sadly, the original purple Magic Attic hangers that I have don't fit in the wardrobe. All in all, I'm really impressed with the quality of the wardrobe for the price.
Assembly was required, and it took me an hour and a half to set it up, including a lunch break and finding a #1 phillips screwdriver.

Looking at the Journey Girls, they're MUCH prettier than the American Girls (in my opinion). If I'm going to start collecting more dolls, I'll get them. I think Alison's made me biased, but I really like the look of non-closing eyes better than the recessed sleep eyes most dolls this size have. It's weird when they're lying down in bed, though. Alison has a towel I put over her face when I'm pretending she's asleep, just for that reason.

Anyway, that's enough for tonight. Tomorrow will be an update about how the Fabric Softerner Foils go. Maybe it'll catch on and overcome the popularity of the Downy Dunk. Who knows.