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.

The MAC living room:

I'll do real intro posts for these girls sometime, but at the moment I've got some shots of them in their little room.
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I'm lucky enough to be getting my own crafting room (at the cost of extra rent$ but Current Me says, "whatever.") and the temptation to not make half of it into a dollhouse has been fought.

I've done a terrible job of 1) making them all everyday outfits, and 2) changing everyone out of their party outfits.
So Rose and Megan are still in their Christmas outfits, and Riley, Heather, and Alison are in their whatever clothes.
I'm sort of torn between loving and hating that I accidentally made a Magic Attic OC. I've been considering rebranding her as Jane, but my entire knowledge of Jane comes from one cover of a book that they apparently never actually put out copies of and written by an author who is un-googleable:

I also sort of felt that Chloe was supposed to be Jane, so I might merge the two if I ever get Chloe (she's at the bottom of my WTB list, though)

Anyway, that cover and that blurb from the catalogue can definitely influence how Riley's personality is going, but for now she's Riley.
When I was a kid and had just unwrapped Alison, I wanted to name her after my friend from preschool because they both looked sort of the same. She ended up going back to Alison, but that friend's last name was Riley, so we're going to stick that name on Riley and call it good.
(It's been so fucking long since I've written here that I don't remember if I ever explained it, but Riley was one of the 2002 model Alison's with rooted hair. That hair was a disaster so I shaved it and gave her a wig. I don't actually like this wig too much for her, so she has another in the mail to see how that works out. Right now she looks like Alison Minus Bangs and that's not what I'm going for. It also doesn't help that it's a 10-11 wig and she's an 11" head, which is apparently too big for a 10-11 wig. It's not glued down and sometimes it just moves places, so forgive that in the pictures.

So here's half the living room. Due to their legs splaying when they're sitting, these dolls aren't always the best for displaying while they're sitting, but I think it's cuter that way. Here Heather is trying to braid Rose's hair, but Alison keeps sticking her bare foot on the back of Rose's neck to see if she'll notice that it's not Heather's hand.
Not basing this off stuff I did as a kid or anything.
Megan's got her hand pretty close to Alison's foot and is probably ready to grab it if Ali starts trying to cause too much trouble. Megan's sort of the mediator of the group.

Outfit wise, Rose and Megan are still in their party dresses, but everyone else is back in more normal clothes.
The main problem about buying dolls without buying extra outfits is that everyone has to share Alison's collection of casual clothes and whatever outfits they were wearing when I got them (which wasn't much). Alison also pretty much always has to wear a hat due to her bald spots in the back.

And over in the corner, wearing Megan's jacket and some hand-knit tights is Helena. Due to her being 50cm/19+5/8", she can share the 18" furniture pretty well, and alternates between living with the xtra tall Monster High dolls and the MAC girls.

And in the other corner, we have Helena, Ann Estelle, and Riley with her guitar. Ann Estelle is a doll sculpted by Robert Tonner, who did all the Magic Attic dolls (except maybe my Megan's face? It's hard to find info about things that happened when I was in 6th grade and didn't care).
Now that I look at this image, the thing striking me the most is that I've been looking for that bottle of window cleaner all damn day.

18": Five's a Party!!

So many dolls!!

So, this is what my Ebay Disease got me. One one or two or three, but four new Magic Attic dolls. Old (kanekalon hair) Heather and Rose, and new (wigged Saran hair) Alison and Megan. Megan has the new face sculpt, which I'd suspected from the two pictures the ebayer posted, and I'm very excited about that!

For those of you who don't have the history of the Magic Attic Club memorized, here's a quic, review, as it relates to these dolls:

• Back in the late '90's, the Magic Attic Club was one of American Girl's main rivals. Their dolls are full vinyl, and much slimmer than the soft-body American Girl. 
• The Magic Attic girls--Alison, Heather, Keisha, Megan, and Rose (Chloe doesn't count, sorry Chloe) were modern-day girls who could transport themselves to adventures by putting on outfits their elderly neighbor had, and looking in the mirror in her attic. The adventures range from modern day (Keisha's cheerleading adventure, Alison's hiking, Heather's dressage adventure...), to historical (usually relating to their real-world selves: Heather's persecution as a Jewish girl in Spain under the rule of Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand, Rose living as a Cheyenne on the prairie), to fantasy (Keisha saving a city on a snowy planet by finding a crystal of power). Each story had an outfit and a series of accessories, and a story book.
• Once American Girl's "American Girl of Today" line started, they ended up being more fierce competition to MAC. Before, American Girl only had historical dolls, but now they were competing in the modern day too. 
• Once Knickerbocker, who owned Magic Attic, started hurting for money, cuts in quality had to be made. They stopped making stories and started just making outfits for the dolls. 
• Another big cut, and one that matters with the dolls that I own, is they made a change to the hair. They went from wigged kanekalon (wigged meaning they have a tiny wig glued to their head, kanekalon being the best fiber for dolls that get their hair played with and what a lot of human wigs are made of) to rooted Saran (rooted meaning tiny holes are drilled in the head and the hair is put in, think Monster High, and Saran being a thinner fiber that sticks to itself--same fiber as Monster High's, who aren't expected to have their hair played with for hours on end and for several years) to wigged Saran after they got noticed for the rooted Saran being crap.
  That's a seriously effed up sentence there but I"m tired and not going to fix it. One of my followers is a teacher. Sorry, Amanda!
• The Magic Attic Club got handed around from company to company. One of those companies thought they could save it and released a new doll (Chloe), gave Megan a new face, gave everyone new starter outfits, and a couple more things. At some point, they were given belly buttons.
• It didn't work.
• Around 2003, there were no more catalogues to sell, and in 2007 their doll hospital closed. When the doll hospital closes, your doll line is officially dead. 

So, it's getting late and now I want to be alone, so let me finish this up quickly and add to it later.

Heather and Rose are the old dolls, with Kanekalon hair. It took me about 11 minutes to brush out both of theirs hair. Kanekalon is great for restyling.

Side note: I somehow still have the original brush that I got with Alison. It's my favorite brush for doll hair. It's got rigid teeth aligned in parallel rows, with the vertical rows spaced out closer than the horizontal rows. It gives me roughly what a wide tooth comb and a narrower comb, depending on how I hold it.

Megan has a lot of hair.

Saran is a bitch and I braided it right after I combed it out.

The city I'm in has marginalized its Black community so much that I couldn't find braid spray even though I went to three stores, but children's detangler spray worked wonders. That stuff's basically propylene glycol in a spray bottle. Saran loves to stick to itself, and so this volume of hair wants to become a giant knot so badly.

Alison #2 also has a comical level of hair:

Remember, my Alison has really thin hair, and originally came with a lot more than you see here. Not as much as Ali#2, though!

Heather and Rose both have the higher quality hair. It looks way better under flash than the Saran. Heather had some weird ends. Some of the ends were three inches longer than the rest of the hair. I trimmed it off.

Here's a picture of Rose next to my Alison, just showing how thin my Alison's hair is. I don't mind, though. It means she was loved. Is loved.

So, speed summary of plans for everyone, and then I'm going to pass out.

• Heather: even out the ends a little more
• Rose: She's just fine how she is
• Megan: Add some layers into her hair to thin out the horzontal width, cut another layer into her bangs to fix the stair step problem she has right now. I'm going to rewig her eventually because I effing hate saran hair. There's a reason why Monster High dolls come with oodles of product in their hair.
• Other Alison: Ebay. If no one buys her, rewig and make a new character to play with my group

Meanwhile Helena is feeling left out. I keep reposing Gooliope and Maddie, but I haven't done more work on painting Gooliope just yet. I'll get back to it when it calls to me.

It's kind of freeing to accept that I'm not in this to "preserve the value" of them or anything. They're dolls for play. I'm going to play with them. Obviously, as an adult, I'm not going to mess them up like I did with Alison, but I am going to do what I want to to make them the characters I see in my head.

I have tomorrow off from work and you can bet your booty I'm going to play barber with Megan. I'm going to do it after I take a lot of photos, of course. Got to document everything and make a real product registration page for each of them.

G'night

Alison Saves the Wedding, pt2

[Part 1 is here]

So, Alison's got her shiny, clean dress, so now she's only missing three pieces.

Two and a half if you count the fact that she has one of her shoes. One shoe is still zero pairs of shoes, though, so I'm not counting that.

It's really a pity that I lost the other shoe, because Alison's wedding shoes are probably the prettiest MAC shoes I own.  They're a sturdy vinyl. They don't have any seams except the back one, so I think they'll (cross fingers) be pretty easy to replicate.

And now, for her petticoat/slip.

Spoiler alert, it looks like this.


Since I recently got a pretty devastating bout of Ebay Disease that's trashed my bank account until my next paycheck (and I got paid on Friday, bad news), all the doll clothes I make for a while are going to come off the Wall of Fabric.

As you can see on the left, the wall of fabric is en restaro right now, due to the water-gushing-from-my-ceiling incident. At the bottom shelf of the case on the left is my box of fabric flowers, so I'll have to unbury that eventually. Thankfully, Clone Zero, my Wheeler and Wilson D-9/W9 treadle sewing machine from 1901 was uninjured, even though most of the water fell on him.

Basically everything I own has a name. It's a bit childish. I'm also a 25-year-old woman who plays with dolls and has a blog where she shares stories about their made-up lives.

Where were we? Right. Weddings.

 So, up there on the wall of fabric was a double-layer of nylon crystal organza. It had been sewn together at the top. I'm sure I bought it for petticoats or something. It's not a Layer Cake Dress leftover because the texture's wrong. I have a lot of fabric on the Wall that I don't know where it came from.
Apparently I had started something with this and then just put it on the wall, because I'd already sewn it up.

So, time to pull out Sergestiel and find my cones of thread.

Couple of narrow hems (not rolled hems, narrow hems. Rolled hems don't like working on organza like this, trust me) on the bottom. I hemmed the two layers at different heights, so you could see both layers through the clear fabric.

Then comes the lining, which is a bleached muslin. Eye Dee Kay why I had bleached muslin, because I only buy natural muslin for draping. No real reason, just that it's the same price and I like the way pencil marks show on it better. Okay, one real reason, I like the way pencil marks show up on it better. That's all I need.

It turns out I don't know where most of my stuff on the Wall came from.

After this, it's just gathering the three layers into each other.
Remember the rule, kiddos: Bell shape, gather at the waist, A-shape and you gather at the hem.
You can't see it, but the lining inside has a blue bias tape bound hem. I want to pretend that it's a design call, but I actually just cut it too short (meaning it technically has a bias tape banded hem, but who's keeping score?)
It's elasticized in the back with some really wide 1" elastic because it's what I had and I'm not allowed to buy anything because of aforementioned Ebay Disease.

And here's a work in progress shot on our dear model, though not a very good one because you can't see the poof that the petti provides at all. It honestly doesn't provide a lot of poof, but GDI it says she has one in the catalogues, so she's going to get one.

The ribbon I used for the picture is stiff and way too wide, but it's what I could pull out of the wall of fabric without toppling the whole mess. She'll get a real flower crown pretty soon, but not this paychek unless someone outbid me and saves my sorry butt.

Not sharing on what I bought. That's secret for now.

Also, I have found an absolutely fantastic doll blog, American Girl Outsider. She's well-known in the American Girl community, but I haven't been part of the American Girl community, so I didn't know of her. Anyway, if you'd like to read something more interesting than the backlog of my blog, take a look.

Alison Saves The Wedding, part 1

At some point I owned this set:

(Image thanks to dollightful dolls' scans of the MAC catalogues)

 

Okay, I never owned the table, chair, cake, or place settings (it was $64 in 1997 dollars, and my parents weren't interested in figuring out where my 18" doll furniture would go when it's put away), but I had that dress (with full slip, shoes, and flower crown) and the veil and bouquet.

These days, I have the dress, and one shoe. To be fair, it was one of the first sets that I got for Alison. All of the Magic Attic girls had a full length princess dress, and I think my sister got Heather's at the same time. They made for some fun stories.

After a while, as I grew up, I started storing my Alison things in a cardboard box without a lid. This worked out really well, for the most part.

The only problem was that, between the years of 2004 and 2014, I had an adorable cat named Maggie. Having Maggie was not a problem itself, but Maggie was very special. Maggie spent two years refusing to walk on the floor, and instead jumping between pieces of furniture. We had to start putting her food on the bathroom counter, or else she wouldn't eat. She would express her desire to go into a room by reaching directly for the door knob, like she understood its purpose and just wasn't tall enough to touch it. She spent a good chunk of time sitting in the shower, staring at the wall. My dad swears he saw her teleport several inches one time. And, if the shower door was closed for some reason, she peed on piles of fabric.
Maggie had a stroke and had to be put to sleep just after Christmas of 2014. She was a good cat, and I frequently remind Smudge (the new cat) that she's not as good as Maggie, not yet.

However, this all resulted in me wanting to dress Alison up in her nice dress and finding this on it:

Thanks, Maggie. Glad to know you're still with us in some form.

I definitely had concerns about trying to clean a 10-year-old, irreplaceable dress, especially this one. One of the very annoying things about dresses with overlays is that the overlay can shrink more than the dress, and become too short. The little hearts are flocked onto the overlay, and I was concerned that they could rub off. There's a silk flower that's glued on, and I don't know what kind of glue it is, or how it could react to water, or how it reacted to time. Finally, the under dress is taffeta of unknown fiber, but might be acetate or not be colorfast. If it's not colorfast, it could bleed blue into the ribbon, or the ribbon could bleed pink onto the dress.

But the pee's got to come out, one way or another.

Enter Oxi-Clean. Not only was it Billy May's favorite cleaner, but it's also the cleaner for the job. For those of you who don't know how Oxi-Clean works, here's a quick summary:

• Oxi-Clean is a powder that, when mixed with water, creates a chemical reaction that makes a gentle peroxide.
• Peroxide binds to organic things, like dirt and sweat and urine. Peroxide does not bind to synthetic things, like dye or glue. 
• This is very good for cleaning Alison's bridesmaid dress, because it means the only dye or glue damage will be caused by the water. 
• The fact that Oxi-Clean will keep producing peroxide for six hours means the peroxide won't be used up in the first few minutes of soaking, like it would if you just put H2O2 on the stain. The fact that it only produces it for six hours means there is NO benefit to soaking it overnight.
• Since the peroxide binds with water in addition to binding with organic soils, when you wash the Oxi-Clean out, it takes the dirt and piss away with it. 

That's pretty simplified, but I wanted to explain it somewhat. Science is cool, folks.

 So, the process was simple: Oxi-Clean soak for as long as necessary to remove the visible urine. Wash in cold water with cold water detergent (like Woolite, but I use the Amway brand because my mom's hella into Amway and gifts it to me a lot). Rinse it out as well as possible.

I didn't take pictures, but that's the process.

Since the dress is so small, I got to do my favorite test to make sure all the soap's out. I filled my baby-sized wash tub up with cold water, and put the rinsed-out dress in it for a minute or so. If a lot of soap comes out, I need to rinse it again. If a tiny bit of soap comes out, I need to swirl the water around to get it out, and then be confident that diluting it in 1 gal of water only leaves a negligible amount in. This method isn't really possible with a garment that's human-sized due to the water necessary, but when it's just a gallon it works out nicely.
It's important to get all the soap out. Soap binds to dirt, which is why we use it. If there's soap left in the dress, it'll bind dirt to the dress.

(Lazy final picture taken from my bed, because I didn't want to move)

I dried it flat on a towel until it was just damp, and then put it on a hanger and carefully pulled the overlay down so it'd dry without shrinking and leaving the under dress exposed. I let it dry hanging. The taffeta really didn't want to hold onto water, and that made it dry really quickly.

The overlay didn't shrink, and the fabric flower's still attached just fine. The Oxi-Clean didn't soak long enough to get the flocking in the overlay back to white, but I would rather have it gray than hurt the overall dress.
The satin ribbon on the sash has faded quite a bit, but that's mostly from time, and not from being soaked. It's almost white in some places.
Something about the process has made the hole in the overlay in the back much less visible. I'd guess the process of pulling straight has made it close. Either way, it'll let me close it up without patching it, which I thought I'd have to do before it closed up. It's good news.

Anyhoozie, the dress is pretty much fixed up. I've decided I'm going to make the missing pieces, and maybe do that for all of her outfits. I'm not going on Ebay for a while, since I recently fell victim to Double Ebay Disease and that looks like it's going to cost me $250. Because of this, and because I'm both crafty and getting 20% off everything I buy at the craft superstore, I'm going to be making as much of it as I can. It doesn't really matter to me as much if it's original or not. I just want the whole set to make up for losing it as a kid.

Again, I really don't feel bad about losing all the pieces. The stories my sister and I told about the dolls adventures and all the crazy costume changing shit they did, and the fact that we had fun playing with them makes me happy.

So, to do list: slip/petticoat for the dress, flower crown, new shoes, maybe the veil and bouquet. Maybe.

It's 12:17am. Good night, everyone.

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.

Alison's hair struggles (and more!)

Careful and not-so-careful observers alike will notice that Alison has some hair problems.

It's very frizzed (I think heat damaged) and has a couple of short spots in the back where a younger me cut pieces off. I was also doing this to my own hair, at the time, but doll hair doesn't grow back.

My main plan is to rewig her, but the idea of fixing up her hair in the meantime is one that I'm entertaining

That stuff in the bottle down there is Katie Bair's miracle in a bottle Wig Conditioner. It's a leave in conditioner she formulated for cosplay wigs, which are usually long and straight and smooth and a lot like what Alison's hair should be like. I've used this on long cosplay wigs and it's amazing, so it was time to give it a shot.

Kanekalon is kanekalon, when you get down to it.

You just rub it on, let it dry, and detangle. Going up Alison's head in layers, there's a lot of places where there's nice and smooth hair, especially at the roots. There's also a nearly-bald spot at the direct back of her head.

The wig conditioner helped a LOT, but not enough to fix all the damage. Once everything's as smooth as I can get it, it's all going to need a trim to even it out, especially her bangs.


I know that for cosplay wigs, fabric softener can work miracles. However, I don't know what kind of miracles it can do to vinyl bodies and 20 year faceups. I sure didn't want to un-wig her and glue it back on unless I have to. 

So, the challenge was to get a product onto hair, without that product getting onto faces or hands or bodies or clothing, and to have it remain on the hair for hours without drying out or falling off.

And then I found a tint brush. I used to use these on my hair, back when I only dyed the front locks and left the back plain.


So, fabric softener foils it is! Process is easy, just sectioned off chunks of hair and applied straight fabric softener to it, no diluting. Perks of doing this with fabric softener and not neon pink dye is that I could apply it with the hair in my hand and feel the underside to know when it's saturated. Once it was on the foil, I could add an extra blob on the ends to make sure they're covered.

I have some damn pictures of this but my google drive folder won't refresh and there's no manual way to force it to refresh, so this post is going to sit open on my computer for a while.

Nope, been three hours and fuck all has happened. We'll catch up with Alison and her cute green bath robe tomorrow.

Alison clothing, progressing

Quick summary of today's progress. Here's Ali in her new pants and most of her new shirt.

First, the pants. They're still lacking a back closure because guess who forgot to buy velcro DESPITE WORKING AT A CRAFT FUCKING STORE

As you can see, the pockets are wanky as fuck, but I'm letting myself get away with this.
I haven't faded the jeans, though I'd like to. I had some fun adding distressed patches, but I'm also keeping track of the fact that these are for a canonically 10-13 year old, so I'm being careful to not let any distressed patch get too high up on the leg. I'm sort of shooting with the clothes for around age 13-14, because that's freshman year of high school, which was when I started really making choices about my own clothes, and I'm working a lot of Alison's personality (both from the books and from what I made up as a kid) into her clothes.
Wow, that was a long sentence. I should stop writing htese when I"m so tired.
What we do know, all canon aside, we do know from the dolls themselves that none of them have developed chests, or wear bras. I didn't have boobs till I was in like my junior year of high school, so I'm saying that's a passable thing for 14. I developed way later than most girls but shhh whatever.

Something I'd forgotten is that her t-shirt (from her starter outfit) snaps in the back so she can get it on. When I realized this, I had to adjust my plans.

I went from plans to do a full jersey shirt to making it raglan sleeved. Raglan sleeves aren't super 'in' right now with the cool kids in freshman high school who are hip to the jive and go to the sock hops. They're still very associated with modern sporty things, and they'll be fun to put on a graphic tee.
Bonus point about raglan sleeves: I can put a snap closure on the back of one sleeve, and make a discrete connection for a closure to let her head in. The black fabric is something I had hanging around after the Lin Beifong cosplay. It's an athletic semi-mesh, which wasn't intentional, but I like it.

I'm still not sure what to put on the shirt. I'm tempted to copy the polyvore I originally used as an inspiration, and just put, "weirdo," but I also might put "dyslexics UNTIE" on it. In canon, Alison is dyslexic, and has to come to accept how getting after school tutoring affects her social life, so I want to represent the way she comes to terms with that. I saw the shirt in person and thought it was funny, but it's always tough for me to represent a disability that I don't have. I need to think this one over more.

Also, found her hat that I made her yesterday when I was at work today.
I'm going to work the teal/blue color theme into the outfit more than it currently is. Wouldn't be the Magic Attic Club without the girls being color coded for our convenience. To be fair, I love the color coded thing.

And a last and final shout out to Sergestiel, my serger, making that shirt much easier.

in the continuing theme of pants

Background's dirty because the background's always dirty, and these pants need a closure in the back (fake fly in the front because lazy). They're not patterned any more than tracing the pieces of her old jeans, but it's kind of nice to give her something new. There's faux western pockets in the front and patch pockets in the back, all of which are lopsided or different between one and another, because haha who needs patterns.
The pants still need a waistband, too. But hey, at least she's got something. Distressing will happen later.

They look pretty silly with her heavily 90's jean jacket.

I knitted her a hat today, too, but I think I dropped it in the fabric store. Handily, I work at the fabric store, so I'll be able to pick it up tomorrow.

I used the same yarn I used for Helena's hat, so they just have matching ones and y'all have to deal with it.

I'm sleepy, so that's all you get for tonight.

Alison McCann: Project registration

The first doll that I had and was really attached to was Alison McCann, a Magic Attic Club doll.
I still have her, and all her original outfit (minus hair bow, shoes, and underpants, for some reason). I was looking at my Alison and thinking it was time she get upgraded from her 1994 style.
Google gave me a rough, if tacky and OTT, concept for a more modern Ali, so here goes.

I grabbed these shoes off Amazon, and I'm going to make her that beanie in the same yarn I used for Helena's hat, getting the teal color on top and bottom. My Alison's hair is also extremely destroyed on top, so having a hat to cover it will be a nice idea.

This picture doesn't capture the fullness of the damage. Last night, I sat down and put some of Katie Bair's wig conditioner (okay, a lot of Katie Bair's wig conditioner) on it, and it did a huge amount of good, but it can't fix the parts where tiny me cut her hair. Hat, until I get off my ass and buy her a new wig entirely.

I even know what wig. I just haven't ordered it. (Denise wig by Monique, size 12)


After making an art guitar with my last paycheck and trashing a bunch of money, it'll be nice to have a 1:3.5 scale (aka cheap) project to work on. 1/3 of a yard of denim or jersey with my employee discount is still affordable as heck. I threw away some trashed jeans today, and I'm kind of regretting that, but whatever. Update: denim and jersey and a pair of premade socks set me back about $8

The real thing is going to be making sure that Alison's personality and recognizability aren't lost in the new outfit. It'll be a fun exercize in color and scale.

Another project in mind is to make a wardrobe to hang her clothes up in. I have a lot of her clothes.

Typos galore. I'm almost asleep and it's 1:30am.