Irrie is possibly the longest I’ve spent on working on creating a customized barbie doll.
I discovered her face mold a few years ago and thought that it was pretty unique out of all the variant molds of barbies that exist (*so far I believe that this is the only version of this sculpt and that Mattel has yet to re-use it??) *also because I’m not an avid barbie fan I am usually way behind when dolls do get released…so i don’t generally know what the state of play is in the barbie-world. LOL.
She started out as Barbie Fashionistas #55 Denim & Dazzle (DVX77).
As you can see, it’s a pretty cute sculpt and such a unique nose for a barbie! 😀
I was really lucky that my friend Kukolka was able to gift me one (as well as my husband finding one for me too! What luck!!) Suffice to say that I was stoked to be able to add her to my collection. Unfortunately though, the one Mark found for me had really “crispy” hair (I think the saran they used might have been a duff batch) and it had to be removed. I thought–huh–ok, re-root needed….should I do anything else?
Well, of course!
How could I resist? I mean, if I was already going to re-root the doll, I might as well risk giving her a repaint. What harm could it do? (I mean, aside from wrecking the whole aesthetic that made me like her so much in the first place?) 0_O I’m often reluctant to go to town customizing on a doll that I really like because I am afraid I will lose whatever it is that sparks my interest in it. Still, if you don’t try you’ll never succeed. So I began.
Here’s what she looked like bald, and with a sketched in repaint.
Yeah, I know she doesn’t look like much in the photo (and it’s a crap photo off my phone) but I’m pretty sure that she’s going to look much better by the time she’s done. Probably.
What I did:
- I removed her hair.
- Wiped her face.
- re-rooted the head with black saran (I broke down and used my old supply from Volks).
- Ditched her default Barbie Fashionista body and replaced it with a Barbie Made to Move Body.
For what it’s worth I’m pretty sure that I swapped her onto the Soccer Player Made to Move Barbie body?
Although, it is possible that she is on the camping fun/rcok climbing MTM barbie (I got a couple of those on markdown and she was a lot more tanned/orangey colored than the purple top MTM. Gee–it’s times like this that I wish I’d kept track of which body came from which donor-doll!
Things I was sad about: while crispy/crunchy hair is no fun I do love me some dolls with super curly/kinky hair. So I was bummed about losing that. I’m pretty sure that my repaint of her isn’t ever going to end up having such HUGE eyes and overtly chipper attitude but what can you do?
I’ll update again when I finish repainting her.
