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Monster High Custom – Just Beginning


After my dollyhair order came in I wanted to get started on my custom Draculaura right away while I am still feeling all excited about the new hair. The first thing you have to do naturally is remove the head. Most tutorials I saw suggested running the head/neck area under water until the head became soft enough that it would allow the anchoring apparatus to be pulled out of it. Personally if I can avoid using water I will, and I found out that it’s quite easy to just take a blow dryer, blow dry the head/neck joint area for 30 seconds or so until hot, and then just pull and yank the head off while it’s still hot from the dryer heat. It took me all of a minute and I didn’t have to get anything wet or wait for hair to dry or anything.

Next step was to cut off all of her hair, lol. Anyway for whatever reason I felt like saving the cut hair, it’s too short to root with, but I imagine it could still be useful for MLP tails or maybe it could even be wefted and used for a Brownie wig, who knows.

After cutting the hair, you then need to take your tweezers and start pulling out what’s left of the hair from the inside of the head. Often times there is glue inside rooted doll heads, and there definitely is in MLP toys, but I was pleasantly surprised to find that there was NO GLUE inside my Draculaura head. You may be wondering then what was holding it all together, and I shall tell you what I suspect. I suspect they use heat to melt the hairs inside the head, but I can’t be positive. At first I thought it was loop rooted, but then I started noticing these tiny bits of melted plastic bits here and there falling out. Either way because there appears to be no glue, once you start breaking apart and pulling out plugs of hair, you can also pull hair from the outside of the head as well, which is helpful because Monster High dolls have small neck holes. Also one more tip is to squish your scalp close to your neck hole so you can easier see the hair and nab it with the tweezers.

After removing all of the hair, it’s time to wipe the face paint off. Customizers will argue up and down on what to use to do this and what not to use and they are often contradictory. Some people swear by Windsor and Newton brush cleaner, while others will tell you acetone, in the end it’s your call what to use. I myself for this particular doll used acetone. Acetone will without a shadow of a doubt remove all the paint from the head no problem, BUT it will take a while because the paint WILL SMEAR so expect to spend a good 15 minutes scrubbing the head. Don’t panic though once you see a smear, because it will come off with a fresh cotton ball and more acetone. Because the paint smears, you will also have to spend time removing the scalp color because there is no way you can remove the face well enough without accidentally hitting the scalp color and smudging it all over the place. My last piece of advice when dealing with acetone is be sure to rinse your doll’s head thoroughly in water afterwards!! Acetone is a solvent used to remove resins aka plastics, so it can destroy your doll if you do not fully rinse and wash all residue off afterwards. It should also go without saying that you should never leave a doll to soak in the stuff, like EVER.

Anyhow, moving along, in the above pic you may notice I have a spot circled on the dolls head and I have out a tube of glue. You see, when they rooted Draculaura’s hair in the factory they put some plugs so close together in her front part that it kinda made a big hole. 🙁 After some research I found that the best thing to do would be to fill the hole with a flexible glue. To be honest there really isn’t that much information that I was able to find out there for patching doll heads. The one site I did find with the most info suggested gel super glue, however just because a super glue says it’s gel doesn’t mean it will dry flexible. I figure that it is necessary for the glue to dry flexible otherwise the glue will just pop out during the reroot process. I have decided to try Loctite’s vinyl and plastic glue that dries flexible. Doll heads are vinyl afterall, so the theory is this should work. Anyway taking a toothpick dipped in glue, I carefully put a few drops in the problematic hole (the area circled). This particular glue dries in 30 minutes, but requires 24 hours to cure, so I plan to leave the doll alone now until sometime tomorrow. I’ll just have to wait and see how well it fares against the reroot tool!

EDIT! – I am happy to report that the Loctite vinyl and plastic glue works fabulously! 😀

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Dollyhair Comparisons

So my dollyhair order finally arrived and I went ahead and shot some fiber comparison pics in the hopes that it might be helpful for other people who are trying to match colors and whatnot. Above is the Kohl Brown Kanekalon hair from dollyhair.com next to my Liv wig. It is a very very close match and will do nicely for patching up the bald spots in the wig. The fiber of the Liv with though is a little smoother and softer, but it is definitely not saran, and has that “dry feeling” like the Kanekalon, and is too fine a fiber to be the nylon. So I’d say it’s up in the air as to what kind of fiber this wig is made out of.

These are the two shades I am waffling between for my Draculaura re-root. On the left is Bitter Chocolate Brown, and on the right is Raven Black. Raven Black is of course a true match for Draculaura’s factory hair, but it’s not hard to match blacks usually. :B The Bitter Chocolate Brown is actually a bit darker than in the photo. It is as advertised as being the closest brown you can get to black and it does not have any red tones.

Next up is the Sherbert Pink comparison. As you can see from the pic that Draculaura’s hot pink streaks are a scootch bit darker than Sherbert Pink. It is very close though, so probably if you wanted to just add a few extra strands of pink in her factory hair, you could probably get away with using this color depending on how fussy you are. I actually bought this hair for a custom Twilight Sparkle I plan to work on after I finish Rainbow Dash who is coming along nicely by the way!

Lastly I bought some Hematite (on the left) and Pacific Ocean (on the right) nylon hair. This pic is fairly close to the true color, though in person I feel you can see the hint of plum in the Hematite more and Pacific Ocean has a touch more teal in it. I purchased these two colors with the intention of rerooting my Twilight Sparkle with them. Seeing Pacific Ocean in person though makes me feel that straight Hematite may work best for her reroot though. Originally I thought to mix the two colors, but now I’m not so sure. Anyhow all of those color comparisons are for another day as I am nowhere near starting that project yet.

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Rerooting Tutorials

While I’ve been waiting for my order from Dollyhair to arrive, I’ve been scouring the internet for any tutorials or general information I can find about re-rooting and the different kinds of fibers and such that you can buy. I figure I’d go ahead and make a posting and share what I’ve found so far.

Mohair and Alpaca related

My Monster Crush: This blog seems to focus on Monster High dolls, and this particular posting has information on making doll wigs out of feathers as well as re-rooting with mohair.

Wedge’s Mohair Tutorial: This is a image on flickr…look for the “BIG” link in the description to see the larger image. Anyhow this tutorial is Blythe centric and again focuses on how to reroot with mohair.

Mademoiselle Blythe: This is another Blythe focused blog, but this posting has a TON of information on the differences between mohair and alpaca, as well as an overview of rerooting and TONS of helpful links on where to find mohair and alpaca fibers as well as more tutorial links.

Saran and other fibers

The Manor: This specific posting has a lot of information and pictures to illustrate the differences between Nylon, Saran and Acetate doll hair.

Wide Eyed Girls: This site has one of my favorite nylon/saran reroot tutorials. It has lots of pictures and I think shows the simplest part thatching method for creating part lines n’ that.

Suppi.net: This link will take you to a search result page after searching for “reroot”. Has many different posts with random information on rerooting, BUT it most importantly contains information on good hair color matches for Monster High Draculaura complete with pictures and fiber names.

This is all I have collected so far. Of course Dollyhair, My Little Customs, and Restore Doll each have their own little tutorials section, so it would be a good idea to scour those too if you are looking for more tutorials. Lastly, if you happen to know of any other great rerooting tutorials or fiber information sites please feel free to post the links in the comments!! Any posts containing links though will have to be moderated by me first as a spam prevention, but don’t worry, they will get through!

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Dolly Find – Clearance Liv Wigs

I always knew about the Liv wigs as I had seen them in the doll aisle many times before, but I never bothered with them because I had always felt they were too expensive for what they were. However Target has started to clearance off some of their Liv wigs and clothing (probably they are summer goods), and at $4 the price became agreeable enough for me to try one out. I will go ahead and write up a review of sorts, but just be sure to keep in mind that this is my first experience with a Liv wig, and I have heard that not all Liv wigs are created equal.

So, first thing out of the box I was surprised to find that the Liv wigs are basically Kanekalon or Saran doll hair that has been rooted onto what amounts to a cheap non-stretchy silicon cap. The part that surprised me was the fact that in a way it’s kind of like buying a scalp. The fiber of the wig is soft and shiny enough, but unfortunately as you will soon see below in the picture that this wig is VERY THINLY ROOTED.

As you can see, there is an unseemly gap at the top of the wig where when the hair falls to either side it reveals a large bald spot. I am imagining that it is difficult to root anything in that area due to the peg which I will get to later, but still, I mean I’ve seen cheap $5 Barbies with better rooted hair than this wig.

Now here is the wig flipped inside out, you can clearly see how it is rooted, and you can clearly see the peg I was talking about. Again I think this picture illustrates just how thinly these things are rooted, but more importantly I want to focus on the peg for now. If you aren’t familiar with them like I was, the peg may come as a surprise. Apparently the Liv dolls and some Monster High dolls come with a slot in their head for the peg to fit and thusly it helps keep the wig on during play. It’s actually a pretty good idea for a playline doll considering how rough the younger girls play with their dollies. However it is obviously going to get in the way if you want to use it on a BJD or another type of doll that has no special slot. The good news is you can clip the peg off quite easily with a good pair of snips or household scissors.

So, with the peg out of the way, the first thing I wanted to do was to try it on my Slinky Neko tiny as I had heard that Liv wigs worked well on Lati Yellow and Pukifee sized heads, and my Slinky Neko girl has a similar sized head with a 5.5 inch circumference. As you can see from the photo, the wig did not fit at all. If the cap had been at all stretchy it probably would have, but the caps on the Liv wigs are surprisingly stiff and unforgiving. So the thing to keep in mind here is that for Pukifees, Slinky Neko babies and other tinies with close to a 5.5 inch head circumference, these wigs will absolutely NOT fit. I am wondering though that perhaps if the doll had a head closer to 5.25 inches then maybe the wig might work, but 5.5 and above, no.
On the bright side though, these wigs work very well on the Monster High dolls. This wig even fits with Draculaura still with her default hair in, which you can see below.

So, here’s my final thoughts on Liv wigs. Initially I was disappointed by their poor quality, but for $4, I mean what can you expect really. The fiber on the wig is quite nice and the style is also pleasantly modern. For now I’ve decided I will be working with this wig and I ordered a hank of Kanekalon which I hope will match well enough so I can fill the wig out more and cover up bald spots. Most people won’t do this I realize, but I’ve been in the mood to reroot lately so it doesn’t bother me. In the end it comes down to this, for a play wig for young girls, this is an excellent bargain. For a doll collector who expects high quality out of their goods, this wig is horrible, a fixer-upper if you will. If you like a fixer-upper, then by all means go for it, if you don’t, then stay far far away, lol. I still however would not pay full price for such a thing…clearance only for sure!!

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Monster High Draculaura

SoOOooo, I guess I’m getting on the Monster High customizing bandwagon because I bought my first Draculaura last week. The image to the left is of her straight out of the box, the only thing I did to her was trim her bangs to remove that weird, vampy, widows peak thing she had going, and I also let her hair down out of her ponytail. I think I’m finally starting to solidify how I want to customize her. I am fairly certain I will be re-rooting her hair, whether partial or full, and she is definitely getting her face repainted and her body blushed. Currently I’m waiting for my order of doll hair from dollyhair.com before I make any definite decisions about her hair. On the one hand her pink streaks have a punkish charm, but on the other hand it can kinda be tacky city. XP I’ve got to figure out what to do with her hair first though, because there is no way I’m rerooting after a custom paint only to wreck it with half my sealer coming off during the process, which is what happened during my Rainbow Dash custom project. Speaking of Dashy, I acquired the glue I needed and she’s drying right now. As soon as her glue dries I’ll put together her tail, pop her head back on and start the styling process on her mane.

Getting back to Draculaura now, I did find out that if you want to retain her natural hair and use a wig, then 6-7 is a perfect fit. Here she is trying on one of my MSD girl’s wigs. See, she’s starting to look cuter already! I also bought a Liv wig on clearance at Target to try, but I’ll be saving that for another posting. I’ve also dug up quite a few excellent rerooting tutorials in my quest for knowledge before I attempt what will be my second rerooting project, but my very first dolly one (since Dashy is a pony after all!). Anyhow I shall be trying to share as much info as I can with you as I go through the customizing process. I am very looking forward to another dolly project!!