Wednesday, January 4, 2012

New find and a head for "Rosie"

Went to Walmart for cleaning supplies and took a quick jaunt down the doll aisle.  I was looking for another Raquelle to separate into body and head.  I found Raquelle (last one) for 10 and some change, so I went ahead and got her.  I also saw something interesting in an unexpected place--apparently there's a new "Barbie Mermaid Tale" movie coming back, and they have a variation on the face of one of the dolls I've never seen, so I grabbed her too.  I put a different head on her body and will give it to my kids.  Don't have a body for her yet, but I really like her face.

The Raquelle, meanwhile, has come home and her body given to a Model Muse who is over there showing off and shouting "Woohoo, look at this!" to all the other poor Model Muses who are still stuck in one position.  Raquelle's head became sort of an experiment, but she turned out great.
I love the Rosie O'Donnell Barbie's body size, but hateHATE the Rosie head (I don't dislike Rosie, but the huge teeth on that head are very offputting).  So I've looked for other options for her head, with two problems: 1.  Her neck is bigger than a regular body, so you can't fit a normal sized barbie head on it.

  2. Because her neck and body are bigger, some barbie-sized heads look way too small.  Luckily, the newer "big headed" barbies are a decent size for her, so the only thing I had to do was adapt the neck hole. 

The first few tries involved splitting a barbie head up the back--which works but will not stay without some gluing.  I have one Rosie hybrid that I did that with, and while I like her, the neck looks sloppy.  But the other day I had the idea, instead of making room at the back of the neck hole, why not make the room at the front of the neckhole?  I used a practice head:

This is the mark around which I will carve with my exacto.

This is after the cutting. 
This is not the same head (this is raquelle) but you can see the size of the holes compared to the holes on a normal barbie head. 
 This is the practice head on the body--it finally sits on, but is obviously too small.
And here is Raquelle on the body.  Great color match AND the right size.  I'm really tickled.  Not a bad day when I manage to finish a doll AND get a new victim, er, doll.

11 comments:

  1. you did a great job with it!looks nice :)

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  2. I like it! she looks like a young chubby girl. I beats just having all the skinny girls out there.

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  3. Wow looks great! I never even thought to look at the more fantasy Barbies. Great find.

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  4. Love that new head. Good job with Raquelle's head and Rosie's body. It came out great!

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  5. Hey, good use for those big heads! :)

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  6. Hi from SpAin, congratulations for great looks. Keep in touch

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  7. Oh this is sad news for my plans, but great to see. I'm actually confused about how to cut out some neck space though, but I can probably figure it out then probably get some help with the exacto, because I'm a wimp, ha.

    I do have a large head that I hated, but love the hair of, and I wanted a blonde on Rosie's body, so she may work. Hmmmm. Thanks for the accidental help? I'm sure you're helping a lot of ladies. ;-)

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  8. I'd suggest a practice head. The key is to cut toward the front of the face and not to the back. Once you shave off a little, you will probably get a feel for what needs to be done. The inside of the barbie head has so much rubber--you have to remove the front half to jam rosies neck in there.

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  9. So I had a little trouble understanding the post. Can I summarize and see if you agree?

    1) A playline head works great on Rosie's body bc Playline heads are very big.
    2) Cut away part of a playline's extra neck rubber, but practice on a throw-away head first. Even though it will look like a pin head on the Rosie barbie.
    3) (This is the part I am not getting as much) -- cut the invisible part of the neck hole and NOT the visible part? and cut the inner neck fodder that is toward the face part not the inner neck fodder that is toward the back of the head.

    Can you confirm part 3? I think this is a phenomenal idea and I wan to be sure I've got it right. Not that I don't have a ton of BBBBarbie heads I can use for practice.

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  10. Kristl, I need to take a better picture. You do have to shave off about 1/8 of an inch from the visible part of her throat toward her chin. Then you cut out the front half of all that non-visible stuff in her head. But yes, there is a cut into the visible part of her neck, but it's crescent shaped and not very big. Let me see if I can get a better picture.

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