u/usagibae

Unfortunately she came with snipped hair at the front, hair so matted I will probably spend 4 hours restoring it, an unidentified sticky substance in her eye, permanent marker writing on her body, a failed lipstick job in her mouth as well as a “manicure” and lovely pen “eyeliner”. Lol.

Luckily I’m getting into doll restoration, so hopefully this is a fun project for me with a great result :) I’m hoping to start up a “doll hospital” locally so this will be great practice. I already failed removing and reinstalling eyes on an “off brand” (Springfield collection) doll, so I’m hoping i can get rid of the sticky brown substance in her eye without removing them. If all else fails, I got a cheap Elizabeth at the end of the day and will send her to the AG hospital :P

I’m thinking about filming/ documenting my process fixing her up, not sure if anyone would even be interested in that. Just figuring out a way to film with one hand and a finding decent setup that isn’t my bathroom floor hahaha.

So…. I was trying to remove the eyes from this doll using the hot water method. The first eye came out perfectly, and the second was giving me a really hard time. So against all other advice, i put more water in the head to soften the vinyl to give it that one last try… and it looks like I really messed up the eye lol. As you can see on the inside, the eye socket looks to be a bit torn. I’m not sure what the integrity of the eye looks like, but I’m nervous to try to get it out again. (This is not an American Girl but one of the knock offs popular in the 90s-2000s that I purchased to potentially practice eye swapping when I’m ready to do it on AG dolls.)

Has anyone ever run into this problem before? Any advice to get the eye out and do some damage control?