MH Care & Repair: Fixing Broken Legs **UPDATE 2**

Hey! Remember Christmas, when I received the thoughtful gift of an honest-to-goodness Battle Damage Ghoulia with real amputee action?

This fine lady? Yep. Well, my initial attempt at fixing her leg (read all about it here) turned out to be a temporary fix. It held for a few days, but because the break was so close to the joint itself, the leg could not stay on, could not be used, and eventually had to be removed again.

So I went back to the sources I'd used in the original repair, namely, the tutorial on leg modification using CAM parts, and I scheduled a spa day for my ladies with broken legs. Join us, won't you?

FYI, this is a "Skulltimate Roller Maze" Ghoulia with custom haircut and clothes, and "Classroom" shoes.. possibly my all-time favorite Ghoulia shoes in existence. She and "Dance Class" Operetta were two of my first, and still my favorite, ghouls.



This is a Wave 1 ("School's Out") Abbey Bominable with original earrings and choker, wearing Scaris Abbey's dress. She joined us when her owner decided she'd "outgrown" her MH collection, and she came to us with this broken leg. She's also missing most of her sparkle along the cheekbones and the right side of her face.
The front of the thigh had been partially split, which implies the leg broke when it was forced forward out of its peg. There was no damage inside the peg cavity itself aside from minor scratching around the edges.

So, for this repair, all that had to be done was choosing a CAM leg for the repair, snipping off the top portion of the peg, and attaching the peg with super glue.

Abbey has a unique skin tone and texture, so her "new" leg definitely does not match.. but at least it fits her color scheme!

 Here you can easily see the difference between their injuries. Abbey's break, while it damaged the front of her leg, did almost nothing to the back, and resulted in a fully functional (though differently-colored) repair. Ghoulia's repair, however, involved a bit more work, as the initial repair attempt had damaged both sides of her thigh and the interior of the peg housing, and the original break had done some damage to the front of the knee joint.

Since peg breakage is common with these dolls and their super-long, skinny legs, here's a walkthrough on how to repair the damage.

Materials:

~ a CAM leg to use as replacement
~ cutting pliers or snips
~ tweezers
~ super glue or any super-strong adhesive

Step 1: If any part of the peg is still inside the leg, it will need to be removed. Insert the tweezers into the back seam of the thigh, and use them to pry open and brace the leg. Use your pliers (or a second pair of tweezers, if you've got 'em) to pull out the peg. Note: the peg is seated between two "gates" for a firm hold, so removing it does take a bit of effort. Try opening the thigh wider rather than pulling harder. Thanks to quality construction, you don't need to worry too much about breaking the thigh, though you may want to be careful about the length of the scar you're creating.

Step 2: Prep the CAM leg for insertion.

In this comparison, it's plain to see the difference in length between a CAM leg and a standard leg. Fortunately, snipping off the tip of the CAM leg reduces it to an accurate length, and a false "neck" for the leg -- so that it can be braced inside the two plastic "gates" inside the peg cavity -- can be easily created with a pair of pliers.

 Step 3: Insert the new leg.

Typically, super-strength adhesives like Krazy Glue have a very short cure time and a tendency to get on EVERYTHING. So my advice to you is: Be prepared! Remove ALL unnecessary pieces from your workspace. Clear away any little bits that might get blown into the glue or the peg cavity. Keep the glue sealed until you're ready to use it.

Prop the peg cavity open with your tweezers. Coat both the prepared end of the CAM peg and the inside of the peg cavity with a thin layer of adhesive. Then slide the new leg in and keep it positioned so that the adhesive will naturally bond into place. In this shot, Ghoulia's shoes are helping to weigh down her new leg!


 If you've used the back of the thigh seam to open the thigh, you'll likely be left with an ugly scar like this. You can glue and hold it shut after the peg cures into place, or you can repair the spot with epoxy, Milliput, or Sculpey. In my case, I've left the scar bare, but I hope to clean it up soon. In the worst-case scenario, just remember: very few people are going to notice it.

And voila! Two fixed fine ladies.

Some folks might be concerned about the lack of matching skin tones. For my part, I kind of like the way it looks on Abbey, but I admit I'm a bit bothered by my zombie ghoul having one healthy pink limb. I've read about using acrylic paints to correct skin tone but I have not tried it yet. My advice would be, if you know a mismatched doll will bother you, use the light-colored CAM legs so they *can* be painted over, rather than using the Sea Monster or Witch parts, which might lend an unpleasant background color to your paint attempts.

If you have any questions or comments, please leave them here. And if you've got a male doll who needs leg fixing, please check out this post!

Updates All Around!

Howdy y'all!

FIRST: I won NaNoWriMo (yay!) with "The Abyss Gazes Also", but it's not over yet. If you haven't checked it out yet, you can right here. We're on Chapter 53 right now, heading into the climax, and it's getting good reviews, so come along for the ride!

SECOND: Look at these fine-ass ladies who recently came to stay.

Picture Day Operetta and Music Festival Abbey.

Our local Walmart is moving out all its old stock, and both these lines are on sale for $10 each. Check your local Walmart for end-of-season deals too! Spring 2014 dolls are coming!

Here's Abbey with just the front piece of the box removed, still attached.

Here you can see everything the doll comes with. The Music Festival line is a budget, or minor, line, but I think you get a good amount of quality accessories for the lower price. She wears a 1960s style blouse with one dropped shoulder, gathered waist and elbows, and ragged-edge three-quarter sleeves and waistline. She has a blue-and-purple faux denim mini with frayed edges. Her melting ice belt in blue translucent plastic is re-used, and I usually despise belts, but in this case it helps to keep the edges of the blouse from curling up.

The one stand-out piece of this outfit, for me, is the boots. Translucent blue melting ice boots, knee-high, with removable bright pink spiked shackles. You can't tell me that's not awesome. (Her blouse and adorable headband also prompted me to get her. I just love the style!)

I mean LOOK at those boots! You can also see her VIM pass and her earrings in the shape of one blue snowflake and one purple crystal. I wonder how many other Abbey dolls don't include her signature "ice crystal" choker?

Now on to that lovely lady from the catacombs...

Picture Day Operetta! I'd been looking EVERYWHERE for her, and B wound up running into her at Walmart, which was unexpected. She was on my must-have list for the following reasons:

- One, she's Operetta.

- Two, the Picture Day sets are fairly cheap ($10 - $15 in most stores right now, $19.99 on release) yet come with some of the greatest accessories and design for their price point. The clothes in this line are consistently well-made and gorgeous. The Fearbook is worth it if only for the sheet of stickers within.

- That jacket! Finally, an MH letterman jacket for a ghoul!

- Those shoes! .. OK, basically the fact that she's 1950s ghoul cool reincarnated. Spectacular.

However, as you might guess, that cute little "hairdo gone astray" image of her on the Picture Day boxes translates to "glue-stiffened unmanageable coil of hair" in 3D, which also left her face spattered with glue; and the back of her head has been pressed so firmly against the box that any shape her carefully crafted ponytail and pompadour might have had, has been destroyed. So, yes. She's on my "imminent boil and re-do" list.

I noticed also that her left hand is deformed and will require some careful trimming with an Xacto before it can bend as normal. Other than that, she's flawless.

The coat is cut just under the bust with three-quarter sleeves. The main body is purple pleather, with an MH logo printed on the upper left breast. The sleeves are white faux leather. The coat has knit acrylic trim at the cuffs, hem, and neck. It's well-made, though I worry about the longevity of the pleather, and it looks absolutely fantastic.

The corset is a removable piece with thin velcro closure and printed white stringing. It is structured just as a small corset should be, in panels, and it fits just right.

Operetta has a handbag shaped like a red and black dripping heart, with a music-note "tail" detail on one side. The bag is small, just big enough for a ghoul's iCoffin, but I do appreciate the nifty curve in its strap, designed to help its weight balance on a doll's arm.

On her left wrist she wears a simple black bracelet, common to the dolls released in this line and around this same time. On the right wrist she wears a bead-detailed red bracelet, a recolor of Lagoona's Dot Dead Gorgeous white bracelet.

Here are her amazing shoes, with molded and painted buttons and a red seam along the inside of the ankle. I can't get over these. They're gorgeous.

Her facemask is still heart-and-cobweb shaped, but this time the spider at its edge is bright red, adding some visual punch. On her right ear she wears a long earring of black vinyl records.

This is the full complement of accessories with this doll: jacket, corset, dress, fishnet stockings, bag, bracelets, facemask, earring, and shoes, not to mention folder with spiderweb patterns and closure, stand, and brush.

The jacket, shoes, socks, and corset could easily be added to other Operetta outfits, without disrupting her basic style themes.

The dress, leopard print interspersed with music notes and treble clefs, combines the "strapless" (clear plastic straps) look of the Ghouls Night Out designs with the tulle, patterns, and ruffles of the Dot Dead Gorgeous line. It's elegant, fierce, and adorable, all at once. That's Operetta in a nutshell!

So, in conclusion, I'd say the Picture Day line are worthwhile, for your own collection or for storing as a future investment. This is the second "basic" Operetta doll and in my opinion she's a gem. It's obvious Mattel put a lot of work into her design and the craftsmanship used to put her together.

As for the Music Festval dolls, I feel their costumes make them worth the cost, but they don't offer much else. If you have a favorite character, get them in this budget line if only to have some variety; otherwise, these dolls will soon be on deep discount, so keep your eyes peeled.

Up next: Pattern layouts for common MH outfit pieces!