Doll Restoration: Summer (2014)

Hey y'all. Meet Summer.

Summer is part of the Barbie Fashionistas line. Here's how she'd look in the store.

This Summer, however, has been through quite a lot. I found her torso on the ground while passing a park by my house. Her arms were still attached, but her legs and head had been twisted off.

Little t told me he'd seen her inside the park a day earlier, and she was whole, but nude. He wanted to pick her up but he thought she belonged to a kid living nearby, so he left her there.

We went back to the park and, after hunting around for a little bit, found both her legs and her head, and brought her home in pieces.

Both of Summer's knees had been snapped off at the hip, and the knees twisted in circles and pulled. The plastic at the knee joint had suffered pretty intensive damage. The right hip-joint knob was still attached to the torso, so I was able to just snap her right leg back on. For the knees, I boiled a pot of water, bent the legs at the knee, and dipped only the knee area for about ten seconds at a time, then pressed the socket in towards the thigh until the plastic gradually receded. Her knees are still in bad shape and one leg juts out further than the other, so she has some trouble balancing.

Her torso casing suffered minor damage and is partially split at the hip only on the left side. Because the left hip-joint knob was missing, I had to use a short drywall screw to re-attach her left leg. It moves front to back and has limited outward movement, but a bit more effort is required to get it in action.

Pardon me for blasting your eyeballs with plastic boobs, but I wanted to show the damage. I could sand down the divots or possibly use the boiling water treatment to coax the divots closer to their original place, but I chose to leave them since they're more cosmetic damage than structural.

Summer's been restored with minimal effort, and is now the new friend of little t.

There's very little that I can do to help people who have suffered attacks like this, but I can fix plastic. Or at least I can try.

Have you ever restored a broken doll? What has your experience been like?

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!

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

Howdy y'all!
Guess what I woke up to this morning?

Well hey sugar. Sweet Grandmere's beignets, what did you do to your leg?!
You might have known this already, but Monster High dolls have some leg problems. It's the price of beauty, I suppose. If this were a standard teen female doll, I could remove the peg and replace it with a CAM leg, as I did for both Ghoulia and Abbey; but a female CAM leg won't fit a male doll because the pegs are thicker in male dolls.
This worked to my (and Heath's) benefit, though. I attempted a peg repair for Ghoulia which failed because the peg was too thin. It seems, this time, the peg repair was a success because of its thickness.
Um, I suppose I should apologize for the skimpy Home Ick micro-apron, but I figured there wouldn't be much benefit to posting jeans-clad photos of a leg repair.. and I couldn't stomach the thought of putting him in those awful Mattel shorts the other boys came with. And if I just took photos without the apron. Well. This would be a different sort of post entirely, involving an awful lot of teenybopper-type giggling.
So here's a look at the break itself. I drew a line to show where the peg snapped. Also, do you see that little hollow in the center of the peg? I'm not sure if it's a manufacturing defect but I suspect that may have made the peg susceptible to breakage in the first place. If the peg was that thick and solid, it would be very difficult to snap.

This was a fairly simple fix. I did the same thing I originally tried with Ghoulia: simply applying super glue to the broken peg and the broken base, and then fitting the two pieces together. I held it in front of my desk lamp so the heat would help cure the glue faster. The hardest part was making sure the two pieces were properly fit together and then not allowing one to drift out of alignment with the other.
When I first saw the break I made the following assumptions:
~ I will not be able to bend the knee again.
~ The knee will probably require additional support, a "brace" of some sort to keep the leg rigid so it doesn't fall off or snap again.
~ The re-attached leg may be so crooked it will make it impossible for the doll to stand on his own again.
~ The leg will not be able to rotate side-to-side again.
Thankfully, except for the last one, all of these assumptions were proven false!

Here's Heath, post-repair, sitting happily on the edge of the Frankenputer. I did have to 'break' a thin layer of super glue that had dribbled over the top of the knee joint, but it seems the internal peg has sealed well. The leg is not wobbly or loose at all. The knee feels stiff but not difficult, the way it felt when he first came out of the box.
However, it will not rotate side-to-side, because any attempt to do so would place pressure on the broken segment of the peg and possibly break the two pieces out of alignment again. While I could keep repairing the leg over and over, I am concerned that over time the layers of glue will build up to the point where the leg becomes useless. So, for now, he has a bad knee.. functional, but not very flexible.

Notice how Heath's right foot now turns inward a bit, due to the angle of the peg when it broke. That's actually kinda cute. Awkward Heath!
For the record, the broken Heath belongs to little t, who hopefully has learned that the floor is not a suitable storage space for his precious dolls. Here's my own Heath, chillin' in the easy chair with a "No Shame" Sundae:

So, TLDR: MH male dolls have thicker knee joints, which makes repair easier but also reduces flexibility in the event of a break. And Heath has pretty nice legs.

MH Care & Repair: Fixing Broken Legs **OUTDATED**

** WARNING!! This post has been UPDATED and the information contained here, in the original, is NO LONGER ACCURATE. If you're looking for fixes for an MH doll's broken leg, please see here on how to fix a male doll's broken leg, and here on how to fix a female doll's broken leg using CAM pieces. Thank you! **


Howdy y'all!
So for Christmas this year, my kids gave me my gift early.

It's Battle Damage Ghoulia! Now with real amputee action!
Needless to say, I wasn't exactly thrilled with this turn of events. But it turns out my favorite dollies have some accident-prone legs, and they've been around long enough that others have had to deal with similar problems.
I found a few good solutions online but none that really fit my issue exactly. This wasn't a Wave 1 elastic break. It wasn't a peg slip-out repair. And it wasn't quite a leg modification using CAM kit parts.
But that last post got me thinking, and soon I had a plan! So, without further ado, I present:
How to Repair Monster High Doll Legs Broken at the Knee Joint

Materials:
- any super-strong adhesive - I used Krazy Glue but Gorilla Glue and Superglue are also great.
- an Xacto knife or other craft knife with a thin, sharp blade
- a pair of thin tweezers
- a small pair of pliers, any size, but needle nose would probably be ideal (not pictured)
Due to the number of potentially dangerous items on this list, it is highly recommended that you have a friend, sibling, or parent to assist you. I'm serious! Please be very careful!

Step 1:
First, take a good look at the break you're dealing with. This is a pretty clean break from one leg being pushed out to the side, resulting in a stress fracture in the joint plastic. Breaks due to twisting, pulling, or forcing the leg into unnatural positions, or eventual brittleness of the plastic, will need different amounts of preparation and care.

Step Two:
Use your Xacto knife to cut slowly along the seam on the back of the leg. This seam is easier to cut into than the front, and the damage is ultimately less visible. Once you've cut halfway up the thigh, insert one leg of the tweezers to prop the gap open, as seen here, and use your pliers to remove the broken peg, as seen below.

Step Three:
Coat the broken ends of the peg and joint with your adhesive. Hold them together long enough to cure. I used the heat of my desk lamp to hurry the curing process; you could also use a hair dryer on low heat or a portable heater or.. I don't know.. a kitten maybe?

Hey, remember when I said Please be careful? That neon green Band-aid is the result of me stabbing myself with the tweezers. So yes! Exercise caution please! And keep Band-aids handy!

Step Four:
Once the glue has cured (e.g., it no longer appears wet and sticky; the pieces can be released without sliding away from one another), you can re-attach the broken limb. Note that those two pegs will have to pass between a narrow gap to return to their original place, and if the glue has not cured, you run the risk of gluing the joint to the inside of the leg. It can be undone but it's a pain in the butt, so, don't do it.

Using your pliers, slide the repaired joint back into the leg socket, being careful to replace it in its original spot and no further. Once the leg has been returned, you can remove your tweezers and press the two halves of the thigh together again. There's going to be a slight gap.

Step Five (optional):
As you can see in the picture above, I did a pretty rad job of actually increasing Ghoulia's leg damage in the course of her repair. If you can get your hands on some Epoxy, Sculpey, or Milliput, you might wish to fill in and smooth over those cracks, which can later be painted to match her skin.

In my case I used a homemade mixture of tissue paper, glue, and a little bit of water to create a crude papier-mache mix, which I plastered over the injury. Once it's dry I plan to sculpt it down against the skin better.

And voila! There you have it. An irreparable doll returned to active duty. Don't know about you, but that just about makes my day.