Restoring dolls can be a way to bring your favorite doll back to life or to transform two bad condition dolls into one nice condition doll. Plus just doing simple things such as cleaning up a doll can do wonders for it.

 

    Swapping body parts is one good way to restore dolls. Items that can be swapped are:

    - Heads

    - hands

    - arms

 

    The legs and torso can’t be swapped, as you have to break them to pull them off.

 

    Heads can be swapped by using my tutorial in the re-rooting section of this site, as I show how heads are removed. Hands can be removed by pulling hard on them and for stubborn to remove ones, place them in hot water to soften them for easier removal. Some doll’s hands won’t remove very easily though and you can end up damaging the hand or end up with the hand off, but the stem still stuck in the arm, but I have fixed this by drilling the hand stem out, so if the hand is damaged anyway, then trying this is usually worthwhile. Just make sure you know how to use a screw driver and have the right size attachment, or if it is hard to budge, leave it as is.

 

    Doll’s arms can be removed for swapping. So if you have a doll with an arm that no longer clicks or is damaged, this can certainly be swapped for another arm. I will soon be including a tutorial for this. For dolls with popped shoulders, these can also be be fixed and I have a tutorial for this.

 

    When a doll has a split in the vinyl, this can be fixed. an industrial strength glue such as ‘loctite’ is very good for this, as it requires a glue that sets fast and sets well. To fix a split, place a small amount of glue in the split, then push the area together tightly. Once the glue is set, you can move your hands to see how it glued. Then use a nail file or sand paper and sand away any excess glue from the vinyl surface. This is such a great method and some splits can be repaired almost to the state of hardly seeing where the repair is.

 

    Dolls that have mystery melt marks on their foreheads or any other place can be easily fixed by lightly sanding the area with a super fine sand paper or emery board. The Melt marks are most likely a reaction to other plastics from being stored and many are scuff marks from play. This technique with sand paper is also useful for other strange surface marks or for to sand away a nose dent on a doll.

 

    Some of the dolls with the ball wrists will have yellowed legs and arms. No matter how much scrubbing you do, they remain yellow. The trick to removing the yellow is using nail polish remover over the limbs and they will return to their normal tone. This is also a great technique to use on the purple Synergy dolls, as the purple color in the skin tone bleeds over time, making the skin blotchy. If you over do it on Synergy, she can end up with a pinkish skin tone, so I do recommend blending the color back through her limbs as you use the nail polish remover on her.

 

    To clean dolls, place them in a tub of warm soapy water and use a scrub brush to clean them up. I have cleaned many dolls this way and it does not remove their face paint. In fact, I even place Jem dolls with flashing earrings entirely in the water and the earrings still work. I just make sure there are no batteries in them and make sure the doll is fully dried before putting new batteries in. After your dolls are clean and dry, use talcom powder on their arms and legs to prevent sticky limbs. This is also recommended for after using nail polish remover on dolls with yellowed limbs.