I usually take reference pics for myself, but thought I’d post them in case anyone is interested in pics of Rochelle bald, and how she is rooted by default. =D I’m gonna be giving Rochelle a new faceup as the current makeup doesn’t suit my character Royce. (Faceup is generally the term Super Dollfie fans use for makeup. =D I prefer using it as I’m a SD fan. ^_~)
To remove the head, I ran hot water (from a tap) across the neck to soften the vinyl head. Had to run it under a few times to get the head soft enough. Once it was, pulling it free of the neck post was so easy! Though, the stupid neck post itself is rather fragile.
Head removed from body!
A little note about the neck post: those who own Volks 1/6 dolls or similar will agree that the MH neck post design sucks. They should have been designed to give the doll more head tilt angles than just side to side. Mattel is way behind a lot of 1/6th doll designs in this. =( Getting into the jointed doll design late, they should have done a lot better. Okay, I know, they were targeting kids when they designed the MH dolls, but still… >=(
With long hair and without.
Gosh. She is -so- cute with cropped hair!! O_O I am seriously thinking if giving her flocked hair now! *_* But I still want her with long, soft white mohair too…. *indecisive*
I cut off her long hair and removed the glue-covered mess from inside her head with a crochet needle. Basically, I dug around with the needle, and the hook is pretty decent in catching plugs and pulling them out. Helps that the head vinyl is soft so you can push the needle around roughly to catch the hair plugs. Just had to be careful about accidentally pushing the hook through the plug holes and enlarging them
But, oh my goodness, it’s no wonder the original hair is sooo greasy. The glue inside the head is not even solid. -_- Here’s how bad the state of the glue inside the head is:
Stickly glue all over the hair inside, and on my crochet needle. -_-
Bad Mattel. Really shoddy design flaw that is highly unacceptable. They should have anticipated the glue melting. And after the complaints I’m assuming they would have had after so long, they should have stopped adding glue to the heads after rooting. -_- A doll you really like might not be able to be kept as it is because of the greasy hair. -_- And imagine your kids playing with their dolls, and their fingers are always sticky and tacky from the glue after playing. >=(
With makeup and without.
I removed the makeup with Mr Color Thinner that I have around. Didn’t make sense to try to find 100% acetone when I already had thinner so I gave it a try. The vinyl didn’t melt, to my relief. *laughs* I swished the thinner around inside the head too in order to get rid of the glue residue.
I had to scrub -really- hard at the paint to remove it. The black eyelashes -smeared- and freaked me out because it was so hard to scrub off! I thought I had stained the head permanently. >_< The eyebrows were also really hard to rub off. It’s a good thing the head is flexible, so I basically bent the face all out of shape in order to remove the paint from the lines and corners of the eyes and mouth.
How she was originally rooted.
The plug holes aren’t too large for the most part, except for where her parting had been.
Like the face makeup, the pink paint on the head is -so- hard to remove! I gave up in the end so there are traces of pink paint left when I was done. I figure I’ll give her pinkish hair in some form so it doesn’t show through too badly. Either that or I will attempt to remove the paint again when I have my faceup supplies. Not looking forward to it though. My thinner smells really bad. >_<