Barbie and tiny glass beads, the story of a new obsession - Part 4, The head

I know that it sounds creepy, but it's part of the process if you have a bald or an almost bald head.
I am not a doll artist, I'm not a painter, and I'm not a hair stylist. I prefer if the original face is still good enough to be left alone and it's hard work for me to re-root a Barbie head and give her a nice hairdo.
Again I'm glad to have my sister by my side who not only has good tips, but helps with the hairstyle as well.

Those of you who know vintage Mattel dolls, may have been surprised when I said in the second post that I chose a Midge doll for the project because the head in the picture is not a Midge head. Actually the first head was, but I messed it up gloriously after spending hours of re-rooting, trimming, styling, and re-painting the face. That girl had some heavy makeup on, I can tell you.
I had used the wrong glue to hold the hair strands from inside the head and I dropped the head in water to set the hair. Not the whole head obviously. I'm not sure what happened or what I missed, but my (not so) clever construction had failed miserably when I came back to a head that was swimming in a mix of water and dissolving glue. Quite a gruesome sight.
I am sorry to say that Midge was incredibly sticky afterwards, and I lacked the motivation to try all over again. I started looking for doll heads online.

That's when my sister came to the rescue for the first time. She gave me one of her Ponytail heads with a bad hair day, but good makeup. So I started all over again, only this time I had the right glue and settled for red lips instead of wiping the whole face.
My sister also had the idea to use a mascara brush to style the hair after I had cut it.

There you have it - the whole story of my Flapper Barbie.
I hope you enjoyed it a little because the word obsession in the title may already have told you that I am not done yet. I've licked blood and I don't intend to stop.
What I will do, however, is give you a break. Take a deep breath, I might be back with the next story sooner than you can imagine, and again I hope you'll be there with me.

You can find previous posts here:
Part 1, The introduction
Part 2, The dress
Part 3, The accessories


Barbie is a registered trademark of Mattel, Inc. I am not affiliated with Mattel.