How to improve a neck joint

Hi everyone! The past year has pushed the limits of my ability to use the unusable and make do with cheap things. In this quick post I will show you how I add up and down movement to a neck joint that only provides rotation.

Quarantine Tess (flea market rescue)

Hey guys! It may look like I've abandoned blogging, but actually I've been busier than when I posted every month. Today I have a picture-heavy project that took a year to complete, with long breaks and an apartment change a few months into it. I'm pretty much settled in right now and I hope to appear more alive online, not just posting but also reading and supporting my fellow bloggers. I am not making any promises for the future or excuses for my absence, instead let me show you today a doll that I'm very proud of!

Monster High repair trick

Hey everyone! I was excited to show you a couple of dolls I bought used from a fellow collector. However one of them, this Clawdeen, was in no shape to be displayed. She had a common MH problem - missing both hands and a forearm. In this post I'll show you my cheap solution for it.

Happy crafting!

Hello, long time no see! I'm happy to announce I wasn't run over by a train, mistakenly arrested, lost in the wilderness or eaten by runaway zoo tigers! Instead of lame excuses, here is a picture by hubby (concept and execution) and some useful (I hope) resources for all you doll artists :)

Wrist surgery

I took some extra time to prepare this post because I wanted to turn it into a more global tutorial. I was just about ready when Blogger had this annoying glitch for a couple of days. What was up with that? It drove me crazy! I half prepared another post while saving this one for a time when people could actually see it, but now it's fixed, and I know I kept the suspense long enough. I'm happy to say I got to the bottom of the blackening issue, then made a new wrist replacement, and another one for a different (not broken) doll. I now present you a full tutorial for fixing broken wrists/elbows/knees on any doll that uses the kind of joint seen in the first picture. The beauty of it is that it uses common materials and can be adapted for any size and colour!

J-Doll upgrade, part 1: A look at the broken wrist

When you are trying to keep a blog, nothing goes according to the plan. I like to think of myself as a fairly organized person. Yes, I'm slow and overwhelmed with ideas, but generally, I make lists, never skip steps and my stuff has to be in the right place or I flip out on the person who moved it. I take pictures for the blog that I put in labeled and numbered folders, signifying the order in which I intend to write the corresponding posts. Yet there's always some event that disrupts the perfect queue and this is how my promised continuation of the hair care saga has been in drafts for months and also, how today's post came into existence.

One week ago one of the girls from the doll meeting messaged me with good and bad news. Her new J-doll came in the mail, but one wrist was smashed to pieces. She knew mine had a wrist problem as well and asked if I'd fixed it. I had to admit that no, I was reluctant to move it and break it any further. Unfortunately, things don't fix themselves if you do nothing about it. I bought a doll, not a statue. I decided I've had enough of that.