First of all i heard the door bell ring and then i heard the girls shout “Special Delivery Mum i think she’s here”. I went to investigate all the commotion and there was Marina,Morna and Tess carrying a rather large parcel. Excitement filled the air as we had been waiting patiently for a special delivery.
The girls put the parcel on the ground and that’s when they heard a tapping from the inside. “Oh” said Morna “We had better get this parcel open i think someone wants to come out”
Out of the parcel came what looked like a mummy from Egypt which quite frightened Marina especially when the mummy started to make a noise. Tess always the sensible one said “listen it is saying something”, then they all heard a muffled “please get me out of this parcel i want to see you”

The girls set to work to carefully unwrap the mummy
It was becoming quite clear that this was not a mummy and when a dainty little hand appeared the girls all shouted “its her she is here Mum”

As the girls help their new friend out of her wrappings she said to them “hi my name is Gitta and i have travelled from Switzerland to join your family”

Morna told Gitta she was very welcome and that they had all been waiting for her to arrive.

Morna ,Tess and Marina gathered around Gitta, Marina always the inquisitive one said “Gitta you have a lovely name”. Gitta thanked Marina and said “your Mum who is now my new Mum has given me the name Gitta in honour of my old mum”. The girls led Gitta off to play and meet the rest of her new family.

Pippin Has Fun Training Woof

Some of you may remember that quite some time ago i purchased a blonde waif in need of some TLC.However, when she arrived it soon became clear that she would need an abundance of TLC as she had a lot more problems than the seller had let on. I took one look at her little face and started making plans to fix her up so to speak.
It has taken quite a while as home and family life has put a few obstacles in my way. Now, i can start to share Hope’s story with you. I decided to call her Hope so that she can be a beacon of hope to all those little waifs out there just waiting to be found.
The first photo’s of Hope are the ones i took when she arrived. Hope had quite a few problems then and there are some i will never be able to fix. When Hope arrived her stringing was shot so she could not hold a pose.
She was very dirty and had ink on both sides of her face. She has a dink out of her nose and a scratch right across one of her eyes which i can do nothing about. Her hair was like straw, but maybe the worst thing of all was that she had no knuckles, it was as if someone had filed them away.

Where to start i asked myself, i decided to try to remove the ink from her face first and there are a couple of ways of doing this. I decided to use acne cream on her face to remove the ink. I had quite a job explaining to the chemist what i wanted it for and i had to promise him that it was not for use on an animal!
First of all i gave Hope a nice body wash making sure that i did not ge t any soapy water inside her. I removed Hope’s arms and put pencils along side the sockets to keep the stringing there. Once Hope was dry i wrapped her in tissue paper and only left the parts of her face with the ink on exposed.
Next i applied acne cream to the ink and then i place Hope in front of a lamp and checked her every now and then, once the acne cream had hardened i removed it and re-applied a fresh batch. The lamp was not proving as successful as i had hoped, so i decided to leave Hope on the window sill and let the natural sun work on the acne cream.

After a couple of weeks on the window sill the ink on Hope’s face had gone.

So the first part of repairing Hope was to remove the ink from her face which has been done.
The next part was not so easy. I decided to try and repair Hopes badly damaged hands. her poor hands had no knuckle area at all as some one had filed them away.
The first step was to remove hopes arms.

Once i had removed hopes arms i could get a better look at the damage which extended to the under part of her hands also. Poor Girl!
I tried the hot water technique first, so i filled a small bowl with nearly boiling water and plunged her hands into the water for a couple of minutes.

Now if there had been a dent or ding to her hands, i would have been able to fix it using the hot water method, unfortunately this was not the case and the damage was to great so i had to re-think what i was going to do.
I consulted various Sasha people for any help they could give me and after much deliberation i decided that milliput was the way to go.
Now milliput is not available in many colours and the terracotta colour is more suitable to the colouring of the early Gotz dolls, so that would be something else to deal with later.
For now i had my terracotta milliput, i mixed up the milliput as per the instructions on the packet and applied it to Hopes hands, after making sure they were clean and dry first.

As you can see from the photo’s i applied enough milliput to the hands so that it sat proud, allowing me to sand the milliput down with very fine sand paper. I sanded down the milliput by hand very gently a bit at a time comparing her hands to the unaffected hands of another Sasha doll as i went and this is what the sanded down version looked like.

As i said before the colour of the milliput di d not match the skin tone so once again after consulting some fellow Sasha lovers, i decided to use acrylic paint. I went to quite a few craft shops and although i found a colour that was quite similar to the dolls completion it was not an exact match. then i remembered that someone once told me that Sasha M always used a touch of black in her paints, which gave me an idea. i added black paint drop by drop to the complexion paint until i reach a colour that i was happy with.
I then painted the milliput with the paint and carried the paint over the milliput and a little way up Hopes hands.This was the result.

As you can see once the paint had dried the colour was not a complete match and at some point i will redo them until i get it right. Then i will seal the paint with matt acrylic varnish so that it does not shine to much but for now Hope has new hands!!

Hi everyone well here i am again with the next instalment of repairing my darling little Hope.
Now Hope had new hands it was time to try and re-string her, before i could do that i had to gather the equipment together that i would need.
Once again i took guidance from a number of Sasha friends and with the knowledge i had gained i decided to give it a go so to speak. now i am no professional at any of the repairs that i have carried out on Hope and everything i have done has been trial and error and done with love, so if you have a doll that needs repairing and you don’t want to take any chances on further damage then consult the professionals.
Brenda Walton is a professional person to go to if you need your doll re-strung in the UK.
i am adding a link to the Sasha Doll Musings blog as this gives you great detail on how to re-string a doll
http://sashadollblog.blogspot.co.uk/2008/11/on-re-stringing-sasha-dolls.html
The first thing i had to do with Hope was to re-set her bar in her neck as it had come loose and was rattling around in her head, so i stood her head in a shallow dish of hot water for a couple of minutes and then with a pair of medical forceps i re-positioned her neck bar and once cool it remained in place.
The restringing process on the Sasha Doll Musings blog shows slightly different equipment than i have used, for instance i could not find the the metal clamps they have used to i used cable ties. I don’t have any photo’s of the actual re-stringing that i carried out on Hope as i was too busy trying to do it.
A couple of tips i do have are with the head to leg re-string is to tie this off at the leg using a pencil as an anchor and then remove the pencil once the leg has been attached. I used plastic ties on the arm re-stringing as it is easier when using a smaller piece of stringing and also remember to put your arm stringing behind the leg to head stringing.
The equipment i used can be easily sourced, the medical forceps i got from ebay for about £8 in a job lot and these are excellent as they are self gripping. The boot hook was also on ebay for about £10 and is great for puling the stringing through, which was a tip from Ted. Ted also gave me a tip about how to use pipe cleaners to stop hook and bar attachments from falling into the doll.The plastic ties are easy to get hold of too.

The string that i used i purchased from ebay and i used the same thickness as the original.
I did it Hope has been restrung, so on to her hair, which resembles dry candy floss. The first thing i tried with Hopes hair was to first clean it gently with baby shampoo and then soak it in fabric conditioner. It felt ok so i styled it in rollers and left it to dry.

Unfortunatley once Hope’s hair was dry it still looked very dry and dull.I wet her hair again and this time i soaked it in woolite, which improved the texture, but her hair was still very dry on the ends. I decided to try a rich human conditioner that comes with hair-dye to the ends of Hopes hair and although her hair is by no means perfect, it does look better and smells beautiful.
Would you like to see her, She’s a bit shy!!

Turn round Hope we want to see you.

Here are some more photo’s of Hope i think she turned out ok!!

And now there is an up date to this story, as hope’s hair was still straw like I decided to re-rot it and here she is now.

by twizeltheresa ^Pro @ 2014-04-29 – 15:49:07

It was rather a nice sunny day today so Gitta a lovely blonde no-navel decided to take the family dog Woof for a walk into town, just as she was about to walk into the town centre she spotted a sign in a shop window saying New Shop opening soon!
Well, Gitta (said to Woof as there was no one else there at the time to talk to)” i bet this is Mums new shop, she has been waiting to open this for ages, but because of all the building work that has been going on at home she hasn’t been able to.I will have to tell the others. I hope Mum is going to sell some clothes like this lovely embroidered coat she made me.

Gitta went on her way
Next to find the shop was Ruth a 1969 blonde centre part and Pebbles an early brunette baby girl. Ruth is wearing a dress and matching pants that i made for her, in her hair she has Frog hair slides that i have also made and on her feet she is wearing a pair of Berkis made by Marti Murphy.Pebbles is wearing a little dress that i made for her and is modelling Ladybird hair slides that i also make.


Next to find the shop was my 1969 brunette side part who does not have a name and this is simply because i can’t find one to suit her, she is wearing a lovely dress and pants by A Passion for Sasha which was a gift to me.The shoes are a leather pair i made myself and she is modelling 1 of the barrette clips that i also made.

Pippin my 1973 wide faced brunette popped along to find out what all the fuss was about?

Pippin is wearing a lovely dress by Joanie B and a lovely cardi by Joan Woodbridge, her sock are by Gillian Nash and her frog Barrette clip in her hair was made by me.
Next to pop along to the shop was my 1970 blonde girl Gracie and she is modelling an outfit made entirely by me from cotton fabric, i also made the leather sandals she is wearing and the hair slide she is modelling.

By now a little group had gathered outside the shop and they all had the same thing on their mind. ” i hope the shop opens soon!!

Twizels Needs a Little Help!!