I received a Sasha 108 white dress red head waif with a very bad haircut. so I took her from this …….
To this………..
I harvested hair from the back of her head to created a single fringe and then matched new hair into the plugs at the back
I think she looks much better, what do you think?
oh, and as it is shoes week, she is wearing a very early pair of JJ shoes.
Thanks for looking……………..
I had a brunette baby that was destined to wear a hat for the rest of her life, as she was related to Curly Duke.
However after seeing Dawn Laws tutorial on curling the babies hair , I decided to give it a go, adding my own twist to the process.
Now first I removed the baby’s head, this was done by unhooking each leg stringing, which then allowed the head to be removed. I then removed the metal hook from inside the babies head, leaving the plastic neck ring intact.
I also took the opportunity whilst the baby was apart to give her a thorough clean.
To Start you will need some pipe cleaners. I purchased mine from Hobby craft 100 for £3 and they are quite long so you can get 4 curlers out of 1 pipe cleaner. You will need approximately 60 curlers.
You will also need a container with water in it, a comb, and scissors to cut the pipe cleaners with.
I found it easier to curl the hair by damping the comb in the water and then running it through the hair, if the hair dries out before you finish curling it then just damp it again.
I started at the back of the head, section in the hair and following the hair line as best I could.
When you have sectioned off the hair you are going to curl, pick up you curler and bend it in half so that it is going to surround the hair. Squeeze the curler together so that the hair is trapped inside and pull towards you until you can just see the hair in the curler and then, use your fingers to curl the curler under until it is tight to the head.
Once the curler is tight to the head, at the open end of the curler, bend the curler ends, one up and back and one under and back on itself so it traps the curler, keeping it in place. repeat this process until all the hair is curled. Always curl the hair under.
When you have covered the head in curlers., you will need 3 freezer bags.
Open the first freezer bag and place the head into it, take out as much air as you can and tie the bag in a knot.
Do the same with the 2nd bag
And again with the 3rd bag
This is where my way is different too Dawns.
You will need a large saucepan with a lid. Place the saucepan filled with water on the hob until it boils and then turn it down to simmer.
make sure you have a pair of tongs and a ceramic bowl ready.
Place the head into the simmering water using the tongs, so you do not burn yourself. Once the head is in the saucepan, place the lid on and begin to time it. depending on how tight you would like you curls.
The baby head on the right was simmered for five minutes.
The babies head on the left is the one we are working on now and I have decided to simmer her head for 10 minutes. Once the time is up, remove the babies head from the saucepan using the tongs and place it in the freezer bags into a ceramic bowl.
The freezer bags will cool vey quickly, unwrap each bag separately, you can pull it apart, rather than undo the knot. The reason I use 3 bags is to protect the head and to allow if 1 bag should split. Using this method the babies head does not get wet, just slightly damp from the steam, which is what curls it. Once you have the head released, you can leave it for about 20mins until it is dry and then take the curlers out or you can speed up the process to five minutes by using a hairdryer over the head with the curlers in for a couple of minutes and then take the curlers out, Hey presto 1 curled baby head.
Please be aware that I do not take responsibility for your dolls. I am not an expert and if you try this it is at your own risk. I don’t know how long the curls will last and if they will loosen over time , but if they do , you have the option of re-doing them.
The one on the right was simmered for 5 minutes and the one on the left for 10 minutes.
I think they look very happy, what do you think?
Thanks for looking….
Hello little waif what are you up to ?
oh , you feel like chilling out in a warm bath with bubbles.
You had better get the bath ready then?
Love the swimming costume and the hair net, very fetching.
That’s it ease yourself in.
Nothing like a relaxing bath of bubbles and a glass of lemonade to help you unwind.
Cheers
We will leave you to it then?
when the little lady came to me she looked like this
As you can see from the photos her face is now very good, she still needs to be re-strung and her fringe is stable, but she is practically bald, so a re-root will be in order. For now I think she is happy just chilling.
Thanks for looking.
Last winter I purchased a very sorry looking early Gotz Sasha doll waif. As you will see from the two photo’s below she needed help.
When she arrived I was not expecting the damage to be as bad as it was. Her face was covered in black ingrained soot type dirt, with some kind of lacquer or varnish on top of that. Her facial paint was not in good shape. Her torso was nearly split in half with tares to both sides of her neck and numerous tares under both arm sockets. She looked so sad. First of all I took her apart and began by trying to clean her face with a soap solution.
That only helped a little. The oxy treatment did not work. I then tried to remove the lacquer with nail varnish remover, which helped quite a bit and there was beginning to be light at the end of the tunnel.
I then covered her face with Vaseline and left her in the conservatory for a couple of months to allow her skin to lighten.
I managed to get her skin as light as I could, but it will never be perfect. Her face paint was not good and the only way to get rid of the substance on her face was to remove her eye paint.
I then started to fix her body, which as you can see from the photo’s below was very badly damaged.
I did the best I could, using Gorilla glue which bonds with moisture and then backing the splits with leather.
I don’t know how long or if it will last forever but for now her body is back together.
As this poor young lady had been through so much I asked Janet if she would paint her some new face paint and she said yes.
I had decided to call this little waif Frankie (due to the body part issues)
Apart from a few missing plugs to the front of her hair line, she had beautiful hair.
So, I would like to introduce you to the resurrected or reborn Frankie. Thank you to Janet for making a very sad girl happy again and a very happy Easter to you all.
I recently re-homed this Later Gotz Sasha doll Maria. I knew she had problems and thought I would try to return her to her original state. Maria had quite severe caving to her neck and body due to her stringing being too tight. This is the first time that I have attempted to re-string a later Gotz and I can tell you it is quite a tedious task, but well worth it.
The photos above are of Maria when she first arrived and the ones below are how she looks now.
This is how I fixed Maria’s problems.
First of all I had to remove her stringing. The later Gotz dolls are strung using elastic stringing and plastic cups (as they are safer for children).
To remove the plastic cup from her leg to allow me to get to the stringing. I first heated the top of her leg with a hairdryer on full heat for a couple of minutes, to soften the vinyl.
Next I took hold of my trusty old button hook to encourage the plastic from the leg hole, once I could see the edge of the plastic cup I used forceps to pull it free from the leg hole.
Once the plastic cup was out, I could see that the stringing went through a hole in the middle of the cup and was then secured with a tight knot. I held the stringing out of the body hole with the aid of a pair of forceps and then used my button hook and a smaller pair of forceps to undo the tight knot.
Once the knot was undone I could then slide off the pink plastic cup. I repeated the same process to the other leg. I had discovered that I would have to give Maria new stringing and to get to the head stringing the pink plastic cups had to be removed as they would not fit through the neck opening.
Inside the neck the stringing looks similar to the later English Trendon Sasha dolls, but it is not.
To get the white plastic cup and stringing out of the head, I used the same process of heating the neck opening with a hairdryer. To remove the plastic cup I also used my button hook and forceps.
The hole on the head opening is much wider than other types of Sasha dolls and Marias was warped due to the caving.
Once I had removed the white plastic cup and stringing from the head, I could see that there was one piece of stringing running through the white plastic cup, which was doubled over and then secured with a small piece of stringing which was tied in a knot. ( I much prefer the English Trendon way of stringing Sasha dolls.)
I had now reached the stage where I had her legs and head off. I tried heating her torso using the hairdryer method to try to correct the caving to her body. The hairdryer method did not work, so my only option now was to remove her arm stringing, so that I could boil her body back into shape.
So once again I heated her arm hole with a hairdryer and used my button hook and forceps to remover her arm stringing and white plastic cup. To say the arm stringing was stubborn to remove was an understatement.
Once I had the stringing and plastic cup out I could see that a brass sleeve insert had been crimped onto the arm stringing to make it more secure. The only way forward now was to cut the stringing to release it from the body.
Incidentally the white plastic cups used for the stringing to the head and legs are the same size. The plastic cups in the arms is naturally much smaller.
I prepared a saucepan of simmering boiled water.
Her are some photos of Maria’s torso before I boiled it, to give you some idea of the degree of caving and warping her body had.
I carefully placed Maria’s torso into the simmering water for 5 minutes. I was careful to place her torsointo the water using a tool with no sharp edges to it, because when the vinyl is softened using something sharp could damage the vinyl in its softened state. I also had a tea towel ready to use to let the torso dry out on.
As Maria’s neck was also quite warped, I double bagged her head in two strong freezer bags and held her head over the pan with the neck hole just into, the simmering water for 2 minutes.
I took Maria’s head out of the plastic bags as soon as possible ,after removing her head from the simmering water. The results were great and her neck hole and body were reshaped back to normal. I left the body parts on the tea towel for about half an hour to let the vinyl cool and re- harden.
Next I decide to give Maria’s hair a good wash and condition I used Elvives’s hair repair shampoo and conditioner.
I let her hair dry naturally and placed a rolled up sock on her head to keep her fringe in place.
Now then back to the dreaded re-stringing. The leg to head was not a problem I used new stringing about an inch an a half longer on each leg, to stop any further neck and body caving. The arms were a headache . In the USA I believe you are able to purchase the brass insert sleeves to use for crimping on the arm stringing, however in England they have now been replaced with plastic ones, which are useless for crimping, luckily some time ago I had purchased some arm hooks, which I used to re-string the arms the English Trendon way.
I heated the arm hole for a couple of minutes, inserted the arm hook, using forceps to hold the hook in place on one arm, added the stringing to the hook and then used my button hook to pull the stringing through the body keeping the arm stringing behind the body stringing and connecting it to the arm hook on the other arm.
Maria was so happy she stood on her head.
I had given her clothes a good wash and hey presto she was ready to go.
I hope you have enjoyed this post. I am not an expert I am just sharing my Sasha adventures with you and I hope you have enjoyed this post. I am over the moon to have Maria as part of my Sasha family, thanks for reading this.
The Sasha Emporium 