Modification Bug-Eyed Beauty - Dollmore Calvin Project Doll (Updated 5/16/24)

Huh, what? Me, back with another project journal and a sad-looking rescue while I already have several other incomplete doll projects? It's more likely thank you think...

I need to stop browsing secondhand websites, because I'll see an old, weathered project doll who needs love and then I won't be able to stop thinking about it and then the next thing I know the poor thing is in a shipping box on my doorstep. (Something something autism and object personification I suppose).

Anyway, that's exactly what happened a few weeks ago when I was browsing Mercari and came across the saddest Dollmore Calvin you've ever seen. She'd been listed for quite a while, and at first she was priced too high for me to really consider buying her. I bookmarked her listing and every so often went to look at her because I thought she looked so goofy. Her price kept dropping, and no one was buying. It was easy to see why.



She was dirty, she was dressed head to toe in camo, and she was missing a foot. I actually hadn't seen this sculpt before--the seller had her listed as a Volks Super Dollfie Midi but I knew that wasn't the case. I reached out to the big BJD Discord server and some folks informed me that she was an old, discontinued (and unpopular) Dollmore sculpt, and almost definitely legit.

I stared again into her gigantic, misaligned baby blues.

And then I sent an offer to the seller.

I can't really explain what drew me to her so much--when I first saw her I honestly thought she was a pretty ugly doll, but her photos absolutely cracked me up. Once I started looking at company and owner photos of the sculpt, her old-school charm and massive eyes started to grow on me. Most of all, I just have a huge soft spot for project dolls like this.

The seller accepted my offer and she was shipped to my house.

When she arrived, I finally had a chance to assess her condition up close. She was actually packed quite nicely, but inside the box she was wrapped in this paper bag that I thought looked pretty funny:



Removing her from the bag, I could see that the seller used a binder clip to keep her elastic in place where she has the missing leg. Her calf piece was included in the package as well, so it's actually just her ankle and foot that are missing. It's worth noting that she smelled a lot like mildew and she had some suspicious black flecks around some of her joints, particularly her upper thighs. I still don't know whether this was dye transfer or mold or something else and truth be told I'm not sure I want to know.



Her in the sparse-looking wig she came with:



And without it. Her whole body was strangely sticky, but especially her face and headcap.



I can't figure out what's going on with her faceup. It almost seems like someone maybe added on to her company faceup, maybe even with makeup meant for humans? It didn't seem to be sealed properly, a lot of it had rubbed off and she had residual eyelash glue at the top of her eyeholes, but no eyelashes. She also has drilled ear piercings, and I'm not sure if these are from the company or were done by the owner.



Now that I'd had an opportunity to assess her condition, I was able to come up with a rough plan of how I might go about fixing her up. I'm still not sure what kind of character I want her to be, but since she's MSD-scale I'll probably work her into my main fantasy setting with my other 1/4 and smaller crew. Her big eyes make me think of some kind of fairy or elf, so that will probably be the direction I go with her.

Here's my plan:

1. Disassemble and clean her thoroughly (including wiping her faceup), and restring her with fresh elastic.
   
2. Give her a light dye bath to bring her color back to a more natural tone, as she's currently the color of butter.
   
3. Make her a prosthetic foot. I considered just buying a pair of new feet for her from Dollmore, but the cost with shipping is a little too much to justify for a project doll like this and I think it would be more fun to work the missing foot into her character and make her a prosthetic.
   
4. (Optional/possibly): Sculpt her some elf ears. She already has these really cute ears that stick out a lot, and I think it seems natural to extend them into a longer and more pointy shape, especially since she's probably going to be an elf/fae. But I may end up keeping her ears as-is since she's a discontinued sculpt and I might not want to mess with her too much.
   
5. Give her a new faceup!

I've actually already cleaned and restrung her, but since this post is getting long and it's rather late I'm going to wait to post about it until tomorrow or the next day. I hope you'll enjoy reading along as I try my best to fix up this poor doll!

 

Thank you all for the messages of encouragement! Part of the fun of doing these projects is posting about them so we can all chat about it.

That makes so much sense! I bet you're right, because it was really just her head that was super sticky. Her body didn't have any blushing and was definitely less sticky (although still very dirty). Thank you for sharing your insight!

As promised, here is the tale of how I cleaned her:

Update 1: Cleaning

Before I could proceed to actually clean this doll, I needed to remove her eyes and get the old putty out of her head. Opening her headcap was more of a challenge than I expected! This was my first time encountering a doll with an older style tied headcap rather than a magnetic one. It was attached to her S-hook by a piece of very thick, inflexible elastic that I had to cut in order to get into her head.



Inside her head was a mass of very old and crumbly eye putty and a bunch of very knotted up elastic. Maybe it's just me, but I thought this elastic seemed especially thick for this scale of doll? I wondered if this was her original elastic or if it had been replaced by the previous owner. Either way, it was gonna have to go. I removed the eye putty and took out her eyes.



After that, it was time for cleaning. I unstrung her and scrubbed all of her parts with warm, soapy water, a toothbrush, and a magic eraser. This (plus getting rid of her old elastic) did wonders for the mildew smell, and I was able to remove all of the strange black marks with the magic eraser. Once I had cleaned all of her parts this way, I went back over all of them with 70% isopropyl alcohol for good measure (even though she didn't have any body blushing). Then I gave her one more wipe down with a wet cloth. Here she is after all of that (please excuse my cluttered desk):



I was able to remove most of her faceup with just the warm soapy water, but it didn't fully come off even with the alcohol so I ended up using Windsor & Newton on her head to remove the remaining residue. I couldn't help but take a photo of her next to my 1/3 scale Batchix Player One head to giggle at the size of her eyes compared to the other sculpt. She has bigger eyes than my SDs! It made me feel like I was looking at a tarsier skull next to another primate.



I popped another pair of 16mm eyes that I had lying around into her head and already she was starting to look much better. The irises of these eyes are about the same size as her old ones, but they're a darker color and they have considerably larger pupils, which makes her look less petrified:



I restrung her with some new elastic (and a new binder clip at her foot) and she was already looking so much better.



Here she is the next morning in natural light:



Just a plain old cleaning and some different eyes did wonders for her! She no longer smells at all like mildew and she is no longer sticky. Now that I am able to see her blank I've realized that I actually, unironically love her sculpt. I think her large eyes are so cute and I hope I'll be able to give her a faceup that does this unique, old-school girl justice.

My next step in the process of restoring her is going to be giving her a dye bath to counteract the yellowing. It'll be my first time trying this (although I have dyed a doll before), as my other significantly yellowed dolls have company faceups that I want to keep. I'll probably be using Lomi's recent video as a guide for this.

Thank you for reading, and stay tuned for the next update!

 

A long overdue update!

Yesterday I took the plunge and dyed her to try and counteract some of her yellowing. Here are some photos that hopefully illustrate why I wanted to try this:

(Left: vs. unsalted butter. Right: vs. 2016 Fairyland NS)



I started by unstringing her and cleaning all her parts with alcohol, then washing each one with dish soap and warm water. When they were dry I strung them all onto pieces of yarn while my dye mixture heated up.



I used RIT Dyemore, in a mixture of 1 tablespoon of Super Pink and 1 tablespoon of Royal Purple. In hindsight I wish that I had used a bit less of each, because this concoction was STRONG. It only took a dip of a few seconds to get the pieces to the color I wanted.



In the end, most of the pieces came out pretty even with the exception of her torso and hips, which are a bit splotchy. I tried wiping the dye off her torso with acetone and re-dipping, but it came out splotchy the second time too. I think I'll just have to make peace with it.







(Left: FL NS, right: dyed hand)



Some pieces dyed faster than others, and I was a little disappointed to realize that they aren't all exactly the same shade once she's assembled. I'm not sure if it's worth redoing the entire process to correct this, but I suppose it's something to keep in mind for next time.







Thanks for reading! My next update should be working on her prosthetic foot!

 

Thanks everyone for the replies and encouragement! I've been feeling rather frustrated and dissatisfied with this project since my last update. The dye job looked a lot splotchier in person and the color was too pinky-purple for my liking, so I ended up removing the dye with the intent to dye again... Then I made the mistake of trying to sand the chest piece so that it would dye more evenly, and then the yellowing looked super splotchy, so I sanded some more, then I removed some of the detail from that piece and now it's a completely different shade from the rest of the pieces. I ended up feeling like I'd ruined this doll worse than when I'd found her.

Besides that, I just didn't know how this doll was going to fit into my collection. Her eyes are so huge that she looks kind of ridiculous next to my other MSDs. I considered scrapping the project in frustration and just trying to sell her, but decided to wait on it.

Yesterday I was playing around with concepts and the idea of dyeing her a crazy color and turning her into an alien came into my head. I think it would work-- her huge eyes, her ears that stick out at an odd angle, her other unusual facial features. I think these would all lend themselves well to an alien character. And that way (at least in my brain) she would also fit in with my other MSDs even though she doesn't really look like them.

Something I really struggle with in the BJD hobby is feeling like my dolls aren't entirely mine--or like I need to avoid making big mistakes or heavy modifications to my dolls specifically because I *might* sell them in the future, and to make a mistake would be to ruin a collector's item for someone else who owns it after I do. The idea of posting about a modification that goes badly or a doll that I ruin also feels potentially embarrassing! But... the more I think about it, my dolls are mine for as long as I want them to be. And part of the fun with this hobby is experimenting with different creative choices, and part of experimenting is making mistakes and sometimes (potentially) ruining a doll. This doll was already in pretty bad shape when I got her and I'm not obligated to try and make her look like new! And even if I don't end up happy with the result, I can always go back to the drawing board and try something different.

Anyway, all this is to say that I haven't given up on this doll! But the next update you see about her is probably going to be a fairly drastic departure from my previous plan, shifting from restoration territory into customization/modification. I hope that some of you will still find this project interesting even though I'll be doing something different from what I laid out in my previous posts! Thanks for reading along.

 

Quick little update! I ended up taking the plunge and dyeing the doll with RIT Dyemore a couple nights ago. The pieces came out a bit splotchy and the chest piece I sanded definitely has a different color/texture than the rest of the body, but despite these flaws I'm really happy with the color and I finally feel like I'm starting to get some ideas about how to incorporate this doll into the rest of my MSD crew.





It's a pretty drastic difference, but I feel like the crazy color suits them. Next steps will be faceup, prosthetic foot, and just generally figuring out this doll's style!