Aesthetics Leenah’s Maintenance, Face-up, and Sewing Progress

This project journal is a bit more for me to track what I do in the doll hobby, but if you’re interested in following my progress, welcome!

I was very active in this hobby in 2009-2011, but after this point, my dolls weren’t maintained all that much. So there’s a lot of work and upkeep to be done now that I’ve returned.

Right now this thread will be a bit of a mess, but hopefully it’s organized soon enough.

Current doll goals, for all:

-Restringing
-cleaning
-new face ups (will be done by me)
-sewing clothes/making accessories

My progress might be slow because I have some health issues that get in the way of life, but I am determined to get some of this done regardless of how long it takes.

My Dolls and their Names
I will be referring to my dolls by their given names for the most part, but including the list here for reference

Adelheid — Soulkid Katie.A
Jane — Luts Kid Delf Bory Girl
Lily — Volks Suiseiseki (SD10)
Gremory — Rosette School of Dolls Fir (Soom)
Kira — Volks Shinshiya / F-12 (MSD)
Hina — Volks Hinaichigo (Yo-SD)
no name yet! — Luts KDF45 Lemon (on order, she will need a face-up and clothes for when she arrives though!)

 

Restringing Progress

This post will document my progress and particular quirks I’ve come across with regards to restringing. Hopefully some of this info will be helpful to someone out there.

Done: 6/6
Gremory ✅
Hina ✅
Kira ✅
Lily ✅
Adelheid ✅
Jane ✅

Dolls that haven’t been restrung in about 15 years are about as floppy as ragdolls So this has been my first goal, to restring all of them.

The string in Adelheid and Jane is still okay, surprisingly. A little loose, but not terrible, so they’ve been saved for last.

All six dolls here are or have been restrung with elastic sourced from the Volks USA store. The sizes of the string:

SD: 4mm
MSD: 3mm
Yo-SD: 2mm

Gremory - Rosette Doll Fir, Pure Body

The first doll I restrung was Gremory, probably the toughest I had for this task. This doll has a very long and thin body and very small holes for stringing.

I used MSD string for her. Whatever string she had before from Soom was a tad thinner, either 2mm or 2.5. 3mm is better!

I could not find my stringing tool (from Dollmore I think) so I had purchased one from Volks, SD sized, thinking I could use it for all. I was wrong, do not make the same mistake as me

The Volks stringing tool is excellent, but the wire is way too thick for anything aside from their SDs. It was especially too thick for Gremory.

One of my other hobbies is wire wrapping, I love working with bronze! To get around the issue with the Volks tool, I made a stringing tool out of bronze wire. I have wire in gauges 14 through 28. 14 and 16 were too thick! Unfortunate because these are much more sturdy.

I had to use 18 gauge wire to get the task done. Steel wire would be better to use, but I don’t have it (nor the tools for cutting it). The wire was hammered gently to strengthen it a bit, but the tool is still rather flimsy.

The biggest problem I had with making the tool was where the loop is. As I mentioned, 14 and 16 gauge wire didn’t work, and this was why. When folded over for the loop, both of these wire sizes were too big to fit through the holes in her upper arms

Hina - Volks Hinaichigo, Yo-SD body

The Volks SD stringing tool is far too large for all pieces of this body. Had to use my handmade bronze wire tool.

I had just bought Hina second hand and once I took her apart, I was pretty sure that she still had her original string from 2007. I have never seen doll elastic this worn out.

Hina was very easy to restring, I don’t have much else to note here. 2mm string is ideal.

Kira - Volks Shinshiya / F-12 MSD

Used 3mm elastic.

The Volks SD stringing tool worked for her legs and torso but was too thick for her arms. For the arms, I again used the handmade bronze tool.

(In the future I will acquire the MSD and Yo-SD tools)

Lily - Volks Suiseiseki SD10

Okay, she was tough to restring. I know I have restrung her before, but it was so long ago that I forgot she was tricky.

I don’t know if all SD10 bodies are like this, but her torso is a single piece. Usually the legs I find easier to restring than the arms of a doll, not so with her.

The SD tool was required for her. 4mm elastic absolutely requires a strong enough tool.

Used 4mm elastic. When I purchased this, the Volks site suggested getting two packs for SD dolls unless you prefer tight stringing. I do prefer tighter stringing, but got two to be on the safe side. One ended up being perfect for my tastes.

 

Restringing Progress Part II + Cleaning

Getting the last two dolls restrung was slow work since I had been sick. I finally felt well enough to restring the remaining two in the last few days.

Adelheid - Souldoll Soulkid
This doll is always a dream to restring. Maybe it’s because I’ve done it the most with her, but she’s the easiest for me.

I’m not sure how to specify which body she has, I think it’s the original double jointed girl body. Anyway, it’s always been easy to restring. With some dolls I struggle a bit more with stringing the shoulder area where there’s often an awkward curl, but this trouble spot has always been easier to restring on her.

The stringing is a little loose in her legs and torso so I will maybe make some adjustments soon.

The tool used was the handmade bronze.

3mm string

Jane - Luts KDF
Not sure which body she has either, Luts has so many now! I bought her in 2009, will update when I am certain which one it is.

This doll is also easy to restring, though I don’t know what I was thinking the last time I restrung her years before. Her stringing from before was absurdly tight and I can’t fathom why I would have done this.

I ought to save this for another post, but she was the first doll I cleaned. The tights she was wearing had discoloured her resin to look like her legs and feet were covered in bruises. This came right off with some 91% isopropyl alcohol and some cotton balls. Her resin looks so much nicer now!

I’m also amazed at how little she’s yellowed, considering her age. There’s a new Luts doll I am waiting for, so it will be interesting to see how they compare when she arrives. As far as I can tell, her yellowing has been minimal though.

Back to the restringing — I have heard that the string goes into the doll differently on newer Luts Kid Delfs, but as this is an older body, the stringing is “normal” to me in the sense that there’s one piece for the arms and a second longer piece looped from the head and strung down through the torso and each leg.

Used the handmade bronze tool and 3mm string.

 

Cleaning up Adelheid - Soulkid Katie.A

Cleaning dolls is hardly worth long posts, and I won’t be doing this for any others. However, this one comes with a very happy discovery.

In 2020, I had moved back to my area after being away for a few years. My dolls had been stored fine, but I had been devastated to find that Adelheid had become badly yellowed. She was much worse than all of my other dolls for some reason. Maybe it’s because she was my first doll, but it hit me pretty hard and was upsetting enough that I packed her away again where she remained until a few months ago.

This all started out when I fixed the string for Adelheid, which was just a little too loose in the torso and legs — it’s much better now.

In the middle of stringing her, since she was all taken apart, I decided to start cleaning her with some cotton balls and alcohol. The first piece was a portion of her torso, which started showing some frosty white patches after it dried…

…which meant that years and years ago I had sprayed her whole body with MSC at some point, to protect the resin from clothing stains.

I spent about two hours getting all the MSC off of her body.

To an incredibly happy find, it turns out that the “terrible yellowing” was mostly the old MSC. She is a 16 year old doll, so of course her resin itself has yellowed, but after removing all the MSC that had been on her, it’s no longer anywhere near as bad as it was before. Her resin isn’t as peachy as it was when she was brand new, but it’s peachy again instead of a dingy yellow.

I have not removed her face-up yet, which had been done by Angel Toast. It’s helpful knowing here that they use MSC for face-ups though.

The current contrast between her face, which still has old MSC on it of course, is really obvious now. Her face is definitely a far more sickly looking yellow, but it is a huge comfort to know that this is mostly due to the aged and yellowed MSC rather than the doll herself.

I will try to remember to put some pictures here once I can take some in better lighting to show the difference. I definitely want to get some last few pics of her with her current face-up before it goes away for sure. This probably won’t be super soon though, the summer months here are far too humid to do face-ups very often and I won’t remove it until there’s a week that looks good for redoing it.

 

Gremory by Lina U, on Flickr

It's been a while since I've updated this journal, but I finally made my first BJD dress! I had joined this month's sewing project thread for July, and went with a visual kei style for Gremory.

There was another member I'd chatted with a little on the forum who showed her pattern making process and this was a huge help when it came to making one. She used both cling wrap and masking tape with a little strip of paper in the back to prevent scratches on the doll when cutting it off. Thanks to her thread, the whole process finally clicked for me. I messed up the first try, but the second resulted in the dress above.

In other areas of progress or lack-thereof, face-ups will have to be on hold until it's not as humid. Apparently it's been the worst year on record for the number of days with high humidity (85-95% on average). I've thought about getting Citadel's matte sealant which is apparently less sensitive to humidity than MSC, but when it's this bad, neither will work.

There is also another doll I acquired recently off of the MP who needs some work, but he'll likely be getting his own project journal. His cleaning process will be a bit more involved and I'd like to remove the modifications that had been added to him. He's also got sculpted hair which I am unsure if I want him to keep or not. I hope to begin work on him soon, he'll give me something to do that differs from sewing during this time where face-ups are not feasible.