Dollieh Sanctuary

How to?

I recently dug out some old Barbies from the late 90s and I want to try my hand at repainting one of them. I searched all up and down this forum and could not find an honest to goodness how-to on it. Brush cleaner? Nail polish remover? I've seen horror stories about this that and the other melting dollieh faces and whatnot, so I'm scared to try anything without checking first o.O

Real nail polish remover with acetone with usually do the job but sometimes you need to use the real thing 100% acetone, but still dilute it a bit. Depends upon the doll. Some facial screenings are tougher than others, but with Barbie regular nail polish remover is usually enough. If you use the 100% acetone kind full strength it can melt dolls depending upon the plastic used. I never use acetone on doll bodies hardly at all and when I do I really tend to dilute it a lot. I've accidentally melted doll fingers forgetting to dilute it more than once. Heads take it better than bodies, but still the full strength stuff can be too much. I've found most generic nail polish removers don't really have enough of it in them to do the job. I always go for Sally Hansen or some other name brand. Be careful to rinse the doll after. Using a paste of baking soda and water on their faces is good too. It supposedly deactivates the acetone, but I seldom do that honestly. I just stick the doll under water after I am done and flush it.

If you are gonna use acetone, be careful: the head plastic doesn't take it too well when it's left on too long. It works really well for taking off Barbie's faceup though. When I was shrinking Moxie Teenz heads in acetone, I also did an old Barbie head I had lying around lol, and she shrunk quite a bit; plus, her make-up dissolved immediately after I put her in the jar

Evelien wrote:If you are gonna use acetone, be careful: the head plastic doesn't take it too well when it's left on too long. It works really well for taking off Barbie's faceup though. When I was shrinking Moxie Teenz heads in acetone, I also did an old Barbie head I had lying around lol, and she shrunk quite a bit; plus, her make-up dissolved immediately after I put her in the jar

Psst: Tie it's hair in a ponytail and paint zombie stuff on it. You got your own shrunken head...Literally! (Awesome in my opinion)

LOL! I'm afraid I finally decided to throw it in the trash a few weeks ago!

Well I successfully removed all the paint. Had to do a little digging with a toothpick soaked in nail polish remover, to get the paint off her teeth. But so far so good. no shrinkage, no discoloration.

Congrats! Did the nail polish remover contain acetone?

Evelien wrote:Congrats! Did the nail polish remover contain acetone?

Yes it did, but my guess is that it wasn't a strong solution... the smell was mild enough that it didn't give me a headache. Granted I worked in 15 minute increments, rinsing the head each time I took a break.