The Joys of Re-Wigging

The first doll I re-wigged was Peggy, my first hard plastic doll. I bought her at a yard sale for $2. Her hair was pretty bad.

Peggy, formerly known as Marley

I don't remember why I removed her hair (possibly it fell off), but she was bald for quite a while.

I made her this nice satin underwear

I had her restrung at the Doll & Teddy Bear show and the lady who did it told me she couldn't put her head back on until I got the crack in her forehead fixed.

That's Peggy on the left, holding the jack o'lantern.

So for a while she was headless, until I persuaded Husband-Like Person to fix her. I don't remember exactly what he used. Some kind of filler . . . Then I put her head back on and meanwhile, I got a wig for her on eBay.

Yes, I know the wig is too far back.

Auntie Berman once worked for a school psychologist who had a receding hairline. One day a little girl asked him "Why do you wear your hair so far back on your head?"

For some reason I never glued the hair on, until recently. I discovered The Joys of Re-Wigging! I think it came about because we found an American Girl at Goodwill Bargain Bin.

Ratty, ratty hair!

Back view

Someone had apparently tried to use a curling iron on this poor girl. We had to get her, to save her from the landfill. I began googling info about re-wigging. I found out how to remove her wig (I was greatly heartened by someone who said she had never met a wig that didn't respond to brute force). The offensive hair was soon removed. We named the dolly Meriel, Merry for short.

She remained cheerful throughout the ordeal.

Meanwhile, Lorraine had had a terrible tragedy in which her arm suddenly fell off while I was dressing her. The plastic had actually broken. I was horrified. Lorraine was horrified. When I searched for a solution, I found out about doll screws, which are curlicue shaped. (By the way, if you search for "doll screws" on google, be sure your Safe Search is on. Otherwise you will get some very unpleasant results.) I ordered them and some doll-stringing elastic from a doll parts store. They were very cheap but I had to get $25 worth of stuff to order from them, so I decided to order two wigs, one red and one blonde, because I was thinking of giving Sunny a new wig, since her hair was kind of choppy. A few days later the doll store person called and said they were out of red and that particular blonde, so I went ahead and got auburn and a different blonde. When they arrived, I didn't like the auburn (it looked brown to me) or the blonde.

Just okay.

I had a half-wig that I liked (it was half a wig cap with lots of hair).

Maybe the curls are a bit much.

I left that on her, because now I had my little green-eyed girl with red hair, but I didn't glue it on (and here I should mention that Auntie Berman does all the gluing, because she is the Glue Queen). I was hoping to find something better.

And I did. It occurred to me that all those porcelain dolls we find at the Bargain Bin and Salvation Army Warehouse are wearing wigs! The dolls are usually broken, but their hair is perfectly good. Of course once I thought of it, we couldn't find any porcelain dolls--at first. But then we did!

Perfect hair!

So Merry is now decently wigged and very happy.

I will have to continue this later, because I have lots more wigs to talk about and no time to do it now.

(And we did get Lorraine's arm fixed, but she wouldn't let me photograph her and doesn't want to talk about it.)