#ken repaint

This was much trickier than creating my OOAK April O’Neil Barbie! That character had a constant look with always the same outfit, plus she was a cartoon, so details were more limited. But I wanted to challenge myself and see if I could even pull this off. My mom has the Twilight dolls, plus there have been other dolls created based on movies/shows I love such as The Hunger Games, plus Divergent, Jurassic World, etc. I know Mattel will never make these dolls due to obvious reasons, and other collectors have tried their hand at it, so it was worth a shot!

Choosing a doll to be Ana was tricky. I had two candidates to start with, but they just didn’t seem right:

Candidate #1:

Her hair was too light, and I’m not a big fan of the face.

Candidate #2:

Her hair is too dark, and her lipstick is a bit intense but that would have been a simple fix. Plus, when searching images of Anastasia Steele Barbies, a few people had already used both of those dolls and I wanted something different. :D

A big problem with finding the right hair is that Ana’s hair color tends to vary based on lighting. It’s dark one minute, then light the next. And the perfectionist in me was going nuts!

Finding a doll with the right hair color PLUS bangs and blue eyes and pale skin was no easy feat. I found some great options when I searched for other dolls people have used, but alas, they were dolls with either face repaints or re-roots. I don’t trust myself to re-root a doll’s hair, so I explored other options.

Then I came upon this lady:

She looked promising. Her hair was about the right shade, and she even had Ana’s pale skin that was mentioned in the books. The only issue was she had no bangs, and her eyes were green rather than blue. So I looked up a tutorial on how to give a Barbie doll bangs, and I’d already painted a few faces so I thought it would be worth a try.

So, the final result:

Before:

After:

I may need to touch up her lipstick a little bit, but overall I’m pleased with how she turned out. Her bangs want to be stubborn and separate in the middle, but I’ve got hair spray and mousse in there, so theoretically she should be okay.

The next course of action was deciding on an outfit. I wanted one that I could easily replicate, preferably with clothes I already owned. I could have done one of these looks:

But those seemed too simple and mundane for portraying such an iconic character.

Stepping it up a bit:

I have a similar dress, but it was also too plain and I’d have to cut it to make that slit, plus find matching ribbon or fabric for the scarf. Plus, it also seemed too simple. I was leaning more toward the evolution of Ana’s character.

I like this dress, but couldn’t find a good match and wasn’t sure how I’d create the shear overlay.

Keep looking.

Ah, the silver masquerade dress. A pretty choice, and surely there is a nice silver dress out there somewhere for a Barbie that would come close. But alas, I’d have to make a mask, plus she wouldn’t match Christian since he wouldn’t have a mask, and her hair is up. I want the doll’s hair down. So that’s out.

The work outfit seen for quite some time in the last movie. Looked promising, but you wouldn’t believe how difficult it would be to find a Barbie business suit that’s not pink. I found some gray ones, but I needed black. Plus these sleeves don’t go to the wrist, and the shirt has a slit in the middle. And I’d also have to find black tights. Was worth a try, but then I thought...

BOOM. Should be simple enough to replicate, and it’s featured in some of the more popular scenes and a pretty important part where Ana agrees to move in with Christian. So, how to go about that...

Well, first, find a black dress with straps. I had some, but no straps. Could have added some with ribbon, but...

Why do that when you can find a great option?

I didn’t want to sew or glue the lace to the dress, as I don’t want it permanent just in case I do decide to change Ana’s clothes. Double-sided tape wasn’t sticking, so I tried another approach - sticky Velcro. And it worked! It tries to come off, but it’s stuck on there good for the most part. That way I haven’t “ruined” the dress but it still closely resembles the source. And Christian’s outfit in that same scene is pretty similar. So it’s a win-win. I kept the shoes that came with that dress since they were a close match, added a black clutch, and voila! I have my very own Anastasia Steele!

Christian was also tricky to find a matching candidate. I had plenty of male dolls laying around needing to be put to use, but I looked into some other options just in case.

Candidate #1:

Jurassic World Owen. I could have used acetone to remove his beard, but I have the same problem with him as I do candidates #2 and #3:

All of these gentlemen are based on different celebs/characters already. It felt weird using one of them to portray someone else. Plus, the prices were definitely not favorable. OUT!

So I started browsing some play line dolls instead.

Yeah, it got ridiculously intense. One thing I didn’t like about these guys was the fact that they’re all smiling. Christian isn’t one to smile that much, though we do see more of it in the last movie. So I took a closer look at some of my male Fashionistas. I kept coming back to this guy:

His hair style looks similar to what we see in the first movie, and since it’s molded, changing the color will be easy. Same with his eyes.

I mixed so much paint together trying to come up with the right hair color! He’s described as having kind of reddish hair in the book (similar to Edward Cullen, since, after all, this series started as a Twilight fan fiction), so I kept that in mind while trying to stay true to the actor’s appearance in the movie. His eyes are also described as being gray in color, so keeping all that in mind, I made this:

Before:

After:

Upon seeing this, the movie shows the two characters’ hair similar in color, so I may need to make Christian’s hair a little darker. But that’s a benefit to having molded rather than rooted hair! I’m also not too fond of the lips now that I see them in camera light, so I may change that too.

For Christian’s clothes, I knew right away that I wanted to do a suit and gray tie. You’d think that would be easy, but no, most of Christian’s suits are like a dark gray. For Ken, all you can find is black, silver, or light gray. So I went with a more realistic one that I found, which includes the front jacket pocket and buttons on the sleeves/cuffs. It’s kind of a navy blue shade, but that’s what my eyes saw when Christian first showed Ana the Red Room in the first movie, so I think it should work.

Neither doll is articulated, but since these are just for display, I don’t mind. I’ve never given a Ken a head swap before, and Ana’s nails were painted (in fact, they seem to be a similar shade to what was in the scene the black dress is from), so I thought it was best to leave them both as is.

I’m tired of stores deciding we don’t need Ken fashion packs here - I just ordered like 4 outfits from Amazon because I wanted more things for my guys. Harry is happy but my bank account isn’t 😂