#rerooting

Sideshave Rochelle with the sooooftest milk silk hair. I really do love milk silk. The curls are just from being in a braid! It's so slippy and pretty!

Hi, rerooting harder heads does break needles but there are a few ways to help :

Game changer: A heating pad set it to very hot and wait for the head to get squishy. For some heads you have to alternate rerooting and waiting for the heat to seep in and wrap the hair in a rag to avoid it getting frazzled by the heat. If using a hairdryer, remember to keep the hair covered with that rag.

Helps a little: Good quality needles, name brand embroidery crewels

Helps somewhat: slightly thicker needles: I use size 8 for barbie but size 7-6 (thicker metal) for hard heads. A size 6 would be good for rainbow high, the original rooting pattern is tight around top and looser in the back so you might want to switch to a smaller needle just for the front line.

Also very important: Rotating the head to match your rooting angle so that you're not putting sideways pressure on that needle. It's when you're in a groove and forget to move the head to match your angle that I snap the most needle 'forks'.

Finally: tightening the rooting tool with a pair of pliers and with something jammed in for the needle to block on. I put a nail inside my pin vise so that the needle rests on it and isn't poked down into the pin vise by pressure. The less the needle can move around, the less likely to snap.

This does mean you then have to cut needles to a specific size as they'll be standing on that block. I like about 1cm of needle poking out of the tool. It's not ideal for the drag and plug method where you place hair down and pull plugs from it: it helps to have longer needles for that, but it's a lot less leeway for accidental bending.

I'd also like to recommend working at a desk on extra padding and lighting so that your face is closer to the work for more delicate work like harder heads or damaged partings for example.

Another pitfall with rainbow high is that they are rooted with big plugs, close to each other and often over each other because of partings and streaks. That can leave big holes or holes too close together that could crack. I recommend starting with a doll whose hairstyle isn't too complex and moving the parting to somewhere with fewer holes.

Listen I know that like... Screens and lighting make colors vary. But man these are just not the colors I ordered though. I just. These aren't the same colors.

(and flash just makes it worse)

gave this glow in the dark doll some glow in the dark hair!

Rainbow hair!