#tutorial doll repaint

Doll Hair Dye Tutorial

I started this project by researching which doll would look closest to Harley Quinn from the movie Suicide Squad.  I needed to decide which size doll I wanted to work with, find a face that would work best, and I needed to find a doll with very light platinum blond hair (or find a blond wig to fit the doll, which could be tricky)!

The Cinderella Disney Animator Doll worked best for this project and I bought her used from eBay. (Keep in mind, materials can add up quickly so try and save as much money when possible, buy used dolls, use coupons, sell the items you don’t need. To save money, I listed her clothes/shoes on eBay and sold them at a price which covered the cost of the doll! Yay! #freedoll)

This post will focus on the Hair Dye, which is by far the messiest part of this whole project! Once I received the doll, I removed the clothing and washed the doll thoroughly with dish soap. After the doll has dried completely, I wrapped the plastic toy body in saran wrap and left her head exposed and used painters tape to seal the edges. I put her hair in pigtails, then slapped on (latex free) gloves and mix equal parts of 70% Rubbing Alcohol with the colored Ink in the spray bottle. (For lighter color, add more Alcohol.)

My advice is to work with one pig tail color at a time. I started with Red and that color was a bit of a tricky. Doll Hair/wigs can be made out of so many different materials, like nylon, acrylic, modacrylic, animal hair, polyester, or polyvinyl, and so much more! So yes, result may vary. So it is best to take a small sample and test it out first to see what the end color will look like before you paint the whole thing. (but seriously, who has time for that!?) lol

Because I am actually working on multiple projects at once, I did 5 different doll hairs/wigs, and just dove right in. These projects may benefit you, because I can show you the differences on how each one turned out and so you can learn from my experience. Some of the wigs turned out too red, I’m talking Ronald McDonald red… some not enough pink, and I had to do it over to get a better color.  

Check out the variations of color we can get from using the ratio same mixture of red ink dye and rubbing alcohol but on different doll hair!

One of the wigs (top right of photo) I used was not light enough of a blond to start with, it was a dirty blond…. and so the wig came out sort of blah. So it’s best to have chose a closest to platinum hair color apply the hair dye to, to get that rich color to show through. For this doll, I wanted to go for a ombre look with blond roots to blend to light pink in the meddle, then transition to darker pink on the ends. The Cinderella Animator doll hair turned out the best!

I applied more Alcohol than red ink to get that pink color. As I sprayed it, I started on the ends and worked my way up, while blending & rubbing it in with my fingers (wear gloves) and then went back down and added more saturated color to the ends.  I angled the doll so that the doll was lifted higher then her hair, so that her hair will hang down to dry to help prevent the dye from seeping up too high on her pig tail. Spray, hang doll upside down and let the pigtail and air dry completely. Then rinse, let dry again and then I repeated on other pig tail  with blue.

If the doll hair starts to frizz after this process, I soaked the colored hair over night in warm water and fabric softener which added a fresh smell to the doll and softened and tamed the frizz.

(Do not dry hair with hair dryer, most doll hairs will melt under heat) And there you have it! Fun colored hair for your Ooak Doll Repaint project!

Hope you enjoyed this post and I will post more steps on how I created the Harley Quinn Doll Repaint!

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