Story of a Heart

Dunno why I am calling it that, but whatever. :P Today I'm going to share the story of how I fixed my Kellys. :)
Kelly was the name of Barbie's younger sister and she had her own toy line by Mattel. They had been making them since the mid 90s up till 2009 or so. Now they're super rare and super expensive. I, however, was lucky enough to get a few back when they were in production.

They were all loved and played with, and, well, their hair sorta got messed up and frizzy... Signs of being played with a little too much.

Using tutorials from My Froggy Stuff and some ideas of my own, I decided that after 6 years of just letting them sit and collect dust in my old, broken, dirty, and ugly doll house that was given to me used, I was going to fix them up.

You may want to take not of the red-haired doll in the top right of the picture with the short hair. There's an interesting back story to it which I'll go into further detail later. ;)

I started out by filling a bowl with warm water and some dish soap, then dunked the doll into it for a few minutes. After letting it get all soaked, I ran a little conditioner/shampoo through it's hair and then rinsed it out. After drying out the hair with a towel, I used an old comb to take out all the knots, and then brushed it with Kitty's doll brush which she was kind enough to let me use. (I do have doll brushes of my own, but they're all lost...) And then I used some sponge rollers to give the hair some body to it. I repeated this process 15 times for all of my Kellys.

I let them all sit overnight so that their hair would be nice and dry when I take out all the rollers. If you notice, two of them have pipe cleaners in their hair - for those I used My Froggy Stuff's tutorial on curling doll hair. :)
And now, 24 hours later, I have nice soft-haired dolls who are just as good as new. :D Their hair are so soft!!

These three dolls are my first Kellys ever. From left to right, they are Mona, Ooh (Don't ask me why I named her that), and Marissa. Mona is a Dutch girl, Ooh is an African girl, and Marrissa is a Spanish dancer - they were a part of a series of Kellys called "Dolls From Around The World" or something like that. My uncle got them for me on my 3rd birthday or possibly even 4th birthday.

As you can probably tell, I had lost a lot of their accessories, like Marissa's shoes, her fan, Mona's watering can, and Ooh's cat and hat. Marrisa's dress actually broke and my mom threw it out by accident... I actually lost Mona on the day I opened her and only found her three Springs ago.

Kelly Club 5! I got this bunch of Kellys for $5 one day when my family decided to go to the mall. From left to right, they are Deidra, Kelly, Kayla, Melody, and Kirsten. No, I did not name them that.

This is how are supposed to look, and as you can tell, I lost most of their accessories and clothes. It's very unfortunate. Ever since I got this set back in 2005 or so, I wanted more. So my mom and my grandparents would always get me "Fat Kellys", otherwise known as Simba toys. They were nice and all, but they weren't what I wanted.


One year later and I finally got what I wanted: Birthday Bunch!

And like all the other sets, I lost most of their accessories. :'(

And then I got this Valentines Day 2-pack of Cupid and a Valentines Day princess of some sort.

These two are Sidney and Nickie. I named them that. :P

Yes, I gave Nickie the cupid dress instead... I thought it looked better on her.
Now, I still have some of their accessories, but like I said, most of them are gone, lost, thrown out.

And the nice part about knowing how to sew is that I'm able to make them clothes... but it's a little hard to do because of they are so tiny. 4'' tall...

Now, as you may have noticed, some of them have different hair. When I say different, I don't mean that I styled it differently, I mean different.

Deidre #2, Melody #2, and Nickie have all had some serious hair changes, Melody #2 in particular.

Melody used to have nice, long, flowing, red hair like this, but after a while, I got tired of it, so I chopped it off. Unfortunately, her hair became too short to play with after that. Recently I got a doll rerooting tool and I was going to reroot her entirely until I decided to try on of My Froggy Stuff's tutorials and poured boiling hot water all over her hair.

Even though she has a bald spot on the top of her head, her hair is now very soft and playable. :D
With Nickie and Deidra, I curled their hair with the pipe cleaners and they turned out lovely.

Deidra's hair didn't come out exactly the way I intended it to, but it still looks nice. I might have to style it a bit more, though.
I am ever so grateful to Kitty for convincing me to do something with my Kellys because now I can play with them without feeling regretful of all the things I did to them all those years ago. :)