I have a few shelves for my doll collection, and I just love creating new displays, changing themes, and restyling my dolls. This is how everything looks after the latest update.
The first three shelves are next to my desk. I spend a lot of time here, so these are my main displays.
The first one is now dedicated to my Barbie Basics 2025, all in their original dresses and shoes.
The second one is for Kens. One of them has a little ZURU baby.
The third one is for the 2026 Neutral Barbie Basics. Most of them are wearing Mattel outfits, but I might change a few.
A little Easter egg about these two and their relationship:
The next two shelves are behind me. They're the first thing I see when I wake up in the morning.
These are the dolls I've restored most recently:
And here I have some of my favorite vintage Barbies:
The others are in a glass-door cabinet. They're protected from dust, fur, and sunlight there.
This is Barbie Basics Neutral Kit 001 JJX35 with the Nichelle face sculpt. I absolutely love this doll - she can pull off any style, express any emotion, and become any character you can imagine.
This is Barbie BMR1959 GPF17. I've been looking for this Ken for a very long time. He was originally an affordable doll, but he's become quite rare and expensive over the years. That's often the case with good-looking Kens on MTM bodies. I have to admit, I just couldn't justify paying that much for him.
Then I found this guy by chance. He was listed for less than half the usual price, and I was lucky enough to get him.
All three dolls share the same face sculpt - GG. Two of them are identical: they're both Princess of Portugal from the Princesses of the World series. The doll in the dress belongs to my husband, while the one with the curlier hair is mine.
In my doll universe, all three of them are sisters.
Recently, I added a GG mold doll to my collection. I still have no idea what her actual name is. The box simply says "Barbie 2000". There's no product number on the body either, but as far as I know, dolls from that time were usually marked only with the year, the company name, and the country of manufacture.
When I took her out of the box, I found two problems.
First, the dress has no closure. The only way to remove it is to unpick the stitching. Then I realized I'd also have to remove the head because the dress still wouldn't come off otherwise. At that point, I was still planning to modify the dress so it would fit the new body.
The second problem was the glitter - it shed everywhere. Once I realized how bad it was, I decided it wasn't worth dealing with. I packed the dress away with the original body and kept only the head. The hairstyle also fell apart immediately because the elastic had deteriorated over time.
After comparing the head with my MTM dolls, I figured out which skintones matched her best.
Of course, those donors are rare and expensive. Luckily, MengF in the White skin tone is a perfect match. I didn't have a spare MengF body, so she's temporarily on an MTM Tennis Player body.
I removed the neck peg because it wasn't needed.
The MTM Tennis Player is the easiest donor to find in my area, so here's the skin tone difference. I'd say it's quite acceptable.
Next, I removed the earrings and hair clips. That wasn't easy because the ends were bent inside the head, making them larger than the holes. I warmed up the head and carefully pulled them out. After straightening them, I could use them again.
The last step was fixing the part line. Fortunately, the doll had been rooted with a real part line rather than a hairstyle-specific rooting pattern, so all I had to do was rebuild it by moving the strands to the opposite side one by one. It wasn't the most enjoyable job, but it wasn't too bad.
Even though this doll was NRFB, the whole process felt like restoring a second-hand doll. In the end, I was really happy with the result. Here are a few more photos of her.
The doll community has been talking a lot about the Chinese fashion doll brand Xian Xian lately. Unlike Integrity Toys, Mizi, Defa Lucy, and others, Xian Xian makes dolls that are affordable and doesn't limit the number of copies available. This approach definitely deserves attention and support. The dolls are also sold nude, so you can order whichever outfits you like separately. In these photos, she's wearing a dress by Xian Xian. I really like almost all of their clothing.
I ordered the doll from AliExpress. The box arrived badly damaged, but the seller had packed it well enough that the doll itself wasn't harmed.
The face paint on my doll isn't perfect, but it's still quite good. The body, however, was disappointing. The joints are rather loose and move on their own when the doll is shaken. The plastic parts make a loud clacking sound when they hit each other, which suggests that the plastic isn't very high quality.
I had looked into these dolls quite a bit, so I had no illusions about the quality of the hair or the rooting. I planned to reroot her using leftover saran from two previous projects. That's why I chose the doll based on her makeup. Of the two dolls with this face sculpt, I preferred the one with dark lips.
Once I tied her original hair into a ponytail, I actually started to like it.
Now, a little about the rooting. The photo below shows just how bad it is. The sparse rooting is only part of the problem. What's worse is how uneven the hairline is.
I also want to point out the molded hairline groove. As you can see in the photo, the groove is higher than the actual rooted hairline. This suggests that the Xian Xian designer understands what the groove is for: the groove slightly recesses the rooting holes along the hairline, making them less noticeable. But the factory apparently decided that the groove marks where the scalp should be painted, while the hair itself should be rooted below it.
It's a pity, because this doll would actually be better if she could be purchased without factory-rooted hair.
I tried to fix the crooked hairline and filled in the rest of the scalp the same way Mattel does.
The head material is difficult to work with. It’s hard to make new holes, and the factory holes don’t shrink with boiling water like they do on Mattel heads. I broke a lot of rerooting needles despite making each hole with a thin awl first.
I used an Etsy pattern for the upper part of the dress and made the skirt myself. The upper section of the skirt is a half-circle, while the lower section is simply a gathered rectangle.
The dress fastens with three metal snaps.
To make the skirt drape more naturally, I wet it and scrunched it to create soft vertical creases. Then I laid it out on a table and left it to dry in that shape.
I used an Etsy pattern for the upper part of the dress and made the skirt myself. The upper section of the skirt is a half-circle, while the lower section is simply a gathered rectangle.
The dress fastens with three metal snaps.
To make the skirt drape more naturally, I wet it and scrunched it to create soft vertical creases. Then I laid it out on a table and left it to dry in that shape.
Some time ago, I bought Madame Morrible from Wicked. However, in my doll universe, every doll has a role, and I decided she would become a grandmother.
The first thing I needed to change was her body.
Her original body is actually very nice: it has beautifully sculpted hands and feet, realistic age-related details, and overall feels very well made. However, it has two major drawbacks for me:
The feet are very large, so only her original shoes fit.
The articulation is limited, so the doll can't strike many poses.
Since I regularly change my dolls' outfits and photograph them, finding a new body was essential. The perfect match turned out to be Yoga HRH27, also known as SWIRL.
I also swapped the hands, not just the head, because Madame Morrible's original hands look much better.
The original hairstyle is very extravagant, but it wasn't what I had in mind for her.
After taking the hair down and washing it, I discovered that it didn't look very good at all.
After straightening the hair, the extremely layered cut became obvious. It's a very distinctive style, but in my opinion, it definitely doesn't suit the grandmother character I had in mind.
So I spent some time with a comb and a pair of scissors until I got a hairstyle I was happy with. The final result can be seen in the photos below.
I absolutely love this body type. There's something very real and natural about it. This time she's wearing a dress made by a local artist, although I usually prefer outfits that show off her figure.
A true treasure has finally joined my collection - Princess of Ireland Barbie (2001) from the Princesses of the World series.
This beautiful watercolor backdrop was created by the doll's designer.
A few posing experiments with her original body:
This is what the body looks like. The articulation is quite limited, but I've seen much worse. The body is in excellent condition overall.
I'm not sure how many click positions the legs were originally supposed to have, but mine only has one. The shoulder joints have a surprisingly good range of motion, and the head rotates quite well too.
I'll be replacing this body with a MengF body soon.
The outfit is very well made. The fabric feels nice, doesn't wrinkle easily, and washes well. It fastens with snaps, unlike modern outfits that use Velcro, which can catch and damage the hair.
A few more photos from my recent nature walk (although I completely forgot to put her crown on).
Recently, I rerooted a Barbie head that already had factory rooting holes.
For this new project, however, I used a head from AliExpress that came without any holes (original post here). On the plus side, it had a molded groove marking the hairline, and most of the scalp was pre-painted in the correct color.
The doll owner chose the hair color. The hair is saran.
First, I covered the factory part lines and marked a new one. I used good-quality acrylic paint for this.
I also inserted sewing pins along the back hairline. This is useful for several reasons:
The rerooting needle breaks much faster when used to make the holes.
It makes it easier to keep the spacing consistent.
After that, everything is pretty much the same as in my previous post.
The next steps followed a simple pattern: I marked the holes with pins, removed the pins, and filled the holes with hair.
It's important not to leave the pins in for too long. Larger holes hold the hair less securely.
I used one of my factory-rooted dolls as a reference to keep the hole spacing and density consistent.
Once I had finished the back of the head, I continued rooting along the hairline up to the part. After that, I started filling the inner area of the scalp, saving the part for later.
I also pre-marked the part with pins, but never more than four holes at a time. When only one hole was left, I inserted the next set of pins. For the part, I inserted hair into each hole four times. The part needs much thicker plugs than the rest of the head, but making larger holes is not a good idea. That's why I prefer using a smaller rerooting needle multiple times instead of switching to a larger one.
The head was fully rooted. At that point, I filled it with glue (in my case, Fabri-Tac) and left it for 24 hours.
The next day, I poured boiling water over the hair, washed it, trimmed it, and styled it. The doll was finally finished.
