Success! Curling my AG doll's hair - quick tutorial

 I've watched quite a few tutorials on Youtube on exactly how you go about curling dolls' hair. Not just AG, but also Barbie and other fashion dolls and MLP. I want to make sure that when I do fix up a TLC doll or pony, I do it right. And there are different techniques to use for different types of doll hair, 

I ended up with some AG dolls who's hair was not exactly in nice condition and I've had great success conditioning it in the past and carefully using my straight iron set at 100 degrees to de-frazzle it. It is definitely a time consuming process (it can take an hour or more) but I actually do enjoy the process. I've just never have been quite brave enough to try curling an AG doll's hair.

The other day, I decided it was time to try my hand at it. I have this JLY #24 who's hair needed a fixing up.

As you can see, it could be worse, but as it was, it just didn't look very nice at all. I did my usual wet the hair, apply heavy condition, comb a tiny section at a time and then flat iron it process. This cleaned up pretty much all of the frizzies and was looking great before I curled it.

I've stock piled curlers for a few years now. I have a passel of different type of curlers that aren't foam curlers (those take forever and a half to dry!) that I have gathered through the years for when I finally get to working on my vintage ponies. And finding the right kind of curlers was far harder than I expected. When I was buying them, I wasn't really thinking about AG dolls. Thankfully, I had some the right size. I'd guesstimate them to being 1" or maybe 3/4" rollers in width. I only had 9 of them, which luckily suited my purpose just fine. Here's how I did it:

I carefully divided her hair up into sections -  3 per side and 3 in the back - and left the conditioner in. I later second guessed this decision as that meant that I would need to still rinse it out of her hair, but I'll get to dealing with that in a minute. I took each section and starting at the top of both the hair and the roller (turned up and down) and wrapped the hair around the roller from the top downward instead of rolling the hair onto the roller with the roller itself. I had a little trouble getting the ends to lay flat and neat. Using perm paper or even a paper towel would have fixed that problem. I'll do that next time. Then I popped the cover on the roller and moved onto the next. 

One thing that I learned was that it is very important for the end result the exact position the rollers are in when you set them. The rollers need to be straight up and down and close to her head. Don't put her facing downward for the hair to dry - if you do, the curls will be dry at an odd angle and it isn't fixable at that point. Sit her down with the curlers resting naturally for her hair to dry correctly. This is how the rollers looked in her hair.

Now to set the curls! I brought a large pan of water nearly to a boil - it was starting to form bubbles on the bottom - and then poured that water into a glass mixing bowl. I did not bring the water entirely to the boil - it will damage AG hair if put straight into boiling water, unlike Barbie who you can. And I know not to dunk the doll's hair into the metal pan as it could melt touching the bottom.

I poured water via a measuring cup over her curlers and then decided to just go ahead and dunk the hair into the bowl. I didn't leave it sitting, I just dunked. 

I left the hair to sit for awhile and then figured I might as well try to rinse the bulk of the conditioner out as best as I could while the hair was still setting. I had no idea if leaving the conditioner in was a bad idea, but it was as it was. I just carefully rinsed the top of her head and very carefully went over each curl with water from the faucet. Dunking it into a bowl of clean cool water would be a good idea too, and likely save on water waste. 

Then I left her to dry for over 12 hours. I originally curled her hair at 3:30 in the afternoon and took the curlers out the 2nd following morning. I wanted to give it plenty of time to dry and set. If you live in a dry climate, you could take them out earlier than I did. I did do a good enough job rinsing out the conditioner while the curlers were still in. Even if it might not do anything for the hair, I'm going to continue leaving the conditioner in every time I curl it the hair as in my mind, it is extra safety going into the hot water.

And here is how she turned out! I am so proud of her hair. It isn't perfect but it really looks good!

Now Delphine is all ready to have her hair styled and be dressed! I'm putting her in the 1850's NOLA style. I have a dress that I made some years back off of the MG paper dolls for her to wear. It's a little worse for wear and needs an ironing, but it is better than nothing.

I'd really like to make her something new as I made more than 1 pattern off of the MG paper dolls, but man, my old AG patterns that I made years ago are a mess! I have my hands more than full trying to figure how what I used to do as I didn't write down much besides 'NO SA (no seam allowances)" and the occasional "cut 1." Or possibly a label such as "Butterfly Lolita sleeve." If I could kick my past self for trusting future me to remember simple basic methods of putting these dresses together, I would. *sigh* My disaster Lolita dress project of yesterday is a post for another day. 

I'll post pics of Delphine when she is fully dressed and ready to go! 1 down, more wigs to fix up and curl!