My name is Kailey.
I have a YouTube channel called
thedollsintherain,
and I restore American Girl dolls.
I'm going to walk you through how I restore
a 1990s Felicity American Girl Doll.
Felicity Merriman is one of American Girl's
six original historical characters.
Originally, this doll would have sold
for around $100,
but in its current state, it is worth about $55.
After I restore her,
she'll probably be worth around $200.
Felicity's biggest problems
are definitely her missing arm,
she has nail polish on all of her hands and feet,
her hair is very messy,
and the face paint is faded.
So, the first thing I'm doing
is taking off Felicity's head.
I'm doing this by untying her neck string.
I'm using a sewing pin to help
get the knot undone.
Then, once it's untied,
I'm just pulling off her head.
Now that her head is detached,
I'm removing all of her stuffing.
I'm just pulling it out by hand
and collecting it in a pile
so I can use it again later on.
Now that Felicity is unstuffed,
I'm going to take off her limbs.
So I'm just untying these,
and, again, I'm using a sewing pin
to help undo the knots.
Now I have Felicity's limbs detached,
and next I'll be removing the tension cups
from inside of her arms and legs.
To do this, I'm putting her limbs into a Ziploc bag
and boiling water in a kettle.
I want the water to be boiling hot,
so the vinyl melts.
Once the water is boiled,
I'm putting the Ziploc bag into the water
and leaving it there for about a minute.
This is going to heat up the limbs
so I can remove the tension cups
without cracking the limbs.
Now that the limbs are heated up,
I'm using a pair of needle-nose pliers
to pull the tension cups out.
Next, I'm going to be cleaning Felicity.
Felicity has nail polish on her fingernails
and her toenails.
American Girl dolls should not have nail polish,
so obviously her previous owner has painted them.
To do this, I'm using non-acetone nail-polish remover.
It's very important to use
non-acetone nail-polish remover,
as acetone can damage vinyl.
All I'm doing is putting the nail-polish remover
onto a cotton ball
and rubbing the nail polish off.
Once I have most of it off,
I'm using a fine Q-tip
to get into the crevices of the nails.
Now that all of the nail polish is off,
I'm using a Magic Eraser
to clean the rest of her skin.
Over time, American Girl dolls can get very dirty.
You can see this when they are shiny.
It's just a collection of grease
and sometimes the oil from your hands.
I'm also using a Magic Eraser on her face,
but I'm being very careful
not to scrub too hard on her lips and eyebrows,
because this can remove the paint.
Now that Felicity is clean,
I'm going to restring her.
Now that all of her limbs are attached to her body,
I am restuffing Felicity.
Once I have all of the stuffing back in,
I reattach Felicity's head.
I just put it back into the opening
and tie the string tight.
Now I'm going to begin fixing Felicity's hair,
which is one of the hardest parts
of restoring an old doll.
Her hair is very frizzy and knotted.
I use a spray bottle and a wired hairbrush
to help get all of the knots out.
When I'm brushing doll hair,
I always start from the bottom of the wig
and then work my way upwards,
so I'm not dragging down the knots
to the bottom of the hair.
Next, I'll be straightening Felicity's hair.
I'm doing this to remove the frizz.
I'm making sure her hair is very wet,
as using a straightener
on dry American Girl doll hair can burn it.
I finished straightening all of Felicity's hair,
and usually I would stop there,
but Felicity has pin curls
at the front of her head,
so I need to recurl those.
I've straightened each of the three pin curls,
and I'm going to be using a straw and boiling water
to get them back to their original shape.
I'm tying each little curl around a plastic straw
and securing it in place with a bobby pin.
Now I'm dipping the side of her head
into boiling water.
I'm leaving it there for about 30 seconds,
then I'm taking her head back out
and leaving her to dry.
Next, I'm just removing the plastic straws,
and her curls are back.
Overall, Felicity's face paint
has definitely faded over time.
Her lips are faded,
her teeth are faded,
her cheeks are faded,
and there is some damage to her eyebrows.
I'm using watercolors to paint Felicity's face.
I think it gives the dolls a really natural look,
especially with the older dolls
that didn't have as dramatic makeup
as the newer dolls have.
I'm using a very fine paintbrush
and tracing over the lips
that were already there.
I do this in one thin layer at a time,
and then I blot it with a tissue.
Once I'm happy with the shape of her lips,
I can move on to the cheeks.
I'm using a slightly bigger paintbrush here.
I always leave it slightly lighter
than I would like, because it dries dark.
I'm using some white acrylic craft paint
and very carefully filling in the teeth.
Now that her teeth are done,
my last step is to fill in her eyebrows.
Now that Felicity is finished,
I've tied her hair into her original hairstyle
with a little white ribbon in the back.
I've put her in this purple dress.
This is from a newer edition of Felicity.
Now she is ready to go on to her next owner
and be loved once again.