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Repaint dolls – avoid Cadmium in paint

I don’t know how many dolls you have at home but I saw this phenomenon among my Barbie dolls. I have a Jewel Hair Mermaid Teresa at home nrfb and for some time I observe that her lips started to bleed out even in nrfb condition.

JHMT
Jewel Hair Mermaid with lips whose color started to bleed

I think I could fix it when I take her out of the box but I don’t want to do it. I heard from another collector that this could have been caused by Cadmium in the paint itself. I recommend you when you repaint dolls – avoid Cadmium in paint. No good, seems to be the material to bleed.

Liquitex acrylic color

How to solve the problem doing repaints?

In the last years the industry obviously worked on the problems of bleeding. There are for example now some red tones from Liquitex that are free of Cadmium. So when you don’t paint it on the dolls, it can’t start to bleed, right?

How to deal with little paint jars with a cap you simply can’t get open

So and when we talk about paint here at the moment I had the problem recently that I wanted to use some of my little jars filled with paint but the caps were stuck. Man, this really left some blisters on my thumb. It’s very unpleasant to have such a situation. Nevertheless I found a very easy solution in the model making corner.

It’s always good to a pair ( or two) of pipe tongs at home. They come in very handy when you have small jars with the cap problem.

Catsilk3
Take your pair of tongs
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Put it around the lid

Catsilk1
Open the jar with the help of your pair of tongs.
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Time for doing some prototype tops

I know I haven’t posted anything doll related in the last weeks because I had not much to tell but yesterday I finally came across some time for my latest sewing project. I did show how to do the prototyping for a Japanese Exclusive top in the last weeks but I only showed how to do the pattern itself, not how to sew the top because I wanted to cover this in another video together with the tiny Peter Pan collar and the skirt.

You can see the first part of the pattern making here

but like mentioned above it’s only the first part of a journey how to come to the full dress. I must say the first try was good so far. I still have to do small improvements here and there under the arms because the arm holes are hard to do in a perfect way when you just did your first draft.

So anyway, I would like to show you the first result here

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Prototype of the Francie dress

I plan to do more prototypes in the next weeks especially one with the Peter Pan collar. So stay tunes in. The project will be continued as soon as I have two hours time for my sewing machine.

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A quick update for my Windows 10 problem

In the meantime I consulted several forums to get the solution to my problem not being able to work with my lately updated Windows 10 version. Did I get answers? Yes, I did but they were not helpful. Why should I consult Nvidia for a problem with Windows 10? The latest driver is 3 years old. Sorry, I don’t get the point. Nvidia will say it’s a Windows problem. So the poor guy from India got a bad mark from me for his answer. It’s simply not helpful and it does not explain why Windows 10 forgets the driver any time I start my Windows 10. We had the problem 2 years ago too but it was fixable.

So we started to solve the problem with updating my Linux. Yes, I have more than one PC operating system on my PC. I have 3 on it and 2 of it accept the driver without problems. The next problem I had to focus was the problem to explain this. I know a bunch of people only use one operating system on their PC. The update was in general no problem. It only lasted several hours but being at work on a Wednesday and coming home and your PC got its update is a good feeling. Nevertheless we were not able to solve the DaVinci Resolve problem. I suppose my CPU is to old for making it run on my Linux desktop. My PC is from 2012. Graphic driver check, running but CPU not. Obviously the problem is that under Linux DaVinci Resolve is treated a bit like a neglected step-child. So what’s the solution to the problem? Guess what? Spending money and spending a lot of money to be more precise.

We hope to solve this stupid graphic driver problem with a new PC but not just a PC but a really high performance PC with a fast and up-to-date graphic card from Nvidia with hopefully a working driver under Windows 10. I guess it’s exactly what they industry wanted to hear but it’s sad somehow that this problem can only be solved with money and not with a quick fix.

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A flat tire, a computer forgetting its graphic driver and over 700 subscribers

I know this sounds weird but my last two weeks were very strange. After updating my Windows 10 on my main PC the graphic card was not able to work properly anymore. I know this sounds strange but the look is so awful now that I can’t work on my PC at the moment. The problem with NVidia and Windows 10 seems to be a real problem since the last update of Microsoft. I hope they’ll fix it to. For cutting videos this is not good but we found a solution. I now work on another PC running Windows 8. There’s no such problem with the graphic driver but I hope that we can fix the problem too. So I’m really glad that I bought an external drive for my video files. It’s small, easy and transportable.

If that would not be enough for one week I had a flat tire on my bike last week Tuesday after work with no tool to repair it immediately. So I cycled to the next bike workshop but they refused to help. I had to cycle with my flat tire through the city to the other end of it just to get my flat tire fixed. Due to the Windows thing I was late with my video and the tire even delayed my time-schedule. The good thing was that I got help immediately in the second workshop and 30 minutes later I could finally cycle home. That’s how I got an unplanned bike trip.

After working constantly on new videos I suddenly hit the 700 subscriber mark this week. I didn’t expect it to happen so soon but it really happened. I don’t really know what to say but thank you. A 700 subscriber video will follow soon. Let’s cross fingers that I can fix the PC problem soon.

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Oh my god, it’s already April?

I know I haven’t been posting here for the last 7 weeks. I had some time problems with my time-schedule. Doing more sewing videos needed more time to edit and cut and I underestimated this fact somehow.

It’s not that I’m not willing to learn how to do it better but this was somehow different from what I planned. You know you have sometimes great ideas and when it comes to put things into reality then there are some “minor” problems.

That’s not what you want. That’s not what I want but I had to deal with it. For one of my videos I had too much light, another one had a bad tone.

The tone problem could be solved by doing it again. The light problem could be fixed with a little help of DaVinci Resolve but I’m far from perfect. Knowing something about grouping is also very helpful. I only knew I had known it earlier. I know it’s already April and I haven’t posted any for almost two months. Please forgive me but after work I drafted for days and days to get the pattern right. It was not cooperative at the beginning.

I think there are lots possibilities for Francie because there are a lot less fashions for her than for Barbie. So if the demand is high enough the chances are good that you can get more videos about Francie. What do you think? Would you like some more Francie videos?

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Re-rooting a Barbie doll

I just saw that I blogged nothing for about a month. The last month was a very busy one for me. I had less time to work on my projects after work due to winter weather. We got a lot of snow that caused traffic problems. I wasn’t able to use my bike for some weeks. Let’s cross our fingers that the winter will be over soon.

Coming home later caused some time problems. I was not able to blog so much as I did before. I somehow felt tired after work and my projects from January were time-consuming. For example I did a re-root and 3 days after working for approx. a hour daily on it, we got snow. We got a lot of snow. Approx. 50 cm in 26 hours. It was snowing all day long. Nice to look at but bad for the traffic.

So my project lasted longer than I wanted it to last since I did work on several videos when I did my re-root. Last year in September I found a Barbie head worth to re-root. I prefer the Vintage Barbie dolls at the moment. It’s less work because you just have to root the outer circle and it’s not full re-root. I think a full one would have lasted even longer. I already did a Ponytail Swirl Barbie in 2019 in a flamboyant red tone. This time I wanted to do a blond version. Somehow she reminded me a little bit of Marilyn Monroe while I did this. I even found a photo with a similar style. That’s how she reminded me of Marilyn.

The styling always needs a lot of time because the hair in not cooperative. After all I had 4,5 hours of film. I filmed the whole re-reroot of this Barbie but I knew I had to cut it down. Starting with 4,5 hours I managed it to come down to 1,5 hours without problems but even the 1,5 hours were way too long. I didn’t want to make a documentary. I wanted to show my viewers the makeover, the transformation. After cutting for one week I finally came to about 40 minutes. This was way more acceptable than the 1,5 hours. At the end I came down to approx. 35 minutes. Way better than before. If you want to see it, have a look below. I linked the video.

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Flax seeds – incredible versatile stuff

You might wonder how do I mention the tagline? Am I serious about this? Yes, I am. No, this is no joke. After eating them for a long time in my bread I discovered that flax seeds are even more versatile than I thought they would be. Why? You can do so many things with them that you probably don’t know all the areas to use them in. One of them I knew was simply eating them for breakfast or in breads. What I did not know were the other areas I stumbled across.

I don’t know how you feel about wearing a mask due to the coronavirus when doing grocery shopping but I hate to wear it. The result is that I avoid going shopping if possible. My preference is doing online shopping because it’s delivered to my doorstep and I don’t have to care about wearing masks. That’s also how I came across the flax seed gel. Doing some research for some of my next videos I came across a recipe for flax seed gel. I admit I was a bit sceptical at first. Would something that easy really work? Two options came into my mind, trying it or buying a hair gel from a supermarket. Before going to a supermarket I wanted to try the homemade flax seed gel. I always have flax seeds at home. So trying the recipe was no problem. At the end I had a lot of gel even from a small amount of flax seed. The consistency was a bit wobbly and I had my concerns about this stuff.

What to do with so much flax seed gel?

At the end after my repair adventure in the Barbie world I had far more gel than I needed and I had to find a solution what to do with the gel. I did some more research and found out that it’s possible to use it for your own hair care too. You can use it to feed your hair with Vitamine E by simply smearing it into your hair. The smell is a bit strange but it disappears after washing the gel out. I can recommend you to let it in your hair for 30 minutes before you wash it ( if you don’t use any silicone shampoos) to feed your skin. Anyway, here’s the video with the recipe.

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Nothing is impossible – You just have to know the way how to repair your Barbie

I know that I’ve been posting not enough in the last months but I try to improve my number of posts in the next weeks. Sometimes I need more time for my videos because you know I’m a part-time youtube creator. Sometimes you need more time because things don’t work out they way you want them to. It’s normal but you as a creator feeling stressed when it does not work as you want.

This is not always the case but it can happen and I want to encourage you don’t let this come too close to you.

I have an example for you. The creation of the first part of this video was no problem. Everything was running smoothly. This was not my first try. I already recorded another video with the same topic in 2019 but back then I used another cutting program which gave me less freedom than DaVinci Resolve.

It’s just the way how to come from A to B. There is a product that does the work for you.

What caused more trouble was the second part. The hair was not co-operating here in the first place. I had to some tricks to get it under control and needed two evenings to tape the re-creation the hairstyle. After filming I realized that although that my hand was in the way again, like often. So I had to tape the whole process again but with another doll.

The try with the second doll was no problem. It did work out like it should. The little waves at the end stayed in place at my Ponytail Barbie dolls. So far no problem. Only the fact that this first record was anything but professional was annoying me. You know it try to do it as original as possible. It’s not impossible to recreate it but sometimes you have to find creative solutions for strange problems.