What Big Eyes You Have!

I have two Kish Olivia Carneval dolls-- one I got at the Modern Doll Convention (http://www.moderndollcollectors.com/), and one I bought afterward to modify (change the wig).  Lately, I've felt a bit bored having two dolls that are almost the same, but was torn about getting rid of one of the dolls.  Then recently I discovered the blog "Dolls Behaving Badly" (www.dollsbehavingbadly.com) and really enjoyed reading about Charlie's adventures with her dolls, especially her Companion Doll (a doll she takes everywhere, yes, everywhere) named Martie.  Martie is a Rapunzel doll by Robert Tonner (www.tonnerdoll.com) who was modified by Jim Dandy.  One of the things he did was he cut out the painted eyes and put in glass eyes-- creating a really neat look!  So, I was inspired to do this crazy thing to my extra Olivia.  Yikes!

Searching the internet for information on how to do this is tough-- maybe there aren't too many people doing this, I don't know.  After thinking about it, I had an idea of how to go about it (my engineering degree is not only good for paying some of the bills, it also helps me with doll projects! :) ).  I ordered glass eyes from Denver Doll Emporium (www.denverdoll.com) and while I was there, I found a cute wig to try out.

I won't go into the gory details, because I don't have pictures (I glued her wig on, and I am NOT taking out the eyes again, installing them was a real bear!) but I found two great sites on how to do this AFTER I had gone through the first iteration on doing this, so I will share those here:  http://www.ehow.com/how_6930664_put-glass-eyes-barbie.html and http://milkshakemelody.com/tutorials/glass_eyes.html.  Pictures of Toni before and after below.  She isn't perfect, but I love how she looks!

-- Janet

Toni, Before...

New Toni!