A Little Doll Surgery

Poor Bleuette!

Bad dog!

We are not the only ones in our household who love dolls-- unfortunately, our Pug got a hold of Kairi's resin Bleuette from Ruby Red Galleria (http://www.rubyredgalleria.com/) last year and chewed up her hands.  We were pretty upset (the dog not so much), but I had hopes we could fix her.  Recently, I contacted Ruby Red Galleria and was able to get a pair of replacement hands (Yay!) so today I replaced them, and have the pictures here to share.

New hands from Ruby Red Galleria

The resin Bleuette is a merging of new and old-- Bleuette was a french doll given away when little girls subscribed to the magazine La Semaine de Suzette.  She had a jointed composition body and porcelain head, and was made from 1905 to 1960 by several different dollmakers.   The magazine would have a clothes pattern for Bleuette in every issue, so there are dozens and dozens of patterns out there (see http://www.thebleudoor.com/Libraryhome.htm for free copies), making her very popular with doll lovers.  Ruby Red Galleria is a doll company in Hong Kong that decided to make a modern Bleuette-- she is made of resin and ball-jointed like modern BJDs (Ball-Jointed Doll).  She is a great incarnation of a great doll, and we have lots of fun with ours!

A BJD is made up of doll parts strung together with elastic, and you can repair or change them fairly easily.  The next picture shows the elastic that the hand is hooked to:

I just pulled the hand out to expose the elastic.  A good way to do this would be to use a hemostat, a tool that clamps on to the elastic and prevents it from pulling back into the doll.  I didn't have one, so I used my fingers and was careful not to lose the elastic.  The next picture shows the new hand hooked on before I removed the old hand, just in case!

Then I removed the old hand and released the new hand into the joint!  All better!

She feels much better!