#glue head

[imreadydollparts]

I had intended to do this after a decade but am moving soon and have to downsize, so I have to let go of quite a lot (so much......) and that includes these old doll heads that I'd treated for head glue with L.A.'s Totally Awesome back in 2017.

The Super Long Totally Awesome Follow Up Post.

Immediate results aren’t always the best indicator of success, so I’ve still been at it with the LA’s Totally Awesome. I’ve spent about $5 o

The short version is that these heads are fine. I'm not seeing any negative effects from the T.A. soaks after 9 years.

These have been in a zipper bag this whole time, too.

Anyway, there isn't any visible damage or change to their hair, vinyl heads, or makeup outside of what had already happened immediately after the treatment. Namely, on some dolls the lips changed color and glitter makeup was affected. I've also heard T.A. discolors the matte teal hair Monster High Twyla has.

Other than that, these dolls are perfectly fine. The scalps are hard where there is left over glue still stuck in the roots of the hair but the rest of the heads are soft still. No changes to makeup, no changes to hair, a couple of the dolls have a little stickiness at their parts in their hair, and Abbey has a couple mm of sticky going again.

So, for the most part, the glue is now solidified and stable, other than a couple places.

The visible yellowing on some of the heads is from the glue itself and occurred before treatment.

I'm very happy to have been a key part of this experimental journey to solve the nasty head glue problem and that my experiments emboldened others to try more products and find other solutions.

I do still feel like T.A. is the most complete and effective method, but it sure is a pain in the butt to do.

[firespirited]

hey!! I have a question about removing glue with cif cream, is it normal that the glue just turns white and "dries up" after soaking? Or should it be completely dissolved? The smell of cif lingers from the inside of the head, and general the whole head has cif smell after a few months:( is it normal?

Hi, the phenoxyethenol in cif and other power cleaners doesn't dissolve the glue, it transforms it from sticky waxy yellow to a harder white substance that can be scraped + tapped out of the head or left there (because it doesn't leech out anymore).

It's more of a glue neutraliser/stabilisation process than glue removal per se.

Which is why more glue is removed if the doll has more fluid glue that then turns into tiny white flakes.

Before I found the less scented Cif product contained the phenoxyethenol, I was using a floor cleaner with a really strong orange blossom smell and left the dolls outside for a week so the smell would wear off.

If you are in the EU or Canada there are websites that disclose the ingredients on household cleaners, if you find one that's unscented and has "non ionic surfectants" marked on the front in small print, you can see if the product contains a variant of ethoxylated alcohol which seems to be the key chemical in Totally Awesome cleaner (US only - See Tiffy's experiments at @imreadydollparts)

👍💜

[littlefluffbutt]

Soaked for a week in LA's Totally Awesome and then the couple stubborn spots hit with Goo Gone and Clawdeen's hair is FINALLY glue free!! She was not the worst case of glue head I've seen but by God hers was the most stubborn.

Worth it!!

[kingkrabby]

Mmm, tea.

[thrifty-dolls]

Glue Head so bad it can defy gravity

[betweenishish]

- Thrifted Hairdorable on a Cherry BB body. I like this combo much better than either of the originals, and the skin tone matches are very good. - Purple purple purple purple. I have no plans for more RH at this time, though, and I might rebody one or both if I can find something I like. - The latest batch of heads I'm processing. The MH are all terrible glue heads with lots of vinyl staining; the rest are either thrifted heads I'm going to reroot or bait heads I just left to dry.

[zaksdolls]

I have almost all the doll heads from that generous package from my friend deglued or in the process of. So now I'm slowly turning my attention to the other dolls in my collection, including repainted dolls. Ever After Cupid (left) is surprisingly not gluey so she will not be dunked in LA's totally Awesome, but she will soak in conditioner because her hair is so dry. She will also need to be recurled and I'm honestly not looking forward to that.

Monster High Cupid (right), on the other hand, is gooey and hard. Yellow stains are also showing on her crown and forehead. So now I'm at a crossroads. Do I:

A- Try to preserve her face up by attempting to only deglue her cranium and hopefully not get any LA's TA on her face?

or

B- Wipe her (and EAH Cupid), deglue, and re-repaint them both at a later date.

I'm kind of leaning towards option B because it would make degluing so much easier, but I don't want to re-repaint them. Although the more I look at MH Cupid's face the less and less I like it. Those eyes. Eugh.

Signature Venus unfortunately lost her flocking during degluing. I'm not terribly upset because I can easily reflock her, but this might bode a problem for other people who aren't customizers. I did leave her soaking for about 4 or 5 days if it makes a difference. Also, CHECK OUT THOSE HUGE GLUE CHUNKS!

I knew from reading @dollsonmain 's tutorials that tinsel does not do well in LA's TA so I expected this to happen. In hindsight, I should have removed them prior to soaking.

Frankie has had two soaks (though i just put her in for a third). She's also stained. Yesterday, I put her in a glass jar filled with hydrogen peroxide and sitting in the sun for a few hours to see if it would help deyellow her hair. I... i'm not sure if it helped to be honest. However, I did notice that the yellow around her crown and jaw did diminish. Her jaw is even lighter in color now. So, beware and proceed with caution.

I am making a little stock pile of all the heads that will need to be treated with Volume 40 developer+ UV/ Heat in order to be deyellowed.

[wafflebloggies]

Seventeen dolls, seventeen severe cases of glue head. I feel overwhelmed by this situation: there are some really nice dolls here, the signature Maddy, the Farrah, the Ashlynn who doesn’t look like she’s going to shank someone, and I really want to fix up the Frankie asap as I don’t have any blue-lip Frankies and I love them.

Buuut it’s just a LOT and I don’t know where to start. My dishwasher fluid method takes a long time and is messy and I don’t have the space to have bowls of dishwasher fluid everywhere, not to mention they’re like £2 a bottle and it takes multiple refills to fix even one doll. It’s also nerve-wracking getting the heads off even though I can generally always do it without breaking necks if I use a hairdryer.

I want to make them all nice but I keep putting it off. It’s not so much that I don’t know where to start, rather that I know that for so many dolls it is going to be such a drawn-out faff.

I also have run out of places to source spare EAH hands- can anyone suggest anything? I’m in the UK and the only ones on Ebay tend to be in the US and very expensive.