I recently switched out the lower arm of a Rainbow High doll for one from a different RH doll, and managed to remember to take pictures along the way. I give you: a very basic tutorial
Step 1: snap the arms you’re swapping off at the elbow. There’s a plastic peg that holds the lower arm to the upper arm, and you need to break that. You should just be able to twist it hard and have it snap as it’s the weakest part of the elbow joint. Here you can see it snapped on one side.
Step 2: cut away the plastic peg. We’re going to replace this peg with a new connector in this tutorial, so we need to get it out of the way. I tried to remove as much as possible. This plastic is one of the softer ones on the doll, so going slow with an exacto knife will take care of this easily.
Step 3: drill a hole for the new peg. Remember to measure your new peg first! You want to make sure it fits through the ring on the upper part of the dolls arm, and ideally want to drill a hole that is slightly smaller than the peg in the doll’s arm. As I said this part of the arm is a softer plastic, so a slightly smaller hole will stretch just enough to let you push you new peg through, but also grip it a little to hold it in place without glue.
Here’s my peg! I ended up going with metal because this doll is a cyborg, and thus it is on theme. A wooden or plastic peg could also work since you’re ideally not putting a lot of pressure on an art doll’s elbow.
Step 4: size your peg. I put the peg in where I wanted it and then marked how long it should be with a sharpie. As mine is metal I used a wire snip to score my cut, and then cut through the peg with a small saw.
And here’s my new RH elbow in action:
I really had no idea what would happen where I first snapped that elbow peg, so I wanted to document whatever failure or success I encountered.
Have fun with your dolls!