Aliexpress Star Darlings heads arrived on Thursday. Some staining, some deep staining, 1 had an eye in upside down, all have Sage’s eyes. Otherwise hair is out of box quality. facepaint excellent.
I am utterly and totally over the moon! Some lines are just totally your aesthetic but never get to where you live or even at a decent price nude with messy hair on ebay by people who bought them for the accessories. I had to go through some very strange hoops to get my favourite dolls. Pinkie Cooper for example were bought in exchange for reroot work from an english client bought on a catalog website and shipped to her house, Bratzillaz came from all over europe in exchange for reroots and custom dolls. I got Star Darling’s Sage who was shipped double in each pack of the five characters (there were going to be 12 for all the zodiac signs) from @dollsahoy in the states and fell head over heels. These eventually made their way to amazon.fr but never under 60€ each as they were disney store exclusives which basically means Paris and maybe Lyon. I’m not sure why they would shoot themselves in the foot when there were fans willing to throw cash at them - I was willing to go upto 30€ which is $40. I can’t believe they let a doll line like this tank, it has built in well written stories and the zodiac angle so you could have a doll that matches you. It’s absurd.
Well, Fantasy hair colour, skintones, cartoon stylings and well done inset eyes seem to be my weakspot.
Now, you can find far better reviews of the dolls on their original shimmery bodies with classic Disney splay syndrome. Here’s what isn’t in the reviews:
The tinsel can be gently tugged out, leaving high quality nylon
They fit nicely on bratz, monster high, ever after high and disney fairy, if you can get the nightmare neck anchor out.
The eyes are oval 15x12mm with non removable irises and are in a vinyl pouch,
The eyes are very easy to remove/replace without damaging the facepaint: just heat with a hair dryer and use a stick to push them out/back in. No need to do any cutting or reapinting (i’m looking at you bratzillaz).
Getting them back on the original body is more damaging to the doll (neck goes white from stress and loses it’s shimmer) than a new normal anchor bod
My project is to assemble all five, get eyes that suit them, put Libby, Scarlet and Vega on Bratz or EAH or Disney Fairy bodies, make custom outfits or just use a combo of Bratz and Monster High to find their characters and maybe make a Piper (green) custom. I’ll do an update when Leona (gold, $13) has arrived! They’ll join my Bratzillaz and custom Bratzillaz crew. If it hadn’t been for Vega being damaged I would not dared do any modding, I haven’t even touched Sage’s hair! but now that I know that’s an option I’m going for whatever seems to suit the dolls best.
In the meantime I’ve put Libby (pink) on a Bratz Jade Pixiez body (the one supposed to be my test for hard head rerooting that I haven’t touched since cleanup <.<), it has been cut at the undies so she can sit and the hard plastic was yellowed at the neck and belly where left in the sun - this happens a lot with Fashion Royalty and Ashton Drake and short of retrobrite-ing it, you can sand it off with a large grit then tidy up with smaller grit. Simple and effective. Her complex but bunching french braid pulls out into a simple braid that can be tidied up.
Scarlet’s short hair can be braided into a short bit or carefully removed as she’s got enough hair to cover the loss. She’s on a fake disney fairy bod and very sassy.This piece of plastic is judging me and I love her.
I’ve got Vega bleaching her stains and she and Scarlet are trying out eyes i mistakenly got in the wrong size a while back (they are 14x12mm I think).
Scarlet’s eyes are pushed upwards with little bits of cotton wool as I don’t have white putty. I removed Vega’s eyeglitter which was uneven, I’d like her to have brown eyes and accentuate her vaguely asian look, she’s quite tan IRL.
Finding these dolls was a wonderful surprise, like that thrift store dream we’ve all had. I treasure Sage and am really glad to reunite her with her friends and add to my colourful crew.