A Grow-Up Glow-Up: Monster High Treesa Thornwillow by Mattel

While I accurately stated that Gooliope Jellington was the only character unique to the 17-inch "Frightfully Tall" Monster High doll size, Gooliope was not actually the only giant character depicted by a giant doll. This is the other one-- Treesa Thornwillow, the growing dryad with a torso-extension mechanism that allowed her to rise to 14.5 inches while unfurling branchy thorn wings. 

[Hugely off-topic side note relevant to my deliberation on a recent doll release: I recently struggled with whether or not to buy in on the limited edition The Haunted Mansion Bride doll from ShopDisney. 

Photo by ShopDisney.

I'm a massive Haunted Mansion nerd. I still have only ridden the ride once (at Disneyland) and that was as a kid too scared to look at most of it, but then I bought Jason Surrell's book The Haunted Mansion: From the Magic Kingdom to the Movies as a souvenir, and it blew my mind with all of the explanations and visuals I had missed out on. I then discovered Doombuggies.com, another resource about the various Mansion rides' history. Then, I discovered the deep lore--the Long-Forgotten blog. This is one of my favorite pieces of blogging ever, as the blog spotlights various Disney parks creatives and features of the Mansion attractions to chart the media influences on the Mansion, the pieces of lore and intent from Mansions-in-progress that were buried by creative differences or technical failures, and to discuss the rich thematic execution of the ride. There's a lot of genuine artistry in the long-running attraction. That's where I truly began to fully adore the ride. 

But I just wasn't sure about the Bride doll. Objectively, it's everything I should want. A fashion doll based on The Haunted Mansion seems right up my alley, and she'd be make for a great feature post here. She's very nicely executed with her bleeding-heart jewelry, patterned veil, and axe and candle harkening to the two distinct Bride characters that have occupied the Mansion's Attic. However, I had to remind myself that as a doll, I just wasn't in love with her visually. The parts weren't adding up to a whole I was completely captivated by, and unlike the Bride of Frankenstein, it wasn't a doll I felt strongly that I would seriously regret passing up. I knew that letting this doll compel me just by its limited status and its nature as a first Mansion doll wasn't right. I don't have to buy into a Haunted Mansion fashion doll just because it's the first time Disney's offered it. I'll buy in when it actually connects with me visually. 

And doesn't cost $150. Geeeez, Disney.

So that was that deliberation. The Bride will not be on this blog. Back to the review at hand.]

Treesa Thornwillow serves as the debuting mascot character and visual centerpiece of G2's second and final specialty line, Garden Ghouls, where the returning cast got insect-fairy makeovers and three miniature insect pixie dolls also debuted to interact with Treesa, their arboreal home. 

Official illustration of Treesa by Mattel. 
What is going on with her ponytail???

Dryads are Greek mythological tree nymphs, which is a respectable deep cut for Mattel to have pulled...but it kind of comes at the expense of a better concept for the brand because it's the safest and softest possible concept for a tree person in a brand that built itself on iconic spookiness. Instead of going for a classic scary tree you would see in a Halloween forest, they went for a tree nymph, and it's maybe the biggest cram-and-stretch into the "monster" umbrella Mattel ever tried. I can't think of any mythological precedent for dryads to ever be classed among monsters, and I find a lot of Treesa to be much closer to the feel of Ever After High myself. Ironic, seeing as EAH was on its last legs at the same time Treesa was released. It says a lot about how far G2's tone strayed from the brand's inception when we have characters teetering on tiptoes over the line of monsterdom...and most of their body is across it in the wrong direction. It's pretty clear that Garden Ghouls was entirely designed under the G2 mandates, because Shriekwrecked, the first G2 novelty line, had plenty of visual splendor and intrigue that marked it as a delayed reworked G1 concept. You couldn't convince me Garden Ghouls was conceived for G1, and there's a reason I opted first to create my own tree monster in favor of the official one.

And yet, my success and delight with Gooliope inspired me to finally go ahead and get myself a Treesa. I didn't need all of her stuff, but I wanted the clothed doll with her stand. Treesa was sold as both a doll and playset, with the doll clicking into a base shaped like a haunted tree stump which had waist clips for some of the micro-sized Winged Critters dolls to be displayed on. Treesa's branch wings also had room for several large decorative charms to clip onto her, but these weren't of interest to me.

(I was a little tempted to try to get one of the Winged Critters, but hell no. Each of those little mini dolls with single-jointed limbs and awkward arm sculpts is going for pretty absurdly healthy prices even incomplete on eBay, and I'm not willing to pay more than $10 for one complete. Sorry, Treesa.)

Treesa as a teenage doll whose body grows follows up on some older "growing-up" dolls Mattel made before, with a couple of dolls depicting girls going through adolescent changes with mechanical features. The more famous was their first-- the 1974 Growing-Up Skipper doll, depicting Barbie's younger sister in adolescence. 

Photo of Growing Up Skipper's box (not mine.)
Not sure I'm comfortable with how she's described in 
each phase. 

Skipper's mechanics were activated by windmilling her left arm to extend her torso and protrude breasts from a vinyl covering to change her contour. 

Mattel revisited the concept in the My Scene Barbie offshoot line (clearly trying to imitate then-recent competitor Bratz) with the "Growing Up Glam" doll.

Mattel stock photos of Growing Up Glam. 

Growing Up Glam had an uncovered chest cavity that breasts pushed forward from and extending legs. Her growth was activated by an attached turning key in her back, a feature Treesa shares. 

The dolls were controversial, likely due to the breast-growing visual of the dolls striking some as inappropriate and sexual, though I think the theory was for it to have been a useful tool to get girls comfortable with the idea of puberty. The My Scene line has a visual shallowness to it that might not align as well with educational puberty features...but even Skipper's marketing feels like it objectifies her too much, since it talks about her two forms from an adult point of view, rather than the way a child would view preadolescent and postadolescent Skipper's two looks. So maybe neither doll was really justified. 

Treesa's mechanics do not include growing breasts, and as a tree monster, her growth is more fantastical in visual. I think it's a much more careful approach, and Treesa isn't sold purely on the virtue of her growth spurt, which might make the depiction more graceful. She's mostly a fantasy tree girl who happens to resonate with tweens on the line of physical growth. 

Here's the doll. My copy came fully-dressed with her base and two of the wing charms she originally was produced with.

Let's talk about the stump first. 

Treesa was one of the very precious very few G2 dolls to have a doll stand. I think it was only Treesa, electronic singing Ari Hauntington, and Party Hair Draculaura in G2 who came with stands, and all of them were novelty dolls in some fashion and had unique stands, not the standard MH style. Treesa's stand is a nice way to make her look rooted into the ground for display, and also functions as a small playset area. The face on the front splits into two hinged doors.

Inside the walls of the base, there are sculpted reliefs of furniture so you can play like the tree is a little pixie home. This also shows the indents that Treesa's shoes fit into, and the clips that hold her legs. The base has small pins that go into holes in her shoes to keep them aligned even more than the shape of the indent does, and the clips grab onto her upper legs. I only realized later that the sides of her leg clips were shaped like cartoon hands, which is a little unsettling. The teal pieces of the stand are the waist-grip clips for two Winged Critter dolls. 

Treesa, shoes misaligned, but clipped in by the legs.

The green rear panel of the base features more sculpting. 

A theme with Treesa is going to be excellent detail with no paint to highlight it. It's not surprising for a plastic microscale doll playset, though. That's a time-honored tradition. On the base, I might be tempted to paint it up, but on her body, it might not be worth it. I may not have the patience or dexterity for any of it. 

Here's Treesa freestanding separate from her base.

Treesa's hair was a big conceptual issue for me. 

It's a wavy ponytail of magenta and green streaks, and while, sure, tying it up makes sense to keep out of the wings, the color and texture couldn't feel further from treelike to me. It also feels a little unoriginal, since the green and pink mix borders on the tones used by Venus McFlytrap, who even started using a medium green tone in a couple of G2 dolls. And Treesa's named for a willow and doesn't have cascading green tresses? Heck, long green microbraids would have been amazing on a doll like this. She'd turn into a great Black character design in a brand that really didn't design Black characters beyond the Wolfs and Honey, and her tree look would be vastly improved. Maybe she wasn't made late enough to benefit from that, though. I don't know if microbraided dolls were yet "a thing" when she was released. Regardless, the pink hurts the look for me a lot. But that's G2 for you. Sweetness at the expense of real personality and creativity.

Treesa's face is okay. Not super special to me. I really like her green eyeshadow, though, and her yellow eye color is good. Her face has more of G1 than G2 in it with her heavy makeup, for sure. Like I did with my own tree monster, Dendrea, I want to paint Treesa's sclerae black to make her eyes look like glowing lights in spooky knotholes.

I might also want to change her eye color to a bright green, though. It might suit my vision for her better.

Treesa's face is also visibly wonky, with her eyes staring in a vacant or dopey way. This seems to be a fairly common issue with Treesa dolls, so there weren't really superior alternative offerings on eBay. 

Unlike Gooliope, Treesa's face sculpt does not include a defined eyelid ridge.

We'll get into her sculpting more soon, but Treesa's head features some woodgrain around her hairline, seemingly blending textured wood with the visual of baby hairs! She might be one of the earlier dolls I know of to feature a reference to styled baby hairs. Cedar Wood from Ever After High beat Treesa to the woodgrain body sculpting, but her face featured grain around the edges of her whole head to imply her face was sanded down, while Treesa's head texture is only at the hairline, making me certain the texture is meant as dryad baby hairs. Maybe she's meant to be Latina, since her name is an anagram of "Teresa". 

Cedar Wood's face-edge grain.

It usually bothers me how MH characters have fully-textured bodies and completely smooth faces, but it doesn't feel wrong for Treesa. She's a supernatural tree fairy, so I buy that she'd have a more humanlike face. 

Treesa's ears are large and elaborate. The ears are textured with swirls and braiding and leafy shapes and I love how they mix branches with elfin features to feel very woodland-fantasy. It's also very workable for a creepier take, too. They're extravagant enough to have been achieved with a separate piece of vinyl glued in--possibly because it wouldn't have been feasible to make an extractable cast of the head if this was all one mold. The ear piece thus features a bar that wraps around the back of Treesa's head so the ears can be one piece connected to both sides. She also has black earrings shaped like dragonflies.

It reminds me a little of Viperine Gorgon's hair snakes, which were glued in a one-piece strip under her head in a similar fashion.  However, for some reason, the ear piece is conspicuously translucent, perhaps the same exact color as Getting Ghostly Clawdeen, making it stand out against the opaque head. 

I later completely lost the earrings, which is a little disappointing, but not a huge deal. 

Treesa's mechanical features are all located on her back, and it's pertinent to mention them before the outfit, though making them work will come a bit later.

On Treesa's back, she has a green nonremovable turning key, and above she has her wing mechanism. The housing for Treesa's wings is understandably external and is shaped like a birdhouse with an owl in it, which is a clever way to make the bulky addition work with her theme and break up her body shape in a reasonable way. 

Treesa's wings are in three segments that fan out on each side. They're loose in her compressed position and can be lifted up and dropped back down. They become more static when pushed into position in her extended form.

Treesa's outfit is boring to me. It's a flat black bodice tied around the neck with green ribbon, and has iridescent woodgrain fabric at the waist and skirt with an additional pattern of bugs crawling over it.

The outfit is split into two pieces so the winding key, which stays in one place while the torso halves part around it, doesn't interfere with the clothing, though I think I can get away with redressing her in a one-piece low-backed dress if the dress ties on top and opens far enough down. The top has a tiny velcro strip to fasten just under the lower edge of the birdhouse so it stays in place.

The most praise I can give this outfit is that it's cohesive with Treesa's official design and has black to bring in her monster side...I just don't personally like the direction of Treesa's official styling.

Treesa's arms are molded with large, long branches that extend past her hands and almost enclose them. I would have killed for a reverse balance where Treesa's fingers were the longest branches on her arms, but nope, that's way too creepy for G2...

Her actual hands aren't even remotely branchy or extended for the tree theme!

I don't think her arms or hands are designed to be removed. She only has the one outfit, and removing the hands is pointless for the arm sculpt she has...but her forearms don't seem removable. Makes sense. 

Lastly for the outfit, Treesa has iridescent teal shoes shaped like wooden platforms with thorny vine wraps. The platforms, as mentioned, have pinholes to keep them aligned in Treesa's base. The color of the shoes matches the Winged Critter clips on the base.

Now let's look at the source of this doll's intrigue--her highly-detailed transforming body.

Treesa's compressed body proportions look notably more young-adolescent than the typical median-age Monster High body, and that's going for the G2 bodies as well. Visually, this ties into the analogy of adolescent growth spurts and matches the G1 little-sister doll body more.

Comparison of a G1 standard and little-sister sculpt, modeled by Frankie Stein
and Twyla.

Mechanically, it's also a consequence of her extended form fitting into the more typical skinny silhouette. She's naturally going to be a little stockier when at her shortest. 

Her body sculpt is covered in heavy woodgrain much like Cedar Wood's, and features several critters and other woodland details sculpted on top. 

Cedar's body.

Cedar's main thematic differences are that she has no branches, leaves, and critters, and her body features sculpting of fake puppet peg joints that Treesa understandably lacks. 

I think my favorite sculpted detail of Treesa's is an MH crest carved on her left shoulder in a tree's equivalent to a tattoo! 

Okay, so she's slightly edgy.

When Treesa is extended, her wings unfurl and her torso splits in both directions away from the key and rises on a jagged line above a core, almost as if she's a log that has been gnawed away by a beaver! 

It's a fun way for Mattel to lean into the tree nature of the character as a way to make the torso extension's oddness look good. It's a good move, since trying to cover the torso with vinyl would be totally incongruous with Monster High's precedent, and since the torso extends instead of the legs, it was going to look weird. So they just made it successfully weird. I also really appreciate that they even sculpted the inner core of her torso with texture and creatures! Her body detail really goes above and beyond.

Here's a back view showing how the torso halves have moved in both directions away from the key, which they close snugly around in compressed form.

Am I tempted to unscrew those screws and try to peek at her mechanism?
Yes. Am I willing? No.

Treesa also came with two of her multiple charms designed to hang from her branch wings. They started off elastic-banded flat to her, but they have hooks that let them dangle after the bands are removed. The two I got were a blossom with a Skullette on one side...

...and a really cool charm that's a normal insect on one side and a fairy on the other!

Here's what the charms look like hanging from their hooks.

I think Mattel wasted a no-brainer opportunity to include a charm with each 11-inch Garden Ghouls doll to incentivize collecting the whole line so Treesa could be accessorized even more widely than if you bought her set alone. 

Treesa has none of the raised articulation of the Frightfully Tall doll size. While her torso obviously couldn't accommodate a tipping rotation joint, I think it could have been feasible to give her double-jointed limbs. However, despite Treesa's articulation not being bumped up, I really appreciate that the designers prioritized ensuring that her body wouldn't have any reduced articulation. All of her joints are on par with an 11-inch G2 doll, which is, remember, a pretty remarkable articulation standard as it is. Had Treesa's legs extended, then there goes one or both leg joints and suddenly she's playing the tree role even harder by being too rigid. Mattel did a great job designing her to maintain the MH articulation standard. The only issues I saw were that Treesa doesn't really look downward, and that her hips, like all fully-articulated G2 dolls', are ball joints that don't move with as much outward range as the G1 rotating hinges. Her restrictions aren't anything unique to her body.

At last, here's a size comparison of Treesa next to an 11-inch doll (Dendrea) and a Frightfully Tall doll (Gooliope). In compressed form, Treesa's about 13.5 inches. 

They make a fairly tidy downward incline.

Treesa's height increase isn't massive, as she tops out at 14.5 inches.

Though I can't compare the size of a Winged Critter to Treesa, I can show an old photo comparing one of them (Beetrice), with Gooliope, an 11-inch doll (Luna Mothews), and a smaller sibling doll from G2 (Fangelica van Bat). 

So Treesa as-is is a fun play feature with a design that doesn't do it for me. So I started hunting for supplies to make Treesa over with my new plan.

First, I shopped online to get Treesa a new costume. 

I hazarded a guess that Treesa's body size fell within the range of Barbie clothing, and turned my attention toward green dresses worn by Barbies, figuring they'd be compatible, even if some effort was required to tweak the fit. I wanted the dress to be green and fit a nature theme, and it needed to be sleeveless and backless akin to her original outfit.

I found a Barbie Fairytopia green-dressed fairy doll to get her outfit. It's a little bright and princessy, but its green color and leafy theme were good, and its cut being designed for a doll with attached wings boded well for it fitting on Treesa. I felt like I could always stain it a little darker or more muted if I needed to.

I had also bid on a two-toned Barbie halter dress that felt suitably Grecian in its folding, much like signature EAH Cupid's. I thought the simplicity felt suitably ancient and mature for a dryad. The colors looked pretty muted, such that they didn't even look two-toned. Another listing I'd seen of the dress was aggressively bright. I was the only bidder on the auction, so I won the dress and ended up with it...after I had dismissed it and regretted my bid.  So...I guess I have options now! We'll see how the dress looks in-person. I knew this dress, at least, would need its halter strap cut at the back to make it possible to put on Treesa. Even if I could have slid it up over her trunk and arms, her wings automatically make it impossible to use unaltered. Closing the neck strap up again to keep it on will be something to figure out.

Then I went to the craft store for her hair and some foliage accoutrements.

Since I can't at all expect myself to create microbraided hair for Treesa, I hunted for the next best thing-- thin green yarn. I wanted a good color, thinness, and for it to be fairly tidy and tight. I didn't want a yarn that was too fuzzy or fluffy.

I also found some plastic bugs to make Treesa a pet. I think the ladybug feels the most like an MH pet in the making, gigantic though it is, though I might select another depending on the tone I want.

I picked up a fake plant sprig that seemed to closely resemble the shape of willow leaves. I think I can cut the leaves off and put them on a dress to dangle alongside her hair. 

I also found some twine with fabric leaves that looked like it might be a fun way to accent a dress, maybe as a waist trim.

The Fairytopia doll had arrived the same day as Treesa. She was concerningly grimy and made for a strikingly weird presence. 

Can't tell if she's awkward or murdery...

I threw the doll out pretty much immediately since she looked to be in pretty bad condition, and took her dress down for a wash in soap and water because it was causing me concern. Fortunately, that seemed to completely clean it and the problem was only dirt, not mold. Thank goodness. It was kind of awful for the seller to not expend any effort to clean this doll and there's an audacity to selling something this icky that I can't support. I appreciate receiving the dress, but generally, the rule of thumb should be that if your stuff is nasty, clean it before selling or just dump it. The seller later followed up with a request for a five-star review of the transaction. Politely, I don't think they sold something in good enough cleanliness to request five stars.

With these pieces in order, I got to working.

I think the last time a project felt so hands-on and intensive was with Dahlia. But wow, did the time pay off. 

I focused first on repainting and rehairing this doll. First, I had to cut her hair, and heat her head to pull it off and remove as much of the roots as I could. Her head was very difficult to remove, but I didn't destroy her neck peg! What I couldn't scrape out of her hair roots, I tried to poke in, and the rest I just resolved to cover up well. Her pink scalp paint got wiped too, of course.

At the same time, Treesa's face got tweaks. I changed her eyebrows to dark green, wiped her lips and repainted them dark brown and a little wider and less upturned than they were before. I painted her sclerae black and initially changed her irises to green, but walked that back later and wiped it off because that was a little overly "faerie" and not enough "spooky tree"--basically playing into the problems I was having with her design!

Her eyes did not stay green for long.

Still, bald nude Treesa with the face paint changes is a very beautiful unusual tree doll!

Somehow, I find her eyes too look notably less wonky with my tweaks despite her irises being placed the same. Maybe the white space of her sclerae before emphasized a vacant look.

For the yarn, I started off cutting very long pieces (I can always trim too long--I can't lengthen too short) and dabbing the ends I'd be attaching in glue to make them tidy. Using hot glue to attach everything right on the head, I set a few rows in to define a center part first to lock that in. I felt it was the best style for length and drape and a nature-focused ghoul. 

Start of the hair gluing.

Here, you can see I realized she could also use her arms to drape her hair behind and across to give it more volume and dynamism, too! 

Then I went to the lower edge of her head, filling in rows to close up toward the top of the head like doll rerooters and wigmakers do. Treesa's ears made it hard to fill the space above them, but they did help in figuring out a natural way to split the hair in front of and behind her torso and wings. I planned to have some of the hair with knots in it to add texture, and this was a good idea since it also allowed me to inconspicuously seal some strands that were fraying. Eventually, I started making the process less elaborate and focused on speed, so I stopped knotting her hair for the time being, and stopped gluing the ends and just twisted the yarn to tighten it and pressed the strands onto the hot glue. I knew I'd be going back to do more knots in the hair later, but I just wanted her head covered before the rapidly-shortening night was up. I wanted to ensure none of her hair was dragging on the ground in fully-extended height, so I kept her at her tallest during this process and trimmed her hair as I went.

I started feeling unbelievably giddy and proud as this process went on. The long willow hair was the perfect choice that was giving her all the woodland drama and visual appeal she was lacking with her poofy pink hair, and the hair emphasized verticality to help her look even taller! By the time I was done, I was incredibly happy. This was an imposing forest ghoul!

The way I ended up covering her head made her hair very dense on top, which widens the silhouette maybe more than I would have liked, but I think it works because she's a tree and I buy it as a thick canopy of leaves over a human face. Hair can always be pulled behind her ears to thin the silhouette as well. 

During the process, the strand of hot glue created veritable cobwebs on Treesa's wings...and that gave me the idea of tying white thread as cobwebs between her wings. But not for the first night; there was just no time.

I stained the Fairytopia dress with darker greens and black at the bottom edge. I cut the edge into tatters to make it spookier, and glued the willow leaves to hang from the waist. I glued the leafy twine over the waist as a belt and two pieces of it inside the bodice to create halter straps to tie it around her neck.

I went in even darker on the lower edge after this photo.

Then I put her in the costume (wrangling it around her hair and her hair around her body was quite a time) and put her in the stand...and I was completely awed. A symphony in green. A dramatic presence.

A very awkwardly-fitting dress. 

Yeah, the dress still needed some working out. I wasn't getting it very secure, and it didn't want to be very tight around the waist, so she needed some technical tweaking. Her hair still needed more tying and I needed to try the spiderweb idea too. I was also still not sure if she was monstrous enough yet, although she was a thousand-times-more-epic fantasy character for sure. I mean, WOW. I think I blew my own mind here. What a transformation! 

Of course, my vision for Treesa wouldn't have been practical for Mattel to have considered. While I think strands like yarn or microbraids are less likely to badly tangle than loose hair fiber, loose strands are a lot to deal with on a doll with wings and so many branches, so a tied-off ponytail made the most sense for a toy for kids. And because Treesa's hair was so legendary and legendarily tricky now, I cut a few pieces of velvet ribbon just to quickly tie together her three hair sections during moments I had to redress her. Those won't be part of her display, but the ribbons proved very practical tools in working with her, and they'll remain in her kit!

If I sold this Treesa design (no plans to), the ribbons would be part of the package!

I set to tying knots in more of Treesa's hair after the first work night, the morning before I went to work. Her arm branches were useful since I could use them to pull knotted strands of hair to the side and keep track of it!

Mattel probably could have gotten away with selling Treesa as a loom-weaving kit!

I knew just how much hair she had from gluing it all on, so I didn't want to tie every strand in knots, but I wanted a high enough proportion of knotted hair to make for some more visible texture.

Then, suddenly, Treesa's mechanism got stuck, and I might have turned the key too hard, since I heard a snap and her top left wing no longer got pushed up into position. I couldn't diagnose or fix the issue before I had to go to work, so I left it aside. 

Later, though, I came home and I think it was literally one yarn strand caught in the mech making the trouble, so I pulled it out and she's all good and completely extends! Phew! 

Then, the other Barbie dress arrived.

It's pretty faded, so it's thankfully no longer violently neon, nor are the two different colors very obvious. The piece is elasticated and features a closed halter loop and an unfinished lower edge that isn't really frayed.  Multiple eBay listings identify it as a 1981 product apparently exclusive to the Best Buy chain of stores, but I can't find any further information, like whether the dress was sold on a Barbie doll or if it was a fashion-pack item.

I'm actually very glad I won that auction now, because the dress works wonderfully with Treesa. 

It fits her like a charm, the elastic keeps it snug around her upper torso (the big thing the other dress was struggling with), and the snipped halter strap ties very easily behind her neck. The piece is simple, beautiful, and feels classical, and the elastic allows it to ride through the growth spurt entirely without a hitch!

I had good intuition bidding on this piece!

And the hair, again, sells the look like nobody's business!

I need to clean the dress a little and see if I can deal with the small red pigment stains, but the color is good and adding detail would probably be the wrong choice. I think Treesa can rock this just as it is. I guess Treesa now has two costumes--the showstopper and the refined casual! 

And I'm slightly surprised a doll dress from 1981 still has robust elastic!

I'd already thought of attaching elastic inside the bodice of the first dress to make it hug Treesa's chest, but the second dress convinced me that was the way to go.  However, this didn't work. I had to attach the elastic between the open sides of the dress at the rear to ensure it would grab on, but elastic that was long enough to stretch over Treesa's body was too loose around her torso, and tighter elastic would pull off the sides of the dress before going up her body. So I decided to split the difference. I cut the bodice off the fairy dress, stained the Best Buy dress darker, and made it so the skirt of the fairy dress could slide over the Best Buy piece as an optional fancy layer. I added two strands of leaf twine at the back to tie the skirt a little tighter at the back. This way, I can have the showstopper look with the base dress that actually covers her torso properly and rides the growth mechanic nicely, and I can still enjoy the simpler look of the dress underneath as well. 

I also tied some spiderwebs into her wings with thread. This was such a fiddly and delicate process that I very quickly ran out of patience for it, so here's the two small patches she has. 

Rear view of her right wing.

Rear view of her left wing.

I used some pen to extend a few of Treesa's lower lashes to make her eyes look more carved and give her a touch more edge, and I selected a cicada from the bug pack to be her pet.

One of my childhood traumas was the emergence of cicadas one summer, and it freaked me out like nothing else to seeing these huge nasty bugs all over the sidewalks and on the trees I liked to climb in the parks. I dread the next cicada year and I absolutely loathe and revile the insects...so I thought it was a good choice of pet to make Treesa a little creepier, and it worked well since cicadas are so closely linked with trees.

Her name is Ada, and with all due respect, I hate her. But she's Treesa's pet and they're good friends. That's all that matters. 

Here's the final result on the table.

And a final comparison. I love how Treesa now embodies green in contrast to Gooliope's reds!

And of course I had to take Treesa out for some nature photos. I don't live next to a forest, but there are plants in the garden patio!

I used to hold that green was my favorite color. While I've since matured to have the opinion that every color is wonderful and the best at certain things...oh my gosh look at that green!!! 

I've already learned that toys look great photographed in natural scenery, but with the green on green on green here in these photos...I'm enchanted.

Then, Billy and Scarah stopped by during a walk together. Treesa was delighted to be the tree they sat under.

"Y'know, I really think my glasses look better on you!"
"Likewise!"

"Awww..."

Scarah was not so delighted.

"HOLY GEEZ-!"
"Oh, hey!"
"Whoa, I said that aloud. I mean no harm!"

"You guys are super cool together!"

"I mean, high five on that, am I right?"
"Oh, heck yeah!"
"You must be having a laugh..."

"Billy, come with me, because I am ready to scream."
"Oh, cra-" *yoinked*
"Bye, guys! Have a great night!!!"

I don't think Scarah will want to stop on walks anymore. But I assure you they had a lovely rest of their date and Scarah might one day be friendlier to Treesa.

And I continue to love the articulation of these dolls allowing for silly little photo stories like this!

So!

I started off being unsold on Treesa as a dryad, finding the concept too sweet and fantasy-bent for a monster character, but by the end, I fell in love with her as a dryad--just a spookier, darker, more elegant take. I kind of realized that you can't really take the fairy out of her, and her tone is not a Halloween horror tree...but it's a much better faerie horror tree, and let me make this clear: I adore faerie horror. And while this project was one of the most laborious, I also felt immensely proud while working. Looking at Treesa with her willow hair and playing with the transformation made me swell with awe and delight. She captured all of the mystique and beauty and eeriness of woodland folklore, and with that as an aesthetic close to my heart, she was a very rewarding execution of it. I wouldn't necessarily call Treesa Thornwillow a G2 forgotten gem, because her official execution felt very held-back by the design mandates of G2, plus, I'll admit, practical toy functionality to prevent little kids from breaking her. But her transforming doll body is beautiful, creative, and darn fun to play with, and making her over was a blast. I salute the engineers and sculptors who made her possible because she's such a cool idea, and even under the G2 style, it's awesome she was made, and made as well as she was. 

I sighed to myself the moment the line popped into my head, but I felt obligated to say it as my closer nonetheless: 

Treesa Thornwillow...

grew on me.