New Looks for Maudie

Early in the making of this blog, I made my own doll "assistant" to serve the practical purpose of being a body model with which to compare different doll sculpts against the standard G1 Monster High median female shape.

I also knew this body-model doll would need to be practical for this purpose--which is to say, very easy to dress and undress so it never felt like a big task to bring her in. I knew from using my Creeproduction Frankie as a body model in my first few posts that she was untenable for the role. Fortunately, I found myself enthralled by the face of the Create-a-Monster Insect for what I saw as a very sixties-retro campy visual character, and so I put her together into a simple, appealing comic-book pop-art ghoul, Maudie Sixtenstein. (Read about her creation here!) 

Maudie was ideal, since a CAM doll is the easiest possible MH base to undress (no need to take off shoes when you can take out the legs!) and her removable hair and wing and tail slots offered different functions for photo-taking or potentially demonstrating CAM-specific features when I needed to. 

She's done good work and been useful, but over time, I've also grown attached to Maudie as her own character, which was honestly one of my goals with her. (I didn't want her to be bland and utilitarian and not worth putting on a shelf.) I've designated her a very excitable, bubbly, puppy-like energy and it's been fun exploring that personality in little photo stories. And since I've had so much fun with Maudie as Maudie, I thought she deserved to expand her style. Everything still within the paramaters of simple dressing mechanics so she can be on-call regardless of her look, but she can, and deserves to, have more! 

The first idea I had was to give her a lime green outfit, sticking with the Inner Monster line because of its graphic design theming suiting a comic character. These pieces came from the deluxe Inner Monster set.

Mattel were going to reuse this fabric pattern for a one-piece Clawdeen dress in a G2 fashion pack, and that cut would have suited Maudie's fashion aesthetic better, but I don't think that pack was ever released, so this is my option. 

Here she is in the pieces. I don't love the ribbon shoulder strap, so I might cut that off.

I think this is a good look for her.

Another major expansion I wanted to try was giving Maudie more wigs. She's a CAM doll and I've always been enthralled with the concept of changing a doll's entire head of hair. For a character I've defined as excitable, exuberant, and expressive, having multiple hairdos felt right.  

Maudie was ready to try, and excited to see what I had for her.

It's the Create-a-Monster Ghost wig!

I admit part of it was from morbid curiosity. Every indication from every in-hand photo I'd seen of the wig indicated it was the worst wig ever released for a Monster High doll. While the stock photo showed a short, feathery triangular bob...

...in-hand photos made the wig look very boyish, unshaped, and close to the head. Disappointing for what it was meant to be, but I thought that could work for Maudie and her retro theme! It could be nice to have a short hair option for her, especially when she's on the job, because it wouldn't get in the way of her body for comparison photos.

But...uh.

"Um...I'm trying really hard, but this is so not groovy."

Yes, the wig is pushed all the way in and attached properly.

It doesn't work even remotely. The bangs are criminally short, like, even Courteney Cox in Scream 3 looked better than this! They don't come near Maudie's eyebrows, and the rest of the hair isn't hugging her head, either. The CAM Insect head is a bit on the larger and rounder side, so that sculpt may be exacerbating the awfulness of the cut, but it's still horrendous. I tried to take desperate measures and cut the wig peg so I could put it on her head shuffled forward to lower the bangs, and that's not a bad look...

"Okay, this is good."

...but it's not at all a proper fit anymore and this wig falls off immediately now. I needed to fix this by trying the only other red CAM wig, belonging to the Werewolf. I have a character wearing one already (DiDi) and her wig was beautifully cared-for (better than factory state) when I got it, but she keeps her hair. 

I ordered another. The wig could be junk if it had long enough bangs, because I wasn't getting it to have it long and wavy.

Here's the second Werewolf wig.

It looks terrible on Maudie as-is because it's matted. 

Combing it a little made it look super dry and puffy (if I wanted this wig long, I should have combed it out while it was wet), and the bangs are really split. It's a fun silhouette, but this needs some work.

I took it to rinse and then cut off most of the length and boiled it. I used parts from an unmodified CAM doll to wear the wig for boiling purposes because Maudie has pen ink in her faceup modifications that could run and stain her if it got wet. The wig had to be boiled twice to make the back lie flat, but this is much better!

"That's more like it, mister!"

Wrong pop artist, but this one was still really fun to make!

If I ever pursued adding the CAM Ghost to my collection (likely a tricky and pricey one given I'd have to find one with the designated add-on body to complete her, or else buy a Spectra body to pop her head onto) I would likely have to invest in another Werewolf wig to have any hope in giving her something in the range of the hair shape in her parts stock photo. Fortunately, its slight color differences wouldn't harm her palette at all.

Here's the red wig with the original outfit.

I also decided to get the CAM Siren wig for a third hair option. This wig is wavy and blue with blonde streaks. 

This wig, I combed while wet and I did some slight boiling on the bangs. 

It looks nice post-treatment...

But I wanted each of Maudie's wigs to have different shapes, so I trimmed this one into a longer bob. That made it feel more retro, too. This wig is still prone to being a little messy, like her original wig.

The color works well with her eyes, but maybe not so much her dress. All of her colors here remind me of a certain cartoon lady with famously vertical hair!

Here's the blue wig with Maudie's first costume.

I then threw in the CAM Mummy wig I've had lying around disused. 

For this wig, I decided to tie it into low ponytails. This wig's bangs are wonky and the ponytails don't really help it to not look like a wig, but it's still pretty cute.

Then, I thought of two more clothing options. First was the colorful dotted teal dress from La Dee Da's Dots of Style Dee doll. La Dee Da was a doll brand with skinny bodies comparable to Monster High, so they were known as a clothing-compatible line. Here's the Dee dress. I got rid of the gross aged elastic and cut the tag inside.

This dress fits easily, though it's quite short. The colors work especially well with the blue wig, and both bring out the orange in Maudie's eye makeup.

Here's the other wigs with the dress. None of them feel poorly-matched to it.

This might also be the best dress for the ponytail wig!

And lastly, I ordered a dress from the G2 cheapo budget line "Popart Ghouls". This line consisted of Frankie, Cleo, Lagoona, and Draculaura in comic-themed pop art makeup and dresses, and I had to give Maudie one of the official costume pieces that was explicitly designed for a pop-art comic theme! These dresses were cheaply made and not printed on the back, befitting the low standard of craft of the cheapest G2 budget dolls, but I thought one of the dresses would suit Maudie. All of them have their characters' monster theming, making them a little harder to put on someone else, but I liked the cut of Draculaura's costume and I thought her symbols would transfer fairly gracefully to Maudie. 

Here's the Draculaura. Even if her hair wasn't ravaged by time and/or play, she'd be an embarrassment. 

And here's the dress on bald Maudie. It has a large bow accent on the back of the neck which I then cut off because it didn't look good to me.

The cut of the dress has a fairly campy, futuristic Jetsons tone to it. I think it looks best with the blue bob, and adding my favorite Scarah sunglasses also looks good.

Here's that dress with the other wigs.

Lastly, I wanted to give Maudie her own Skulltimate Secrets locker as a storage box for the doll and her new style expansions. I have no need for the lockers with most characters, but Maudie is someone I always want on hand and who now has a set repertoire of looks, so the functionality of the lockers for storage was ideal for her. I took Neon Frights Frankie's locker as a base and started swapping doors out from the lockers I'd amassed to get a good color palette for Maudie. I took the corresponding keys as well. I also grabbed a cardboard doll-door insert from Fearidescent Cleo's box to repaint for Maudie to have her own door design. 

I repainted the door insert with a cream color to look like aged newsprint, and added some primary-colored comic-book dots as well as an arm and a leg to suggest Maudie's role as a body model, and a couple of small comic symbols like the ones on her Inner Monster clothing. On the inside, I painted a very simple dressing room with a mirror, a wig stand, a posing mannequin, and a cup with a certain harpy feather in it. 

Unfortunately, I hadn't accounted for the fact that the different sculpts of the doll doors between the Skulltimate Secrets series meant that each door design had a different set of tabs to interlock with the cardboard inserts--so a series 2 door insert didn't fit into the Series 3 door. Since I had already painted it, I decided to cut the tabs out of the Series 3 door and glue the insert in afterward. It leaves a couple of gaps visible in the front from cutouts that don't match with the Series 3 door, but it's fine. 

Then I decided to paint the Skullette. I filled in the eye and nose holes with black, and the bow holes with red and black comic dots. I then painted over the Skullette itself with yellow to establish a personalized Skullette design for Maudie and make the door more interesting.

I had debated what to do about the interior of the doll door. I tried cutting a pattern out of cream paper to create a new insert, but the look was too plain for Maudie. I had bought a comic-patterned bandanna to use as a photo backdrop, but I realized I could glue that down to one of the existing compartment inserts to fill the space with that! Here's the fabric glued down and trimmed to one of the inserts.

I could have had this post published several weeks ago, but I was waiting to open Skulltimate Secrets Series 1 Cleo because I wanted to use a couple of her locker doors on Maudie's locker to really get the look I wanted for it. 

Here's the final result. 

"Ooo!"

Maudie can rest in the doll compartment in a costume and wig (or nothing), and the top three doors can hold wigs, while the bottom door stuffs in all of her clothing. 

I use the middle two doors for the two longer wigs, and I tie her original wig up with a ribbon while storing it.

Here's the inner door design.

I can see now how these lockers can serve as playsets, too. Bringing a chair in creates the feel of a dressing room or fashion studio. 

She looks like Anna Wintour here.

Maudie's a lucky ghoul with all this to enjoy!

So our G1 MH body model has some more freedom of expression! Her appearances won't be quite as static now. I had fun working with her some more and exploring more visual potential for this character. She's definitely one of my most precious dolls now, and she feels like she's been honored properly with this wardrobe and locker. 

Go, Maudie!