Mini Morsels of Halloween: Living Dead Dolls Minis Isabel and Halloween Party 2004 Kelly

This was initially going to be more of a footnote within the next LDD roundup post because the Minis doll I got was bundled with one of the big dolls, but I can never made a footnote a footnote and it ended up becoming a long enough interlude that it was too much and warranted its own post. My third roundup doll has also gotten a fair bit delayed and stalled me because I need her reviewed and the roundup published before my birthday post, so while I fret about that, this topic works to have something up.

I wasn't super likely to seek Minis Isabel out on her own because her original doll was my problem child. I was happy to accept her Mini as a bundle with one of the roundup dolls I got, though, especially since either of them have been listed for more on their own than the auction price I won for both. Minis Isabel has since popped up for more reasonable typical Minis prices, though. 

I'm still looking to get Minis Eleanor, but she's a slippery one on the market, and when I previously tried purchasing her, the seller was unresponsive and I had to withdraw my order.

Minis Isabel comes from Minis Series 6, based on LDD Series 16. Series 1-3 of the Minis were based on 1-3 of the standard line, while Minis S4 was based on exclusive-line characters and Minis S5 was based on standard S4. The leap from S4 to S16 is large but welcome, and the dolls all have mini versions of their trick-or-treat costumes and look like really good counterparts, though we know the Minis line is pretty impressive for its downsized replicas anyhow. Minis S6 was the final typical series release of Minis based on prior LDDs (though the Alice and Oz lines provided the final appearances of actual Minis dolls), and Series 6 featured a significant change to the Minis packaging. Series 1-5 of the Minis all had the same construction mimicking the larger dolls', with a cardboard coffin and a plastic window shell around the front and sides and a hang tab on the back of the coffin for store racks.

Inside the coffins was a tiny chipboard printed with the brand logo and a clear plastic tray holding the doll, with the noose keychain taped to the back and one twist wire around the waist.

Hang tab plaque cut off the coffin by me--it wasn't perforated to tear off.

Minis S6 changes the packaging to a blister pack with tabs folded against a backing and taped down, and the coffin shape is less direct--nor are you as able to make the packaging into a prop coffin like you could with the older Minis boxes. 

The tray the doll is resting in is opaque colored plastic, which is more appealing than a clear tray over a colored background, but the purple color is strange given that Series 16 used orange coffin lining for its classic-Halloween theme.

I do appreciate that the Minis chipboards in S6 are now slightly more like the larger dolls' by printing the character's name rather than the brand's. The visual style of the chipboard is still generic LDD text, however, not a series-specific design or reflective of the original doll's chipboard design.

I was amused to see, after peeling the bubble off the card, that Minis Isabel also had a hole cut out in her doll tray for her hair bun, just like the larger doll!

Minis Isabel is the only LDD Mini I know to have a handheld accessory, and it's her mask, packed with her keychain in the back in the same way large LDD accessories and Halloween masks are packed in the back of the tray with the death certificates.

The limited-edition Wonderland set of mega and LDD-Mini Sadie Alice has the "Drink Me" bottle as an accessory, but I'm not sure which of the two Alices it's scaled to, nor if either can hold it...or if it's instead meant for the standard Sadie Alice size released to the wider crowd. I expect to someday know, but the Alices are very expensive.

The purple doll tray has a black cardboard wrap around the sides to "frame" the coffin shape.

Here's Isabel unboxed.

It's not much of a surprise now to say that the doll is as visually 1:1 to her larger counterpart as possible within the limitations of Minis molds and scale, though it's still worth noting sometimes because a few Minis are lacking costume or accessory pieces of their originals, such as Deadbra Ann not having her crown, Dr. Dedwin not having his mask or stethoscope, and Minis as a rule lacking handheld pieces. Isabel has it all. 

Her hairstyle is created exactly the same way as the larger doll, with a bun on top, two small ponytails in back, bangs in front and two center-parted side locks rooted at the top which are meant to fall down and frame her face. 

As with the larger Isabel, there are problems.

Because of the way the side locks are rooted to come from the very top, they defy gravity better than Elphaba. On variant Isabel, my good child, I was able to tame the side locks by using clips to weigh them down as well as wet cloth on top to boil them. On Minis, I wasn't confident about my prospects. Also, Isabel was shedding hair everywhere. Small fibers like she'd been shaved were falling off, long strands were pulling out, and clumps of shredded hair were revealing themselves and I had no idea why or how. Eventually, both of her ponytails lost all of their long fibers, as well as the elastics falling apart. Still, the fact that half of the ponys were made of short fibers is also a problem. They should have been entirely long.

I don't know what the factory was doing. Was there not enough glue inside her head? But then where did all the short fibers and clumps come from? Those can't be from a rooting issue. I'm almost tempted to get another copy of this doll and see if this was a fluke--almost. 

Minis Series 6 had a (apparently very scarce) variant set mostly replicating the S16 variants, but Isabel's hair was incorrectly black. Her large variant had orange hair as part of the color changes, but both Minis Isabels have the black hair.

While I fully replaced my main Isabel's hair with some changes to the styling, I kept the color and general structure the same. This photo shows the color changes between the two variants which the Minis Isabel dolls did not fully follow.

The Minis variant set. Isabel's hair is not a prototype error; the very scarce produced variant Mini has the same incorrect black hair color.

Minis Isabel has the standard Minis face mold since far fewer sculpts were developed for the Minis line. They did appear to custom-mold the ripped-cheek face for Minis scale, as well as the open mouth and the horns, but the horns only got used in mass-market Minis for Lou Sapphire, but not Inferno afterward or Sin before who both needed them, so was that even a full new head? Isabel's Mini is painted up to look like the big doll, with smudging reflecting her gouged and color-washed eye sockets and black paint implying the empty holes. Her blood drips imitate the pattern of the larger doll down to the disconnected streak of blood under the left eye (socket), while her lips are the same color but lack the dry lined texture that was part of the sculpt of big Isabel's head.

My Minis Isabel's eye shading is slightly uneven, with the left eye shadow being higher than the right and making the face look a little wonky.

Like all Minis costumes I know of so far, Minis Isabel's dress is made of the exact same fabrics as the original and is constructed the same way.

Minis Isabel's dress is less sleek or voluminous with the fabric becoming stiffer and boxier at this scale and on this body. Her high-neck collar is more defined than the one on big Isabel, though, and better matches the curiously-better-sewn collar of variant big Isabel.

What gives? Why was main big Isabel's collar so weak?

The black fabric of the dress left some wicked stains on Isabel, particularly on the hands which are mostly swallowed by the sleeves. This looks like late-stage necrosis!

I suppose that's appropriate, given the brand?

The brocade fabric of Minis Isabel did not tear away from the sleeves like on the big main doll, even though the dress was tricky to pull off and on. There also wasn't a nightmare of loose threads on the Minis dress, unlike on the big main's. The Minis costume is more comparable to the quality of the big variant's!

This was what my main big Isabel handed to me.

Did I stress the fabric? Sure. Should this have happened? Nope.

Honestly, rather than a second pass on the Isabel I have, it could be a better choice to suck it up and get another Isabel to have a more fair run at handling and protecting her costume and replacing her hair with a reroot, or else just give her default hairstyle better care and make it work better akin to the lighter touch I gave the variant. Or else I can accept variant Isabel as my main and conclude main Isabel just wasn't worth it. I had a very poor experience with her, possibly my worst with LDD to date, so part of me wants a redemption with the mass-release main doll, but I can also see it being practical and peaceful to just take what I have and enjoy the variant for being better. Another go with a fresh main Isabel would be for a time where my LDD priorities are far fewer.

Minis Isabel wears the Minis equivalent of the Mary Jane shoe, since the Minis never made a counterpart to the pointy boots big Isabel wore. 

I could have accepted Minis Isabel wearing the Minis boots that did exist (replicating the round-toed sculpt), but I can understand the idea that those wouldn't be elegant enough.

Minis Isabel's mask replicates the big one and carries the honor of being a Minis handheld accessory due to its design. The other S16 dolls wore face masks or a sheet that were hands-free, but Isabel's mask is carried on a stick, so the Minis one had to be, too!

The large mask was vinyl, while the Minis piece is hard plastic. The stick is square in shape, while the big mask had a round handle, and the Minis stick has a bracket loop for the fingers to slide into. The large mask worked with a gripping hand sculpt on a rarer bent-elbow arm. The paint on the Minis mask is a very effective replication of the big piece and it's impressive for its size. The back of the mask also features the same "nerve endings" of the implied eyeballs implanted into the piece--Isabel's whole thing was that she took out her eyes, but it seems like her actual eyes are the ones in her mask that covers her empty sockets. The big mask's back has score marks that look like untidied artifacts from the hand sculpt that was cast, but the mini mask is cleaner.

Big Isabel's mask had the functionality of being able to press into her hollow sockets and complete her face, at the expense of being held in her hand.

She could do both if you popped her elbow out inside her sleeve, but doing this is what tore her costume and drove me to aggressively seal the seams of the variant dress with fabric glue when I got the variant doll. 

Not worth it unless you seal the dress's internal seams first, and I had no reason to think I should on this doll.

While Isabel wasn't designed to hold her mask and have it fill her eye sockets simultaneously, you could still visually complete her face by taking advantage of forced perspective, aligning the mask over her eyes while she held it in front of her.

Minis Isabel isn't able to do any of this. The angle of the Minis hand on the arm sculpt forces the mask rod to be held at a diagonal angle that can never align with her face. You can put the mask over her eyes, but it doesn't press in or connect because her sockets aren't hollowed.

Now is as good a time as any to throw a sidetrack into an interlude and bring up a fairly obvious note I've realized recently: The Minis are conversing with mainstream dolls in their own way. They're Kelly. 

By which I mean, the LDD Minis body shape and doll size is a fairly transparent echo of the Barbie Kelly/Tommy little-sibling dolls from the nineties and early aughts, during which the Minis emerged. The giveaway is the pose and sculpt of their arms, which is highly similar. It makes sense that the Kelly line would have inspired LDD to go mini, and it suits the overall lens of a dark parody element to the doll line reflecting recognizable innocent doll styles.

Kelly/Tommy dolls had a huge range, with a majority of editions being cutesy little children, a large amount of Halloween dolls depicting costumes appropriate for tots (with no fantasy skintones), and the Kelly range  overall featured other recurring named characters built on the doll style, like Tamika, Nikki, Deidre, Lorena/Loreena, and Jenny. My favorite Kellys are the collector dolls based on licensed properties or styled with more chic glam chibi-adult styles, which is odd for me to say as someone who dislikes chibi, but the Kellys styled as more fancy or grown characters have a retro kitsch to them and an appealing standard of craft. I think the Raggedy Ann and Andy Kelly and Tommy set are absolutely darling.

LDD Minis of their Rotten Sam and Sandy would have been a great idea and could serve as dolls for the bigger dolls!

There's even a set of Kellys depicting Lucy Ricardo and Ethel Mertz in Martian costumes from the I Love Lucy episode "Lucy is Envious", and how niche and incredible can you get? The pointy nose sculpt!!!

I also adore the Wizard of Oz Kellys, particularly the Tin Man Tommy and Wicked Witch Kelly, both using fantasy colors to match the film. My only hangup is that the collector-focused Kellys seem to be sewn into their clothing, with the Oz doll boxes explicitly saying the costumes aren't removable and photos of Lucy and Ethel on the same above listing showing sewn backs on the bodysuits. I never like that restriction even if there's no practical reason to undress a doll. 

Kelly dolls have changed shape and articulation over time, though Chelsea, the current equivalent, and Kelly herself in her sporadic modern appearances, have maintained elements of the Kellys who were mirrored by LDD Minis. Even the maligned Monster High little siblings in G2 had a couple of dolls with similar sizing and shaping to classic Kelly, though Fangelica here is visibly skinny and elongated for her brand's aesthetic and has clawed feet.

Don't ask why I got her in 2016. I don't really know.

The Kellys of the time have lower articulation than LDD Minis, with only swivels on the arms and legs, though later Kellys got the shoulder hinges of the Minis as well as hip hinges the Minis lack. The Minis legs only swivel.

To get a Kelly to showcase for this comparison, I landed on a Halloween 2004 witch Kelly with big yellow hair and an entirely warm color palette and candy-corn witch hat. I had to make sure I found a Kelly I could imagine keeping, who had the contemporary body sculpt to the LDD Minis, and who I could undress for comparing the two doll types. I figured this was playline and kid-targeted enough to be redressable.

This range of dolls would have been Target exclusives. This Kelly also had a Black version with light brown skin and light brown hair with black streaks. I don't know how many of the other dolls in this Halloween collection had multiple variants.

These Kelly boxes are plastic tubes with hanging hooks on top, and the tube window features a "Halloween party" graphic and the Kelly branding as well as the relatively self-evident phrase "Kelly is a witch" on the side. Kelly has a folded card trick-or-treat bag, which is a cute idea, but it's fallen out of place enough to sit on top of her hat!

This was a point in Barbie where different dolls had different names, and so Kelly the name was not synonymous with every female doll in the Kelly line. It was a line of multiple characters who were not Kelly, however--my favorite design just happened to be the real Kelly among them. 

In the rest of this line, Nikki is a Ghost, Tommy is a Vampire, Kerstie is a Pumpkin, and Melody is a Tiger. Witches and pumpkins were done several times in the Kelly Halloween line. Kelly is named Kelly in both variants of the witch doll. The Black version of 2004 witch Kelly is not identified as Deidre or Tamika, who are the typical established Black Kelly characters. I've also seen a Black version of ghost Nikki on the aftermarket, whose name is also unchanged. There was also a clown from another Kelly Halloween year who came in a White and Black variant, so this was relatively common.

I like Nikki's ghost costume shape a lot, but the "BOO" text kills it for me.

I guess Melody's head could dye orange and repaint to push the tiger look a step further for a ferocious plush look a la LDD Teddy. Kelly doesn't seem to have made an ideal teddy bear suit that could be customized into a LDD Minis Teddy doll (there are Valentine teddy Kellys that don't match up quite right), and I have doubts that Melody's clawed suit could dye convincingly to match him thanks to the stripes. Melody's body is all covered by her suit (though I expect she has long hair out the back of her hood) so that'd be an easy doll recolor if you wanted to push her tiger side.

The text on the tube indicates that the bottom surface is actually a doll stand--which is pretty much how the L.O.L. O.M.G. Fierce packages were built, rolling plastic around the contour of a doll stand base. The box asserts that Kelly cannot stand on her own, so a stand is a good feature.

The Fierce box design.

It was difficult getting into the tube even after peeling off the two round stickers connecting it to the base. I had to squeeze the tube to separate it from the base and cut it with scissors to peel away the plastic enough to pull out the rest. 

Inside the tube, a printed card piece provides a backdrop and wraps around dynamically to create a fence in front  with a really fun effect. Each of this doll line's characters had their own printed design on their card scenery, and Kelly's orange and black is made just for her. The cardboard is actually adhered to the plastic puck of the doll stand, however, and had to tear away and left residue that needs Goo Gone and scrubbing to remove.

The paper bag is such a cute concept, but the purple really disrupts everything else. The classic vintage orange and black look sings without the purple bag there. 

With the card backdrop peeled away, Kelly is attached to a plastic strut on the back that looks more complicated than it is. Gentle pulling separated her easily, with no plastic tags stapled into her head or clothes.

Here's the doll assembled on her stand.

The doll stand has a wide stable base and is firm and level in molding. It's my first doll stand designed to grip the doll by both thighs. It feels a little awkward to push the doll's legs out to fit the clip between them because she doesn't have side-to-side hip hinges, but it works to stably and very attractively display the doll as a little decor piece. It's easier to swing one leg forward, clip in a leg, and then swing the other leg into the other clip while turning the leg that's clipped in.

The leg grip doesn't pull out of the base easily, so I stopped trying under the assumption it's not meant to. The base is made of two pieces, with a disc filling in the bottom, but they have no reason to separate and didn't feel designed to come apart for any feature. 

Kelly's hat is a tall conical witch hat with a wide brim, and the cone is done in candy-cane stripes and encrusted in glitter. I love the proportions of the hat on the doll; there's something almost Ozian about it.

The brim isn't the yuckiest glitter-caked doll clothing I've seen (my top two contenders are Casta Fierce's rock-hard dress and Fame Queen's jacket), but the cone is a little wonky. It does better when it's stuffed.

The brim is thin velvet sheeting which is also a little wonky, but it looks fine. The hat is sewn to Kelly's head with a yellow thread which I elected to cut. There was also a thread on each side of her hair gathering some of it together for packaging.

Kelly's hair was my main drive for getting this doll because it's a wonderful fantasy combination of bright Halloween yellow and orange that elevates this design into a more theatrical witch costume than just an everyday kid on the street wearing a hat and dress. I like Kelly dolls that go further and this one does with her fun Halloween hair colors. Her hair is big and wavy with straight bangs across the forehead and a center part.

Nearly eleven years of hat hair have made their mark on her, but the hair texture seems fine and not damaged. 

Kelly's face is a little bland to me.

She has a typical Kelly sculpt with a chubby toddler face and an open grin, but her paint feels a little lifeless and inattentive to me, with a softness and a lack of alertness combining to such some energy out of the doll. I think she definitely looks worse up close, and has more brightness and charm from a further view where she can feel more lively. I know Halloween Kellys are supposed to be wholesome actual children, but I'm very curious about the repaint prospects of this character with a little more glam and fantasy.

Kelly's head is soft compressible vinyl. LDD Minis heads are hard and feel like they've been chemically shrunken.

Her dress is all one piece and velcros down the back. The outfit reminds me intensely of LDD variant Ember's.

Not only are the top halves of the two witches' costumes basically identical, but the flame-style skirt tiers on Kelly's dress resonate with the burned Ember and especially the orange colors of her variant. While Ember did come after this Kelly, I'm more inclined to think there was a common ancestor both cited than to say Ember copied Kelly's 2004 witch doll. Still, if you wanted to make a custom Minis Ember, you've got half a dress already made!

Kelly's bodice is printed with appliqué to form the lace design across the front, rather than using ribbon like Ember, but the top half is sewn with seams at the edges of the "laces" that form the same "jacket" shape that Ember's dress also fakes. Kelly's neckline is more of a sweetheart shape, though. The appliqué is damaged and will need filling in with some paint.

The skirt has two layers of flame-shaped fabric over a printed black layer with a candy-corn pattern. The waist overlays have a rounder shape like fire, while the hem of the black layer is sharper for a tatter effect. All of the skirt is unfinished edges, but I hope it holds up. The yellow layer also has some glitter on it to tie into the hat.

The dress has a Barbie tag sewn into the inside.

Kelly's shoes are Mary Janes with a bow and no divider in the gap below the ankle strap. The vinyl is a little firmer than some LDD Minis shoes, which can be very flexible. Other Minis shoes have been firmer.

Kelly dolls are pretty much exactly the same size as LDD Minis, and the Minis are as close in shape to Kelly as is legally possible.

Sadie is modeling because her outfit is very easy to take off for body comparisons.

The torsos are highly similar, the cuts of the leg joints work the same way, and the position of the hands is close, too. The LDD is a little skinnier in parts and the head sculpt is more wicked, but there's an obvious conversation here.

Mattel wasn't kidding about Kelly not standing on her own, though. Her feet aren't molded perfectly flat (they're both angled outward and upward so they're in a very wide shallow V) and even in shoes, she's had to balance. The Minis can be finicky depending on the copy, but less so than Kelly. 

Minis have hinged articulation in their shoulder that gives them more posing potential, but the rest works like Kelly. And later Kellys would be outperforming Minis, with rotating hinged shoulders and hips.

I love this example of a later Kelly (Kayla, actually)--she's a Frankenstein edition who's perhaps the only playline Kelly edition with a fantasy skintone!

Adorable. This was just a couple of years before Frankie Stein would hit the shelves, too!

LDD Minis and this era of Kelly swap clothes very easily, though both dolls' shoes are hard to pull onto Sadie's heels. 

The clothes swapping potentially expands the catalog of possible LDD Mini custom dolls, and it didn't escape my notice that the "nostalgic favorites" collector Kelly set provides a pretty acceptable swimsuit (homaging the first Barbie ever) if I ever dared attempt to make a Minis version of my first LDD, Faith...

The Barbie swimsuit has a different cut and stripe formation than Faith's piece, but it's the best I'd get without sewing a tiny piece myself. I do not guarantee I'd actually try this idea...but just saying, it's an option. I already remarked on the fact that Faith was near enough that LDD could have made her into a direct Barbie homage, but they didn't. (My other idea on this angle would be to make a custom full-size swimsuit Sadie with Barbie's hairstyle and Faith's suit as a parody. I'd be curious enough about seeing if a second copy of Faith would give me better hair and more even eye paint that pursuing that would give me the second costume and put the Sadie idea on the table.)

Because Kelly's head is soft, it pulls off pretty easily--and LDD Minis copied the head anchor peg too-precisely. Minis heads have to be heated a lot to take them off, and I've had one of their neck pegs break during one of the removal/replacement actions.

Lottie demonstrates the neck peg shape.

What a fun little dialogue between toys!

While I was a little blah on the face at first, putting her together and putting her on the cleaned-up stand does a lot. I love the drama and whimsy of this doll design with the proportions all feeling right, and she makes for a really cute classic Halloween piece.

The normal Kelly arm sculpt is actually great for a witch's hexing pose!

Back to Isabel for a bit. 

I was unhappy with Minis Isabel's hair, as much as I was with the big doll's, so I decided to take it down, finding a nest of short hair fibers clumped together inside the updo. Eerie. I ultimately decided I'd be replacing this doll's hair, too, but not with glued wefts. I figured she'd be ideal training for the reroot process, being a tiny head and all. I cut her hair down, and to resolve the mask function...well, I'd already tested a hand rotation surgery for one of my upcoming roundup dolls, to great success. Why not Minis Isabel? Cutting off her hand to turn and reattach her wrist let her hold the mask upright like the big doll, and allowed for the use of perspective/parallax to align her mask and complete her face at the right view.

Honestly, for going so far as to give Isabel a holdable mask for her Mini, they really ought to have re-molded her right arm for it, too.

I then heated and removed the head to scrape the hair roots out.

Even though this was baby's first reroot, I was getting nowhere without the apparatus to perform the task, so I ordered a rerooting kit. Reroot needles are thin with gapped prongs that the hair piece slides into before you fold it and pull it tight against the hook.

Then, while holding the hair down and taut, the needle punches into the holes in the head and withdraws with the folded hair left inside the hole--if you make sure to let go of the hair before withdrawing! 

I realized I probably made this process harder even though the small head objectively made it shorter and I thought this was the easy way to learn. Loose doll hair is always fiddly and messy to work with, so hooking it on the needle was never super efficient, and the needles are wider than the tiny rooting holes here, making the reroot less tidy and one-to-one. I'd be more precise with a larger head, even if it was a longer task. I had some black hair from the craft store, but it turned out to be too stiff and unnatural in its hang, so I pulled it back out. I had started trying to root the ponytails and bangs first, but then switched to more nylon hair from the same dyed O.M.G. locks I supplied big Isabel with and rooted around the perimeter first. I swabbed some fabric glue inside the head to secure the roots and pulled it back in a tie. I tried to curl the tied hair into an updo, but the head was so tiny and it wasn't feeling good, so I wrapped it into a bun instead and locked the hairstyle with fabric glue. I then got to rooting the bangs and ponytail. As with big Isabel, I didn't create the side locks the same way Mezco did because that was a silly system, and just let the ends of the bangs hang longer for a similar effect.

In progress.

My first needle broke along the way, so I grabbed another from the kit during the process. The rooting job isn't perfect, but it should suffice. I tied the bangs under a fabric strip and boiled them and left the tie on so they would flatten as much as possible.

The result isn't wonderful. Somehow, the hair fibers stiffened a lot, maybe from seeping glue, and it's still a little unruly, but at least the head of hair is complete. It wasn't like I was staking a lot on this Mini. This was just an experiment on a freebie doll. And in time, the fibers did soften and relax, so I don't know what was going on. Maybe it was just not combed out enough at first and the hair was sticking together after being wet.

Here's the two Isabels. Neither was very well-made, and both could have been better made-over with more skill. I think my approach with a second main Isabel now would be to do the lighter touch I gave the variant-tidy the hair as rooted and seal the costume sleeves with glue. With the Mini, if a second copy had such horrific hair as the first Mini, I would use a better hair source for rerooting than I did, because I'm not satisfied with the dye on the O.M.G. nylon--it didn't get dark enough.

The hand modification was worthwhile, though.

This was a tricky perspective to align so all three masks hovered over the faces right!

My opinion hasn't changed, though--the variant doll, scarce and expensive as she is, was really the best execution of LDD Isabel.

Going back to Kelly, repainting her face was a bit of a mess, resulting in redos and a full wipe and new paint job that looks pretty sloppy. I was aiming for a more retro design, but I couldn't get the precision I wanted on such a tiny head, particularly not with the mouth sculpt which was hard to define with paint with its open shape. She looks okay, I guess, but I could see myself going back for another pass at this faceup if I find better tools. I'd love to use pens for thinner lines, but the ink smears so badly and the paint pens I have aren't as thin as this head would require, so ultra-fine paint pens are something I need to acquire.

Also, her stand pole snapped and couldn't be glued back together, so to salvage it, I drilled out the pole to remove it and found a simple new solution--a wooden spool glued horizontally which can fit between her ankles. 

I spray-painted it black. In practice, it's an inferior fix because the doll can wobble and fall forward and back and isn't actually braced against the base. 

I can keep working on this or get another Kelly with the stand to replace it.

Ultimately, both dolls are cases where I might have better left well alone, though Kelly was definitely the better factory product. Isabel's damn hair wasn't done well at this scale, either, and the modifications benefited her more than they did Kelly. Kelly was just a matter of personal aesthetic taste to make the doll more spooky and in line with my usual Halloween paraphernalia, though I could have, and perhaps ought to have, accepted her as she was because I saw the charm in her and my efforts to repaint her were either a fool's errand or just attempted at the wrong time with the wrong supplies. I'm happy enough with the makeover as a little Halloween trinket...but I do regret mishandling the doll stand. At the end of the day, the biggest thing of value was illustrating the LDD Minis/Kelly dialogue in the doll design space. Kind of a downbeat post otherwise, but I found a new little gem in the Kelly line and will probably seek more, and I can still assure you that better LDD Minis are out there.