This post was split from my second Hatter Madness review, since, despite being integral to its production, this side avenue's content got too long (and took far too long!) to include in the post. Since I wanted to keep the series moving, this became an interlude, and this interlude practice will continue for other review series which have tangents or tie-ins far too long to be excused by the blog name!
See, my second Hatter doll selection had the special distinction of being particularly suited to restaging the John Tenniel tea party illustration, and with that amount of similarity, the doll made me consider getting a small Alice to go with him and complete the scene so I could make the best possible art-recreation with this Hatter. A Barbie face style for an Alice seemed appropriate for the semi-real visual and the fact that the Hatter was a Barbie doll, but the options of Barbie candidates are limited. There is a Skipper Barbie Alice who would be definitively too large for the Hatter in question. The Kelly doll based on Disney's Alice is a bit better, but might look too young and too happy for staging the Tenniel image. The mini BJD body I modified my LDD Minis Ms. Eerie with was promising, and I thought I could go even a bit taller for a good Alice:Hatter ratio, though.
I decided to cover my bases and order options--the Kelly/Tommy Disney Alice/Hatter set (the latter of whom does not get a feature in this series, per the "no doll Hatters based on another adaptation" rule I set), plus a YMY mini BJD body with taller legs than the one I put on Ms. Eerie, and a blonde female Mego figure with a head to test. I could try working with the Kelly head and if I didn't like it, the Mego one. Alice would work with a more mature tiny head like a Mego lady's to put her more in line with the Hatter and Tenniel's art.
My Mego choices were limited, but I picked a Mego figure I used to own--Samantha Stephens of Bewitched. Her cool expression suited the Tenniel tea party art and wasn't grinning with teeth, giving it some promise. I either ruined and/or got rid of her at some point because I didn't think she was an excellent Samantha, but she could be a great Alice!
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| 2018 photo of my original copy. |
A Mego woman intact, however, is the same height as the Hatter in question, so the Mego head needs to go on a smaller body for my mission. White Mego women are starkly "California" next to any pale BJD body and we'll not get into the politics of cultural beauty standards right now, but I did suspect a mismatch incoming based on my other Bewitched Mego ladies, Serena and Endora. I'd cross that bridge when I got there...and maybe I could use the Kelly head!
The mini BJD body arrived first, and I worked on modifying the neck joint so a head could pop on while letting the joint be controlled. I also prepared some white stockings for the doll in lieu of tights. Alice needs her legs clad in white, and the Kelly doll tights were not only striped (a feature only in Through the Looking-Glass) but wouldn't fit this body. The socks are Rainbow High pieces cut short and glued to fiber elastic bands as cuffs to keep them pulled tight at the correct height.
One of the socks is dye-stained from being worn in dyed shoes previously, but it's all I had.
The Kelly/Tommy set arrived. It's a loose copy with all of the pieces. The seller also included a LEGO Friends white bunny, which was not part of it!
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| LEGO bunny not pictured. |
Here's Kelly.
Kelly Alice's hair has a ribbon sewn in which Disney Alice wears, but which book-1 Alice does not. The hairline is inaccurate to both Disney and Tenniel, with a tied-back side part. The Kelly doll has a closed-mouth sculpt, but it's still rather toddlerish and smiley. She also has freckles that Alice, Disney or Tenniel, does not.
These dolls have removable costumes, which is nice. Not all collector Kellys do. The pinafore has a metal snap on the waistband, but it's very nerve-wracking to unsnap because the pinafore has a lot of fraying threads and it feels like the snaps will rip off before they separate. The piece is also yellowed and needs a vinegar soak. The dress snaps in back. The tights are blue and white stripes and the Mary Janes are black as expected. Kelly is not at all steady on her feet.
The Tommy Hatter is really nice for a doll who doesn't count here.
His hat is mint green velvet with tissue and a cardboard tube shaping it, and has the paper 10/6 label. The hat is sewn to his head in two places, but still has a plastic tag securing it. The hair is grey and gelled, and the face has bushy brows and the grinning sculpt. The brim could do with an iron.
The coat is ochre suede, and underneath is a separate waistcoat/shirt piece like the Silver Label build, closed by two snaps in back. The pants have a snap in back and the doll has teal socks and shoes. This is a doll I wish had the shirt and pants sewn together, because the waistcoat gaps and lifts over the belly when the arms move. The coat is so thick the arms don't like to move much, though.
I think I could get good mileage from this doll with a Ken head popped on and a BJD mini body for a very small Hatter in imitation of the book illustrations, proportions and all. I just need the perfect Ken.
The tea table is made of rough scrap wood with slight gloss, and the tablecloth sits over it, but without realistic drape. It's stiff and awkward.
The more doll furniture I get, the merrier. I could probably tidy and paint the bare piece.
The set comes with an ornate yellow teapot with a turquoise lid that fits in, but not securely, and two purple teacups and saucers. The Kelly dolls can't hold them, and the table and accessories seem a bit large for them. The BJD mini gripping hands can't really hold these pieces either, but they're welcome dressings for the tea table. I think the pot is much closer to the vibe of the piece in Tenniel's art than the teapot Hatter 2 includes, so I'm happy to have the Kelly tea settings.
The Kelly doll's color is a strong match for the BJD body, but even with the freckles, blush, and lips wiped, the hair recombed, and new thicker brows, the resemblance to Alice is starkly limited by the base sculpt and hair rooting and texture.
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| Once I got the shoes, I cut the feet down to fit them. |
The doll's head is also too soft and squishy to easily use the BJD neck joint, and it doesn't totally seem to match the body. The hands are very childlike and that could be an issue with a Mego head, but the Kelly head doesn't feel right to me. I found a Mego female hand surgically cut out of the arm socket could be popped into the BJD body, but it doesn't match the body in sculpt or color.
I can't help but think Mego Samantha is going to be the better likeness or give the more faithful spirit, but I'm scared about negotiating the color disparity.
So what if Samantha doesn't work? Well...what if I shrunk a Barbie? A sufficiently neutral Barbie face sculpt with the right hair and head shrunken could be the best result of all. I took a gamble and got the recent "Twinning Looks" Barbie whose hair was rooted near-perfectly for Alice's book style of hair tied back on top and loose all on the sides, and it wasn't one of the overwhelming majority of grinning toothy Barbie heads. This was my second contingency if Samantha disappointed.
It's a pretty poor contingency.
The color match is wrong in a different way than Mego, and honestly, and the head seems too large to be able to shrink to the proper size. The sculpt is still too smiley. (Curse you, Millie!) I don't think there's a single Barbie head I'm aware of which fits the requirements of being pale as the BJD, not sculpted with a smile, and not rooted with a parting that detracts from the Alice resemblance. The closest would be to concede some of my requirements by accepting a center part and platinum hair color, using the Barbie Looks "Victoria" doll. The Twinning Looks doll also has grainy UV printing for her face. It really does look like it's all on Samantha--but the Mego head type somehow makes the most sense to me on the mini body, and the color disparity looks less offensive to me than the Barbie one, despite a more obvious difference.
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Okay, Endora is a horrible test example, but the Serena head I workshopped neck mods with got cut open during the process. Just in terms of proportion, I think Samantha's got it, and a bit of touching up could ease the color issue.
Here's the Samantha head with hair straightened and the face partially wiped.
I slowly repainted the face with thin layers, and restyled the hair. This is the result. I'm not as convinced as I thought I would be.
The head feels a bit too large, or else the body's immaturity with the short arms and undefined wrists is standing out too much, but I missed my chance to shrink the head. Doing so would require a restart of the skintone paint. The face also still feels too smiley, and the widow's peak is wrong. At this point, I had the Barbie head shrinking just to see what would happen and if that could work, but I needed more options. Maybe I can scrub this doll head down and repaint her lips to have my Samantha back.
Ignorant of just how small they were, I tried ordering some rooted Polly Pocket dolls, and also ordered an alternate body that seemed to be the same color and a bit more in line with the look I wanted, since I was suspecting the body proportions and sculpt of my first pick were wrong for my purposes. The body could be a false start, with the arms feeling a bit short and thick, having a juvenile effect which was wrong for the more graceful Tenniel Alice. She is only seven years old, but definitely doesn't look as toddlerish as the arms of the YMY body do, and the wrists of the second body option seemed promising. It also had double elbow joints.
Of course, I undergo this project before the MINNEE doll line is in reach! This brand is claiming to be the most articulated tiny fashion dolls ever, and seem to be 1/12 scale, so roughly four inches, with joints normally seen on action figures and non-chibi non-anime heads!
I think MINNEE might be too small for the Alice I need, and maybe the faces aren't in line, but these would definitely be an option on my table if they were already out! I'm definitely interested in them regardless, though. I'm hopelessly fascinated by high articulation on tiny dolls. These are blind-boxed, though. That's no fun for me, and not practical for customizing.
When my new options arrived, it was a bust. Polly's heads are quite a bit too small for the BJD body, and the new body was much too large for the Kelly costume and Mego head.
I made the educated guess that the head of a Peek-a-Boo Petites doll would be no larger than Polly's--and if it was, it would still be too small for the first little BJD body.
If I say it's poetic that nothing seems to be the right size in this Alice project, then maybe it'll feel less frustrating!
I did get some new ideas, though. The newer body is good and I could accept it as a new base. I prefer the sculpting with the longer arms and more elegant wrists, and the added articulation in the elbows is also welcome. The body is still smaller in stature than the Hatter I wanted this for, and the original illustration's art makes a slightly oversized Alice next to the Hatter feasible. In her journeys through shifting size, she might not have shrunk down enough that the Hatter was exactly proportioned to her like an adult in the real world! Alice would also fill a doll chair much better at a larger scale, better matching the art. While there's poetry in Alice being swallowed by adult-size furniture, this isn't quite right visually.
My acetone was overly diluted, so the Barbie head was unchanged and a no-go unless I got more acetone. I weighed the question of the Victoria head, which seemed to be the most ideal match. I accepted that sacrificing some traits, like yellow-blonde hair and no parting, might be worth it to complete the doll. After all, the Silver Label Hatter isn't 1:1 with the book. A Barbie head had much better promise with the larger body, anyhow, and if it was really looking off at factory size, the margin of possible shrinkage could correct the head scale for the new body in a way I felt wouldn't be possible if trying to use the smaller body.
Here's the Victoria head arrived. It's a tad large for this body, but I can reserve judgment for the full assembly before deciding if she needs a little shrink.
It's about as good a match as I can possibly hope for, really. I like the seriousness of her face. The neck hole is wider than the BJD neck, but the conical neck anchor piece can poke into the head and sit flush with the bottom of the doll head, looking more natural that way. I glued a LEGO ball joint piece to the top of the pole above the anchor so the joint pops into the doll head while keeping it basically aligned with the neck anchor in the position I want it. The head spins more loosely than is ideal, but it works fine.
As for costume...well, there's one Alice doll I've previously owned back in my original doll era: Travel Friends Alice.
She's a small modern-style vinyl doll from the Madame Alexander company, possibly riding off Ever After High. The Travel Friends line started as a "dolls of the world" concept, so the similarities might be incidental because this sculpt existed before the fairytale dolls. This doll's dress and shoes might be usable if I added some new socks or tights sourced elsewhere--and at this point, I was willing to also allow Alice to wear her sequel stripes, as seen above, which let me use pieces I already had. I'd gotten the little modern Madame-brand Alice at a bargain store back then. Her likeness and sculpt aren't satisfactory for me, but the costume could be just what I need.
Or would it? Would that really make me happy? Because what if...
Now, listen for a moment...
I didn't put Alice in blue?
I'm quite open to Alice in other colors, and I'm fond of some interpretations of Alice in yellow, including some early colorations of Tenniel's art, like The Nursery Alice. I thought a yellow dress would flatter a platinum hair color and the stripy blue Lottie tights I had on hand, while also adding some color balance and variety to the whole photo composition. The body fits G3 Monster High clothing fairly well, maybe with the collar area of the clothes hovering a bit, and I was able to find a yellow collared dress by seller SpellbindingBeauty on Etsy, and a separate BJD mini dress set with a pinafore apron that could work. This idea had me energized, and while it added onto the uncertainty and complexity of building this doll, I felt that this might make me even happier and create a more interesting Alice in tone with the departures of the Hatter to whom she'll play counterpart.
Here's the dress arrived. The sew isn't perfect for this BJD body, and I don't like that it opens all the way down the back with multiple pieces of velcro that aren't super securely stitched. It's hard to get the collar to sit right on this doll body, and it might be too long, but most of its visual flaws arise from the context I gave the dress, and the issues can be covered by the apron.
I cut away one layer of the dress ruffle to make the legs look less short. I also tested an adult male BJD's hands I had in the wrists because the hands still looked too childish. These other hands are not strictly compatible with this body, and had to be popped onto the pegs of the Alice doll's wrists, since the male hands' wrist joints don't fit into the mini BJD arms. The mini pegs don't fit fully securely into the male hands as such and they come off fairly easily, but the proportions, while odd in a different way, flatter her a bit more.
My fears about this doll were well assuaged when I tested her in the chair at this moment. She gives exactly what I want her to, and I knew I had my Alice.
If my Alice looks a little more surreal than Tenniel drew her, fine. It's a fun look in its own right. She now reads a little large for the Hatter she's pairing with, but again, Wonderland makes that possible. Maybe I'm coping, but I'm actually genuinely pleased with this after that chair picture. I feel like I went down the right path.
Less then twenty minutes after taking that chair picture, the apron and shoes arrived. And I was nearly not okay because I worried my plans had failed yet again. The apron was short and the shoes were too small even for a Kelly doll. Logic and proportion were sloppy dead eons ago at this rate. But I saved it. The maid dress I ordered for the apron also had an elastic frilly headband, and I was able to pull that around the doll's waist under the apron to visually lengthen the piece so it looked right. I also found some shoes that worked--the Draculaura heels I dyed for my custom Monster High ventriloquist dummy Chatterine, who also lent socks to my early attempt at Alice. The color in the shoes hadn't faded a bit, and these shoes managed to fit the BJD feet when on tiptoe. They are the shoes that stained the sock of my first attempt at mini-BJD Alice, but that's fine. I needed this doll complete!
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| The maid headband doing incredibly heavy lifting to correct the length of the apron. |
I think the shoes are pretty much perfect for this collaged Alice design, and the height they lend her helps her proportions. My other functional option for shoes was the Coffin Bean Twyla pair I gave to my Alice-themed Twyla custom, which are blue and match and fit the doll, but I'm glad I had the black pair.
Her arms are pretty short, especially the upper half, but I have my doll, and I'm so glad I went less traditional. All of these pieces work together, and letting go of a staunch resemblance to the original artwork allowed me to find completion.
Polly, meanwhile, wears the Kelly dress fairly decently if she wants to be an even tinier Alice. She might be handy, and her legs can be painted white and black. The lips are vivid, but wiping the sculpt is not at all an improvement since her mouth is sculpted as a lipless smiling gash. I had two copies of the Polly in the package I ordered, and wiping the worse one as a test did not yield good results.
I sculpted some extremely rudimentary air-dry clay shoes right onto Polly's feet after cutting half away since the shape was very long feet in heel-shoe pose. When the sculpted shoes dried, I painted her legs.
Then a whole other branch of this arrived, and delayed this post by a few more weeks. The trouble started anew when I wondered if I could make Hatter Tommy into something more special. As such, this interlude features an unofficial, non-contending Hatter! He won't be considered in the main group in the summation of the series.
I figured the Tommy Hatter costume would be fine for a custom doll with a larger doll's head for an alternate (and potentially more book-accurate) design, inspired by the Silver Label doll mimicking the book proportions in his own way. I thought that the dead-end mini BJD body could be used for this instead. This is inspired by the next official Hatter in the series doing similar with the proportions.
A Monster High/Ever After High boy head seemed too large for the mini body. Jackson Jekyll is a skintone match for the Tommy body and potentially a mini BJD, but his dolls have no hair rooting that's right and his piercing is a problem. A Ken head seemed far closer to the proportions and look I wanted, particularly around the eighties or nineties where many Kens had "grown-ass man" sculpts that looked over thirty. One common sculpt had both a grinning face, pronounced cheek dimples, and a fairly similar profile for the Hatter in the book, just with a smaller nose and a stronger chin, and a copy of the Prince Stefan Ken doll seemed just right. Only thing is, he's blond, and that might not work with the character or the yellow coat. Maybe he needs to be a redhead...but I can reroot.
I actually got two Princes Stefan by mistake. I saw the email notification that my first order had a refund attached, and assumed, due to unwelcomely frequent experiences having orders cancelled and refunded due to the product being unavailable after listing, that I wasn't getting the order and I purchased another copy. Turns out, the first order just got a small partial refund. I'm not upset, though, because I tried cutting away some of the neck of the first head in a way that disfigured it, and the second chance was appreciated. I got the doll bald to reroot, and eventually settled on using auburn yarn in lieu of doll hair on hand in the right color. This spared me some time, as well, as I could plug in larger pieces and cover the head by rooting the front and side lines and sweeping back and gluing the hair in place in several zones. I put him on a white LDD Minis body because the Stefan head is not a skintone match for the BJD body and the white cast works for gloves--also like Silver Label Hatter. The hat stays on by fitting around two long pins stuck into his head.
The Ken head physically pops on pretty well, but the neck of the costume is much smaller and it's a bit awkward. What else can you do, though?
Here he is with Polly.
The LDD Minis body is a stopgap for this Hatter. I made a ridiculous further order to get a jointed white mini BJD body to rig him onto because I think that will improve the proportions and display. The big realistic head on this limited-articulation body gives me the creeps a bit. But to reallocate the parts again and give purpose to that poor little BJD body, I gave it to LDD Minis Sheena, a character and messy doll who needed something for me to love about her. I also found her some nets and a necklace from my collection to make her more faithful to the original LDD Series 3 doll.
Rerooting the Hatter with yarn inspired me to return to the Monster High Slo Mo doll I lost steam with at the beginning of last year. I didn't like his "paintbrush" hair rooting, and it was impossible to shape into the loose messy style depicted in the 2D art and cartoon, but I have yarn in the right color, and will be pursuing a reroot to see if that takes me and Slo Mo somewhere I couldn't reach before.
I got the body, and I do love it.
Its joints are tight but fluid and in terms of operation, move the best of any mini BJD body I've gotten yet. The hands and feet might pop off more easily than I want them to, but it's okay. Because the limbs are longer than the Tommy body, I tried out the long-pants piece from a spare copy of LDD Minis Marley's Ghost, which allows the doll to use the lower legs as white stockings without any doll socks in play. With pants any shorter, though, the uncovered legs weren't successful.
I wasn't sold on the Hatter's head at first. The neck being part of the sculpt, and too wide to fit inside the costume collar, was grating on me, and even with a ball joint knob added to the body, the head fits loose due to the socket not being further up in the head. I ordered the head of a Mego fashion doll, Farrah Fawcett's, actually, because I saw promise in the severe facial sculpt. The wide jaw and deep cheekbones and visible teeth all seemed like contributors to a decent Hatter likeness. Farrah Fawcett was beautiful, and I don't even think Mego did her dirty with this doll, but there are some faces that can cross over into wildly different looks and contexts.
My deepest apologies to the late Ms. Fawcett. I might later have to apologize to another woman for using her doll likeness in service of another Hatter. Not yet in the works, but I have an idea.
The Farrah head pops onto the BJD neck joint more securely and is tighter, while interacting with the Tommy shirt better, but it's significantly larger than a Ken head and the only way I can feasibly put the hat on is with a magnet under some hair and inside the base of the hat cone. Trying to rip out the plastic eyelash strips also seemed to partially peel and damage the eyes themselves, which appear to be a plastic layer over the vinyl, so that would need touching up. The dark tan of the head also put me off, so I considered just stopping with the Ken head, which has a good energy and can squeeze into the Tommy hat.
I decided it wasn't fair to make a call without trying to finish up the Farrah head first, though. Thicker eyebrows and a yarn root and hat attachment system would be worth trying. I also ordered a Barbie Extra Minis doll with a checked jacket (getting the whole doll was cheaper than getting the jacket alone) to try swapping that piece out. The Tommy jacket is attractive, but it's too thick to move well on a small doll, especially a well-articulated one, and the wrists are too short on the BJD body.
To finish the Farrah head, I needed different yarn from what the Ken head used, as there wasn't enough to finish both in the same fiber. The magnet solution worked to hold the head on...but there's an energy that's not here. I think I had it right the first time. Ken Stefan embodies the character well.
I had to tweak things for the ideal head mount when going back to the Ken head. I did a more careful trim of the neck from the vinyl of the head this time to improve the look and eliminate the conflict with the collar (which could flip against the jawline to cover the damage as well!) and I had to re-rig the neck peg to hold the head tighter down. The peg original to this mini BJD body broke when trying to take the LEGO ball I added off the top, so I harvested a wrist peg from another BJD to replace the neck joint. It took a good while to figure the way to keep the head on in the right position while maintaining the hinge rotation of the neck joint. I didn't want to cut one big piece of articulation out and reduce the head to a swivel. While I tried baked clay neck knobs that would pop into the head, the doll body's skinny neck doesn't stop the head in position and keep it at the right height. I tried solutions that would extend to the top of the head interior to try to achieve tension, and it wasn't reliable. Because the neck joint can pop out, it was also much more frustrating to try to pose the head if the neck was popped inside, because the head could disconnect the neck joint when trying to move it, and extracting it was a pain. I ultimately succeed by changing my approach. I decided to essentially fill the neck cavity in with clay, leaving a cavity for the neck joint to fit into, and cast the shape. I then glued that clay to the inside of the head's neck cavity so the joint could pop into the bottom of the head while the head stayed at the correct height and could use the hinge fully.
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| This clay nubbin pops on and off the neck peg. The clay got glued inside the head cavity, which places the head properly and lets it pop off without removing the neck peg or getting pieces stuck inside the head. |
The clay piece wobbles a bit on the neck peg, but it's more than acceptable and I couldn't keep baking clay head inserts forever.
Then the Barbie Extra Mini arrived with her jacket and I could complete the Hatter. I was lucky to be 100% correct the jacket would be an ideal fit for the doll, and the assembly looks good without needing to dye the jacket.
I didn't have the insight to glue a magnet to the head before the yarn hair got secured, so I just glued it on top of the hair because squeezing the head into the hat, only for it to fall off immediately when very gently brushed, was getting too frustrating.
I then set up the Hatter and Polly Alice outside with my 1:12 garden table set and the Kelly tea things. I could have put the Kelly tablecloth on too, only I couldn't locate it quickly enough and didn't really care to search very hard.
The last photo to take was the cover concept, where I wanted to visually segue from the previous Hatter tea party with Alice lifting the tablecloth cover to see the mini dolls underneath. A version with the Hatter on top and Alice on the ground made more sense aligning the dolls with the mini dolls, and matched their placement in the Tenniel art and Hatter Madness 2 photoshoot, but I ultimately preferred the version with Alice on top and the Hatter on the side.
I had to stack the LEGO table-leg additions significantly higher to fit the HM2 table above the mini scene, and the legs being quite fragile made this trickier to stage, but I didn't want to glue pieces together for this and I got it done.
Phew. That was a pain. This post has held up a lot of work! It delayed Hatter Madness 2, and has postponed HM3 and a second interlude by not being finished as well. I'm very glad to have this done, but it was fun figuring some custom ideas out. I do love mini BJD, for all the challenges involved. I don't think I'll have a hard rule of interlude posts only coming once between main posts, so there might be one more interlude before HM3 comes out, or maybe not. I'll figure it out. I'm just glad they're on track now!
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