Audrey’s hair has been breaking for a while now, & back in April it finally came off in clumps. I never figured out why, but since it broke off at the scalp & the only way I was able to get it out of the holes was to poke it with a needle, I think maybe Sekiguchi used some kind of glue which eventually caused the hair to snap off. I couldn’t find a replacement for her, so my only other option was to re-root her This is around the time I had my first problem. After getting rid of the old hair, I realized that her rooted eyelashes had disappeared. They must have been attached to the hair on her head, so when I removed that, it took her eyelashes too. I was not happy, but I added her eyelashes to the re-root list.
First I had to decide what color to re-root her in. She looked like she had black hair, but when I looked at photos of her, I realized that I could see a brownish tint. I finally decided on Espresso for her head & black nylon for her eyelashes both by Restore Doll. I decided to do her eyelashes first & they came out pretty nicely (there’s a photo in my photostream) so I went ahead & started the re-root. I don’t really like re-rooting but I sucked it up & started using the existing holes in her head. This is when problem # 2 appeared. I realized that even though I was using the same holes as Sekiguchi, there were big bald spots that looked very obvious. I don’t know what they did with the original rooting so that didn’t happen, but I had to make some of my own holes to cover the spots. Eventually it was time for problem # 3. Her nicely rooted eyelashes got all messed up from the re-rooting & had to all be removed. This whole process had taken a few months by now, & I had loose doll hair, a doll body, & a partly re-rooted doll head on my desk all this time. It was the task that would not go away. I finally finished the re-root, re-rooted her eyelashes again, & after many months, put her head back on her body.
At this point she had very long hair, but her original style is a very short haircut, so it was time to get the scissors out. I’ve done a few haircuts on dolls, but I’ve never done a short haircut & I wasn’t sure how it would come out. It took me a few days because I didn’t have any clear photos of the right side, the top, or the back of her head before it broke off, so I kept putting her down so that I could check progress with a clear brain, but I have finally finished to my satisfaction. She doesn’t look exactly like she did, but she looks close enough to make me happy.
This is the third Sekiguchi Momoko I’ve had a problem with hair that just snapped off. One I was able to replace, & the other I was able to hide it, but it’s ridiculous that this would even happen. They take no responsibility for it, I guess they just think it’s OK for their dolls to only last a while.