A Mistake Was Almost Made

 Scissors? No.

 

Casper is undergoing dolly surgery.

 

    Recently, I accidentally damaged Casper's right arm when I tried to spot clean it with distilled water, so I'm going to have to make an update to one of the Reborn doll pages on this blog. Now, I am not yet a Reborn doll artist, so I do not have the experience to repair someone else's artwork in this hobby myself. Fortunately, I was able to get in contact with Casper's artist, Joanne Donovan over at Lullaby Lake Nursery, and she was kind enough to allow me the chance to mail his arm to her for repairs. Today, I finally got up the guts to approach removing his arm to be packed and sent off and despite having watched a lot of tutorials on how to remove Reborn doll limbs in the past, I still almost made a terrible mistake. I am writing this post to let other collectors know not to do what I almost did and that I feel very lucky that what I did, did not actually get to do any harm.

 

    Now, vinyl reborn dolls' limbs and heads are typically held on their bodies with the use of a plastic zip tie. These have to be clipped in order to remove anything from the doll. It was the same with Casper this afternoon. The task of removing a vinyl doll's limb can seem like a complicated process because the zip tie is usually tucked very far into the fabric of the cloth body. Boy, was I ever nervous! I was so nervous that my brain went blank and did not remember that scissors might not be the best idea of a cutting tool to use in this instance. I went right for my sewing scissors. Scissors in hand, I tried very carefully to slide one of the blades up under the "box" of the zip tie (the little square bit that holds it together) so I could loosen the plastic tie from the arm of the doll. When it held fast, I then tried to use them to cut the "box", which caused the scissors to slip toward Casper's arm but fortunately, my finger was directly in the way and stopped the blades from touching his arm at all. In that moment, I realized the scissors would not be a good idea. That I could wind up doing more damage to his arm. In that moment, I finally remembered that YouTube tutorials from other collectors exist. So I pulled one up and silently prayed that I would already have whatever tool that person said to use at my disposal. 

 

 

 

    Thank you so much to Diana for making this tutorial. I was able to find a pair of cuticle nippers that did a much better job of removing Casper's arm than the scissors would have. I cannot say that I slid the clippers up under the zip tie as much as Diana here did in the tutorial above though. All I know is that I did not see any visible gouge when I was finished cutting. I got so anxious that I autopiloted a bunch during his initial "surgery" and I feel lucky that it seems his arm was not damaged. For added comfort though, I am thinking I may ask Casper's artist to let me know if she finds any scratches on him. His arm was already packaged by the time I realized I could have scratched him with the nippers and for lack of resources like tape, I am unable to re-open the package and check again. All I know is that I did not notice anything when I removed the arm from the cloth and that the blades were kept away from the actual artwork on the doll. 

 

    Anyway, his arm will now be shipped out to his artist for the repair of the little white spot that appeared near the elbow crease. Here's to wishing little Casper good luck on the repair of his little arm!