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Cleaning and Protecting Dolls

Your Doll's Clothes

I must be honest here - cleansing fabric is a huge frightening subject matter - too simple and too complex at the identical time. It is even more complex because old & / or collectable doll's garments are shaped the manner they are (complete & fluffy), due to the fact the fabric is starched to the max. Starch is water soluble. Read up on upkeep and allow commonplace experience be your guide. But right here are a few beneficial equipment & techniques:

SOFT BRUSH

But no longer too tender. Think of this as a bit whisk broom to your dolls. An collection of cheap but NEW paint brushes will serve. Different sizes and if they are no longer stiff sufficient, use stout scissors to trim shorten up the bristles a touch.

COMPRESSED GAS

The kind that comes in a can with an extended tube / nozzle and works first rate for getting potato chip crumbs out of the keyboard. Also works on doll garments. May be all you need to clean up a doll's garb.

VACUUM CLEANER (the kind w/ a hose)

Kind of the identical thing as compressed air -simply going within the different path. To surely do it up-fancy, for sensitive fabrics and all, make your self a body and staple nylon screen-door-screen around it. This will involve a ride to the hardware story and a bit wooden-work, however it can't be helped. If making a body is the beyond you, get a smallish piece of metallic display screen and fold some layers of duct-tape round the brink. Be a shame to have overlooked this step and smash something all pretty and satin via catching it on a ragged metal cease of display screen. If you have got skin - and all the first-class collectors do - the duct-tape will even make it easier to keep your blood inner your skin due to the fact these ends are ever-loving-sharp. Vacuum via this and buttons and bows will stay on something you're cleaning.

SUDS, heat soapy water

Look closely at what I've written - not the water, but the SUDS*. Make your self a sink full of suds, dab them onto the grimy components of the cloth, and work them in with one of your brushes. Vacuum it all out again.

MILDEW:

Get rid of it via moistening the stain in lemon juice and salt, permit it dry in the sun, (mildew hates the sun). Use your brush and vacuum set-as much as get out anything is left. If this does not paintings, try hydrogen peroxide more solar, but assume some fading.

Your Doll's Hair

Dandruff shampoo ain't gonna get it. Being as it's at the pinnacle, dirt is apt to choose your dolls hair to a fair-thee-properly. A tooth brush will do away with the dust and--what the heck-- try out a brand new hair style! TO do more than this, you had better know exactly what you're doing.

Your Doll's "Skin"

In standard, distilled water and Q-guidelines won't hurt some thing, unless the doll is celluloid. (See under.) If this don't get it done, add a tiny squirt of detergent (shampoo). Beyond this, you run the hazard of cleaning off greater than just dirt. Go slowly, however strive - so as of aggressive solvency...

Alcohol. If you do not have some shellac thinner on hand, use vodka. (Seriously -liquor is little extra than a combination of alcohol & water.) Paint thinner. Or label remover -same stuff however scent like lemons. Lacquer thinner. Only on glazed porcelain and be VERY careful around the painted parts. *Chris, of Bearly Believable Gifts, gives this for cleansing plush toys (Teddy Bears) and it'll paintings for doll-clothes too

I placed a squirt in the sink and then fill it up with heat water. I simplest use the SUDS, now not the water itself, and absolutely rub the suds over the fur with your arms. You don't want to genuinely get the fur moist, simply sudsy. You can check maximum fabrics in a small spot, however I have yet to have had a trouble. When this is dry, I use a 1 to 2" paint brush to "bush" the bear's fur. Very easy, and this method additionally removes most of the oil that floats via the air and attach itself to the fur.

Chris also shows a live within the freezer will kill the allergic dirt-mites, Finally, she counsels against retaining filled animals inside the kitchen wherein they soak up cooking oil and scents. Smart lady!

A BIG RED LETTER WARNING!!!

Vintage Plastic (celluloid)

Very vintage dolls had been crafted from celluloid. Interesting stuff celluloid, however not at all best. It become invented in 1856 and become the first plastic to hit the marketplace, largely as a substitute for ivory. Pretty a whole lot went out of fashion via the 1950's. Only location you find it now-a-days is ping-pong balls. What is thrilling is that it starts out life as cotton waste which is processed to grow to be both celluloid, cellulose lacquer, Stuff Dolls or gun cotton. 

Gun cotton is what they use to shoot large shells out of the cannons on battleships. Yep, gun cotton is explosive as is celluloid! (And - for that matter - lacquer burns like a son-of-a-gun too.) Additionally, if it gets wet--and remains wet--it oozes nitric acid. Nitric acid isn't always only corrosive as all heck, it is a effective oxidizer as properly.

There are tales (?) of celluloid queue-balls exploding and killing humans. Men's collars used to be fabricated from celluloid. But the most crucial celluloid for creditors is antique dolls. Antique doll heads / faces are made from the stuff. Here is what the pros have to mention about celluloid. It WILL smash down.

 Can't be helped - it may handiest be bogged down. As it breaks down, it out-gasses camphor - the stuff that make Campho-phenique smell like it does. Store celluloid dolls in (swear-to-goodness) explosion proof cabinets or the freezer. Clean it with distilled water and dry it carefully, however recognize the even water speeds up the damage-down into corrosive nitric acid.