I have a strong obsession with fantasy themed dolls and also a great love for Disney. If you look into my background you'll see I did loads of princess and character costumes for Entertainment Companies for years and it's not unusual that I would want to bring a little of that into my doll collecting. You would think that I'd have a ton of Disney Designer Dolls or that I would even have some of the new American Girl Disney Dolls that they just rolled out, but oddly enough I'm really not attracted to any of those. I think because the Disney Designer Dolls are fancy Barbie shaped dolls with character faces and although I love the outfits, the doll itself doesn't do much for me. For the American Girl Disney Dolls I think it just reminds me of something I can buy from Target for my little girls on their birthday. I think this is because as an adult collector I'm wanting something a little more exclusive and original than something that looks mass produced. I think this is why my collection includes so many artist dolls these days and I have steered away from dolls that everyone has. I like that a doll is unique to me and therefore unique in my collection. My style has long since been glamour and beauty which you will see repeat itself over and over in a lot of things that I create. And yes, there is a bit of nostalgia buried in there and a bit of high fashion that peeks out from time to time in my work.

For My Twinn Dolls I was determined to experience at least one doll in each of the molds that "spoke" to me in terms of face shapes and looks and lucky for me, most of the ones I liked were deemed common molds that were easy to find and fairly cheap to purchase. The Ariel mold had me curious, could this face mold actually work as an Ariel Little Mermaid inspired doll? Well I am certainly going to find out. So down the rabbit hole I went to obtain an Ariel and start the project of creating a doll and an outfit fit for something a bit special.

The first thing I did was to pop out Ariel's existing eyes which were that stock light blue sky color and replace them with some eye catching blue eyes. I chose a glass eye from Eyeco to do the trick and I'm very happy with the way they looked. I stripped off her old wig which was a standard 80's blonde with bangs and straight hair using a hair dryer to loosen the glue. The wig wasn't anything special but I saved in just in case because I literally have no wigs in stock at the moment for My Twinn and they don't come in until June 2024. So I designed an Ariel red wig for future because I know this will be great in the future for collectors. In the meantime, I wanted to get Ariel ready while her wig and outfit are pending (have to make it still). So I cut off her neck zip tie and got out my blow dryer to loosen the glue on her head. After about 10 minutes the head came off and she was ready to go. I sent her to my friend Emily who I work on doll projects with (I don't have the talent for painting dolls) and who does beautiful artistry for a lot of my customs. I did a bit of research on Ariel's doll look and a lot of them had these very light almost yellow looking eyebrows to offset her bright red hair. I wasn't sure how I'd feel about that but Emily always takes good care of me and I was most delighted to get her progress shot below. I think she is definitely heading in the right direction and she still looks child-like and natural and not cartoony which is definitely the look I'm going for.