Number 6: Baity bait.

In the Blythe world, 'bait' or 'baity' is shorthand for 'someone (quite possibly the seller, although I don't think it was in this case!) screwed up on this one a little/pretty bad/a whole damned lot, pay your money and take your chances'.

Alright, I'm up for a challenge.

This little beauty was a Cinnamon Girl, face mould EBL-7, launched in Feb 2003. She's supposed to have thick light brown hair, a set of blue/orange/green/pink eye chips, brown eyeshadow and light pearly brown lips.

Hey hey, Number 6! How you doing? 

Unfortunately, it looks like someone's decided that they don't like that, and have scribbled on her face with... um... nail varnish... before using a blunt paperclip to scratch out some lips and a philtrum.

Er... what's that on your face?

(Insert music from Psycho and do a slowly zooming-in close up here.)

Aaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!!!

Okay, okay. Caveat Emptor and all that. She was a complete bargain and I got in there first, so over she came from Spain. We got out the box, posed for two or three photos, then on went Hunger Games on Netflix* and out came the sanding sponges.

Then out came the x-acto knife. Which needed three new blades in the course of doing this doll's makeover.

Ladies and Jellyspoons. If you're looking for a quick way to spruce up your Blythe, can I suggest you use pastels. Volk doll chalks. Make-up. Acrylics. Watercolour pencils... in short, use absolutely anything under the sun with the exception of NAIL VARNISH. It's not that it's hard to get of, it's that it's:

1. Bloody impossible to sand off because... 
2. ...it's damaged the plastic underneath so badly that it just crumbles into nothingness...
3. ...and when you scratch that lot of nasty away, the underneath looks all... melty. 

It took the best part of four hours to strip back the faceplate to something I could even contemplate trying to carve/file/sand properly, and I'm not entirely sure even now that I got all of it. There's a patch on the outside of her left eye that just won't take pastel properly, no matter how many times I sand and re-apply, and the eye sockets ended up a little larger than I intended, because I just had to keep cutting away the bad stuff... 

Hah. In this shot, you can't see the 'melted' look to the lips and right eye socket. 

That said, she's not looking too shabby now. The perfectionists'll notice the slightly uneven finish around the top of the right eye socket and to the upper lip... sorry Ma'am, nothing more I could do. I tried sanding the hell out of it, and the finish just kept looking worse so I stopped. Her philtrum is a little more prominent than I generally like; again, nothing else I could do once the damage was fully assessed. Yup, those are copper glittery lids. Who likes Steampunk? I love Steampunk, as it happens. 4 new pairs of chips: brown and gold, silvery grey, green and blue.  

Not perfect... but a hell of a lot better

We're waiting on a chocolatey-brown alpaca side part scalp and some glorious ambery/gold beads for the pullstrings. And then instead of bait, I reckon she's going to be simply stunning. 

*Not a bad adaption of one of my favourite brain off reads. I think they got Katniss really well, Peeta wasn't too bad (and he only really grows properly as a character in the second and third books) Rue was perfect. Looking forwards to the next one.