Detangling Doll Hair

I'm still on a roll so bear with me for a few more posts about dolls.

Anyway, yesterday, I posted about the hair detangler product from Barbie. I made up my mind to get one but the nearby toy store doesn't carry it and I won't be going to other toy stores soon. Last night, after Andrea went to sleep, I decided to work on one of her other dolls. This is another student doll from Teacher Barbie. This is how she looked like before I started working on her:

I don't know how she looked like originally, I haven't been able to find a photo of Teacher Barbie with a blonde girl student. Anyway, in this photo, I was already able to brush her bangs down. When we got her, I didn't realize she had bangs because they were brushed back and looked like part of her long hair in the pony tail. I only realized they were bangs when I shampooed her hair and saw shorter ones. When I blow dried her hair, I concentrated the heat in the bangs part for a while to get them to flatten down.
Going back to the detangler, since I didn't have Barbie's hair detangler, I tried to use what I had available: Vitress Cuticle Coat. It worked!

The hair was a bit sticky after but that was fine since I planned to wash it again after I get all the curls out. Anyway, here's the tricky part... I read in one website that you can iron doll hair directly... I must have done it wrong because a part of her hair almost melted. So I used a cloth over the hair before applying the hot iron. I didn't get it really, really straight but at least the hair is falling down the back already instead of sticking up. Then I had to trim her hair because the ends were already knotted. The hair was already thinning when we got her, I think it needs to be re-rooted but I have no idea where to get doll hair (if I'm able to get it, it might be the subject of a future blog entry). After trimming, I washed hair again using shampoo and blow dried. The result isn't as nice as I had hoped (maybe because the hair was thin?). But I think this is better than the curly-knotted-sticking up look she was sporting when we got her:


I also made the dress out of an old lace tank top. I would love to share how I did it but thing is... I don't use patterns. She's very small (around 3? 4? inches) so I would just wrap the fabric around her and mark the areas where I should sew. I got the idea from this site though, so you can check here instead. For the headband, I used one of Andrea's pink hair elastics... it's the perfect size. The headband covers some thinning/spots on her head.