Hello again and welcome back to the blog - I've got some new tips and tricks for you with rerooting Barbie dolls specifically. Rerooting can be a wonderful thing when it turns out well, you can take an old friend from frizzy, dry, chopped off, etc. hair to a new head of luscious soft locks ready to be styled. Or just give her a color change if you think she'd look better brunette than blonde. You can also simply add highlights to an already existing color.
Rerooting gives your hair customization new levels with Barbie and other dolls. Sure, applying a wig might be less work, but the satisfaction of putting your doll back together post-reroot and seeing her new look all put together is worth every second of the work it takes to do it.
Here are a few helpful hints and tips I've come upon over the course of about a dozen reroots, all compiled in one place.
- Keep FabriTac fabric glue on hand, this will be your savior both for locking the new hair in place so that it doesn't pull out of the head and for patching holes in the vinyl if you find yourself in that sort of pickle.
- If you do rip the vinyl, it is what it is. You can go ahead and squeeze some fabriTac into the ripped spot and let it dry, it'll still be flexible and rubbery once dry so that you can poke your needle through and continue rooting afterward!
- If your rooting tool isn't going through the hole properly, try taking the hair off the needle and poking the needle by itself into the vinyl before trying to put hair in place. Otherwise, you can try either a thinner needle or a bit less hair per plug if the issue persists when you try to add hair again.
- You can also try a thicker needle without hair to widen the holes slightly, just be super careful of this in the part line and hair line where the holes are extra close together.
- Try your first root on a head you don't mind losing. Like the fifty-seventh Millie left over from body swapping. If it works, you can always repaint her face and keep her as your first reroot. Otherwise, you haven't lost a head you cared about if you decide it's not working or accidentally rip the vinyl further than a FabriTac patch can fix.
- A cheap pair of long nose/needle nose pliers or a pair of thin tweezers will be your best friend for removing the old hair. Don't use a scissor blade, it works well but it tears up the vinyl at the base of the head somewhat.
- Also! If you're going to repaint the face, reroot first unless you have intention of applying a sealant. Seal it and make sure the sealant is DRY before you start rooting...acrylics can and do stain vinyl if not sealed before you start messing with the head.
- Do you a favor and put the doll head first into a plastic ziploc, then dunk that in hot water before you try to pull the head off...it's a pain when you break the body by mistake while trying to take the head off, trust!
- You can repeat heating the head as you reroot, Barbies have soft vinyl heads but other dolls like Rainbow High, Bratz, LOL OMG all have harder heads. You will only hurt yourself trying to reroot these without softening the vinyl
- Keep a spray bottle of water on hand. When the loose hair is getting hard to separate, spritz it. Rooting wet hair is so much easier than rooting it dry.
- Don't hesitate to keep a couple small clips or hair ties on hand, when the hair you've already rooted in is getting out of hand you can tie it out of the way with a hair tie and keep going.
- Don't worry if it's not laying flat when you're done with the reroot. Boil up some water and do a basic boil dip on it, it'll lay nicer afterward. I promise.
- Make sure the hair is positioned just about how you want it before you boil though, because it will stay where it is after a boil and restyling how it lays will take another boil to set it all over again. Use a wide rubberband, a small sock or something else with elastic to hold the hair down if it won't stay where you want it to be when you boil dip.
- Don't use straight heat on the rerooted hair for styling if you're using saran, Kanekalon etc. --High quality nylons are the only ones that can take straight heat styling.
I might add more when I think of them, these are just lessons I've learned the hard way during reroots so you don't have to!
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