Another Barbie-headed Cool Girl, this time I used a 'Chinese' Triad Alpha body (Caucasian, medium bust).
Another Barbie-headed Cool Girl, this time I used a 'Chinese' Triad Alpha body (Caucasian, medium bust).
The head is from a 2017 Barbie 'Floral Dress' play-line doll.
The head was fixed to the back of the box with no less than three nylon tacks, one more nylon tack was put through the top of the head to fix her sunglasses in place.
I carefully cut all tacks using a small pair of scissors and pushed the sharp protruding ends of the tacks into the head using a toothpick.
After removing the head from the Barbie body I removed the remains of the tacks from the inside of the head.
Apart from the oversized eyes, this Millie face sculpt has a realistic shape and beautiful features.
Like most recent Barbie heads, this one also is slightly larger, mostly wider actually. There is a lot of hair on this head, which makes the head look smaller than it actually is.
There are quite a few doll enthousiasts who seem to dislike Millie heads, all I can say is: have a look at a close-up of Becky, a basic play-line Barbie with one of the most lovely faces I've seen on Barbies in quite some time.
The Caucasian skin tone of the Triad Alpha body matches the tan Barbie skin tone nicely.
Alpha bodies have a rather large neck so it took a bit of work to get the neck to fit the head.
This particular body came with mismatched arched feet, hands in a rather cramped pose and crooked knees. I replaced the feet with spare flat Triad feet, but these fit a bit loose. I have yet to replace the hands.
I warmed up the mounting pegs of the knees and straightened them but the hinges themselves are also not straight so the knees are still a bit crooked.
When I verified the movement of all joints, I noticed that the right elbow did not flex all the way, making the slot in the top of the lower arm 1.0mm longer solved this.
Then I cleaned up all seams and fitted an adapter for the head.
After test-fitting the head on the body I took a first picture. At that time I noticed that her head would hardly move up or down, so I removed the head from the body, sanded the diameter of the uppermost 8mm of the neck down by about 1mm, buffed the sanded areas and refitted the head.
Many recent Barbie clothes will fit an Alpha body as only its waist, thighs and calves (and bust in this case) are wider than a typical recent Barbie body.
For now I dressed Becky in the Barbie dress that she wore in the box. The dress fits well but has a tendency to creep up a bit, which caught me out when taking some of the pictures on this page.
I wanted to put her on white Fembasix boots but the Alpha feet are too big to fit the boots, so I decided to reduce the size of the feet.
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| More pictures (click for larger version) | ||||
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Tools and materials needed:
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The feet that come with Alpha bodies are some 8mm longer than CG feet. The extra length presents a problem when trying to find shoes that fit. I had some spare flat Alpha feet so I decided to reduce the length of one pair of feet. | |
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 | Using a razor saw I made 2 perpendicular cuts 3mm apart across the front of the feet. As I planned to put the feet into (rubber) boots I decided to reinforce the cut with a pin.
I happened to have some 1.2mm diameter Plastruct TB-1 plastic rod with a steel core which is perfectly suited for this. Using a pin vise fitted with a 1.2mm drill bit I drilled a 1.2mm diameter hole in the front part of the foot. To get the hole in the opposite side of the cut at the exact location I inserted a small piece of pencil lead into the hole, making sure it stuck out by about 1mm. After applying some masking tape to the opposite side of the cut I lined up the parts until the pencil lead left a mark on the tape. Then I drilled a 1.2mm diameter hole at the pencil mark and removed the masking tape. I cut a length of rod (10mm in this case), inserted it into the front part of the foot and took a picture. | |
 | After making sure both parts of the feet mated properly, I applied some Plastic Weld glue to both sides of the cut and joined the parts. After leaving the glue to cure for a couple of days I used a small round file to restore the contours of the foot. Finally I used a fine sanding sponge to smooth the filed down areas, then buffed the plastic to restore the surface. | |
 | This picture shows the difference in size: left are original Alpha feet, in the middle are the modified Alpha feet, on the right is a pair of LM feet that I modified to fit Alpha ankles earlier. | |
