La Dee Da Sweet Party Tylie Custom

I just finished my custom of La Dee Da Sweet Party Tylie and I wanted to share my process and results! I found this doll at the flea market last summer for $4.00 and was super excited to finally have her as she was the last La Dee Da doll I was looking for to complete my collection. The photo below is from eBay as I don’t have photos from when I initially got her, but the doll in the photo is in extremely similar condition to how my doll was.

After receiving her, I wanted to restore her hair as it was extremely bent out of shape from being in a ponytail for many years. Now, I’m honestly really bad at doing doll hair, but I wanted to give it a shot. I separated her hair into small sections and curled them around straw pieces, securing everything with bobby pins. However, after boil washing her to set the style and waiting for her to dry, it became clear that her hair had become totally fried after the whole process. Instead of cute cotton candy curls, she was looking more like she had a head of purple ramen noodles… Unfortunately, I no longer have photos of this stage as I was so sad about the hair being ruined that I deleted any I had. Below is a photo of what the doll was supposed to look like.

Anyway, after this whole debacle, Tylie ended up sitting in my doll bin for months, awaiting a potential reroot or customization. And months later, here we are! I decided that I wanted to base her new look on this La Dee Da fashion pack that I had lying around in my doll bin. I’ve had it since I was a kid, but no one was wearing it at the time. She was the perfect model for this since Tylie originally came missing her shoes and headpiece anyway, and I was still planning on picking up a perfect Sweet Party Tylie to replace her at some point. The fashion pack in question:

After deciding on this, the hair was next. Was I going to get supplies and finally embark on my first reroot? Nope! I’m still too lazy for that haha. Instead, I decided to go for a wig. Using the info I found from a blog post about La Dee Da doll customing from the website genkigirl.com (https://www.genkigirl.com/dollyblog/?p=944), I determined that a size 5-6 would work on Tylie as long as I chopped all her hair off first. Below is a photo of Tylie after I got her wig. The 5-6 size fits perfectly!

After getting the wig, I was quite happy with her overall look. Still, I was debating whether I should repaint her or not. Prior to receiving the wig, I had repainted her lips, but as you can see in the photo, they turned out quite messy. So I definitely wanted to redo the lips at least, but I was on the fence about the rest of the face. As such, I made a quick mock-up on my phone of a potential partial repaint.

After fiddling with the idea for a day or two, I decided to go forward with the idea! For the repaint to work, I wanted to remove only her lips, undereye makeup, and irises. Here’s a photo of that lovely nightmare-fuel stage:

Isn’t she lovely? Anyway, after this stage, I proceeded with several layers of sealant and watercolour pencils. I tried my best to follow my original idea as closely as possible, and I think she turned out really great! Here’s the result:

I’m super happy with the end product! Like I said, I’m really proud of how she came out, especially how well I was able to match my concept. I’m so happy she no longer has to languish in the doll bin anymore! Please let me know what you think down below if you’d like, and if you’ve read this far, thank you for reading!