Never too late to bond

or, how one risky decision led me to loving a doll I had neglected for over a year

Last year I bought Shadow High Costume Ball Eliza the instant preorders opened on Walmart. I was really excited to have a Rainbow High fairy doll (still obsessed with the Neopets faeries at 23!), however when she arrived, I realized she was a bit of a catfish.

(sorry for my terrible photo- I only had collection pictures of my Eliza before this)

Still cute! But definitely not as cute as her stock photos made her seem. Also, I’m not sure why she didn’t receive a special stand like Roxie- those wings make the normal stand a nightmare to work with. TLDR, I put her on the shelf and never picked her up again.

A few months back, I lightly “downsized” my Rainbow High collection by putting a few I wasn’t as in love with right now into my closet, and I realized how much I didn’t miss Eliza in particular. I thought about selling her, but somehow found it hard to really let go of her. (I really like fairies)

In comes the tweezers.

I began looking for images of what Eliza would look like restyled from others, hoping to find some inspo to help me bond with my Eliza, and after seeing 3 too many Violets without their bangs, the urge to rip the gelled-to-hell bangs that came with my Eliza grew. However, I am notoriously bad at hairstyling in general, even outside of dolls, so I decided against it in the meantime.

So instead, I decided to simply fix her ratty, gelled hair tips instead. Armed with conditioner and boiling water, I got to work fixing the hot mess that was her hair (mine was gelled bad, the last time I had so much trouble with washing doll hair was gen.3 signature Lagoona).

However, when I was brushing it out after boiling, I realized her bangs were no longer sitting quite right. I also really, really had the urge to just rip them out again instead of going through the trouble of fixing the bangs, since at that point, I realized even a hair wash was not making me love her. I was terrified to actually do it, because Eliza is becoming pretty scarce to find at a decent price if it all goes wrong. (Not to mention, the “new direction” Rainbow High is going through is leading to shortages of a lot of popular dolls)

However, I ultimately decided after struggling to fix her bangs to just rip them out anyway. And….

I absolutely loved it!

I styled her hair into two twin-tails with braids to add to the fairy look, so her amazing elf ear earrings would finally be visible. Fun fact, that took me longer than washing and tweezing her bangs did combined, and there are still fly-aways ToT. Hairstyling is not my best skill, but I really, really love Eliza with this style! Now I absolutely love her; I’m even planning on further customizing her by adding some small nail-art gems to her face for a jeweled fairy makeup look.

If I were to take this further, I would remove the writing on her dress (black on iridescent baby blue, really MGA??). However, to be honest I am not feeling that adventurous. I am feeling adventurous enough to rip some more bangs though- Kim Nguyen is on her way to me now and she will be free from her bangs soon!

All in all, it was a fun exercise in both risk-taking and bonding! Were there any dolls it took you a while to bond with, and what did it take for them to finally “click” with you?