Off With Her Head! And This Time I Really Mean It!

If you are familiar with Blythe dolls, you know that by pulling the string on the back of her head, her eyes will change color. There are four sets of eye chips, in different colors, set at different angles, that make this possible. Even with all this fun eye movement, the one thing that her eyes don't do is stay closed. The eye lids do close in between each eye color change, but that's it. A lot of dolls have eyes that close when they are laid down. Blythe doesn't do that.

If you do a Google search, you will find many tutorials on how to give Blythe sleep eyes. The problem is that you have to open up her head to do this. Frankly, that notion scared me. It had made me nervous enough when I scalped her, never mind opening up her head.

Finally I found a tutorial that didn't require Raleigh to undergo brain surgery. LOL You can find it here:
Sleep Eye Tutorial. I found this a few weeks ago, but was still hesitant about doing it. After all, Raleigh is an Ashton Drake Gallery doll and they are no longer made. Her value (price tag) has gone up substantially since I bought her. And besides, I could never really replace her if she got ruined. Sure I could get another doll, but she wouldn't be Raleigh.

So the tutorial said to use a crochet hook. I didn't have one, so I substituted this hook tool.

Next, I was to pull on the little wire, that is part of a spring, in the slot, on the back of her head, until I saw an eyelet or loop. I proceeded carefully, but instead of seeing a loop, I watched the tiny wire slide through the slot into her head. I freaked out! I tested her eyes and they still worked normally. YAY! I knew I had to fix the spring and they only way to do that was to open her head. YIKES! That is what I was trying to avoid in the first place.

So, I found a tutorial about how to make the sleep eyes with her head open. Tutorial for Sleep Eyes. I got a screwdriver and took out the two screws in the back of Raleigh's head. Unlike some other brands, the Ashton Drake Blythe dolls have 2 screws and not 3. First thing that happened when the screws came out was that her head fell off her body. Now I am in complete panic! They don't warn you about that.

The picture is blurry because my hands were shaking. I was hoping that I didn't do any damage to the neck. Nothing I could do but to keep going and fix the spring.

The front and back plates had to be separated to fully open her head. There is a seam, so this isn't too hard. Since I had scalped Raleigh, it wasn't difficult to do. I am not sure how manageable it would be if her scalp was intact, but in the tutorial, they didn't remove it.

So now you can see the spring above her eye mechanism. There is no eyelet or loop at the end of it, which is why the wire went inside her head. Ashton Drake dolls differ from other in this case too. The end of the spring is just a small piece of wire, which has a slight bend in it, to hook over the slot in the back of the head. The only way to do the sleep eye technique, on an Ashton Drake doll, in my opinion, is to open her head.

The next step is to feed a cord through the hole where the spring is attached. I used a cord which is meant for making jewelry. Then, to keep the spring from moving around too much, you tie the cord to the other end of the spring. This was tricky without a loop to tie it through.

You can actually remove the spring entirely, but if you want to put her eyes back to normal, you will need it. I wasn't going to fiddle with it and so I just left it tied off.

After feeding the new cord into the slot. It was time to put Raleigh's head and body back together and test things. Thankfully, her neck was fine and everything went back into place perfectly. I tested her new skill and Voila! it worked!

I had to put a pull ring on the new cord, but I decided to use a charm instead. Since I was doing that, I figure I would also put one on her original cord and take off the very plain pull ring. I also shortened the cord at that time. I always felt it was way too long and it was always getting in the wasy.

This funky glass star and heart were in my bead stash and thought they were perfect for Raleigh. Now, when you pull the heart cord, Raleigh's eyes close. Note: if you do this, make sure you pull hard enough to hear the "click" from the eye mechanism, at least in Ashton Drake models. When you pull the star cord, her eyes open and have changed to the next color chip.

I am very happy with the results of this, it was just a bit nerve wracking along the way.

I will close by sharing a new dress I made for Blythe this week. It is reversible, so you get 2 looks for the price of 1. You can purchase it here: Reversible Dress for Blythe

I have more of these versatile dresses cut out and ready to sew. You can look for them in the near future.