Monster High reroots, ranked in difficulty.

[tsubasahome]

Having rerooted one Frankie, two Ghoulias, one Clawdeen, and 1.5 Draculauras, I thought I'd share my impressions on rerooting each, and the various pitfalls for people who have never rerooted them before.

Frankie: Pros: She looks good with many hair colors, her head is painted white, making her old head paint easy to remove cleanly(or not remove, since it doesn't really show through her hair)

Cons: Her head is HUGE. I almost ran out of hair rerooting a Frankie. You must make the plugs very small, and make them numerous.

Ghoulia: Pros: Her head is not as big as Frankie's. Her head paint is close to her skin color and not too hard to remove cleanly.

Cons: The shape of her head makes it difficult to reroot her hairline(in the back, in particular) without bending your needle.

Clawdeen: Pros: She has the smallest scalp space of the dolls I've rerooted, making her good for impatient rerooters.

Cons: Those ears! Unless you reroot her hair swept back like vintage Licca, her hair will fall over her ears leaving gaps and looking terrible. If you want her to have non-huge hair(not swept back, like Dead Tired Clawdeen) you have to do a T-shaped part, with another part dividing the hair around each ear intersecting the main part. If she's got a side-part, you only have to do it to the ear farthest from the part.

Draculaura: Pros: Her head is actually pretty small and easy to reroot. She seems pretty orthodox, but...

Cons: This is something I feel I need to point out especially to beginning rerooters. Unlike many of the other dolls, Draculaura has blush. Her head paint is very dark and has a tendency to flake off into dust when you're taking her hair out, and it stains. You need to use acetone to take it off any place it winds up. And if you get that dark paint anywhere near her blush...let's just say that I had to take extra care to not touch ANYWHERE below her eyebrows and past her ears.

So what is my conclusion? For a beginning, I would recommend Ghoulia. For a beginner with a lot of patience and a lot of doll hair, I would recommend Frankie. If you're not familiar with how to minimize damage to the face while removing gobs of glue from a Monster High head, stay the hell away from Draculaura! Or if you must, stick to Dead Tired or Skull Shores Draculaura, as they don't have glue in their heads or blush.

Comments

[twotone]

For Draculaura, would it be helpful to, say, lay down a layer of Elmer's glue (or some other water-soluble glue) on her face like a mask (and then letting it dry), so that the dark paint falls on to that rather than her face and blush? I feel like I've seen a tutorial for *something* that involved using glue as a mask and then peeling it off at the end.