Brasilian Crecy

The first "international" doll I purchased was the Crecy doll from Brasil. She is the Brasilian equivalent of the American Crissy doll, made by the Estrela company. The first doll I got arrived here in bad shape, as has been the case with most of my international purchases. Here she is before I did any "work":

Notice how horrible her hair is.

I spent a lot of time trying to tame that hair. I steamed and steamed it until I finally was satisfied enough (and tired), and here was the result:

As good as it gets...

I dressed her in a fashion from American Velvet, and I think she looks very cute in it. After awhile though, I decided I wanted a Crecy in an original Brasilian fashion. So it was back to MercardoLivre. And lo and behold, I discovered there was a red-haired Crecy!! Well, I just HAD to have her. The seller also had a blonde haired Crecy, with original clothing and shoes, so after some back and forth with her, I decided to get both dolls. Here they are as they arrived:

The new Cuties :)

I removed their clothes and scrubbed their bodies and faces down with Clorox wipes. I'm a big fan of using those to clean up dolls because you never know where they have been. I know a lot of people do not like to use chemical cleaners on dolls, but I do it, and I'm admitting it (haha). I also did another thing some collectors wouldn't do, and that is that I washed their clothes in the washing machine with a load of my clothes. The clothes seemed to be pretty sturdy and they were already faded, so I said, what the heck. I did not, however, put them in the dryer. I draped them over my fan to dry. Washing them in the machine helped to get rid of the odor they had. It wasn't a bad odor, more like, that old, musty odor that you get when something has been in storage for awhile.

While their clothes were washing and drying, I did my favorite thing, and steamed their hair into place. Here are the after pics:

With clean clothes (also note the original shoes)

Here is a close-up of my pretty girl's face (she needs some lip paint)

The blonde girl with clean clothes

Facial close-up (notice this girl still has good make-up, including blue eye shadow)

All three of my Brasilian Boneca cuties :)

A few things to note about Brasilian Crecy:

1. They all seem to have dirty faces. I don't know what it is, but every single one of them seems to have just enough smudgy, dark stuff on their faces to make them look a little dirty. I have been unable to get whatever this substance is off of any of their faces entirely.

2. Crecy's base hair was glued down when she was originally made at the factory, so she will have glue residue on her head, and around her face, particularly in her ears. This is something you will just have to live with.

3. I have purchased all my dolls from MercadoLivre, which is the Brasilian equivalent of eBay. Sellers are very nice, and are always willing to work with you. You can use Babel Fish translation to aid in your communication, and it turns out, a lot of times, the seller will actually speak a little English.

Here are a couple of catalog pics of Crecy that I got from the auction site.