Maya's New Dress Inspired Her New Face

African-style dress, matching headwrap, and black sandals for Dasia to be worn by Maya.

The above African-style dress made by Vanessa of Fashion Dolls at Van's Doll Treasures, inspired me to create a better quality face for my Dasia as Maya doll.  This task had been on my to-do list since the original face was made in September 2014.

Recall the process (from the original post) where I printed a head-shot image of Maya Angelou onto light T-shirt transfer paper.  My printer ink was low at the time.  As a result, the color of the original face was not as vibrant as it could have been, which is the reason I wanted to create another. In the original process, the printed face was ironed onto a piece of a white T-shirt and finally glued onto a mold of the doll's face that had been made using T-shirt material and Aleene's Tacky glue. In one of the comments to the original post, a suggestion was made by Phyllis to use dark T-shirt transfer paper.

This photo illustrates the tacky-glue face mold as it cures (not the mold ultimately used for the new face, however).  A printout of the new face is shown along with the package of dark T-shirt transfer material, which was used to transfer the new face. 

A printout of new face onto dark transfer material has been ironed onto a piece of white T-shirt fabric.  Because of the yellow-brown areas on the right that resulted from the use of a too-hot iron for this blend of T-shirt material, I reprinted and re-transferred the new image using a warmer cooler iron.

As described in the caption above, for the new face, dark T-shirt transfer paper was used.  I modified the original face-mold-making process by using a thin layer of polymer clay (instead of glue-hardened fabric) to make the mold.

While making the new face, I discovered the image transfer process for dark T-shirt transfer paper differs from image transfers onto light T-shirt transfer paper.  After printing the image onto the transfer paper (which has a rubbery texture), the backing is removed and replaced behind the transfer image for support while the desired area of the image is cut out.  The cutout is placed face up onto T-shirt fabric and a piece of parchment paper placed on top.  An iron, at the correct setting for the fabric, is used to complete the transfer by ironing over the parchment paper-covered image.

In this image, new transfer paper face is glued to polymer mask which is placed over doll's original plastic-wrapped face.

An additional piece of plastic is wrapped around the new face/mask to smooth out any wrinkles.

In the above two images, the new face has been transferred onto transfer paper, which has been glued to the mask made of polymer clay.  To ensure the mask maintains the desired shape, the mask is placed over the doll's plastic-covered face and another piece of plastic wrapped tightly around the new face until the glue hardens.  This was done because the glue used to attach the new face to the clay mold softened the clay.

I did not take step-by-step photos of the entire process but the end result is shared after the before image, which is next:

Maya's first face made with light T-Shirt transfer paper

Close-up of new, more vividly colored face

New face, new fashion (the scale is a bit off, but the color is on point).

Thanks again,Vanessa, for the inspiration to complete the project.  Thank you, Phyllis, for suggesting the use of dark T-shirt transfer paper.  Maya is a happier doll as a result.

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