"It's a Doll Affair" Kelsey

Custom Kelsey Doll From Carol Linacre

I have had the great pleasure of purchasing a couple of custom Journey Girl dolls from an amazing artist, Carol Linacre.  My most recent purchase was Kelsey.  Carol takes the base doll and does a “face up”, improving upon the dolls facial features, making them look much more realistic.  Carol mostly customizes American Girl dolls, but sometimes does Journey Girls and other brands of dolls, creating beautiful additions to anyone’s collection.  I thought it might be neat to look at Kelsey and the new details that Carol added, just to get an idea of what is possible with the Journey Girls.

Carol does an amazing job of keeping the original feel of the doll intact, while enhancing the dolls features.  I have seen some customizations that add eye liner, eye shadow, and darken the lips a lot.  They are beautiful customs, but I really like the more natural look that Carol does in her customizations.  So let’s see what she did!

Note: Kelsey just had her face customized, the doll is still an Australian release Journey Girls Kelsey, which as many of you know, means her joints are stiff, her legs spread like crazy when she sits, and the vinyl is prone to staining.

Carol wrapped Kelsey up before shipping her to me. 

The outer box fit around the Journey Girls box perfectly, but even so, Carol added a little padding just in case. 

Even covering her face, just to make sure that there were no scuff marks in case the shipping company got rough with the package.

Kelsey has her original Australia meet outfit on, and the purse that comes with the outfit.  Carol added a few bonus items in with her.   

She has a new puppy (I named her Pugly) to take care of and love.

There is a scuff/mark remover with instructions on how to use it.  And then finally a note from Carol with photos of Kelsey after she was finished being customized, along with her Certificate of Authenticity, which has the artist's signature, when Kelsey was finished, and her certification that she is one of a kind. I love that Carol includes the Certificate of Authenticity for two reasons: first it legitimizes the doll as something new/different from the original Journey Girls doll, and two, it has her signature for her work of art, which is very important.

For Kelsey's "Face-up", Carol adds shading to areas that would naturally have shading, for example around the nose, mouth, and upper eye lids.  

There is deeper shading on Kelsey’s mouth than underneath her nose, as the space on her mouth is deeper.   Her lips are a very natural color, but have been enhanced with vertical lines that mimic the skin on our lips.  

There is also slight shading to give the lips a more realistic look, as our lips are not all the same color.

Kelsey’s cheeks are blushed, as is the bridge of her nose, and a little bit of her forehead. Again this mimics the coloring that naturally happens in us as humans.  

The Australian dolls did come with some cheek blushing, but this looks more uniform and is not just on the top of the cheeks.  Around Kelsey’s nose there is shading as well as on her philtrum (that’s the little divot between or nose and lips).

A fuller set of eyebrows helps make Kelsey’s face look more realistic.  Carol changed the arch of the brows to look more realistic, setting them lower on Kelsey's face.  Gone is the high "surprise" arch that many of the Australian Journey Girls originally came with.  

Most of our eyebrows are like this with multiple colors of hair rather than one uniform color. The detail work on these thin hairs is awesome!  I love how the eyebrows arch, and how they feature on Kelsey’s face now that they are fuller.  Plus the color is a closer match to her hair.

I was so happy to see the Australian Kelsey with freckles.  As most of you know, my original Kelsey I customized by adding freckles (and I like to believe that is where Toys R Us got their inspiration to freckle Kelsey - J ).  Carol adds beautiful freckles to more of Kelsey’s face.  

Most of them are on her cheeks, like the original doll, but they are on her nose and up the side of her face also.  I love the non-uniform look of the freckles.  

They are different shapes and colors with no discernable pattern, which is an important piece of making the freckles look more realistic.  The freckles are perfectly imperfect!

Carol does a lot of customization to Kelsey's eyes.  I mentioned that she added shading to the upper lid of the eye, where the eye socket and the upper eye lid meet, creating a more realistic looking eyelid. She has added a line (the same color as Kelsey's eyebrows), almost like eyeliner, on the outer edge of the lower eyelid, accentuating it while also making it look more realistic. 

Below that, fine drawn/painted in eyelashes create a full, realistic look to Kelsey's eyes that was missing from the original.  A small amount of pink was added in the inner corner of the eye (the lacrimal caruncle) to finish the lower lid.  There is a gloss on the lid and the corner for that realistic touch.

Along with the shading on the upper lids, Carol adds another set of eyelashes, but not the same type as are already on Kelsey.  These ones are auburn, like her hair, creating a much more natural look, especially when they are mixed with the black eyelashes already on the doll.  

The addition of the new lashes really draws you in to Kelsey's beautiful green eyes (new for this release of Kelsey).

It looks like all of the custom work was then sealed so that it stays on Kelsey's face.  That being said, I don't know that I would give Kelsey to an 8 year old.  More likely an adult collector or a child in 
their teens.  And since the joints can be touchy, you wouldn't want to break them on such a wonderful doll.

I love this iteration of Kelsey!  The details that Carol added to her are amazing!  They accentuate the beautiful facial features of the Journey Girls dolls and really bring out the eye color in Kelsey. I love the addition of realistic freckles and eyelashes. It is amazing how different these things make Kelsey look!  

At about 3x the cost of a normal Journey Girls doll, customized dolls aren't for everyone.  For me, the cost was completely worth it.  My "It's a Doll Affair" Kelsey is worth every penny.

For more information on Carol's awesome work check out her webpage www.itsadollaffair.com or follow her on Instagram @itsadollaffair