Fashion Royalty Manicure
As I’ve mentioned before, the clothes I tend to be drawn to for Eve are mostly designed for Fashion Royalty—FR for short—dolls. Eve has a made to move body—MTM for short—which means she’s shorter than her FR cousins, who also happen to sport a much smaller waist, and longer limbs. I see them quite a bit while looking for outfits, and I admit I’ve run into a bit of jealousy. Hand jealousy, that is.
While Eve’s face is, in my opinion, absolutely stunning, her hands aren’t all that great. Meanwhile, FR dolls have more realistic hand gestures and poses. They also come in a variety of painted nails, and because of the detailed fingers, there’s even a little room for rings.
“Can I interchange a made to move Barbie’s hands with hands from the Fashion Royalty dolls of a similar size?”
I typed that question, and shortened versions of the same, into google and came up empty. I felt a even more discouraged when I discovered that if you have an FR doll, you probably don’t have a MTM doll, and vice versa. So, I did what anyone with a nagging question would do, I decided to test it. EBay has quite a few options for folks looking for replacement hands; though if you, like me, have never owned an FR doll, or even ever seen one in person, the skin tone possibly not matching is a risk.
Still, when my small, morbid package of severed hands arrived, I was excited to give them a try, and I finally got my answer.
No, sadly, they don’t fit.
I was so disappointed, and then the idea hit me: hack them. They’re just too attractive not to use. Determined not to let these pretty appendages go to waste, I decided to go ahead and try a barbie hack. The goal was to hold the hand in place with tape on the inside. I then took some of the photos from the blog and re-created the poses for comparisons sake with this fix in place.
For those that might be wondering: yes, these hands are fully functional in the same way the regular MtM hands are - they can move at the wrist without any issues, very easy to pose. The only thing that I had to hack was the part that disappears inside the arm, which has no impact on functionality whatsoever. In fact, it might make things easier when I need to remove her hands to put on certain clothes. I’ve never been particularly comfortable popping the regular hands out, and I’ve even broken a few of them.
Unfortunately, the nub is too thin at the top, and it’s just a little too long, so there’s a tiny gap that, after taking the pictures (above) really bothered me. So I decided to very carefully cut the nub down a bit. There’s currently not a gap, which is a good thing, but it still requires tape at the top of the chopped nub to add volume and keep it in place.
Obviously, these are both quick fixes, and if anyone out there has any ideas that don’t require the melting of hard plastics, I’m interested in hearing them. I’ll update this post when/if I find a better solution. The next outfit pictures you see will have her new hands on display, with much less of a gap. For now, these will have to do.
There were four sets of hands in the package I got. I chose this set because they’ve got a soft pink nail, and because the skin tone is much closer than the others. I love the look of them, delicate and expressive. That being said, I may swap them out for a red-nail look on special occasions. It’s nice to have options.
If you have any Barbie hacks, I’d love to hear them. As always, thanks for stopping by.
