The BioBarbie
I decided to try and create a Barbie doll out of sustainable materials.
The immediate choice of material for the body was the friendly Bio-clay we used in class so I started experimenting with it a few weeks before our midterm project was due, to see how it absorbs color, possible shrinkage and other qualities. I was a little disappointed by the initial results but decided to continue with this material for now because it doesn’t require much drying time and is very nice and easy to use.
- Finding a Barbie doll
I searched online for a vintage doll because I wanted to get that 50’s feeling or at least refer to that period when the doll was first introduced. It was hard to find something that would be immediately available so I went to Target and got one that seemed the closest in looks. I don’t like the new design of the doll I feel like the head is too big and the legs and arms aren’t bendy, but for now this will do.
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- Making Agar-Agar sheets
I wanted to create colorful sheets to later make clothes for the Barbie so went ahead and cooked this recipe with added food coloring. I really liked the colors I got from the different food colors but they don’t stick as nicely as the natural dye, they come off easily and leave stains so I eventually used the beet root one for the final result.
- Planning the Alginate mold
I started by making a big Alginate mold for the entire doll, planning on doing half each time and getting a basic mold of the body but I didn’t like how it turned out so I decided to create a separate mold for each body part, so it was 2 molds for each part.
- Dismantling the Barbie parts
It was hard to remove the different parts and I was afraid to ruin the doll so I watched some tutorials on YouTube. Apparently a lot of people, for many reasons, are trying to take their Barbie dolls apart, so that was very helpful (also – weird!).
- Making molds for the different parts
I started with the more delicate parts because I was afraid they wouldn’t work but was surprised to see that they came out just right. I used a different type of Alginate powder ,one that is used by dentists, so that helped to get more accurate results.
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- Bio-Clay + Coloring
I first tried creating the body color with Turmeric and food coloring but couldn’t get the exact hue I wanted so created this pink elephant for myself.
I bought some more food colors and started mixing till I received a brown hue I felt could be good for a skin color. I started adding this color in small batches (a finger tip at a time) until I received the shade I thought was the best for this experiment.
I started pushing the colored clay into the molds in hopes of creating the shape for each part. I kept this process for all the parts and took them out by breaking the Alginate tray each time. The molds came out a little wet and uneven in texture so I had to manually smooth them out each time.
- Drying the parts and connecting it all
I wanted to dry everything in the open air so took breaks between parts and spread this process along a few days, eventually I had to use the oven on it’s lowest setting to get some final touches done. I was very alarmed by the effect the heat from the oven had on my molds, they came out cracked and slightly misshaped. I managed to glue back some of the faulty parts and smooth some cracks with the extra clay I had but it didn’t have the same nice quality as it had before the oven heating. I decided to glue it all for the presentation and used this glue which worked very nice.
- Makeup , hair and clothes
Next steps:
– Create 3D scans of the body parts to make long lasting molds
– Find some natural coloring options (inspiration?)
– Try out interesting materials shown in class (Coffee leather and milk&honey gelatin) and gelatin covering to mimic plasticity
– Make a Ken?