Johanne Vandenborn’s dolls support LHS “Shoppa-Paw-Looza” auction
It’s an old story: kids grow up, and favourite toys get left behind.
Johanne Vandenborn spends all year rehabilitating old dolls to be sold at the Lakeland Humane Society’s “Shoppa-Paw-Looza” online auction, which runs from November 20 to 26 this year.
The dolls are cleaned up and given a full set of accessories to match their new “careers.” They may run a restaurant or a salon, or they might be teachers or students or just a kid’s best
friend.
“Most of my dolls are Walmart ‘My Life’ brand,” Johanne said. When new, the dolls are typically sold with some clothes and maybe a few accessories with the option of adding to the set at an extra cost.
Johanne’s refurbished dolls come with a complete set of clothes and accessories, all for the price of your winning bid.
Johanne spends most of the year with her eye out for items that might go well with a doll set. She searches thrift stores and garage sales, not usually looking for anything in particular or even for something that is specifically made for the dolls. Toy tools or utensils, clothing, fabric—anything that might fit the dolls’ scale is possible material to complete a set.
And what she can’t find, she will make. She will fashion replacement parts out of whatever is at hand. She made a plastic drawer for a doll’s sewing table, for example, which fits perfectly. She knits and sews new doll clothes herself.
But the dolls’ first stop at Johanne’s house is the “spa,” where they get thoroughly cleaned up. Just restoring the dolls’ plastic hair is a lot of time-consuming work.
“The shampoo, a lot of conditioner, and a lot of patience untangling all those mats in the hair,” Johanne said.
“I had a doll one year that the cloth body was markers all over. I took a chance, took all the stuffing out, washed the cloth part and it came out clean, believe it or not. I put it all back together and it worked,” she said.
“Some of the dolls, I have to cut the hair because it’s so bad.”
After the spa treatment, the dolls are ready for their assignments. Johanne takes pride, and joy, in completing the accessories down to fine details. The trouble is, she keeps seeing opportunities to make a set even more complete.
“It gets a little bit too much,” she said with a laugh. “That’s why when it’s done I want to send it away so that my mind doesn’t keep adding things.”
She will make 20 sets in a typical year, and they tend to go for $40 or more each. That’s useful revenue for the Humane Society, and great value for the buyers.
For Johanne, it’s a lot of work and a lot of creative energy. But she loves to imagine each set as a child would see it—in that sense, all the patience and care and skill come down to a grownup version of playing with dolls.
“I don’t know,” she says, “ I just guess it’s the child in me.”
