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Delilah-Nicole Eye Swap! - A little bit of a tutorial, a little bit of an archive

I eye swapped Delilah and Nicole (while keeping delilah's white eyelashes) and i took photos the whole way to share/archive here in case someone's curious about the process.

Chapter 1: Taking The Eyes Out

So first i heat the head up by putting it in boiling/freshly boiled water. I keep the doll itself dry (making it easier and safer to handle) by putting her head in a zip-loc bag. I put mine directly into the freshly boiled kettle (be careful of the steam), as i find it heats the head up very quickly, but you can also put the doll's head (in a zip-loc bag) into a cup and then pour the boiling water into the cup. you can also use a hairdryer apparently. do whatever you feel safest doing.

I cannot emphasize this enough - you need the head to be VERY SQUISHY. In my experience, the squishier the head is, the easier it is to do the eye swap, and the less likely it is that the eye makeup will chip or scratch. When the head is VERY squishy, squeeze the head to pop the eyes out. For reference, here's how squishy my Nicole's head was (i was not using much force at all here):

You want the head to be as squishy as possible, for as much of the process as possible, so keep reheating the head regularly. If at any stage you have difficulties, HEAT THE HEAD UP. The vinyl is very resilient, don't be too afraid of hurting it.

Once you've popped the eyes out, you've finished the first stage! Here's Delilah and Nicole with their eyes out. (pls ignore that nicole is body-less, i was testing to see if it was any easier to remove the eyes with the head taken off. my findings were that it CAN help, but if you get the head hot enough you shouldn't need to do it.)

Now that the eyes are out, this brings me to

Chapter 2: The Anatomy Of a Rainbow High Eye, and Selecting a Suitable Eye for an Eye Swap

Notice how the eyes have a vinyl socket, and that the back of the socket has indents in it? These indents are important - the back of the eyes have corresponding pegs so that the eye snaps into place in the socket securely and with the perfect orientation. You'll notice Nicole and Delilah both have 4 indents in each eye socket. Every different eye shape uses a different amount of indents and pegs, so Nicole and Delilah having the same number of indents means they have the exact same eye shape, and use the exact same eyes. Here's the pegs and identifying info on the back of Delilah and Nicole's eyes:

As you can see, the letter/number codes on the back of the eyes don't match, but the number of pegs does. This is what matters when doing an eye swap. If you want to do an eye swap, you should ideally choose to swap with a pair of eyes of the same shape. You'll know for sure they're the same shape when you get them out of the head and confirm if the indents and pegs of the eyes are the same across the two dolls you're eye swapping from. You CAN swap eyes between dolls whose eyes don't match, however it will be harder because the indents of the doll won't match with the pegs of the eyes you're swapping in, meaning they might sit a little weird, and they won't lock into place. This means it'll be more difficult to do the eye swap, and it also means that once the eye swap is done, the eyes may shift a bit in the socket, requiring you to reheat the head and reposition them again.

Now, onto some more anatomy of the eyes. If you're doing an eye swap where the colours of the eyelashes don't matter, then this next part doesn't apply to you. I however wanted my Delilah to still have white eyelashes and Nicole to still have black eyelashes despite swapping their eyes, so i had to do an extra step of swapping the back plates of the eyes.

To do this, i get a thin solid object like a nail file, flat tweezers, or in this case a small flat-head screwdriver, and jam it into the seam of the acrylic piece of the eye and the black back plate of the eye to separate them.

Be careful when doing this! If you're too forceful you might dent, scratch, or snap either of the eye pieces. You can also damage the lashes in this process by bending them or breaking them. So be gentle and only use as much force as necessary. I like to jam my instrument in and then wiggle it up and down to loosen the two pieces, then use my fingers to pull them apart.

As you can see, the eyes are made of two primary pieces.

There's the acrylic piece, which is made of clear acrylic and has an eye chip inside to make the iris and pupil, and is painted with white acrylic paint on the inside to make the white sclera of the eye.

And there's the back plate, which is made of black plastic and has a strip of lashes glued to the inside rim.

These two pieces snap together to make the full eye. Since i want Nicole's hazel eyes to have white eyelashes, and Delilah's blue eyes to have black eyelashes, i will be swapping the back plates. Since the eyes are the same shape, this is as easy as separating the eye into its two parts, and then snapping the acrylic part onto the back plate with the lash colour i want.

And with that, i now have my eyes ready to be put into the heads!

Chapter 3: Put Those Eyes Back In!

Now we just repeat the first step basically. You'll want to again get the head VERY squishy. It's in this step that the squishiness will matter most. Here's a visual reminder once again of just how squishy the head should be, considering that i am not using much force in these pictures:

My preferred method for getting the eyes back in is to insert the outer corner of the eye first, at a SHALLOW angle. You want to push more sideways than downwards/INTO the eye. If you push the outer corner downwards instead of sideways, the eye will likely get stuck like this:

If the eye gets stuck as you're re-inserting it, don't panic. Just squeeze the head and pop it back out. Remember to reheat the head if it starts feeling AT ALL difficult to squish and manipulate. The squishier the head, the easier this will be with the least damage to the face. Also, note that in the picture above her eye socket is stretched out quite a lot. This is okay and will not damage the head, when the eye is in the correct position and the vinyl cools down, it will go back to its original shape. Of course being TOO rough may split or tear the vinyl, so proceed with caution, but don't worry too much - if you get the vinyl squishy, then it will be stronger and more resilient than you expect.

Once i've got the outer corner inserted at a shallow angle, i push DOWNWARDS on the inner corner of the eye. This part takes considerable force, but again if the vinyl is squishy enough then it won't damage the face or paint. The eye may just pop right into place, or it'll go in but not be looking the right way. Take your time and keep reheating the head as needed and pushing the eye around until they're looking in the right direction or snap into place.

Once they're in the right place, you're done!

Now that i'm done, I LOOOOVE my Delilah like this, it seriously makes me love her SO MUCH more than before. I was actually considering getting rid of my Delilah because something just wasn't "right" about her in my opinion, but now that she has these eyes she's PERFECT to me. I seriously couldn't love her more.

Nicole i will admit i don't think looks better with blue eyes, i really adore her hazel eyes. BUT this eye swap was to prepare her for a custom project, so i have faith that once she's customised i'll love the change for her just as much as i love Delilah's. She's also only one of three Nicoles i have, so in my opinion her sacrifice was worth it to make Delilah so beautiful :D

#rainbow high #ridiculously long #tutorial #aurelia dolls #delilah fields #nicole steel

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