How to Fix Cécile’s Curls (or Any American Girl Doll’s Curls!)

Hey everyone! Madi here—with Cécile!

Whew, it’s been a minute! Sorry I went a little MIA these past two months!

Your comments wondering where I’ve been did make my day though, I’m so glad you’ve been excited for the next post! I love you guys!

I started my senior year of high school, and I’ve been busy with extracurricular activities, school of course, and working on getting my driver’s permit. I haven’t been able to do any of these things in three years due to chronic illness, so I am SO GRATEFUL to God that I can again!

In the midst of all these things, I didn’t want to stress myself out too much—I’m still not 100% recovered and I want to take very good care of my health and not overwork myself again—so I put blogging on a lower priority.

I hope to take things slow and steady, but I will ALWAYS be here! Posts are still a-comin’!

In fact, I have something SUPER EXCITING coming up this next week, so don’t miss it!

But for today…

I’m going to show you how to re-curl Cécile’s hair—or any American Girl doll with tight, curly hair! Such as Truly Me #26, #58, #85, #91, etc, or any of the CYOs with tight curls.

This will also work on dolls with larger curls or even waves, like Saige or even Lea. I re-curl Jasmine’s hair with this method a lot, I just do it with larger sections of curls!

You will need:

• American Girl Sparkly Hair Pick as needed
• An unsharpened pencil or paintbrush
• Water mister spray bottle
• Bobby pins (I like to use mini bobby pins since they fit doll hair a little better!)

First, here are some before shots of Cécile’s curls. They’re pretty flattened and droopy and could use a little fixing up.

What you’re going to do is spritz your doll’s curls with plenty of water. You will work one curl at a time. If your curl is tangly, go ahead and gently brush out the tangles with the hair pick.

Use plenty of water beforehand and then twist it in the direction it curls afterward so it keeps it shape!

When you’re ready to re-curl, take your pencil or paintbrush and wrap a curl around it in the direction it curls.

Wrap it tightly with no space in between, smoothing the curl down with your fingers and misting with water as needed.

I’ve only curled the end of this piece to show you how to do the ends, but when you get to the bottom of the entire curl you’re wrapping, wrap the end of it around itself a couple of times instead of in a downward spiral.

This will hide any dry, split ends, and keep the end of the curl looking nice.

See what I mean?

Once you’ve wrapped and smoothed the entire curl around the pencil or paintbrush, gently slide the pencil or paintbrush out, keeping hold of the curl in your fingers. Slide a bobby pin through the curl to keep it in place like this.

And you’re going to repeat for every curl around her whole head!

I ran out of bobby pins so I had to do half her hair at a time, LOL.

Lightly mist the curls over again with water for good measure. Let the hair stay pinned for 24 hours.

After 24 hours, gently take the bobby pins out and let down her curls!

What a cutie! Look how coily her curls are now!

Now that’s darling!

If your doll has pin curls like Cécile does you can use this method on those as well! My Cécile’s pin curls are pretty frizzy so I just kind of left them alone :’)

Style the curls however you like, and you are done!

It’s worth noting that the curls will loosen again over time, as we didn’t use any heat (such as a boiling perm) to set them.

Repeat this process as necessary. I do it whenever her curls need a little more bounce or have loosened. This picture was taken about a month later, when the curls have loosened due to styling and gravity.

I hope you’ve enjoyed! I’ve gotten a few requests of how to re-curl doll hair over the years so I’m glad I could finally post a tutorial!

Do any of your dolls have curly hair? How do you care for their curls? Chat to me below, I’ve missed you!

And if you try out this tutorial, definitely let me know! I would love to see pictures of your doll’s new curls, too, to share with the DWOD newsletter! Email me at madigrace@powerofgod.com.

That’s all for today, my friends!

I hope you’re having a wonderful week—I certainly am! I have a free weekend so I stayed up late and got up early to put this post together and had a lot of fun. ?

What’s NOT fun is this bad cold I’m having. Blech. ?