"I'm an action figure!"

When I was about six, my favorite doll was my Mattel Gymnastic Whitney (friend of Stacy). I loved her flexible little body, which fit so nicely into my flexible little hands. I lost it when my family moved. Years and years later, I thought fondly back on that little doll and decided to acquire another on Ebay--my justification was that I wanted to use her as an alternative to those lifeless wooden pose mannequins to practice drawing, but the honest to goodness reason was sheer indulgence of nostalgia.

Long story short, after taking her out of her box and fiddling with her for a few minutes, my nostalgia was satisfied and Whitney took up residence alongside my other well-loved but retired childhood toys on my shelf, where she may have very well remained...

Until, in a moment of idle observation, I though of how much she reminded me of another acrobatic, freckled, flat-chested, body-suit-wearing girl with super-shiny red-brown hair...

And I thought of an upcoming birthday date for the creator of said girl...

And an ambitious project was born.

Tools:
1 Mattel Gymnastic Whitney doll
Cheap fire-engine red fabric
Cheap black fabric
Red and black thread
2 sewing needles (one was lost, somehow...)
Gold and silver metallic paint Sharpies
Black Sharpie
Red Sharpie
Super-glue
8 inch shiny gold elastic thing used as a decorative ribbon on a candle
1 Cheap, black craft-foam hat
3 trips to JoAnn's and lots of scrounging through landlady's supplies

Process:
I will preface by saying that I am NOT a craft-y person.  I occasionally get these wild crafting hairs, but for the most part, I stick to drawing and writing to express myself. Thus, my process and the result are pretty rough around the edges, but fortunately, it didn't end up a total disaster!

I started by attempting to style her hair to match Spark's. The doll's high ponytail was already similar, but Spark's face is framed by a sort of bob. Getting that effect on the doll without exposing any bald spots was actually way more difficult than you may think, and honestly I had to eventually give up. Her hair was simply not rooted in a way that allowed her hair to frame her face, and no amount of hairspray or gel seemed to help. I also tried pinning it down, tying it down, and almost resorted to gluing it down, but I lost my nerve on that one. I continued to fight with her hair all throughout the project.

Once I had the fabric I made a fool-hardy attempt at making her body suit. I ripped out the seams of the doll's original costume and used it as a pattern.

Using some terrible hand-stitching, I managed this! I gave the suit a TON of give so it ended up being far too large for her (in the pic I'm pinching most of the fabric behind her back). The rubber band around her head was another attempt to make her hair flatten, but the only thing I actually gained from this attempt was a really creepy picture that reminds me of The Watcher in the Woods.

Several undocumented steps later, and she was finished!  The original plan was to make the black parts of her costume with black fabric, but I found sharpie really did the trick. The costume and mask was also supposed to be removable so that Evie could dress her in something else if she chose, but drawing the mask onto her face ultimately just made more sense and I had to take some shortcuts in fitting her bodysuit that involved restrictive stitch work and super glue, so, alas. No Mighty-Morphin' feature.

I really wanted to make Spark's ponytail super long, but I couldn't find an economically feasible way to do so. At least the color is right! Ignore the awful stitch work.

The most difficult part of this whole project was her shoes, by far. I sewed the two finger-puppet-like boots, tied and re-sewed them to her legs to make them vaguely boot-shaped, and then sewed two tiny foot-shaped pieces of foam to the bottoms of each to create her platform soles. I thought about making them even thicker to match Evie's drawings, but I was too fed up by that point. If I'd had gold jump rings I would have used them for her boots. Again, sharpie magic provided a nice shortcut. The silver on her boots was intended to make them look reflective, like rubber.

I leaned her against the video games just to make her sit upright for the photo, but the juxtaposition of the titles is pretty awesome.  Spark's life is nothing but Epic Nights.  The bruise on her temple is surely an indication of some heroic battle, and has nothing whatsoever to do with smudged ink from her mask.

I used red sharpie to change her purple eyes more brown-colored, and gold sharpie to make the purple earrings the doll came with match her outfit. Spark doesn't wear earrings so far as I know, but she DEFINITELY doesn't wear purple earrings.

 I wish I'd had more time to take more pictures of mini-Spark in all sorts of mischief (trekking around Epcot, chillin' in my seven-year-old roommate's ostentatiously pink, 3-story Barbie town house, interacting with my Took doll, encountering any one of my Pokemon plushes, etc.) but I didn't have time for all of that. So this would have to do.

In closing, Krissy would like to make one thing about her plastic super-heroine counterpart ABSOLUTELY CLEAR: