How to Re-curl American Girl Doll Hair

How to Re-curl American Girl Doll Hair

Curly haired dolls are especially cute; however, the curls do tend to frizz easily. After about a year and a half now of styling my Courtney doll’s hair on occasion, her hair is looking frumpy. Re-curling the hair takes a little time, about an hour to two hours depending on how precise you want to be, but it is simple to do and produces a better than new result!

What you will need:

  • water in a spray bottle
  • pencil
  • toothbrush
  • hair clips
  • apron/gown to cover the cloth body
  • hair pick (you may need a brush if the curls are knotted)

Courtney’s hair was just frizzed so I was able to work through it with just a hair pick. I have re-curled a secondhand doll before that had very knotted curls, so I had to use a brush to get through them because the picks were bending.

To begin, wrap the cloth body to protect it from getting drenched with water. This little plastic gown that came with the hair care set worked perfectly, but I’ve used a towel before and the towel gets quite wet but it works. You are going to work one curl at a time so clip the remaining curls to the side so they are out of the way.

Be sure that you separate the curl strands as they originally came. Spray the strand with water. Using the hair pick, brush through through the curl.

Spray the hair again with water and wrap the curl around a pencil or similar sized item. Be sure to follow the natural curl to the hair when wrapping around the pencil or the curl will come out funny. This is very important and may take a couple of tries to get the hang of how to wrap it around the pencil with the natural direction of the curl. Don’t worry if it doesn’t look quite right as you can re-curl it again!

Using the toothbrush, brush the end of the curl strand around the pencil. Spray the strand again with water and hold the curl in place around the pencil for about 15 seconds.

Release the curl and slowly pull the pencil out. Section off your next strand and repeat these steps for each curl.

Once the hair is completely curled, you can go back and re-curl any that may be a little loose or otherwise looking not quite right.

Now your doll hair is re-curled and looking even better than new!