Doll-A-Day 2019 #185: Teen Courtney All Grown Up and The Story of the Sarah Harding Doll

  Just to remind everybody that the sales page is up,and can be reached by clicking on the heading 'Dolls and Accessories for Sale' in the right side bar. Anybody need any Mini Brands?
  Today's doll is a girl with a history in our family.

She's Teen Skipper's friend Courtney.

This particular Courtney is from a series of Teen Skipper and friends dolls called All Grown Up.

The series included Teen Skipper, and her friends Courtney and Nikki. All three dolls had the same head sculpt.
 

They were made in 1996. The dolls all came with stickers and tattoos for decorating the doll,her clothes, and her owner.

Courtney originally came in a purple nylon crop top/bathing suit top with orange trim and a butterfly on the chest,a pair of white jeans with a clear orange vinyl belt,and purple high tops. She also had a purple bathing suit bottom,and her accessory was a clear orange vinyl  purse.

 She wears an orange ring.

She has a single braid in her hair that is accented with an aqua ribbon and an orange butterfly.

Her hair is very long. It comes way past her knees.

When I say she has a history in our family,here's what I mean. My son was born in 1995. In 1997 the movie "The Lost World:Jurassic Park" was released. Fuzzy LOVED that movie. When it came out on video I got a copy for my birthday. Fuzz watched it all the time. When he was a toddler I would give him a bath and set him up on my bed with Lost World playing,while Emma and I got our showers. He never moved and was completely fine until Emma came in to join him.His favourite character was Sarah,played by Julianne Moore. He loved the scene where Sarah invokes the ire of some stegosaurus parents,and has to run for cover in a hollow log.

 

  That year,for Christmas, all he wanted was 'Sarah and a log'. There was a Sarah action figure, and she was impossible to find. She was selling on Ebay for exorbitant prices. 

 

And she wasn't very good either.

  So I went on a search for an appropriate doll to turn into Sarah. I couldn't find a doll with red hair,and ended up having to settle for this Courtney,who has brown hair with a streak of 'orange'. (When Fuzz was tiny and learning his colours it always confused him when people would talk about his 'red hair'. It wasn't red, it was orange. So we started referring to it as orange hair,and Fuzz and Ivy still do to this day.)
  To turn Courtney into Sarah I took out her braid,and pulled the orange portion of her hair over the brown hair,and put it in a ponytail. 

Then I had to work on her clothes and accessories.
 

Sarah wore a sort of wine coloured t-shirt,a pair of brown jeans,brown ankle boots,a tan jacket,and a twisted blue headband that usually hung around her neck.
 

That headband looks green.

 I started by dying Courtney's white jeans brown. I also painted her purple high tops brown. I painted the laces and soles a darker brown. Next came trying to find a t-shirt the right colour. That proved impossible. So, I would have to make one. I had to find the appropriate fabric. After looking around I came to a conclusion. There was only one place to get the fabric for the shirt. Ken had a pair of underwear exactly that colour,and the fabric would be perfect for a t-shirt. . I know that sounds disgusting, but he's Fuzzy's dad and Fuzzy was too young to care anyway. So Ken became the unwitting donor of a pair of wine coloured underwear,which my bad sewing skills transformed into Sarah's t-shirt.
  Then there was that jacket. It figured prominently in the story,since(spoiler!),she got baby T-Rex blood on it and the parents tracked her by it. The closest I could come was a Barbie safari jacket that was available as a carded fashion. The problem was that Sarah had a short jacket,and the safari jacket was thigh length. Not only that, but it was short sleeved,while Sarah's jacket had long sleeves which she frequently pushed up. I solved the problem by cutting off the bottom of the Barbie jacket,and using the excess fabric to lengthen the sleeves. I sewed them to look like they were pushed up. That way there was plenty of fabric for the sleeves,and they would stay 'pushed up',and also the join wouldn't show. The final touch was the headband. A pair of my dad's old navy blue pants provided the fabric,and Sarah's clothes were completed.

Poor dirty and worn Sarah. We found her though! She still has her headband around her neck.

  Next came the accessories. One of Sarah's most important accessories was her camera.

I got hold of a Barbie camera,but it was purple.I think I painted it black.I don't know why I wouldn't have. The other very important accessory for Sarah was her 'lucky pack'. (More spoilers,but really, you should have seen the movie by now.) Sarah's back pack saved her from dinosaur attacks,and a deadly fall. I searched through the stores. (Ebay not being then what it is now, and no Amazon.).I finally had to resort to an expensive G.I. Joe set with a back pack and a folding shovel,amongst other things. 

It was ok, because when Fuzz got older he ended up with the folding shovel as one of Fuzzy the Doll's Christmas presents. To finish up Sarah's 'accessories', I added a rubber baby T-Rex figure  with a bandage on it's leg. Then I decided to package the whole lot up in a mocked up Sarah doll box,so he would feel like he was really opening a manufactured present. I used some kind of big, heavy frozen food box that opened like a book,painted black,and decorated with Lost World logos on the front and spine of the box,and photos from the movie,from a Lost World book I bought at Dollar Tree. (Fuzz got an uncut up copy of the book too.) Inside there was a blurb about the character of Sarah Harding,also from the book.

This was the picture used in the inside of the lid,along with a paragraph from the book, telling who Sarah Harding was.

    Fuzz was typically low key when he opened the box. I said,"Do you know what it is?" He just said,"Sarah." I showed him the backpack and said,"Do you know what this is?" "Her lucky pack." Then I asked him about the dinosaur. "The baby." He recognized everything matter of factly. Why shouldn't it be Sarah? And of course she would have her lucky pack,and even the baby T-Rex.
  My attempts at a log weren't as successful. I got a piece of PVC pipe and cut it down to Sarah size. I collected real bark from a dead tree,but it had bugs so I got rid of it. After that I didn't know what to do. These days I would have coloured some hot glue and covered the pipe with it,texturing it like bark,even sticking in some fake moss and stuff to make it look more like bark. So he didn't get the log, and I still feel bad about it. 

  And that's today's doll and a story you probably didn't want. But there you go. See you again tomorrow for another doll.