Basaak and her indestructible eye chips...

After a long and boring day catching up on assignments, I decided that some me time was in order and spent a few hours this afternoon fussing about with Frankie and trying to track down some customising tools on the internet. As well as the sanding sponges and such, I need to order her some eye chips and as info on the subject is sketchy, I decided to pull out Frankies chips so that I could compare them to a Blythe's. And that is pretty much where I'm still at.

Well, her head might practically fall apart in your hands, but her eye chips will outlast the apocalypse. They are NOT coming out without a fight...and possibly not at all. I initially didn't want to pull her mech out as I was afraid that it might be flimsy and easily broken, but after attempting the glue-stick method of chip removal with her mech still in over and over and over, I decided that perhaps a good soak in hot soapy water might be just what the doctor ordered. The mech came out with a bit of prying with a masking tape wrapped screwdriver between the mech and the faceplate (with more force required than I imagined would have been necessary) and I managed not to damage her eyelids (yay!). But I think I may have misinterpreted the instructions for unclipping the arc and it looks as though I have done it on the opposite end to the way it's demonstrated on Puchi Collective. Hope that it all goes back together ok!!

So now her eyeballs are floating about in some warm soapy water, hopefully to be nicely loosened so that I can get the damned things out. I sincerely hope that this glue is water soluable - there is no way that those babies were coming out with the gluestick method alone. I spent some time researching to see if anyone else had documented their experiences customising these clones and while there were lots of pics of completed dolls on Flickr and a couple of in progress ones, there really wasn't much practical information...such as if the glue used is nice and water soluable or horrible and super-glue-like and what kind of eyechips other than the flat ones will fit her. Hopefully by the time I'm finished with Frankie, I will have compiled a nice little bank of knowledge that might help someone else out. It's so frustrating that this info isn't out there! For the record, her eyelashes came out with very little trouble. I didn't bother taping them out of the way when I was trying the gluestick method of chip changing and I ripped out half of one set that way. The rest came out easily after a brief soak in warm water.

I have a really busy day tomorrow so I might not get back to her before Thursday. Hopefully the chips will just fall right out (haha - right!). BTW - isn't the photo I took wierd? It looks like she has a light in her head!