One of the things I did yesterday was to clean a pair of vintage doll shoes, the vinyl or plastic Mary Jane types that fit Ginny-sized dolls. They were seriously the filthiest pair of doll shoes I have ever seen, but they were one of my Ginger doll's originals, so I wanted to try to salvage them.
They had a lot of play soil on them, as well as some kind of glue or varnish that had made shiny discolored spots:
I started out using a little of my favorite doll cleaner, but even that stuff — as good as it is — wouldn't cut through the glue or varnish that was on the shoes.
I happened to be soaking some doll clothes at the time, so I decided "Why not?" and threw the doll shoes in with a dress. They soaked overnight in Biz (I'll blog about my clothes washing method another time). When I rinsed them off the next day, I scratched the spots a little with a fingernail and found that I was to peel up the varnish or glue.
The shoes were still a little discolored, especially under where the varnish had been, so I used the doll cleaner on them again. I was surprised and delighted at how white they turned out!
It's definitely worth a little time and effort to clean vintage doll shoes!
