How To Clean American Girl Doll Face

How to get stains off your American Girl doll's skin

My newest patient, Mia, is here today to help me show you how to remove stains like these from your doll's skin. My mom bought her on shopgoodwill.com and then had her sent to me to get fixed up, as poor Mia was in terrible condition: her eyes had been painted on, her hair was cut and messy, and all around her eye sockets were these stubborn pen marks. As you can see in the second picture, she has been restored to her original beauty and ready to go home.

Many stains and marks will come off without much more than a wipe with a wet rag, but sometimes you need to use a little more drastic measures. I'll go over the easy and inexpensive method I used to restore Mia.

If your doll has stained skin, there are several ways you can try to remove it.

The first is baking soda paste. Put a little baking soda in a container with some water and mix it until it's a pasty consistency. Then smear it on the doll's skin, staying away from the eyes. Wipe it off with a wet wipe.

If that doesn't work, try applying rubbing alcohol to the stain, as this will remove some types of ink.

If that doesn't work either, then you'll need a few supplies:

A sunny day
Some free time. I highly recommend devoting an entire day to this project, if you can.
Plastic wrap
Acne treatment cream with a benzoyl peroxide content of 10%. Here's what I used, for about $3.50 from Walmart:

That's it! Let's get started.

You'll want to begin as early in the day as possible. You can do this over the stretch of several days, of course, but you'll have to bring your doll inside and wipe off the cream in between settings. I'll talk more about that soon.

First, undress your doll. Then locate the stain or stains you will be removing. Mia has a lot on her face but several on her legs.

Dab a bit of acne cream onto the stain(s).

Cover with some plastic wrap so that the wrap is pressed against the cream. This will prevent it from drying out.

Get your doll comfortable, and put it in direct sunlight so that the sunlight is directly on the stain.

I'm covering the rest of her that isn't being stain treated to prevent fading of her hair and skin in the sun.

Now you'll leave your doll in the sun for the rest of the day. At the end of the day, bring them in, wipe off the acne cream, and check the stain.

Here's Mia after a few hours. I didn't start until after 1pm in this case, and by then it was getting a little cloudy, so she's had not much exposure. It has faded a bit, though! The stains on her legs are completely gone but these seem to be a bit more stubborn.

If the stains aren't faded by the time the sun goes down, bring your doll inside and wipe off the cream so it doesn't discolor the doll's skin. Then when you're ready, the next day or even a few days later, repeat the same process until the stain is gone.

After her second treatment of a few hours.