June 22, 2003

Get dolled

By LAURA HENSLEY
Eagle Staff Writer

Midge needs her eyes done, Gene is in line for a hair transplant and Barbie is here to be turned into a mermaid.

Like any good plastic surgeon, Ella Trumpfeller’s steady hand and eye for detail guides her to nip and tuck, pin and paste until her clients are beautiful.

Over the years Trumpfeller has performed hundreds of nose jobs, lip implants, hair transplants and even a few tattoos. By the time she’s through, her clients have a new attitude and look complete with new hair, makeup and clothes — an ultimate makeover.

Her patients aren’t Hollywood stars or aging baby boomers. They’re dolls.

Under Trumpfeller’s knife, plastic dolls with brand names like Barbie, Gene and Kelly are transformed from factory-pressed clones to customized O.O.A.K. (That’s doll-customizer speak for “one of a kind.”) She uses the store-bought dolls as a template for designing her own unique fashion dolls that range from sequin-dripping mermaids, ballerinas and fairies to fur-covered cats and hunky drag queens.

Her doll-making hobby has evolved into a full-blown business. Trumpfeller says she has sold hundreds of her dolls over the Internet to eager fans and fellow customized doll enthusiasts. She also has been featured in several of the industry’s books and magazines. And yes, there is an industry.

“When I first got into this I had no idea there was an entire makeover community out there,” she said. “But there is, and it’s growing.”

Although her first passion is dance — she has been a dance teacher for 20 years and owns the Dance Centre School of Dance in College Station — dolls are her second love.

“I’ve always loved dolls and I’ve always loved pretty things,” Trumpfeller said. “This was just a natural step.”

An avid doll collector since childhood, she didn’t begin customizing her own dolls until 1998. It actually was a hobby borne of an accident.

The doll collector decided to trade a prized vintage Francie Doll she had kept in mint condition since childhood — Ella wasn’t much for cutting her dolls’ hair as a child. She carefully wrapped the Francie doll in some pretty pink tissue paper to be shipped. During the shipment the doll absorbed ink from the tissue paper, leaving the doll’ body and face streaked pink. When the doll was returned, Trumpfeller was determined to not allow her doll to remain ruined. Because the doll had a spot on her nose, she decided she would make a cute cat. Inspired by her favorite Broadway musical, Cats, she leaped into recreating her doll.

After a few trials, practicing the cat transformation on 12 inch comic hero dolls (X-men’s Storm and Rogue) she took a try with the Francie. Trumpfeller was able to sell each of the dolls online and a new hobby was born.

She quickly came into contact with a global community of doll customizers on the Internet and began swapping tips and secrets of the trade.

“I’ve learned a lot but really I made up a lot as I went,” Trumpfeller said.

Through imaginative experimentation, Trumpfeller developed her own techniques for customizing dolls. Her makeover techniques include a process called a boil perm — curling a doll’s synthetic hair by wrapping sections of hair in drinking straws and then dipping the doll’s head into boiling water. The result: Instant kinky curls. Trumpfeller repaints dolls’ faces, rubbing off the doll’s factory-printed face with a non-acetone nail polish remover. Other tricks include rooting eyelashes or whiskers and reforming limbs by dipping them in boiling water — a technique used in her trademark ballerina series which have pointed toes.

Trumpfeller never uses patterns for her doll’s clothing and prefers hand-stitching to using a sewing machine. Materials for her creations range from remnants of fabric, scarves, headbands and old shirts or jackets culled from yard sales.

“I’m always on the lookout for anything with a little froo-froo,” she said.

Most of the dolls Trumpfeller uses as a base are ordered or purchased at toy stores, but she also has rescued a few toy-box rejects from local yard sales.

Most of those bedraggled dolls have become one of Trumpfeller’s more popular (and most controversial) dolls in what she calls her “Texas Trailer Trash” series.

“I found one Barbie and some dog had chewed her hand off,” she said. “I couldn’t fix it so I just made a cast like she had a broken arm. Her hair was a little messed-up too, so I just made her a trailer trash doll. It went from there.”

In the series the dolls wear tight skirts, short shorts, heavy makeup, heart tattoos and most have cigarettes made from toothpicks dangling from their mouths. Some come with a diapered baby perched upon their hip or miniature tubs full of faux ice and beer.

“Some people get mad at me for them,” Trumpfeller said. “But I just say, ‘I’m from Texas, I can get away with it.’ You can do anything you want [when customizing dolls]. That’s why it’s so fun.”

Trumpfeller’s dolls sell for $35 to $350 depending on its detail and beadwork. Some take weeks to create, others only hours. The dolls that haven’t sold online yet or those that are just too dear to part with are on display at Trumpfeller’s dance studio. More than a hundred more collectible dolls are perched on shelves that line the walls of the studio.

“I just love dolls,” Trumpfeller said, but her surroundings say it all. Her studio’s store looks like a 10-year-old girl’s dreamland, packed full of fluffy pink tutus, shiny sequined jumpsuits, ballet shoes and dolls, dolls and more dolls.

Last spring she offered her first doll design class for children, spending four weeks helping five seven- to 12-year-old girls decorate their own dolls. “It really is an art,” she said. “You have to be creative to do this.”

Trumpfeller said the class was such a success she plans to offer more classes for children, and others for adults, this fall.

“I’m not married and I don’t have any kids,” she said — besides her poodles Alisha and Buff and a 10-year-old Chihuahua named Kiki. “I have all the freedom in the world and I can work on my own schedule. This really has become my release and I love it.”

• More of Trumpfeller’s dolls can be viewed at http://www.texasdolldesigns.com or at her studio at 2151 Harvey Mitchell Parkway in College Station.