Barbie Display Cabinet

After making a new display cabinet, I decided to use the old one to put the Barbie dolls in that I collected over the years.
At first I bought Barbie dolls with the intention to put the heads on CG bodies, so I picked the ones with the most lovely faces.
However over the past couple of years Mattel released so many beautiful new heads that I ended up buying more Barbies than I have CG bodies.
As most Barbie dolls can not stand unsupported, I fitted magnetic supports along the sides and back of the cabinet.

Most of my Barbie dolls do not have a separate web page, if there is one it is linked to the name.
As I was particularly interested in the heads, I gathered info on what head was fitted to each doll and listed the info here, including the head sculpt code. More info on Barbie head sculpt codes can be found on a separate page.
Here is a who-is-who of the Barbie dolls on the picture:

Magnetic Supports

Most Barbie dolls can not stand upright without some support. On top of that Mattel recently changed the material for the shoes to soft vinyl, which causes any high heels to buckle.
There is not enough room in the cabinet to put all of the dolls I wanted to display on regular doll stands, so I was looking for other types of supports.

making the supports

I had some easily bendable aluminium craft wire and some small strong round magnets.
The magnets were 12mm in diameter, an old whiteboard marker happened to have a tubular body with an inner diameter of 13mm, so I cut the body of the marker into slices (each 7mm tall).
The craft wire was 1.5mm in diameter so I drilled a pair of oversized holes (1.8mm) across the upper half of the tube slices at a height that would keep the wire clear of the magnet (in this case at 4.5mm as the magnets were 2.5mm tall).
After sanding the edges of the tube slices smooth, I glued a magnet inside each tube slice using small dabs of rubber cement.
Finally I stuck a piece of clear self-adhesive packaging tape to the base of each tube slice and trimmed it to size, the tape adds a bit of friction and makes sure that moving the support does not leave scratches.

The picture on the left shows a freshly made support, waiting for the glue to cure before trimming the clear tape.

For brackets I cut some lengths of wire and sanded the ends into a rounded shape. I experimented with different lengths of wire, for a regular body a length of about 80mm allows the ends of the wire to be just wrapped around the sides of the waist, for a curvy body about 90mm will do.
I also used some longer lengths (about 100mm) to allow a doll to stand a bit further away from the wall or at an angle to the wall.
The wire can easily be bent around the waist of the doll, to take the doll out of the cabinet either bend the wire back or snap the support off of the strip in the cabinet.

fitting the supports

To fit the supports to the insides of the cabinet I used metal strip meant for holding magnets (Fix-o-Moll metal strip with self-adhesive backing, article #3562849).
This strip comes painted white and is sold in a length of 1m.
I cut the strip to length, carefully rounded the corners and smoothed any sharp edges and stuck it to the rear and sides of the cabinet.
To determine the proper height for the strip I measured the height of the waists of the different types of Barbie bodies I wanted to display.

The metal strip is 35mm tall, so I fitted it at 162mm above the cabinets 'ground level'.

The picture shows the metal strips on the back and side of the cabinet, a regular bodied Barbie held by a support (the edges of the wire are barely visible), an unused support with wire fitted to the back and some supports yet without wire fitted to the side.

other uses for the supports

The supports are also useful when posing Barbies for taking pictures: I usually use a sheet of cardboard for a background, so with a support on the front of the cardboard and a spare magnet on the back, the support can help a Barbie with holding the desired pose.