Recently, I’ve been getting lots of My Little Ponies from Goodwill auctions. They’re not some magical, untapped goldmine of cheap ponies, but they are (at least for now) free from the outrageous starting and But It Now prices I see on eBay.
I’ve gotten quite a few ponies in terrible shape, and a good handful in excellent condition – underneath the dirt. They’re always SO dirty that it’s usually hard to assess their condition until I get my hands on them. Here is such a pony, Posey, in her original state:
You can see on the first photo that the first few plugs of her hair were cut, but the rest were intact. These cut ones needed to be replaced. First, I trimmed them as short as I could using scissors, and then used a reroot tool to poke them back down inside the head. Then I used my long needle nose pliers to grab the small pieces of hair and pull them out of the head.
After I washed her with Dawn dish soap and used a Magic Eraser to remove the stubborn marks on her body, she was ready to be repinked! I used “Petal Pink” Rit liquid dye, and use 1/4 teaspoon to 1.5 cups of boiling water. For the tail and most of the mane, I just do a quick dunk with the hair already wet and combed through to make sure it gets applied evenly. Then I quickly rinse with cold water. For the hair closer to the body, I paint on the dye with a paint brush. The hair picks up the dye immediately, but the body would have to have a few seconds of contact to change color, so I make sure to quickly rinse or wipe away any dye that touches the vinyl body.
This will never *exactly* match the original hair color, which is just a bit warmer. I might experiment with blending Petal Pink with an orange shade, but I haven’t yet. It’s still pretty close. 🙂
Next, I just had to reroot the plugs on her mane that I had removed. I used Dollyhair‘s “Pussycat” color, which is supposed to be the actual pink hair originally used by Hasbro. I assume this means it also fades easily, so be careful! This was my first time trying to match repinked hair with the original “fading” pink, but I think it turned out pretty close! Next, I just had to style her hair and touch up her symbols. I’m not the best painter, but I’m getting better. Here’s the end result:
