I've recently finished my collection of Summer Wing and Windy Ponies, however when Glow arrived her hair was a bit more bleached than I was hoping and the Little Flitter I purchased in a larger lot, is there an way I can fix them or should I look for ones with better hair?
I don't want to rehair them as they still have a fair amount of their factory curl and I know that pink rit dye was recommended for restoring fading pink hair, but I have a few questions about it.
Is it possible to use it without ruining the Pony's factory curl? Is there a possibility of it dyeing the plastic around the hair roots and if so how can I prevent it? Their hair isn't completely bleached, /glow for example is about 50% bleached, would I still be alright dyeing their hair or would it end up too dark? How should I go about dyeing their hair to make sure the look the best that they can?
Also I saw that they have both powder and liquid dye, which should I use?
Thank You
As others said the issue with hair like Glow and Little Flitter is that the pussycat color in its mint form is much more of a neon shade so it can be difficult if the pony faded unevenly.
However, I have had very good luck with matching it with the liquid Rit Petal Pink, though it sounds like it may not be available to you. Liquid dye I prefer in spades because you can easily adjust the shade when mixing it up.
I'll show some pictures of my Squeezer who's tail was near the original color but the mane was almost white to show you my process.
Here she is before I re-pinked her mane.
First you want to make sure your pony has been shampooed and dried previously to make sure there aren't any dirt or other residue that will interfere with the dye. As long as you are gentle when you wash the hair the factory curl can be preserved fairly well.
I wrap the ponies up in a lot of plastic wrap to insure that I don't get any dye on them by mistake because it can discolor the bodies. I also put down extra under the hair so that I can protect the work area and for easy clean up. For the tail or mane area I use scotch tape to secure the plastic, as well as get closer up to the plugs.
Then I mix up a bowl or pot of very hot water with liquid dye and a little bit of vinegar. I don't have a set ratio of dye/water/vinegar. You will need to make the solution darker than the shade you are going for though. I use vinegar because the nylon hair takes acid dye better than other dyes. Acid dye requires an acid like vinegar to use it. (However, most acid dyes aren't useful for painting on the dye like I would do with hair that is still attached to a pony.) But, most dyes you find in supermarkets are combinations of different types of dyes. So you will get a better color with the vinegar, instead of basically staining the pony hair.
I then use a small cheap sponge brush that you can find at craft and hardware store to paint the dye onto the hair, being extra careful around the area where the hair meets the body. I do this until the color is at least a shade darker then what I want the end result to be. And I let the pony set for 30 minutes to an hour. Then I wash out the hair to remove extra residue. This will make the hair lighter. You may have to repeat the process. But it is better to have it come out lighter than what you want than the other way around.
Squeezer required two rounds. The first round her hair came out about what the dye bottle color is.
But upon repetition:
Now Squeezer is part of my personal collection. If I were to sell a pony I would not re-pink the hair because it depends completely on the collector how they might like to restore a pony, or not.
