How to Dye a My Little Pony

A confined space known as my kitchen, where the sorcery begins. Here using the latest and greatest in hyper technology toy supplies, we change the colors of ponies. This is not for the faint of heart but for the fearless and those who can handle a little cleaning, cause ya know hyper technology is messy.

So is RIT dye and RIT dye is what brings you here. That's right - better living and customizing through chemicals and fire. I shall share this alchemy with you, but it will not be easy, in fact it can be dang tedious. Well if your semi OCD like me.

Are you ready young customizer?

• Shop smart...shop S-Mart
• Fishing Bait
• Cleanliness is next to...
• RIT Dye and You
• Clatto Verata N... Necktie
• Something's wrong, something's a miss!
• Name's Ash...Housewares
• Groovy!
• Links!

Well unless you have all this stuff laying around (some of it you might), you will need to do a little shopping. Besides, shopping is fun and easy to do and well...at least this is cheap and better for you than that nice gourmet candy bar....oooOOOooo gourmet candy.

*blank stare*

Sorry about that, started daydreaming on you. Here's the list and for a limited time only it's in no particular order!

• Pony
• Acetone
• Dawn Dish Soap
• RIT dye (I use the powder stuff)
• Water
• Pans
• Vinegar
• Salt
• Courage
• X-Acto Knife
• Cotton Balls, Q-tips and paper toweling
• Clean towel (preferably white)
• Stove
• More courage
• Scissors
• Apoxie Sculpt or Clay(Optional really but if you want to be cool like me...you need it)
• Soft Scrub
• Measuring Spoons
• Pliers
• Pasta Laddle
• Bar Keeper's Friend
• Glass Bowl
• Wisk

Okay so now let's start with some bait basics. A pony bait is a My Little Pony that is cheap and in good or great shape. Minty fresh works really well, however depending on the final design and stuff a few blemishes isn't a bad thing. However I do avoid chew marks, melted parts, rust and things that really destroy the body. I also prefer G3 body types, though any generation is good if that's your preference. For the sake of not arguing with the teacher use a G3 and spare the poor G1 ponies.

For the best deals, really use things like rummage sales, Goodwill, Craig's List and of course eBay!

That divine power person, entity or other politically correct term that does not glorify any one religion. So now we enter the world of my OCDism. (it's my phrase so no telling me I need a spell check ^_^)

Here's what you need for this step:

1. Acetone
2. Cotton Balls
3. Sink filled with warm water and Dawn Dish Soap (as my father in law taught me, Dawn is great for removing oil from your hands and it also works nicely on removing your natural hand oils form the pony)
4. Soft Scrub (use to scrub your sink and pans out first and then for use on the pony)
5. Boiling water on stove (in a pot, no less) and make sure it's enough to cover the pony
6. X-Actor Knife
7. Clean white or lint free towel
8. Ladle
9. Clean washcloth

The Process:

• Cut and Remove
  • Cut that hair, that's right twist it up and cut as close to the hair line as possible.
  • Using some acetone on a cotton ball wipe away the symbol and if necessary the little cute heart on the leg or other markings. 

• Sink Time!
  • Dump the ponies in the sink and give them a quick scrub and rinse.
  • A little soft scrub on a washcloth does wonders for tough dirt and stuff. However does not work on ink, that's a whole other beast. Rinse the pony again
  • Back into the Dawn Dish Soap sink, scrub and rinse.
• Boiling Ponies (with extra little things to be aware of as boiling ponies is well tricky stuff)
  • Add pony into pot and use ladle to hold them down. Also, use the ladle to scoop the pony out as this helps defend against warping.
  • Every two minutes or so, remove pony and put into towel and try to pull the head off.
    • CAUTION #1: Hair dye can run off and into the water, thus leaving a streak on your pony, remove pony immediately and rewash with soap and acetone to remove. You don't want that dye setting in.
    • CAUTION #2: Pony is hot; if necessary wait a little bit till you can handle it, I go for max hotness, thus the towel.
    • NOTE: Some pony heads are just stubborn, so try this a few times, if no success a little puncture with the x-acto knife may be just enough to start the ripping, otherwise just cut the dang thing off. Reminder: Cut away from your body as those things are just dang sharp!
  • Put pony head back into the water and remove body. This is a good time to squeeze the hoof to see if the magnet will pop out. You may need to resort to cutting and pulling it out with pliers. Or if you are not removing the magnet, well just skip this and leave the body out of the pot once the head is gone!
• Baldy!
  • The tail just kind of comes out, so you can shake it out or use your pliers to pull it out. No real challenge here.
  
  • Now here's the challenge part, the head hair!
    • Using a hot pony head insert pliers, grab a hold of glued hair and pull. Usually this just kind of pops out, nice and easy for me.
      • EXTRA FUN NOTE: In case of really evil glue amounts, set pony head on counter edge and squish it to hear fabulous crunchy noises. It just helps break up the glue and you should be able to pull it out now.
      • DESPERATE HAIR REMOVAL: Soak head in acetone and wait for glue to dissolve...personally I avoid this like the bubonic plague.
  • Put your pony back in pot for about 30 seconds: this helps pop it back into shape (squeezing warps hot ponies). Use ladle to remove and dump into sink water for cool down, little scrub and rinse. Remember no squeezing!
• Acetone Part Two
  • Using a new cotton ball and fresh acetone wipe the pony down again. Make sure to cover her completely. Also, you do not need to remove the eyes; however, now is a good time to do that.
    • OH GOOD GRAVY WHY?: Well, loosened glue can form on the body, you may of missed a few paint or glitter specs and other things that can really ruin a good dye job. So acetone away to help remove these problems and because inhaling it makes me warm and fuzzy! (I'm joking here, please no emails about inhalants)
• Back to the Sink!
  • Oh - just guess this step. Make sure you only remove the ponies by placing your finger in the holes. Honestly I do this cause of hand oils and yes, they can interfere. 
• Let air dry and scream "Finished!"
• I warned you about the OCD thingy. Though you can't argue the results. ^_^

1. Dying ponies is messy, that's right you will need to scrub your kitchen. I'll even cover the clean up phases!
2. Use either old pans or solid stainless steel. I caution against flaking Teflon pans as the Teflon coating can flake into the dye and cause streaking. But hey, if that's all you got, just scrub real good with an SOS pad first. As for stainless steel, it's a non-reactive surface that you can completely clean with a light acid.
3. You don't need to use a whole box of dye to get good color results. You want to shoot for at most a tablespoon in 2.5 - 3 quarts of water (somewhere around there). Extra time in water will continue deepening the pony color. Keep that in mind!
4. Pony base color does affect the final dye color and sometimes you want that.
   1. Use cool colors with cool colors. For example a very light purple to go to blue.
   2. Warm colors go with warm, such as a nice yellow base does a very pretty retro hard core orange.
   3. Try to use paler ponies for this, as vibrant colors are more difficult to dye to a good result, unless you are going to a really, really dark color or need the undertone for something.
   4. White ponies require more supervision during the process as they can easily mess up your color result.
   5. Experimentation is required: I once used a pink pony in a red-orange dye mix and the result was very striking. Then again it was part of an analogous tone. (Analogous colors are a palette of compatible color combinations that blend well together. They are neighbors on the color wheel.)
5. Use the RIT dye website to find custom color blendshttp://www.ritdye.com/Create_Custom_Color.9.lasso, I used a basic Orange for this. Make sure you pay attention to the ratios, if it's a 2:1 ration, when you scale the amount down, keep that ratio in mind. You will use significantly less dye than they require, so the ratio is IMPORTANT!

So now it begins and here's your list of things:

• Sink filled with fresh warm water and Dawn Dish Soap
• Glass bowl with cool water and a splash of vinegar
• Ladle
• Pans, yes two of them, both with enough boiling water to submerge the pony and a little extra for vaporization.
• Dye!
• Salt
• Measuring spoons
• Another glass bowl or in this case a measuring cup (I specify glass because of the fact it's a clean surface that dye will not seep into)
• Wisk
• Spoons

1. Add dye and salt to water in smaller pan or just one pan if you have the same size stuff. Add in just a little salt, wait for water to boil and whisk for about 30 seconds. You sooo need the powder to completely dissolve.


2. Add in ponies and yes you need to do the head and body at the same time. Make sure both are under the dye water fully.


3. Wait about 30 seconds and remove, check for errors. In case of errors see the "Something's wrong, Something's a miss!" section


4. Add pony back to pan and watch the coloring, taking it out about every 30 seconds to 2 minutes to check color. Put the pony in the clean boiling pan to diffuse the color and help keep pushing that dye in, again remove after about 30 seconds.
   
   
   
   1. NOTE: This may just be a me thing, but I strive to make sure I boil dye my ponies for a few minutes to really lock in the color as the boiling water help open the porous nature of the vinyl.
   
   
   2. NOTE: Continue to watch for dying problems, sometimes they just show up after initial check.
   
   
   
   


5. I also wash the pony in the sink to help remove extra color(for truer results) and any residue you may encounter with your pans, before putting back into the dye pan. This is where that glass measuring cup comes in as you want to use that to move the pony, so you don't spill dye all over the floor.


6. When you get close to the color you want, boil the pony in the diffused dye pan, this will allow you more dying time and a slower progression. Again this meticulous nature is that whole OCD thingy.


7. When color result is achieved; quickly wash and rinse it in the sink water and submerge into the vinegar solution, using the spoon to weight it down. Leave there for 5 minutes or as long as it takes to clean up that dang mess.


8. Soak the pony in fresh warm sink water with soap to remove the smell.


9. Let air dry.

So during this I wound up with a problem and lucky for you I did, so now we can study the art of problem fixing.

A common problem and sometimes hard to spot is extra glue around the neck. Due to this nefarious glue thing, it can leave white spots where the dye cannot get to. So now here's the fix.

1. Using a cotton ball soak it in acetone and apply to glue area.
2. Let sit for 5 minutes or so!
3. Realize that yes acetone will streak and eat at the dye...it's okay, it shall be fixed.
4. Wipe away the dissolved glue.
5. Using a fresh acetone soaked ball, give a quick wipe down of the pony, this way it evens out a little.
6. Wash and rinse in the dish soap. Acetone residue can ruin future dying attempts.
7. Dunk back in dye pan and wait 30 seconds, inspect pony.
8. Continue with dying plan or otherwise repeat process until glue is removed and you can achieve an even dye job.

Next problem: Streaky/marbled dye. This can be caused by faults in the pony, oils(from hands), un dissolved dye powder or residual acetone. 

1. Faults in the pony: no fix, resort to painting...sorry that's the best solution I have!
2. Oils: soak in more concentrated Dawn Dish Soap bath and rinse the heck out of it...usually works nicely.
3. Whisk the heck out of the pan till a frothy foam appears.
4. Acetone: Same fix as oils.

Other problem: Head and body don't match. This one is a pain, which is why you need to hold both head and body under the water completely and remove within like 2 seconds of each other. To fix, slowly dye the lighter part in the diffused pan until it matches the darker part. Trust me trying to go in the reverse direction with acetone, only hurts. It's really a bad idea!

So now a few problems have been fixed. The hard one to handle is having to paint over it, usually this means a full body repaint and that is a whole other tutorial.

Okay so pony is done! YAY! She is safe and drying out in the air, but be careful with her near windows for a while. Let the color sit first before sun exposure. So now before we have a mojito we need to clean and cleaning is easy.

1. Drain sink water and pour dye water from pans into sink.
2. Since I use stainless steel, I break out the Bar Keeper's Friend(yes it actually has a light acid in the mix). I make a paste out of it and rub it on the inside of my pans, let them sit.
3. Using the Soft Scrub I make a little paste of it in my sink and on my stove. Again let this sit for a bit.
4. While stuff is sitting take the time to really check the area for additional dye splatter, including, refrigerator, floor, counter tops and so on. Just apply Soft Scrub paste and let sit.
5. About 3 minutes or so later, with a wet rag, wipe down the sink, counter tops, stove and etc. As for your utensils, a quick wipe with Soft Scrub and place in the dishwasher will work just fine.
6. Using a scrubbing pad, like the other side of my sponge here, scrub and rinse out the pans. They come out beautifully and the Bar Keeper's Friend really eats that dye away, not one dang trace of it anywhere.

Only take about 7 minutes or so to clean up after all that work. So yeah, now you got your ponies dyed and your kitchen clean.

Okay that's our show, ladies and gents. At our conclusion we have one clean kitchen and one or two dyed ponies. So now here's the after thoughts.

I like the process of dying ponies and usually with my son we make it a day process, where we do several ponies and mix some really wild colors. After all if you are going to clean one pony like this, while you got the set up, might as well clean a bunch at the same time. Use what you want and store the rest, I prefer nice and dry sandwich bags to protect them.

Before painting or customizing please allow dyed ponies to sit for at least a month (ideally more like three or more). This helps prevent any dye bleed and for added measure paint a layer of white, where your design goes and seal it in with Mod Podge, let sit for a night. If it's still white in the morning, then paint away and if not, return pony to shelf and keep waiting. As you can guess if you need a pony to customize immediately for a project, this isn't the quickest way to go; unless you want to risk the dye bleeding into pony hair to painting.

Hope you enjoyed this tutorial and link list to follow.

-Jenny
creampuf customs

RIT Dye: http://www.ritdye.com You can order directly and also get other dying tips and custom color blends.

eBay: http://www.ebay.com Ponies  and sometimes bulk RIT dye and other things like old pans.

Craig's List: http://www.craigslist.org for ponies and stuff.

MLP Arena: http://www.mlparena.com  You can find me here and tap into a whole fabulous group of pony lovers and customizers who know more than me.

creampuf: http://www.creampuf.com My website, heck yeah I need to promote me...a lot.

THE BIG TUTORIAL: http://www.squidoo.com/custommlp  My masterpiece work, from start to finish, one pony.

My Little Pony Custom Supplies: http://www.squidoo.com/custom-my-little-pony-supplies  Other neat things for ponies and the ponies themselves.

Selling Custom My Little Ponies: http://www.squidoo.com/selling-custom-my-little-pony  A few thoughts on markets, pricing and advertising.