Zombie Elf

No, I haven't been working on a new custom.  In fact, I haven't been doing much of anything for the past week as I've got the evil cold that's going around town.  So I've been the walking dead, instead.  Not even feeling like customizing.

So here is an old restoration to check out in the meantime.  I haven't posted much on restorations yet, but I do do them occassionally.  Actually I have several ponies in my collection that need only minor work to get them looking fantastic again.  Here is one that I actually did something with.

Poor Trickles here was bought from a garage sale held by a daycare.  This was in about the year 2003, so she'd been through a few generations of little kids and she sure looks the part.  Anyone could be forgiven for considering this pony bait.  But the first step to baiting a pony is cleaning (not to mention that I didn't much want to handle her until she'd had a good cleanup!)

Well, I did clean her up, and it turned out she actually wasn't in that bad a shape after all.  None of the dirt and marks on her body actually stained, her symbols and eyes weren't bad, and even her mane was in good shape after it was washed.  Her worst flaw as a terribly frizzy tail.  Now this was before the days when replacement hair was cheap and plentiful, so I braded her hair to hide the frizz (and her mane to match.)  Nowadays I'd have made her a replacement tail and popped that into place - problem solved.  Someday, I might get around to doing that now.

To clean her I started with bleaching.  I don't normally take this step, but in this case it seemed warrented.  I then gave her a good scrub with a toothbrush and dish soap.  That pretty much took care of the dirt (a lot of it was crayon, so the wax just needed to be scrubbed away.  Her hair was washed and conditioned, and although her mane was in great shape her tail was too frizzy to be saved (perhaps a straightening iron could've helped but we weren't trying that back in the day.)  And that was all she needed.  Overall it wasn't a very stressful restoration.

Elf