#pretty pumpkin

[ponyaday]

10/2/22 - Pretty Pumpkin (custom by @ponyguru)

[ponyguru]

Behold! The lovely Pretty Pumpkin Masterpost - for real this time!

I always like to do a post-custom discussion, because I figure that people enjoy seeing my process, and I of course love talking about my ponies!

Pretty Pumpkin was a pony design I came up with, a bit on the spur of the moment, for the coloring contest in 2020. (The lineart is by Shaiyeh on the MLPArena!) The pony was shown with pumpkins flying around her, and so I added those to her symbol! She won first place in her division, and I fell in love with her design. Purple is my favorite color after all!

This year, as usual, I left things a bit to the last minute, but I knew at the start of October that I wanted to make a Halloween pony! So I made my first foray into dip-dying nylon hair. I didn’t set up my boil pot of dye like I do for ponies, because I’ve heard that you can dye hair much more easily than pony plastic. But after my first black dye came out brown, I decided it needed to be hotter, so I boiled some water in the microwave, which did the trick. It’s not perfect (you can see her hair is a bit brown IRL), but I’m still very proud of it! I got 99% of the colors I wanted, and for a first try, that’s not bad!

(More custom rambling under the cut!)

Her mane was from my stash of old DH hair (who I don’t recommend to anyone anymore) in two shades of yellow; I used two full hanks and a half hank of Lemonade and Golden Delicious, and only had around a quarter hank left over! G3s take a lot of hair! (Especially if you love to give them long, flowing locks like me!) I widened her tail hole a bit, too, since it seemed pretty paltry.

I used some new paints for this, specifically the orange pumpkin and the black liner, and it made a huge difference. These are miniature paints from my local gaming store, and they gave immediate coverage without having to do ten million layers - hence, my tiny lines are much neater. They were only around $5 a bottle, and I highly recommend them!!

I can’t remember exactly where Pretty Pumpkin’s base came from - I found her in my big box of G3 baits, already stripped and dehaired, ready to go! I’m only disappointed that I forgot to get a pic of my dyed hair before I rerooted her!! Or even post-reroot pre-paint? Good job, me! I did find a few in-progress paint pics, so I included those! I try to remember to take in-progress shots, but I so often forget, or get wrapped up in the painting.

I had a bit of an adventure with the paint - it said it would dry in 2 hours, and 48 hours later it still hadn’t set!! So I had to set her up with a hair dryer for about an hour, and that did the trick! But that was a fun little panic-inducing snag, right before Halloween!

She was painted in one night, in a 11pm-3am mad dash, so I could finish her in time for Halloween! She still needs to get sealed, so I’ll share some pics once she’s truly, truly finished!

[ponyguru]

It only took one 3am painting session, but she’s done! Happy Halloween everyone! Pretty Pumpkin is here to help you celebrate! Her favorite holiday tradition is carving pumpkins of course, but she also delights in growing multicolored varieties to decorate with year-round! #mylittlepony #mlp #mylittleponyg3 #mlpg3 #g3mlp #halloween #happyhalloween #purple #jackolantern #mylittleponycustom #mlpcustom #ponygurucustom #ombrehair #mylittleponycollector https://www.instagram.com/p/CVtsFvYpu4n/?utm_medium=tumblr

[vozchik]

[rosie-art]

I had a lot of fun pumpkin carving yesterday, although it took ages and now I have a numb thumb! 

I had to use a drill to create the holes and then I used a craft knife to remove only the top layer of the skin for the petals and stems.