Hair Color Neutralizing and BtS
I bought Meena online so I risked the high probability of getting one with defects. Upon arrival she had staining on her face, damaged printing on her eyes and lips, as well as an indentation in her temple area:
I didn't want to repaint her, but the defects were bothering me too much and I decided to go ahead with a new face up.
Before repainting though, I realized that as much as I love orange her hair was way too intense for me. I don't remember how, but I had found a couple of videos by Darling's Dollhouse on how to neutralize doll hair color with fabric dye and used that for my Meena's hair.
Blue is the opposite of orange, but I went with an aqua blue instead to match the vibrancy of that bright orange (or at least that's what made sense in my brain). I used regular fabric dye and not the dye intended for synthetics (i.e., Rit Dye More/ iPoly Dye). I also used warm tap water and not boiling.
I started off with a very diluted solution and slowly added more dye until I got the effect I wanted. Some of the strands in her color blend turned greenish. To neutralize that, and give the hair a slightly different hue, I used red instead of orange dye to balance it all out.
At first I couldn't tell if it even did anything, but once I compared it to her skirt, which was very close to her original hair color, I realized it was enough of a change and left it at that. After washing and rinsing her hair of course.
Three years later, I finally got around to the face up. I remember I originally wanted to do some elaborate eye make up style, but I couldn't find the motivation to come up with anything beyond smoky and shimmery with gold. It's fine.
Relearning which brushes were best for thin hair lines and how to control them was a struggle. Another struggle was coloring her lips. I was torn between giving her lips texture and then not and then yes but only a little and then some color shift but wait maybe mica shimmer instead, but it all ended up in a big gloopy mess and I had to carefully scrape it all off with my craft blade. Eventually, I went with a simple flat color to better match the other Rainbow High dolls.
I hadn't quite finished her face up, but it was at a point where I felt it was best to stop and reinsert her eyes. I didn't want to pile on the layers of MSC and then have them all crack trying to get the eyes back in. I figured I could mask her eyes and lashes and keep working afterward.
Then I realized I had no idea where her eyes were. Looked around for hours but did eventually find them! And then I remembered that when I bought her, one of her eyelashes came off. Apparently, her eyes also came apart when I popped them out?
So I had to take the time to secure the printed iris decal with glue and giver her a new set of eyelashes.
Had to soak the lash line pieces in isopropyl alcohol to remove the old adhesive and then attached the new lashes with some regular ol' PVA glue.
Reinserting Rainbow High eyes is a pain and I have decided that I never ever want to do it again with a repainted face. Unless I cut a hole in the back and go the bjd face plate route, no. No thank you. I definitely did some damage to the eye makeup and some MSC cracking occurred. I masked her eyes and added another layer of MSC to minimize the ashy crackling.
Oh, and it happened again when I was straightening her hair with hot water. 🙃 She used up way more MSC than I ever intended.
Not pictured here, but I'm glad I painted her accessories with white and coppery red to balance the very orange scheme a bit more. On one hand, she's better than when she started out, but I'm also not over the moon with her. But after three years of nothing, I guess she didn't turn out too bad.
