Remove any symbol or hair the pony once had and please clean your pony. The dye will stay better if it's cleaned off first. If you don't it will show through the dye. Dye your pony the desired color, follow instructions on the rit dye packedge. Let her dry and you can start working on painting her.

Removing symbol- acetone or nailpolish remover is perfect for removing symbols!

Painting the symbol on

     Painting is the hard part. Some people prefere to draw it, they sell those gel rollers in tons of shades. I recomend drawing a symbol on in pencil first. The small symbols are very hard to do! You might want to make a stencil, I tried using one, but the shape just didn't turn out right. On TAFs painting is very hard but if you are doing a bigger symbol, painting might not be a bad idea. But I really recommend gel rollers if you can't hold your hand steady or you are doing a TAF symbol.

New hair (and hair in general)

Removing hair- take the head off and use tweezers to pull out the plugs, if the head won't give in try using a small knife to cut off the glue, try not to puncture your pony! Or cut yourself, cut AWAY from yourself, I gave myself a bad cut on my hand when the knife slipped. Remove tail if nesscary,you'll probably need tweezers to pull out the washer and tail. If the tail is good remove it and reuse it.

Possible Mildew- if you don't know what mildew is, you'll know when you take a pony's head off. If the insides are all black, you have a mildew problem. You can usually tell from the outside because the pony is faded from the mildew, or there is tail rust. I take nailpolish remover, put it on a Q-tip, and try getting out all that I can. When you think most of it is out, remove the tail (the washer is probably all rusted, so throw it out) and put a bathroom cleaner inside the pony. Let it sit a few days or so and it will kill any mildew that remains. But if there is no mildew, well then that's good because it's a gross job having to remove it all.

     Craft hair is a good thing to use when you need new hair. Most of the time it is curly...so that will take an extra step in making the hair the way you want it. Cut out desired length and straighten it with a cool iron. Put it between 2 pieces of fabric when ironing. If you want to dye the hair another color use rit dye. If you don't want to use craft hair use a pony with good hair, but try not to take it from a pony with a good body.

Getting the hair in the plug can be annoying but you can fold it in half and stuff it in and put glue on it. Or just have it as one long piece of hair not folded, put some glue on it, and stuff it in the plug. I've never replaced hair, but it seems hard. My friend suggests getting a curved needle and just threading it through, if you don't have a curved needle...just bend one to the right shape. I am not an expert on doing the hair. But with going on the newsgroup I did copy some text down. on the first method I didn't catch the e-mail address or nickname (SORRY!)

"What I found even works better than a needle, is the floss threads that are made for people with braces... you can find them in most drug store, or just ask your dentist, they are blue needle-looking things, only they are made out of plastic, so they are more flexible, and they are thinner than needles, so you can fit more hair through the plug. If you want you can even rip it in half so that you use it like a needle on the way in, then you just slip it out from inside the ponies head, leave it loose while you do the next plug, feed the next plug through the loop of the last (inside the head), and you weave the plugs together so that you only have to tie a knot or glue in the very last plug, and they will never come loose. Hope you all get the picture... I agree that this is a very hard thing to explain, and probably everyone will have a slightly different method that works for them."

Method by:msawyer+@andrew.cmu.edu

" I made a custom out of a baby Bouncy, and took the time to thread black hair through every hole! If you string them just right, and tightly, you don't need any glue. Just string about 5-8 strands of hair through a needle (pull the hair through the needle so you really have about 10-16 strands), tie a knot at the end. Push the needle through the head (starting from the inside first to hide the knot), then, keeping double the length you need outside the head, push the needle back through the closest hole. Repeat this until you run out of thread, (needle should be on outside of head on your last stroke). Remember those strands you left double long? Go back and cut them in half, right at the center, and you have two perfect strands coming out of two holes at each cut. I only recommend this when you can use doll replacement hair where you can have a long piece to start with. Too bad this can be difficult to explain! Someone shoud offer a "custom pony 101" night course. "

Mimicing already made ponies