OK, so you collect My Little Ponies, or maybe you don't, but you still have your childhood ponies. Unfortunately, those ponies are looking a little sad. Who on earth let you have access to scissors anyway? And why did you ever think it would be a good idea to write your name on her face instead of her hooves? Or maybe you got a great deal on eBay for a super-rare pony. Problem is you got a great price because her hair is hacked off or because she's got rust coming out of her.
This is where I come in...
I've been restoring my own childhood ponies, as well as fixing up ponies for other people. Now I am offering that service to everyone. If you are interested, have a look at the list of services below and feel free to contact me at velvetrose@rocketmail.com to see if I'm open for restorations.
Below is a list of general prices for different services I offer. Prices are negotiable depending on each individual case.
| Rehairing (both mane and tail) | $25.00 |
| Rehairing (mane only) | $20.00 |
| Rehairing (tail only) | $5.00 |
| Symbol repaint (normal) | $5.00 |
| Symbol repaint (TAF) | $10.00 |
| Symbol repaint (glittery) | $7.00 |
| Tail rust removal (includes thorough cleaning) | $5.00 |
| De-frizzing | $2.00 |
| Eye touch up | $2.00 |
| First Tooth touch up | $1.00 |
| Mark removal (ballpoint pen, crayon, paint, nailpolish) | $4.00 |
| Severe mark removal (sharpie, biro, highlighter) | $10.00 |
| Pearly paint retouch (for Pearly babies) | $3.00 |
| Curls restored (Candy Canes, Rainbow Curls) | $3.00 |
| So Soft deflocking | $25.00 |
| Re-pinking (not available on So Softs) | $6.00 |
| Re-tinsel (Princess Ponies) | $25.00 |
| Full eye repaint | $5.00 |
REHAIRING - Self explanatory. Rehairing is neccessary when a pony's mane and/or tail has been cut by overzealous little children with delusions of being a hair-dresser. (And let's ace it, didn't we all?) It may also be needed if a pony's frizz is just SO bad that no amount of conditioner or fabric softner will repair it. I rehair ponies using either authentic MLP hair harvested from the tails of other ponies, or high quality nylon hair which is the same stuff Hasbro uses. The advantage to the real MLP hair is that the color is almost always certain to match exactly and, of course, it's MLP hair. Unfortunately some colors are hard to come by (Crumpet gold, Butterscotch gold, Paradise red, Moondancer red, etc.) and it takes me at LEAST two pony tails to rehair an adult, one for a baby. The advantages of nylon hair is that most, if not all colors can be matched. It's also super shiny and soft and looks fabulous on display. Some people, however, do not like that the pony's hair is no longer "original" pony hair. Either way, if you plan on reselling your pony later, you MUST disclose that the pony has been rehaired to the prospective buyer. This is especially important when dealing with rare or nirvana ponies.
SYMBOL REPAINTS - These could be little touch ups for rubs or it could be a complete repaint. Most ponies had symbols on each hip. Some ponies, like the Twice As Fancy ponies, had them all over their bodies and one their faces too. And some ponies had metallic or glittery symbols that lose their glitter coatings pretty easily. I use high-quality, artist's-grade acrylics to paint symbols and I do NOT seal them since most sealants (even the matte ones) look shiny. The same applies to eye and tooth touch ups. For metallic symbols, I use those teeny pots of paint that are meant for painting shiny armor on battle miniatures, which are ungodly expensive. For glittery symbols, I use a thin coating of glitter sealant and very fine micorglitter, whch takes some skill to use without getting it everywhere.
TAIL RUST REMOVAL - OK, who *didn't* take their pony in the tub once in a while? Particularly those cute little seaponies! Well, most of us didn't know that the metal washer that holds our pony friend's tail in has a tendency to rust. It turns the inside of the pony a yucky, brown-black color that often spreads into the pony's tail. The result is having a pony that looks like she's got the runs... ew! I clean them by taking off their heads and scrubbing them inside and out to get rid of that yucky rust and mold. The tail (and sometimes the mane if it's really bad) get treated with RIT rust remover and most of the time, all of the stains come out. I will replace the old, rusty tail washer with a new stainless steel one. Now, don't take her into the tub anymore.
DEFRIZZING - Sometimes a pony's hair isn't quite so bed as to require rehairing and just needs a conditioning and de-frizzing. This is done by washing and conditioning the pony's mane and/or tail and then pulling a curling iron through it while the conditioner is still in. I find this methods works on about 80% of frizzy cases and I have yet to burn the hair on any of the ponies I've worked on. *crosses fingers*
MARK REMOVAL - Crayon, ballpoint pen, dirt that you just can't get with soap and water. I use acetone or Goof Off to remove minor marks from the ponies' bodies. And I am very comfortable with removing marks from pony's symbols. I use cotton swabs or sometimes even toothpicks to remove all marks, or at the very least diminish them so they are not so noticeable on display.
SEVERE MARK REMOVAL - Biro/Sharpie marks and highlighter marks are HARD to remove! Even I may not be able to get them out entirely. But with some Remove-Zit and some sunlight (while carefully keeping the non-marked parts of the pony out of harm's way) we might be able to get rid of those marks!
PEARLY PAINT - Those pearly babies are so cute... but nicks and rubs to their pearly finish make them look like leper victims, don't they? I have a pearly paint that is VERY close to the coating that was used on the pearly babies and can touch up those rubs to look brand new!
CURLS - Some ponies were meant to have sleek ringlets of hair; namely that Rainbow Curls ponies and the Candy Cane ponies. Some people just like curls on ALL ponies! I use the boil method, which does use heat (obviously,since it has the word "boil" in it), but I have never managed to melt a pony's hair this way. I even managed to get saran hair to curl using this method. This works very well on either authentic MLP hair or nylon hair.
SO SOFT DEFLOCKING - I have yet to find a way to successfully patch the rubs so common on those nuzzily fuzzily so soft ponies. If the rubs are really bad, some people opt to just take all of the flocking off. You'd think it would be easy since it's so easy to get rubs...but NO! Deflocking a so soft entirely means giving them a bit of an acetone bath to remove not only the fuzz, but that skanky glue underneath that tends to turn yellow or brown with age. Sometimes, but not always, symbol and eye touch ups are needed after getting all the fuzz off, but that is already included in the price of deflocking. And BTW, it's expensive because acetone is a hazardous chemical and I need to use a LOT of it to deflock.
RE-PINKING - Maybe ponies that had this lovely, bubblegum pink hair when they were new now have this odd, white-yellow color. We lovingly refer to this color as "fading pink". Using RIT dye in Rose, I can repink your faded pony's hair back to its intended shade. It's the same price whether I'm repinking all of her hair or just a stripe, mainly because it's actually harder to repink just a stripe. Repinking can't be done with So-Softs (sorry, Wind Whistler!) because the dye has a nasty habit of soaking into the flocking and dyeing that too.
RETINSEL - Princess ponies and some G3s have lovely, sparkly tinsel in their hair. Over time, brushing, heat, hairspray and other stuff can absolutely ruin tinsel, making it crinkley and nasty. Unfortunately, defrizing doesn't work on badly crinkled tinsel, though I always try this method first. In some cases however, the tinsel needs to be replaced. Since this is just as time consuming at rehairing, the price is the same. The tinsel I use is high quality metallic thread that matches Hasbro tinsel very closely. It is a little expensive, but well worth it. (Note, if your Princess pony is getting new hair ANDnew tinsel, the cost is just another $5 tacked onto the rehair fee, making a full Princess rehair $30.00, not $50.00.)
FULL EYE REPAINT - For those rare cases when the entire eye is nearly gone and not merely rubbed. I usually remove what little may be left and give the pony an entirely new eye, just to keep it neat and not "lumpy" looking.
NOTE : There are some things that just cannot be fixed. Some ponies are prone to getting REGRIND, which are spots of a different color appearing on the plastic. Party Time, some of the flutters, and many ponies that are "neon" colored are prone to this problem. Since it is a deterioration of the plastic and not an external mark, it is not fixable. The same applies to ponies whose head no longer matches their body. Cocoberry comes to mind, as does Tornado. Play marks are also not removable. There are a slight yellowish discoloration usually to the tips of ears, noses, hooves, and unicorn horns. Missing parts and chews are also hard to fix, though not impossible. My sculpting skills are not wuite up to that kind of restoration yet, though it may be possible in the future. Flutter pony wing replacements are readily available on ebay or through Aikarin. If what you need done is not listed here or on the above pricing list, e-mail me with what you need and I'll figure out a quote for you.
More services to be added as I discover new ways to restore ponies!