The Up, Up and Away Restoration Project: Bleaching and Rust Treatment
The bleaching process was done in two stages. The photos I have are only from the first stage.
As you can see from the above photo, boiling UUA didn't get rid of all the mold. You can't really tell, but it's all down inside her legs, still. Fortunately, boiling DID remove all the pin-dot mold on the outside of her body.
The head had the same problem; mold was still stuck inside it, and a lot of it was stuck to the threaded plugs of the mane. Unfortunately I don't have a photo of that.
I did the bleaching in the bathroom. At this point, I had the body filled with watered down bleach. The head had already been filled with bleach, and I had just finished scrubbing the inside with a toothbrush (never fear, this one ain't going in anyone's mouth xD My mum uses it for scrubbing tiles). The q-tips were also used on the inside of the head. After I let the body sit with bleach in it, I rinsed it out and scrubbed the inside with the toothbrush and q-tips.
Internal shots of the head and the body post-bleach. You can't see it, but there were STILL some spots of mold in it, which is why I had to do it twice. But the bleach has pretty much killed everything now. SO, her body is all done, except for cleaning on the outside. She has some dirt on her in a few spots, so I'm going to take a Mister Clean eraser to those areas.
After the bleaching, I treated UUA for tail rust. Since I don't have a lot of photos of that, I'm not going to make a separate entry for it.
The tail pre-treatment. As you can see, it's pretty gross! Fortunately, the rust is only from the tail washer, not the clip holding the hair together.
I've used toothpaste for tail rust before, and it worked pretty well. You put it on the tail, then kind of rub it in and such, maybe leave it sit a few minutes.
Well, the toothpaste took off a good amount of the rust, but as you can see it still has issues! At this point, I found it difficult to tell what was rust and what was the remnants of pink colour. So, I looked around under mum's sink and found some CLR. I've heard of people using it on tail rust before, so I decided to try it.
The results of using CLR. This picture is a bit deceptive - the flash made everything look brighter than it really is. At this point, I figured I couldn't do much more to it.
Now, because I don't want to re-pink UUA's hair, I decided to try to fade the whole thing to a bright white. I put it in a sunny window, and in a couple of weeks I'm going to take a look and see if it worked at all.
If it does work, then I'll do the same thing to the mane, but first I'll wrap the head up in foil so that the plastic doesn't fade.
She's ALMOST THERE. I just need to do a few more things~
As you can see from the above photo, boiling UUA didn't get rid of all the mold. You can't really tell, but it's all down inside her legs, still. Fortunately, boiling DID remove all the pin-dot mold on the outside of her body.
The head had the same problem; mold was still stuck inside it, and a lot of it was stuck to the threaded plugs of the mane. Unfortunately I don't have a photo of that.
I did the bleaching in the bathroom. At this point, I had the body filled with watered down bleach. The head had already been filled with bleach, and I had just finished scrubbing the inside with a toothbrush (never fear, this one ain't going in anyone's mouth xD My mum uses it for scrubbing tiles). The q-tips were also used on the inside of the head. After I let the body sit with bleach in it, I rinsed it out and scrubbed the inside with the toothbrush and q-tips.
Internal shots of the head and the body post-bleach. You can't see it, but there were STILL some spots of mold in it, which is why I had to do it twice. But the bleach has pretty much killed everything now. SO, her body is all done, except for cleaning on the outside. She has some dirt on her in a few spots, so I'm going to take a Mister Clean eraser to those areas.
After the bleaching, I treated UUA for tail rust. Since I don't have a lot of photos of that, I'm not going to make a separate entry for it.
The tail pre-treatment. As you can see, it's pretty gross! Fortunately, the rust is only from the tail washer, not the clip holding the hair together.
I've used toothpaste for tail rust before, and it worked pretty well. You put it on the tail, then kind of rub it in and such, maybe leave it sit a few minutes.
Well, the toothpaste took off a good amount of the rust, but as you can see it still has issues! At this point, I found it difficult to tell what was rust and what was the remnants of pink colour. So, I looked around under mum's sink and found some CLR. I've heard of people using it on tail rust before, so I decided to try it.
The results of using CLR. This picture is a bit deceptive - the flash made everything look brighter than it really is. At this point, I figured I couldn't do much more to it.
Now, because I don't want to re-pink UUA's hair, I decided to try to fade the whole thing to a bright white. I put it in a sunny window, and in a couple of weeks I'm going to take a look and see if it worked at all.
If it does work, then I'll do the same thing to the mane, but first I'll wrap the head up in foil so that the plastic doesn't fade.
She's ALMOST THERE. I just need to do a few more things~