The Dye Bath

Sunday got off to a rocky start--we were out of milk and bread, it was supposed to storm, and I had to drive to Target in the truck since it was in the accessible slot in the garage and had AC. This was at an hour when I am not really qualified to run a toaster, much less a motor vehicle; but I got there OK, got my stuff, and even managed to resist the lure of 4.00 coffee in order to go home and make my own.
 Then the storm veered off somewhere else, and it was sunny, so I decided to both dremel down the top of a body to fit Deesse/Danu's head on it, and to try using the iPoly dye to dye that junk body. ( The junk body was the former Headless Laurel, but Laurel has a head now, but it is now on a Loongsoul Cartoon Boob body, which is actually a lovely, beautifully posing body even if it looks like Hugh Hefner designed it)

("Was this really necessary?") But Laurel, look how well the resin matches AND you have joined fingers now.

I did the dremelling first, and it actually worked really well--I did wear a respirator and goggles and I did it outside, and I am so glad I did, because it threw resin dust everywhere.  I even had to hose off myself, the body, and the dremel bits and change my clothes when I was finished, but it went really fast--just a couple of minutes to convert the neck from a mushroom shape to a reasonable cone.

Anyway, the IPoly dye is supposed to stink when you cook it with the resin, and J didn't want me doing it in the house on the stove anyway, so we set up my Goodwill pot on the side burner of the barbeque. This was problematic as the burner is really uneven in heating, and my pot was too small for the thighs. It was actually too small for most of the Idol body:

 I slightly melted the shins along the ankle when I first started, so I turned off the heat and kept going. The resin really didn't take the dye well--I probably should have sanded it, used an electric burner, a larger pot and a candy thermometer. The cotton string turned a quite gorgeous ebony brown, but the best piece, the elbows, ended up as mostly a sort of pleasant coffee color. So the next step was just to paint the poor thing, because I was tired of Danu rolling around loose. Here's some sponge painting:

It being summer in Chicago, it was really humid and the paint stayed sticky even with spraying with MSC, which meant that it also slid right off in the spots it got wear:

But I just kept going--mostly she will be covered with clothes. I did replace her ankle balls with brown ones, and that helped a bit. Eventually I may try dyeing her again, or see if I can get another Dark Tan Idol, but in the meantime, Danu does have feet. :D

And with the magic of Photoshop, I can touch up the chips.

 Elf conference: