Hobbes used to belong to Gypsymaria, and she took him from Dollzone Normal Yellow skin to the wonderful orange and brown with multiple overlays of pastel seen in his older posts. It took her a very long time and lots of hard work. Sadly, over time Hobbes' wonderful full body blushing started to wear in places.
Also, Hobbes went to live with Diamondclaw (He and Citrine are definitely an item!). Gypsymaria decided that Hobbes needed to be redone, and had him back while she scrubbed off all her hard work. Diamondclaw and I thought we should have a go at actually dyeing him the base color to save Gypsymaria time and effort!
It worked like a charm! We used a tutorial from DoA. The color used is Rit Dye Sunshine Orange (about half the bottle) in a large pot of water with three chopstick dips of Rit Dye Navy. I think we matched his original base color very well too!
Hobbes and two other foxes are off to Gypsymaria now to be faced up and finished off. I'll post pictures of them all here sometime on Monday. Gypsymaria used Friskit to mask off Hobbes' tummy and muzzle, making it easier to keep them lighter.
Just to let you know how very easy this was, it only took 40 seconds in the dye bath for each piece. Since Hobbes is so tiny, it was easy to do several small pieces together. Now that we know how easy it is, I suspect there will be more dyed dolls!
#1 - showing some dyed and some undyed pieces.
#2 - showing more of the same, with some pieces in the bowl we used to keep the left and right parts separate. Also in the foreground is the failed large fox ear cast we used as our test for the dye and the friskit.
#3 - showing how we masked off his tummy.
#4 - showing how the parts that were masked off came out after the dye bath.
Here's a link to one of the posts featuring Hobbes before the boiling dye adventure.
Hobbes version one