Dyeing Dyeing A Yellowed Doll To a Light Color?

A good way to test its colour is by using a paint software like photoshop or any ol digital painting tool and test how the colours will mix. Take a photo of your dolls colour, add a new layer and set the dye colour on a multiply layer. This will give you a rough idea of how the dye will affect the doll. Unfortunately when it comes to dying there's no way to make the skin lighter than it is, only ever darker. Also note that yellow will make the tone a bit warmer than you might expect it to turn with the dye!

 

Also, grey and purple are probably the MOST difficult colors to dye resin, even on a brand new paper-white doll, and you'd be starting off at a disadvantage because your doll is heavily yellowed. I don't want to be a bummer but this sounds like a difficult project even for someone experienced with dye. If it were me, I'd change plans to make it easier... like, green is also a skin color used for zombies, and would be VERY easy to achieve! But like I said, that's just me, so if you decide to go forward with your original plan then I wish you best of luck!!

 

Can I also suggest that you try to minimise the yellowing by giving the pieces a soak in Polident (denture cleaner).

I've had some success with it:


It doesn't restore the original colour, of course, and results vary according to the resin composition, but it might help lower the yellow tone.

Teddy

 

If you're going for a greyish color, purple and yellow neutralize each other when mixed, so dyeing over it, depending on how yellow it is, will give you a more greyish tone. If it's unevenly yellowed though, then your results would also be uneven, so trying something like a polident or oxiclean treatment to even it out first could help.

 

If it's going to be a zombie, is uneven color really a problem? I would think it would add to the effect.

 

A very thorough high grit sanding would indeed be helpful before dyeing. Especially if she was originally WS. You'd need to be very careful to be thorough, and maybe just sit and wet sand each piece while you watch tv or listen to something because it takes a long time to do- I have done it myself so I feel for you! But she may be much less yellow underneath the top fraction of a mm, and then it will be easier to dye her to a different color. Purple will indeed kind of grey out over yellow, but if you add a couple drops of blue to it, it may be stronger. I do recommend testing all your methods on the headcap, and then you can see what it looks like.