Lightening Resin - Why Bleaching or Dyeing Doesn't Work

Oh thanks everyone for the advice! Yes, I imagined it would be difficult/impossible to make her lighter. As the artists say, you can always add paint to make black, but it's impossible to make white . . .

I think I will try MSC her a few coats to see if it will lighten her. She only has one coat on now. If that doesn't work, then maybe spray paint? White or light grey could work. I will do some research into what types of spray paint, unless you all have suggestions?

This advice will help me a lot. Thanks everyone!

Oh, and thanks for the compliments. Actually it seems that Denver Dolls has been carrying some piggies lately . . . so these little darlings aren't as rare as they once were.

 

MSC alone will not make her lighter. MSC is seethrough. You will definately need either pastel blush or acrylic paint to make her lighter. MSC is just for sealing and protection, it doesn't actually change the color ^^

 

hi
@snow....msc makes tan skin "lighter" by spray more msc....i saw some myself and i think the msc could help to make the black resin some kind of lighter...^^

greetings and much luck with your project fiatan

 

it might work for tan, but on any other resin I've sprayed it on it made it darker if anything. If MSC actually becomes white, it's not sprayed on properly. I sincerely doubt just spraying MSC will make a black doll lighter.

 

Okay so I had nooo idea what to search on for this one x'D so if there is an already exciting thread with this topic please direct mere there ^___^

Hello DoA! : D

So, I gave my Boyfriend my three year old DZ normal yellow skin doll, and he wandered; Can he make her more white? XD
Ofc. I didn't know the answer, that's why I tried to search on information, but had no clue what I was searching for...

Is there a way to make a normal yellow skin doll a tint more white??
- I guess she has yellowed a bit over the years, since she wasn't afraid of sunlight like some of my other dolls x'D

I considered soaking her in bleach mixed with lots of water... But I toughed that might damaged the resin...?

Help : D

Thanks!

 

I think if you search for threads with "peroxide" in them you might get your answer (I used this method for my French resin doll). Bleach would be a bad idea.

 

I've read somewhere that you can use 97% isopropyl alcohol to lighten a white skin doll that has yellowed slightly. I used it on my Dollfactory fox's tail after it fell off one time when I was out during a photoshoot, and didn't find it for a day. When I did find the tail, it was pretty yellowed. I soaked in in isopropyl alcohol for a few hours, and it eventully did turn quite a few shades whiter. I can hardly tell it was yellowed at all. Also, the tail had blushing, and msc, so perhaps the msc yellowed, and removing it was what made the difference. But I think the isopropyl alcohol did have some effect, because the longer I left the tail in it, the lighter it became.

 

If there is already a topic about this, I'm sorry, I tried to search it but it didn't give me the results I was looking for.

In a while, I want to dye a Resinsoul Bei Purple, with using Rit, or a product that is equivalent. The Bei in question has a factory 'purple' color, which is more grey. I want it to become light purple, lavender coloured with dyeing it. But now I wonder, is it possible to get its colour lighter with dyeing that its original colour, or will the original colour be visible through the dye then?
As far as I found, people always seem to dye lighter dolls darker, and not the other way around...
(And does the result get better with or without sanding it first in this case?)

Thank you in advance.

 

You might be able to get a more purple tone too it, but you can't dye it lighter. Colour over colour makes a darker colour. If it were WS you could get a lighter purple, but your Bei is going to be a little dark. I do sympathize with you on the factory shade, I always thought it looked very grey also. I bought a WS Sprite and dyed it a bright purple.

 

Thank you for your quick answer ^^
And what if I dye it purple, resulting in a darker tone of purple, but then add a light, semi-transparant white layer of blushing, could I then achieve a lighter purple, or would that be too vulnerable?

 

That might work, but you have to be prepared for the blushing to chip or wear where joints rub or clothes rub your doll. I don't honestly know, since my doll isn't blushed, but I was going for a deep shade. I suggest trying it after you SEAL the doll well once it's dyed. That way if it doesn't work, the sealant will protect the dye job and you can wipe the pastel off with a damp paper towel without removing the dye.

 

Okay, I will certainly try that. Thank you for your advise ^^

 

No problem! Good luck on your dying job! There are plenty of tutorials on it if you need help.

 

Good idea.
A friend of mine suggested air-brushing. I want a doll that's only made in NS to be WS.

 

***Please delete this if there is already a similar topic!!!*** I didn't see one, however!

Anyways, I was interested in buying an older doll in yellow skin. As it is older, it would probably be even more yellow now. I was wondering if it is possible to dye or bleach a doll with a yellow skin tone to a lighter, whiter skin tone. Thanks so much in advance!!

 

Generally speaking, you can't significantly de-yellow a polyurethane doll, if that's what we're talking about (most BJD are PU). Processes exist for reversing the yellowing of dolls made from ABS plastic, such as the well-known Retr0bright process, but the chemistry of ABS discoloration is completely different from polyurethane and these do not apply. I give the basic options below, but went into this topic in a lot more detail in this thread: http://www.denofangels.com/forums/s...-yellowing?p=10499934&viewfull=1#post10499934

How much you can reduce the yellowing of your doll depends on exactly what is yellow, and how deep it goes:

In the best case scenario, the owner coated the doll with a UV sealant, such as Mr. Super Clear, and much of the yellowing is actually of the clearcoat. If this is the case, removing the clearcoat with alcohol could significantly de-yellow the doll.

The next best case would be shallow, even surface yellowing that can be removed by fine sanding. The tradeoff here is that you might get back closer to the original color of the doll, but you will lose the original surface texture which is very difficult to reproduce once lost (same reason you should never clean antique coins). It's also difficult to do this where there are sharp curves or details, like on a face. This is more of a viable solution if the yellowing is not full doll, but rather restricted to a patch on a smooth area, like the thigh.

Worst case is deep yellowing of the polyurethane. Generally, nothing can be done, except dying the doll to a darker color or painting it to a lighter color. Do not try to bleach your doll. Chlorine bleach can wreck the plastic with immediacy, and oxygen based bleaches will wreck the doll in a much more insidious way that can result in the plastic rebounding to an even yellower state (oxygen is one of the causes of yellowing) and at worst cause the plastic to crumble into a powder over time. Don't do these things :-)

 

You cannot dye a doll a lighter color. It's just not possible; that's not the way dye works. As far as I know, bleach is just going to damage the resin, and most "yellowing remedies" are either a dye bath to restore the lost red tones, negligible results, or a lot of hard work. (There's a lot of people who will attest to soaks in things like alcohol, Oxy-Clean, etc, but there's also a thread here somewhere explaining that the way they work will result in faster re-yellowing following the treatment. I've personally used alcohol in a deep clean/de-yellowing process and will say that it made no difference in the yellow tone--the only thing that did was an all-over sanding.)

You may be able to airbrush or spraypaint the doll a different color, but this will result in chipping around the joints. I'm considering attempting something like this with an older, slightly yellowed WS doll of mine, in order to bring him back to a white color, but I don't know if it's going to work at all, and I can't recall seeing any information on others attempting the same (though I may be wrong about this).

 

Thank you Adam! I really appreciate your response! Haha, I must've sounded really dumb asking if you could bleach a doll, but I know that regular bleach would be a terrible mess XD

Thanks! I'm fine with the yellow color, overall it's not a huge turnoff in buying the doll, but I was genuinely curious. Both your and Adam's answers were really helpful and I greatly appreciate you two taking the time to respond with such detailed answers!

 

I don't plan on doing this in the near future, but I'm just curious. Is it possible to dye tan skin in NS? If so, what are the difficulties involved?

 

You can only dye a doll darker. It is not possible to dye a doll lighter, hence tan to NS will not work.

 

Thanks! Glad to know!

 

Roterwolkenvogel is correct. When you dye something, pigment is added to it that changes its color. Dye does not take away pigment, it only ADDS pigment. If you took a tan doll and tried to dye it lighter nothing would happen since the dye pigment added wouldn't be visible against the darker pigment already in the resin. Similarly, you can't take a dark purple doll and put it in a lavender dye bath to make it light purple. You could take a tan doll and dye it to be a darker brown, or (theoretically, this would be more trouble than it's worth IMO) dye a white doll to be normal skin.

 

@Shojo-Chan I suppose this in reference to dyeing in general or just in regards to resin? Thank you!

 

It's dyeing in general. Look up subtractive color mixing.

 

Yes, dyeing in general. That's why tie-dye is usually done on white clothes. If you tried on black the colors wouldn't show up.

 

Thank you! On a side note, would dyeing resin be a viable method of returning the doll's original colour after it's yellowed out?

 

@Leona Rory there's a tutorial about that.

/tutorials/de-zombification-serum-resin-color-restoration.85/

 

@scripple Thanks!

 

You couldn't dye the doll lighter... but I'm assuming you could seal it, then paint the skin to the shade you want (airbrushing or some form of spray painting seems like a better idea than brushing it on), and then seal again. Paint would need to be opaque, and I'm not sure how many layers it would take. It'd also have the problem then, that if you handle it a lot and are moving the joints, you can wear through the sealant and the paint can then fade, chip, whatever. Especially at the joints.

 

@Nana I thought of that. Hence why I posted the question. XP