The MLP Arena

Pony Talk => Pony Corral => Topic started by: Poster on November 10, 2020, 01:33:38 PM

Title: Birthday Pony restoration questions
Post by: Poster on November 10, 2020, 01:33:38 PM
So, here's my Birthday Pony (standing on my shoddy old desk that could use replacing :P).
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She was obtained several years ago at a yard sale. As you can see, her tail ribbons have almost none of their original curl and are quite stretched and crinkled in multiple places.

Can these be fixed? I'm guessing no, seeing as they're so stretched, but I haven't really worked with this kind of ribbon before. If they are unfixable, where might I find good replacements? Good color matches, the right width or very close, chrome on one side and matte-ish on the other--and of course, curling!
Title: Re: Birthday Pony restoration questions
Post by: tailrustedtealeaf on November 10, 2020, 01:49:51 PM
I wonder if one might be able to apply very gentle heat to straighten out the ribbons and then curl them again.
Title: Re: Birthday Pony restoration questions
Post by: SunPony on November 10, 2020, 02:16:07 PM
I have not worked on one, and I don't think she's on the mlp preservation project website?  Hopefully someone who has worked on one will chime in - I'm SURE someone has had to deal with this before! 

If it was me I would test a method on just one first, maybe the one in worst condition.  If they are paper-backed then I would try the above idea with an iron at very low heat.  If they are all plastic/foil, maybe you could wrap the ribbon around a drinking straw, secure with bobby pins, and dip it in hot water (but how hot? You could dip just a bit in at a time to see how it does...)

Keep us updated!
Title: Re: Birthday Pony restoration questions
Post by: The-Extravagant-Pony on November 10, 2020, 02:38:36 PM
You can always just use gift wrapping ribbon. You can curl the ribbon yourself! I think this may be your best bet. To curl it you just run a scissor down the side of the ribbon and it curls:)
Title: Re: Birthday Pony restoration questions
Post by: Poster on November 16, 2020, 08:26:27 PM
Not certain whether or not the ribbons are paper-backed. They feel sort of papery and plasticky at the same time. The chrome/foil shininess is only on one side of each ribbon; there's a noticeably paler sort of pearliness to the other side instead. Of the three, I think the pink one has the best odds of being fixable since it's the least damaged. There might be hope for the silver one, as well.

The blue one, however... hoo boy. On closer inspection, it almost looks like a couple of sections were chewed on at some point. Not sure the blue ribbon is salvageable, sadly. Which is particularly unfortunate since, while I've found pretty nice matches for the silver and pink, no luck with regards to that pretty blue shade.

If I can get it smoothed out, I will be pleasantly surprised, but there's also a few places where the color's stripped off the blue one--just the color, not the chrome finish, so there's a bunch of shiny silver bits showing. I'm wondering if there's some sort of ink or dye that could put the blue back on without bleeding or staining the ribbon in an undesirable way.
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