~~ Stardrop Sparkle ~~ clear sparkle pony ~~ (Updated with Tutorial on page 2)

[Leave a Whisper]

awesome. I love how she turned out! 

[Ledbyrd]

Such a pretty custom! I love the glitter inside the clear body. The stars in her eyes are really pretty too.

[NoPonySpecial]

Aw, look at the pretty little gem notes 

She's such a darling custom. Great work!

[Elfpony]

Very cool

Elf

[Dreambaker]

Very pretty, I want to do a custom from a snow globe pony but I am afraid of messing it up. Did you follow any tutorials? I would like to try it but they are so expensive.

[Twizel]

Thanks, everyone!

Diamond and Dreambaker ~ no, I didn't follow any tutorials. I haven't heard of anyone customizing a snowglobe pony before, so I made it up as I went along!

Here's a little tutorial explaining what I did, hopefully if you try you'll be able to avoid some of my mistakes!

- I drilled holes in the bottom of Celestia's feet to drain the fluid. The first thing I noticed that complicated things was that the liquid inside is not water. It's a bit more sticky, like a dishsoap kind of viscosity. The big, chunky Celestia glitter was not coming out.

- Realizing I needed to get that glitter out somehow, I grabbed my fiance and we dremeled off the bottoms of Celestia's feet. Then came a long process of flushing the inside with water and soap to clean it out.

- The tail is kept separate from the body in its own tiny waterproof compartment. It wasn't too hard to pull the tail hair out, but I had to widen the tail hole with an exacto knife to get the washer out. Then we drilled an extra tail hole on top, because otherwise there's no way to affix a new tail. Thankfully, dehairing the head was quite easy, as its built like regular ponyheads, just of a stiffer plastic.

- I sanded down the bottoms of Celestia's new cone feet so that she would stand evenly and the dremel work wouldn't be noticeable. Then she went into the sink for another rinse to get all the plastic bits off.

- Once everything was all cleaned out, I tried to use acetone to clean off Celestia's symbols. Big mistake. The snowglobe ponies are made of a completely different plastic than our regular MLPs. Its much harder (hence the need for drilling), and immediately clouds up when exposed to acetone. For a long time I thought my project might be ruined because one side of the pony had a big blotchy white cloud in it. I tried lots of remedies to fix it, but nothing worked. You can kind of see it in the pictures still, but only if you're looking for it - its on the right side of the body. Thankfully, Celestia didn't have a display symbol on her left, so that's the new display side.

- Very frustrated by now and wanting to throw the whole project in the trash, I took a month to calm down and ignore it.

- The next thing I did, once I'd calmed down, was to paint silver glitter on all the inside surfaces my paintbrush could reach. I also sprinkled a little bit of multicolored fine glitter that would adhere to the sticky paint surface, but that doesn't really show up in the pictures. It's mostly silver glitter. This is where my paintbrush broke, though - from trying to contort it into those hard-to-reach angles! Then it was a game of trying to find the right angles to let it dry from, because the glitter had a habit of sliding down toward whatever part of the pony was lowest. I rotated it a lot.

- I added sealer to the bottom insides of the hooves, and anywhere else where I thought glitter might try and fall out. It also protected the edges of the feet from scuffing and scraping.

- The next thing I did was to rehair the tail, which was a troublesome process because of the way its molded. I did eventually get the tail through in the usual way we re-tail MLPs, but then had to tie a little bow on top, between the wings to cover the extra hole. As a result, the tail looks larger than Celestia's was.

- Rehairing the head was quite easy, very similar to a normal re-hairing job. However, the head had to be glued back on with krazy glue, because there was no other way to get it off than to cut with exacto knives. I was really worried that the krazy glue would also discolor the clear plastic. It did dry white, but I was able to confine its effects to the area between the neck so you can't see it. To anyone using krazy glue or other super glues with clear ponies, don't let the glue spill over to the side of the pony's body! You'll have to scrape it off with an exacto knife and it may stain the translucent plastic.

- At this point, I'm feeling better about the custom, and I start painting the symbols. This, thankfully, was no more troublesome than on a regular pony. The plastic reacts to paint and sealers in the usual way, its just acetone (and possibly super-glues) that's the problem. After getting the symbols just right, attaching some rhinestones, and a quick hair trim, I was done!

In retrospect, it wasn't the most difficult custom I've done - that award goes to Devil Jin (http://mlparena.com/index.php/topic,332819.0.html), my custom with poseable feather wings and an internally-weighted body so he stands - but it was a complete experiment and puzzle trying to figure out how to get it all to come together. Yay for power tools. Hopefully this little tutorial will help you guys if you decide to make one, and maybe you can improve on some of what I did!

[tikibirds]

Very cool.

[Diamond]

Thanks for the information, still need to get one to play with.