Post your personal customizing horror stories!

[Alipes]

We've all been there!  You're working on a custom, and everything's going great, when BAM!  Things go horribly, horribly wrong!  Let's share our personal horror stories!

***** Please note: I would like this to be a safe place where we can have a little laugh at ourselves, and maybe share things we've learned from our experiences.  So with regards to that, please only share your own experiences, and don't call out others for mistakes or things like that.  I'd like this to be a fun thread!

I will start with my experience from this afternoon, and the one that inspired me to make this thread!  I was working with a G4 Fluttershy and trying out some new painting techniques to make a super sparkly pony, and by the time I gave up, she was sparkly, but also SUPER DUPER goopy and sticky.  Bleh!

So I started using acetone to strip her down to try again, and I kept thinking about accidentally melting G4's with acetone.  I thought to myself, "Oh well!  At least if I melt her body too badly, I'll just turn her into a seapony or something!"    Thankfully she pulled through, and she's currently in the garage with a new coat of primer to try again.

My lessons from this: 1) If you're working with new stuff, be extra careful about the dry time!  and 2) Learning to recover from mistakes is just as important as learning not to make them!

So how about you guys?  Did you dog eat half of your custom?  Accidentally knocked something to the floor?  Share your stories!

[Crowning_Glory13]

Mine was today too! I was working on a Blind Bag custom and then went off to do some work. Came back to tidy up and leave the custom to dry. I left the bottle of paint open and it spilled onto the carpet floor!!! I spent 45min trying to clean it all up.....will work on it again after work.....sigh. Always put away your custom tools and make sure they are not able to leave a mess.

[BlackCurtains]

My airbrush has this little paint cup that's held on by tension. I was spraying a pony black. Usually, the cup stays on just fine, but on this night, it came loose. I saw it fall, tried to catch it and ended up kind of juggling it in my hands. Black paint went everywhere and I ended up with a bigger mess than I would have had if I'd just let the cup fall. I also got a nifty airbrushing outfit from the experience; black splattered shirt and pants

[cleverLC]

When I made Zena, I'd never beheaded a G4 before (or any other toy for that matter--except for the Skipper doll I accidentally broke as a kid) so I wasn't as slow as I should have been cutting out her neck plug.  The knife went through in 2 or 3 places, so she had little gouges.  The paint covered most of them, but one split was still open.

Lesson learned, from now on the knife is tilted INWARD when I remove G4 plugs!

[kaoskat]

Well there was the time I left a pony in the oven too long and nearly killed myself when I went running through the room to rescue it and went sliding on a rug and crashed into the kitchen table....... I did save the pony though.......

[Shiromisa]

I was working on alicorn Flitterheart. The purple for her mane was very thin and watery, so I mixed it with some oithers to try and thicken it up, to no avail, so I had this full plastic plate of paint on the couch beside me. I kept reminding myself, "Don't spill it on the couch, don't spill it on the couch." Well, I finished painting with no trouble, and got up, congratulating myself on being so careful...

...and my leg jogged the plate, sending this gorgeous arc of purple paint into the air. 

Well, on the bright side, at least it all splattered on my pajama bottoms--not a drop got on the couch!

[babystargazer]

I don't collect g2's, but somehow received one in a lot.  It was one that, if you turned a knob on the tail, the head would spin around completely.  It always reminded me of the Exorcist, so I kept it around.  Recently, I decided to actually customize it based on the possessed girl in the Exorcist.  Everything was going well on it, and I was 90% finished when suddenly I couldn't find it on the coffee table where I left it.  My heart sank as I realized there was only one other possibility...perhaps my adorably fluffy husky mix Nessie decided to adopt her as a chew toy.  Which would be a bit surprising, considering that I had left boxes of ponies on the floor before without her taking the slightest interest in them, but I've learned to never underestimate her.  So, I go upstairs, and sure enough, there she is happily chewing out the pony's butt while all of my sculpting lies in tiny pieces all over the bed.  The thing that holds the head on and enables it to turn, was, of course, broke.  I almost cried.  After regaining my composure, I went to work re-assembling her.  I glued the head part back on, and while it doesn't work as well as it should, it works somewhat.  Everything else was re-scuplted/painted.  The knob that you tuned and that encased the tail was chewed beyond recognition, but I was able to replace it with a couple skull beads.  Overall, she turned out all right, considering the circumstances.  But I'll never forget that moment of horror when I found her in Nessie's mouth and pieces all over the bed...I think maybe there was some sort of demonic conspiracy involved .

[Honeycomb]

I tried to cut the neck plug of a G3 pony with a new knife I had never used before. Didn't know how sharp it was. I sliced the flesh on my left hand open, so badly I had to get stitches. Believe me, the wound looked BAD. *Shudders at the memory*

[LeighAnnApanites]

These ponies I'm working on for a swap are making me nuts! One of them has been going really well, until I boiled her head to put the neck plug back in (which I now know is not a good idea, so at least I learned something) and melted the glue holding her hair in. The glue ran all down into her hair. Luckily, I reboiled the hair and the glue came out! Yay! (I think, I'm still waiting for the hair to dry to make sure.)

The other one . . . 
I did some sculpting that despite working and working I couldn't get it smooth, and it had this weird grainy-ness that I could NOT get out, even with sandpaper once it was hard. Then, when I baked it (had to use sculpey) the back of the neck distorted. Then, I had to touch up a place on the fbr and I mixed the color wrong, but didn't notice until too late. Also, between the fbr and the sealant, I closed up the mane holes to the point where I couldn't tell where they had been, so I had to poke new ones. If it was possible for me to hate a pony, it would be this one.

[Aednatia]

I was boiling water for pony beheading and I poured the water into a cup and then put the pot back on the burner. Well I spaced it for some reason I put it back on a different burner. While I was popping off heads I set the towel on the still hot burner. It caught fire. Only a small fire, just had to move the towel and touch of the water already on hand. Next I popped off the head to a bait and was setting the head back in the water to get the hair glue loose and I set the body down- on the burner. I have no idea why I normally set them on the towel. She really isn't too bad off just needs a 3-D symbol now, so she going to be in my bait box for a long time.

[elish2]

Umm, I had a tiff with the hubby and the custom I was working on for him went into the trash....kind of a childish thing to have done, I know...and am kicking myself for that.... I had worked really hard on it and it would have been my first to have done almost a full overhaul on it including rehairing and using clay, before that I have only done paint jobs on ponies with the right colored hair..... 

[Skeen]

I had just finished a set of perfume puffs and stored them in my art closet.  My cat Slick managed to open the door and eat all the hair.  I was picking up yarn hair for days.  And also cat barf.  He's about 80% of the reason that room stays LOCKED now. 

[Shining_Lyris]

I'm new to customizing ponies, as I was waiting for my childhood ponies to be shipped out to my new state, but I have one heck of a doll doozey!
So I received a lot I had won from Ebay. In it was a... Mary-Kate Olsen()... doll from the 90's I hadn't known was going to be in the lot. I think the seller tossed it in as a freebie. Anyhow, I hadn't the slightest intention of keeping the doll as is, but it did have a nice twist and turn body and was about the size of Licca/Tyco dolls, so I knew I'd just be able to pop off MK's head and replace it. There was one problem though, the surprise doll had a severely chewed hand. Normally for small chews I just use a small heat tool to warm up a needle and carefully re-sculpt the part. It's not perfect, but it works well enough.
So, I got MK all set up on my little plate/stand and plugged in the tool. I was fiddling away at her mangled hand just fine for about 5 minutes when one of my kids came running through the room and bonked my work table. The heat gun next to me flew THROUGH her entire arm, into her chest, and slashed across her face (which I hadn't pulled off yet).
Mary Kate now sleeps soundly in the back of my closet wrapped in some tissue paper. I'm not sure any parts of her will ever see the light of day again. I'm hoping nothing like this happens while I work on ponies.

[ViciousJupiter]

I am very forgetful at times and left ponies in a pot of boiling water to loosen the glue...and completely forgot.  An hour later....yeah, took that long to smell the plastic burning...  I come back to an empty pot and two ponies totally melted to the bottom in globs of pony goo....oops... lol  Now I set an alarm if I have to boil anything.

[TexasGal]

The typical cutting my fingers, cutting the necks a bit closer than planned, etc.  I have been trying to figure out how to get the glitter off of the BB ponies...I can already tell that it's going to be a very disastrous end.  Least, I am so very afraid of it.  o.o  Anyone had any luck with that yet?