Is it possible to dye rooted hair?

[Hotfoot]

Is it possible to dye rooted hair?

I have a Mary Ellen head with long brown hair. Is it possible to die it black?

Or is there a female head with long black hair available?

[Bizarro Amy]

Your best bet is to reroot. I have yet to see a dye job work well on Mego hair. It's made of synthetic material, and not very porous, so it won't absorb dye like human hair will. I've heard of people getting slight color changes from boiling very light hair in dye but it doesn't always last. I tried to dye a Breyer girl's hair from brown to black once and the dye got caked and clumped on the strands, plus it flaked and stained the face. There are tutorials on rerooting in Customego and around the internet. It's really not that difficult, just time-consuming. If you can thread a needle, you can reroot a Mego head. I can send you pics of some of the ones I've done if you like.

[Hotfoot]

Thanks.

I read through the tutorial. I was hoping there was a less time intensive solution.

Your gallery of customs looked great.

[Bizarro Amy]

Thanks.

I read through the tutorial. I was hoping there was a less time intensive solution.

Your gallery of customs looked great.

Aw thanks!
The only other thing I can think of is take a look at some of the newer Barbie heads for possible shrinking. Some, but not all, of the vintage doll heads I've used acetone to shrink had hair that melted once they were submerged. But I recently shrunk a newer Barbie head, and the hair stayed intact. In fact, most of the paint was ok too - just needed a touchup. If you pick up a black-haired Barbie at a low price, you could test the hair by dipping just the ends into acetone. If it doesn't melt, you could try shrinking that head. After multiple "baths" I've been able to get Barbie heads down to Mego size. They're usually hard afterward, but a little heat should loosen them up to put them on a neck peg. Note - if the hair doesn't melt, you will want to wash it really well after shrinking, maybe soak it in some fabric softener afterward.

[Hotfoot]

My daughters have some broken Barbies. I'll have to give it a try.

[almitysufx]

It's possible to "color" doll hair with a sharpie. I don't like to but before I learned to re-root hair, I used a sharpie on a few heads. I would not advise it for figures that will be handled much. There's risk of ink getting on your hands then onto the figures costume... But, It can be done.

These were "dyed" the Sharpie way. the Firestar and Phoenix had blond hair and the others are Dorothy heads.

[Cosmicman]

Look up the member Spiderouge. His wife does a fine job of re-rooting heads. I plan on shipping my botched Mary Marvel head to her once they get a permanent resident and I get some cash.

[RG]

one thing that I was able to do that worked ... but I'm not sure if it would work with getting Mary Ellen's semi dark brown hair to turn black ....

I used some Delta cream coat acrylic paint ... I mixed it with water so it was about 50%paint 50% water ... then dipped the hair in to it ... let it dry for a day then brushed the hair

it worked great with making blonde hair have a light silver blue ... but when I tried to turn blonde into black ... it came out dark gray.

and what's nice, is you can tell if it will work while it's still wet ... and if you don't like the effects ... just run warm water over the hair and it washed out really fast.

not sure if it will work ... but it's worth a try ... it beat the heck out of re-rooting

[captact]

My advice,..have it re-rooted,..as Mego hair is not easy to dye as its not porous, believe me,..Ive tried. I myself do re-rooting and everyone who's seen my work, know of this, top quality job! Ive done re-roots on Mego, Ideal Super Queens, etc...good prices!

Ray - King of "Super" Queens!