- Joined
- Oct 18, 2017
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Now that @BethMcBeth has received her Halloween Swap box I can share this custom AJ I made for her.
This pony was a complete joy to make and I am very happy with how she came out. For this project I wanted to make something unique for Beth being that she’s the official AJ connoisseur and has almost all the AJ’s. I decided it was unlikely she already had a G5 AJ, so I set out to make one.
Exploring a new generation for customs is always an adventure. You never know how much glue will be in the pony or how much you will need to disassemble. I will say I want to give Hasbro big kudos for staying true to being more environmentally friendly. This Sunny had literally NO glue and everything came apart pretty easily and locked right back together. Look at the beautiful braiding of the mane!!
Once Sunny was disassembled, it was time to paint. I removed Sunny’s factory paint with 100% acetone it all came away nicely (I forgot to take picture of no factory paint my bad!). Then I painted her scalp yellow to keep with her mane colour. Made her brows smaller and longer than what Sunny’s were. And I repainted her eyes and added more light reflections much like the G4 movie because it adds more life to the eyes. Then I painted her hooves brown and decided she needed a bit of glitter because it’s a Skybreeze custom and I love glitter sparkly things. I sealed her paint with Mr Super Clear and moved onto the next part.
Next, was the stress of making a hat for Applejack. I chose to try out Super Sculpey, I don’t like this medium, I found it to become very fragile after baking and took about 4 tries to get the right sculpt that didn’t break. I added some holes on the sides to string through some beading elastic to secure the hat to AJ’s head. Once I filled a few smaller cracks with a glue made for miniatures (thanks to my Dad’s hobby of model train building) I took to painting her hat and added glitter. Then I sealed it off with MSC.
Because of the increase amount of hair plugs in the G5 fashion size ponies, I knew I was going to need a lot of hair. I ordered 3oz of “Applejack” from Shimmerlocks and this was more than enough hair to complete this custom. I have about half the amount left over and each plug has a generous amount of hair in it and I used a size 7 rooting needle (my go to size because it really fills the plugs). Here she is with literally just the “bangs” rooted, I wanted to check that this hat was still looking/fitting good with hair rooted in.
After well over 14 hours of work on this girl she was finally complete. I decided to leave her mane longer because I liked how it looks. I added in beading elastic to her tail and mane to give her the G4/5 AJ loose pony tail look and chose to tie red ribbon because AJ. And left in bows to pay respects to our G1 counter part as well.
And finally the big reveal:
Since doing this AJ I’ve decided I need to make the G4 mane 6 fashion sizes for myself. As well as a Skybreeze, I really loved working with this generation’s design and it was so easy and wonderful to not have to fight a toy to customize it. Also to not have stabbed myself mistakenly with any sharp objects. Lol (If ya know, ya know.)
This pony was a complete joy to make and I am very happy with how she came out. For this project I wanted to make something unique for Beth being that she’s the official AJ connoisseur and has almost all the AJ’s. I decided it was unlikely she already had a G5 AJ, so I set out to make one.
Exploring a new generation for customs is always an adventure. You never know how much glue will be in the pony or how much you will need to disassemble. I will say I want to give Hasbro big kudos for staying true to being more environmentally friendly. This Sunny had literally NO glue and everything came apart pretty easily and locked right back together. Look at the beautiful braiding of the mane!!
Once Sunny was disassembled, it was time to paint. I removed Sunny’s factory paint with 100% acetone it all came away nicely (I forgot to take picture of no factory paint my bad!). Then I painted her scalp yellow to keep with her mane colour. Made her brows smaller and longer than what Sunny’s were. And I repainted her eyes and added more light reflections much like the G4 movie because it adds more life to the eyes. Then I painted her hooves brown and decided she needed a bit of glitter because it’s a Skybreeze custom and I love glitter sparkly things. I sealed her paint with Mr Super Clear and moved onto the next part.
Next, was the stress of making a hat for Applejack. I chose to try out Super Sculpey, I don’t like this medium, I found it to become very fragile after baking and took about 4 tries to get the right sculpt that didn’t break. I added some holes on the sides to string through some beading elastic to secure the hat to AJ’s head. Once I filled a few smaller cracks with a glue made for miniatures (thanks to my Dad’s hobby of model train building) I took to painting her hat and added glitter. Then I sealed it off with MSC.
Because of the increase amount of hair plugs in the G5 fashion size ponies, I knew I was going to need a lot of hair. I ordered 3oz of “Applejack” from Shimmerlocks and this was more than enough hair to complete this custom. I have about half the amount left over and each plug has a generous amount of hair in it and I used a size 7 rooting needle (my go to size because it really fills the plugs). Here she is with literally just the “bangs” rooted, I wanted to check that this hat was still looking/fitting good with hair rooted in.
After well over 14 hours of work on this girl she was finally complete. I decided to leave her mane longer because I liked how it looks. I added in beading elastic to her tail and mane to give her the G4/5 AJ loose pony tail look and chose to tie red ribbon because AJ. And left in bows to pay respects to our G1 counter part as well.
And finally the big reveal:
Since doing this AJ I’ve decided I need to make the G4 mane 6 fashion sizes for myself. As well as a Skybreeze, I really loved working with this generation’s design and it was so easy and wonderful to not have to fight a toy to customize it. Also to not have stabbed myself mistakenly with any sharp objects. Lol (If ya know, ya know.)
