Today, I decided to give my 30th Anniversary Ariel some love. As you may already know, I have three of these Ariels because of issues with defects and broken necklaces. This Ariel is the one that came defective with a red stain on her neck.

After having no success with all sorts of surface cleaners including acetone, benzoyl peroxide and magic eraser, I decided to try RemoveZit stain remover by Twin Pines. This actually worked after one week, but it also melted and ate through her plastic, leaving an unsightly dent on her neck. I planned on sanding that out, but never got around to doing it until now – 4 months later ^^”.

It was my very first time sanding a doll, so I was a little apprehensive, but fortunately it all went swimmingly well! I started wet sanding with 240 grit to sand out the dent, after that I used 400 grit to smooth out everything, followed by 1000 grit to start polishing out the rough surface. To restore the slightly shiny appearance of hard plastic, I polished her neck further with some 1800 grit micromesh. I didn’t want to polish with anything finer because it made her neck look way too shiny.

As you can see, the result was great, and you can barely tell she’s ever had a defective neck!

Beaming with pride at how good she looks now, I decided to give her a quick hair wash too 🙂 say farewell to crunchy hair!