Hair Therapy!

I visited my parents' house this past week and my Mom and I went through a ton of boxes that I had stored in their basement. Most of the boxes contained childhood "treasures". The kids were with me and they enjoyed seeing some of my old toys. My daughter really liked my old My Little Ponies. The bodies of the ponies were not in bad shape for being about 25 years old, however, their manes were a totally different story!

I had pinned this a while ago, knowing that it would come in handy in the future.


It was a snowy day and I did not feel like going to the store to buy liquid fabric softener but I did have some spray leave-in conditioner and thought that it would work out just as well. I combined about a teaspoon of leave-in conditioner with about a cup of water and put it into a spray bottle.

Here is the before picture (I had more pictures and accidentally deleted them...ooops!):


I sprayed the magic formula directly onto the pony's mane and brushed the mane with my roughly 20-year old American Girl hairbrush (which is the same thing as a wig brush). As I said, it was a snowy day and I was trying to avoid going to the store unless I absolutely had to! Out of curiosity I tried to use a regular hair brush to see if it would work as well, however, the magic really is in the wig brush! Once the tangles were out, I used my hair dryer to speed up the drying process and to further smooth out the hair.

And here is the after:


I am truly amazed at how well the ponies turned out! They look practically brand new! I also scrubbed their little bodies with baby wipes. I had read that you can soak toys in soapy water but I was worried about water getting into the bodies of the ponies and getting moldy.

I would highly recommend trying this on any doll with crazy hair. The only downside that I could possibly see is that if a doll has curly hair, this process would probably turn it into straight hair. I figure, straight and untangled hair would be better than curly hair that is a mess. They also have little doll hair curlers, so maybe those would help bring back some curls.

Good luck and happy pinning!