This weekend was the build gathering and I actually finished this kit before the build gathering even started. This past couple of weeks, I have been dealing with the issues of the paint chipping on one of the chap parts. I had painted the chap piece along with the other parts and masked as I normally masked and the paint chipped when I started unmasking. I ran the part in a tub of lacquer thinner and placed this tub in the ultrasonic cleaner with water and ran it there; then painted and it chipped again. I then soaked the thing in more degreaser, ran it with the degreaser in the ultrasonic cleaner, and left it soak in the degreaser overnight. Then ran the part in isopropanol alcohol in the ultrasonic cleaner and dried the part. Upon close inspection, I found that the mold release was still on the surface of the kit, so those areas were rigorously sanded and the part re-cleaned in alcohol in the ultrasonic cleaner. Dried completely, then repainted and masked without any issues.
With that done,I finally got the rest of her finished and assembled. One of the major last parts was the hair. Once that was finished, I got to working on the details such as clear glosses, washes, the fingernails, and flat coats. The very last piece was her butterfly hair clip. And with that, she’s done!
Starting with the finished face painting, the head piece is glued to the back of the hair. I had painted the separate hairpieces to make the eventual painting of the hair easier. But the hair still needs a seam line fix. The face is masked off with parafilm and sticky tack. Then the second piece of the hair is glued into place. Once glued, the seam is filled with light curing putty and the entire seam area is sanded. Once sanded, the seam area is primed as it would be an initial primer layer.
The first layer of primer dries and once checking the seam, more clean up is necessary, so the area is sanded and putty applied again, and then more priming. The second priming session is successful then the base color of the base sand yellow is used as the base tone for the hair.
Final fixes to the hair, final shading tone using custom blond mix that I made for the Yukimo project.
The butterfly hair clip thingy was a clear resin part. I used Alclad Hot Metal Blue and painted the entire piece. Once cured overnight, the part was clear glossed with Mr Super Clear. Once that cured overnight, a black wash was applied to the detail areas and a sharpie was used to paint the edges.
Check out the video for the entire hair work process as well as the final bits of work.
