Safely Removing Paint Blemishes from Bare Plastic

G'day, Readers!
(Do I actually have "readers"?)

I seem to have been writing on this blog a lot recently, but I'm not quite done yet.

This time, I will be addressing a truly fearsome, yet common blemish: THE PAINT BLEED.

You know the one; Your lovely new figure is all shiny and perfect except for that single spot where the paint from one part has been, for no obvious reason, liberally applied to the part next to it as well. 

If the erroneous colour lies on top of another painted surface then the perfect solution is just to blot over it with a dab of (you guessed it) more paint.
... but what if the splodge is on a bit of unpainted plastic?

In figures, skin (along with occasional other parts) is usually made from unpainted plastic, sometimes with a light gradient applied to it. Painting over blemishes on these bare plastic areas doesn't really end up looking all that nice, because, let's face it, the textures just don't match up.

So what do you do if you've got a figure where paint has bled onto bare plastic?

Surprisingly, I'm going to tell you in an extremely longwinded manner.

As in my last post, my subject today will be one of the Lucky Star Nendoroid Petits! This time, it's Tsukasa Hiiragi B!
Have a look:

Isn't she cute? I love all the colours in this set! ^__^

If you can't see any paint bleeds, that's probably because I took the picture after I had already fixed it... but if I had taken the picture before fixing the bleed you probably wouldn't have seen it anyway.

Luckily, none of my figures are suffering from any major bleeds or smudges at the moment, but I still wanted to write about this method, so I will be doing it on an itty bitty teeny weeny little bleed which I noticed on Tsukasa's hand.

Here it is:

The orange paint from the chocolate pastry thing she's
about to chow down on has bled onto her hand slightly.

This is an infinitesimal bleed.

It's about 1mm across – barely visible – and I usually wouldn't have bothered to fix something this small, but I wanted to write this vexatious post it was surprisingly eye-catching...

This method is just as applicable to larger blemishes, however.

So... The tools for this job: 

From left to right: A big needle, a regular needle,
super fine sandpaper. (It is so fine)

Yup. Pretty sophisticated machinery, this. Not like, some stuff I found lying around in my house or anything...

I mentioned in a previous post that you should not use regular sandpaper on figures and I stand by it. Regular sandpaper will make your figures look like they've been attacked by a platoon of small, angry porcupines, and, in many cases, this is not desirable.

"Super fine" or "polishing" sandpaper is usually safe. You could also use very fine files or other dooverlackeys which serve the same purpose, if that's how you roll. I myself have several miscellaneous sanding tools in my collection. You can usually buy them at hobby stores.

The sandpaper I will be using in this job is a sort of rough sponge which was given to me by a friend who collects ball jointed dolls (that's right, kiddo. When you get too far into this sort of hobby that's the kind of creepy, wacked-out thing you do... swapping sandpaper squares like hippie freaks...). I included it in the picture so you can get an idea of just how "fine" it really is. As you can see, it barely looks rough at all... YES. IT'S THAT FINE. (So very very fine.)

It even says "super fine" on the back!
(Just in case you'd forgotten that it's fine...)

Anyway,

I used the two needles to remove most of the excess paint.

It would have been better if I could've used the large needle by itself because, as needles go, it's fairly blunt and doesn't scratch figures very easily. Sadly, it just wasn't breaking up the paint, so I swapped to the smaller needle to scratch up the surface of the blemish (taking care not to go though the paint to the figure underneath). I then chipped off the bulk of the scratched paint with the large needle.

At this point, I would usually show a blurry picture of my purple hands, but I think in this case it would be more constructive to actually explain to you how to use the needle;

1. Hold it as you would hold a pencil (or a scalpel, if you fancy yourself as the surgeon-y type). You'll have maximum control this way.
2. Always start gently, applying minimal pressure, making very light scratches. Gradually increase the pressure until the paint starts breaking up. You don't need to go any harder than this. If you plough in at full speed, you'll probably just scratch your figure.
3. Be patient! Proceed slowly and carefully. It takes a bit of zen to remove paint cleanly.
4. If it's just not working, try a different sized needle.

This may be a good time to mention that the reason I am painstakingly using a needle to remove the paint instead of just sanding the whole lot off is because I want to make a nice sharp edge where Tsukasa's hand meets the pastry (I assume it's a pastry).
If I had a splodge in the middle of her face, away from other painted parts, I would probably get it off with sandpaper alone (much faster and easier), but it's hard to make clean edges that way.

If you have a large bleed, you may want to try removing the paint around the edge with a needle and then gently sanding the rest off with fine sandpaper.

In my case, though, the area is so small that the whole thing is edge.

Here's what it looks like after the needle treatment (that sounds so scary – I just noticed):

Most of the erroneous paint has been removed.

You can probably see that there's still a little bit of paint left.

Most of this can be sanded off.

Although the super fine sandpaper won't scratch the plastic, I still use it gently and with caution. I don't want to grind away actual plastic from Tsukasa's hand, and I also don't want to remove any of the paint from other parts of the figure (sandpaper is a gun at removing paint).

After sanding, the former blemish looks like this:

In the picture it doesn't look much better than before sanding, but
in person it's a noticeable improvement.

And... we're done!

Now Tsukasa is free to enjoy her pastry (or whatever it is) in peace!

Om nom nom!

Afterthoughts;
I use needles for this sort of job, but really you could use any small, sharp object. Triangular-bladed craft knives, pins, thumb tacks and extremely sharp cactus spines are all suitable candidates.
Just remember, you're trying to remove the paint without damaging the plastic underneath, so be gentle.

Well, that's all from me for the moment!

As per usual, if you have any questions, feel free to ask! I usually reply within a day or so.

Good luck with your repairs!

     Cheers!
          Sparkey