Clear Unsightly Blemishes

AR received a sweet Bitty Baby for Christmas from Memaw! Two days later her baby doll looked like this:

Yes, my friends. AR drew all over her Bitty Baby's face and hands with an ink pen.

I trolled the Internet for answers and tried the following:

The ink's dye soaked deeply into the plastic, staining it so that no amount of surface scrubbing would remove it.

So I tried one last thing:

10% benzoyl peroxide acne cream

A toy collectors' forum suggested that acne cream and sunlight could remove the ink stains without bleaching the doll's skin tone or removing painted accents.

On a bright, sunny afternoon, I smeared the acne cream over her "blemishes" and left her to sunbathe for a few hours. The darkest stains took around 4 hours of bright sunlight to disappear. Many of the lighter stains were gone in 2 hours.

  

Bitty Baby received a quick photo shoot before returning to her cradle.

I still need to go back and get in her nose and ears and a few other small crevices but 2 lesson were learned during this experiment:

1. Be very cautious of unattended pens around toddlers

2. Don't wear acne cream in direct sunlight