And then there was Joseph - the Restoration.

I don't know how many figures were created before Joseph - but I do know that of all the figures Mom created in this Nativity set - Joseph was the worst.

He was somewhat of a design flaw from the start I think, and of the returned figures, he was the most beat up and in poor repair.

To begin with, for some reason Mom decided to give Joseph more facial hair than any other figure, and she crafted a wig of hair from fun fur for his head as well.  True, Joseph was a carpenter - a woodsman, a working man - but did he need to be so hairy?

Mom - really!

Joseph wears a very simple robe of burlap-type material, he has a rope tied around his waist, he had no real head covering (except fur) and the weirdest thing ever - blue eyes that had smudged across his face.

I decided I really needed to rescue Joseph from his comical image so the first thing I did was tear off his beard, mustache (yes that was fur too) and his hair.  I am not sure what kind of glue she used to attach these items, but after removing these furry items, there remained a shiny residue with pieces of fun fur stuck to it.

The smudged blue eyes bugged me, so I decided to completely repaint Joseph's face.  Bad idea - the acrylic paint I used picked up every piece of un-removed glue and made it look like he had a terrible skin condition... and the flesh-colored paint was so pale beside the other figures, that Joseph looked like a woodsman with a severe skin condition AND anemia.

So I took the poor guy to the bathroom sink and scrubbed off my paint job. The smudgy blue eyes would not wash off, so I took a black Sharpie pen and outlined them and darkened them as best I could.

I put a piece of fur back on just the back of his head and then wrapped his turban around his head - and you will agree - not so good!

I let him sit this way for a few days, but I really didn't like the way he looked - he looked just plain creepy to me.

So off came the beard and head wrapping again, and over the course of the next few days I tossed all kinds of things his way.

In the end I decided to keep the fur beard off completely and I decided to add some different color to contrast the green.

Here is how Joseph looks now.  I think he is just going to have to be happy with his new image.  I still am not 100% happy with him, but I think he does look a lot better than the hairy man he was before.

I didn't have the dip and drape material so my head covering is simply cotton.  It doesn't drape well so I had to glue it to his clothing in strategic spots to make it looked draped.
You can see the difference and the benefit of using the dip and drape - It really did work well.

Oh, and I gave him a walking stick - his hands looked like they needed to hold something .