New Hair!

Hujoo Berry has a new Hair-do! 

I've done a little bit of work on her right-hand gauntlet, but I haven't quite finalised that yet... so for now I've been working on a new wig. I'd been looking into getting some natural fibres such as Mohair in a lovely auburn colour to give her a more vintage, romantic look. Inspired by BJD Magazine's super tutorial about how to make a no-sew wig with wig cap*, I realised it didn't have to be as difficult and time-consuming as I had initially thought!

*All available at BJD Magazine: http://bjdmagazine.com/2011/01/11/tutorial-create-a-no-sew-wig-with-wig-cap-for-your-bjd/

So, I needed to get hold of some soft wool fibres, and lots of them, since Hujoo Berry has such a big head! I had initially planned to use Mohair and to buy this from ebay, but by chance I was chatting to my mum about it and she mentioned she could acquire some Alpaca wool for me to try. There is a local Alpaca farm near her home in East Sussex who she sources wool from to make environmentally friendly and hypo-allergenic cushions from - she sells these at http://www.designercushionsandthrows.com/.

So she brought me over some Alpaca wool for me to test, courtesy of the adorable Alpacas who live happily at Spring Farm in Fletching East Sussex  http://www.springfarmalpacas.co.uk/. 

I've found it to be lovely and soft and the colour was exactly what I had been looking for, which was lucky! They do also come in a variety of other lovely colours:

So I set about following the BJD magazine tutorial instructions, as well as Ryo Yoshida's superb doll making guide book, which I ordered from Hobby Link Japan* recently (who by the way turned out to be a great place to shop - great comms, accept Paypal, customs fees included in the price, and Fedex service available. To my surprise my book arrived in just 1 week! Cost about £30 in total)   *http://www.hlj.com/
    

I started making the wig cap, having covered her face in cling film and and glueing the fabric sections as in the tutorial. (I didn't take any pictures because it's all really clearly explained on the BJD Magazine site.)

What I did slightly differently though was to prepare sections of hair in advance:

I know, it looks really weird! But it was quite practical, because I just squirted my PVA glue into the middle and then with  a brush glued each section to the plate, so that I could peel it off easily later. I made two of these hairy frisbee plates, but later made another one adding smaller sections of hair as well. I needed these at the front of the wig cap to neatly frame her face.

I left the glued hair sections to dry over night. In the morning I peeled them off the plate and trimmed the edges with scissors.












I then started glueing the sections onto the wig cap:

(This just shows the wig cap on a wig stand, just it was nice and clear for the photo. I did the glueing while she was wearing it, her head still wrapped in cling film.)

This really didn't take very long at all, only a few hours. And the Alpaca wool has worked really well!










And the result is gorgeous!!

Wild and tousled!

The wool has such a thick, soft texture and gentle colour gradation!

Neat bun

Close up of face. The wig has come out really well and fits nicely

Next up: I've been playing around with making a swivel-down eyepiece made from a brass fixing from an old chest of drawers... It'll all make sense soon enough!!