Mermaid Hair - In 200 easy steps!

Over on Puppetsandstuff.com, Shawn Sorrel posted about a fabric (for lack of a better word) called Wonderflex. It's the top layer of this fabric roll, and has a sort of plastic-y feel to it.

I have been wanting to make a wig for my puppets for a while now, but couldn't find a good base to build off of. I ordered some of the Wonderflex (which hardens when you heat it) and decided to have a go.

I cut out a circle, pinned it to a styrofoam ball, and hit it with my hair dryer. (You're supposed to use a heat gun, but I wanted it to stay a little flexible).

I pulled it off the styrofoam, and had this:

 I trimmed the edges so I wouldn't have anything sticking up. I could have smoothed then down with the hair dryer, but I was impatient. (Shocking! I know!)

I knew I wanted to do mermaid type hair, so I picked green and blue wefts that I thought would work. I rubbed a copic close to the green color over the Wonderflex, and amazingly, it stayed. Yay! I did this, so if any of the hair parted and showed through, it wouldn't be a glaring white.

Then, I started the process of gluing the hair to the head-plate-thing-a-ma-jigger. (That is totally a technical term...that I just made up.)

So, I finished attaching all the hair, and stuck it on a head form.

Here it is from the back. The small spot on top is where I'm going to put a shell and possibly some netting later. But I thought it might look silly...

...so,  I grabbed a flexible mold about the size of the shell I want to make and tossed it on there for a size comparison. It looks like she's wearing a tiny purple beret. My mermaid is obviously from France.

I also trimmed the bangs a little so I could get a better idea of how the finished wig is going to look.

Here it is from the side. You can see that it still needs to be cut and styled, but that has to wait until the wig is on the puppet, so I can decide how long to make it, etc.  Overall, the process was pretty easy.

 I think my total materials ran about $8 or so. It took me about two hours to do everything. I wound up snipping and placing about 35 pieces of hair, so I admit that 200 steps is probably a bit of an exaggeration. It WAS fun, however, and I'm looking forward to playing with the Wonderflex when I have more time.

Professor Usagi

Just popping in to update my blog with a pic of my latest puppet. His name is Professor Usagi, and he's smart but always slightly befuddled. Usagi is Japanese for rabbit.