Hair All About It!

Painted Almaloy wire mottled brown and grey to camo under the hair, let dry. Added bulks of sheep wool in dark brown tones to these with tons of messy matte medium. I layered on strands of white goat hair to make them looked aging and grey, like my own.

I forgot to wait until Rana's skin was lighted with another layer of paper before adding on the hair--but the moment was seized... Began by folding the wooly wire lengths in half and hot gluing them onto the puppet's head, careful to work around her animation-active ears and fixed horns in her head.

Carried on around the back, filling in with the bulked lengths until her entire head was covered. I left a few stiffened strands poking out here and there to add realism to her later hair styles. Turned the pupp upside down to fill in the hairline at the nape of her neck as her hair will be worn partially up half the time.

Letting my hands work without my head being in charge, I felt the dark hair wasn't a match for Rana's tawny goat skin leg hair color. It was too jarring a color difference for me. So I reached into the "amazing box of all supplies" curated through the years for each puppet, and pulled out a bag of Gotland sheep fibre in perfect honey-shaded ringlets that I'd bought a few years back from my Slovakian Shepherdess living in Scotland.  When I topped Rana's hair base with thin wafts, invisibly affixed with hot glue, the combination of color and texture leaped off the puppet and brought her to life right before my eyes! I have become 100% fully obsessed with making Halfland now more than ever.

I continued for several hours until her hair was sheathed in the Gotland from roots to ends, and from top side to underside. I worked hard to make the natural curls in the fiber lay organically and yet also permanently hold their place until the wires are repositioned.

Once done, I sopped more matte medium onto the ends of each tress-bundle and wound a finishing ringlet onto the plastic handle of many paint brushes, clipped on via pegs overnight to dry into that ideal tapering shape.

The results are AMAZING!!! Here we now have the puppet's hair that she can wear down at night in the cottage for bed and it also easily wires up for daytime halfbuns in the back. Fully animatable, natural looking, wise old goat woman hair!

Rana done got her hair did! YAY!