All the Hair!

Hair. It's on your head, on your arms, your legs and everywhere really. Hair isn't -quite- the same with ball jointed dolls.

With a lot of bjds, their hair is from a wig, which is removable and much easier to keep clean compared to the dolls you can buy at the local grocery and toy stores who have their hair embedded in their squishy heads.

So, let's go into what TYPES of hair there are for bjds, 'cause there is a ton of materials that can be used.

First: Alpaca - Huacaya & Suri

Alpacas are adorably long-necked mini-clouds of variously colored fluff. Sheep with long necks. But smarter. They also spit when stressed out, so be a bit careful if you get too close, just in case you scare the fluffy critter. Their super soft fur is a good, renewable resource for making doll wigs, and though it DOES take a bit of preparation and of course, time to grow, especially if you buy the locks raw and long, it's amazingly colorful even on it's own! There are close to 26 different colours of alpaca fur out there, and they even grow super-fine, curly, straight, you name it. I'll explain more.

Suri Alpaca is the best fluff to work with for doll hair in my opinion, and many others who work with it agree - It's sooo soft! The alpaca hair you can get from farmers tends to be dirty, so of course it needs to be cleaned before you can begin working with it, but by following several YouTube videos online, you can find out it's pretty simple to work with the hair, though the longer stuff tends to be a bit easier to knot up apparently, so be careful!

Huacaya locks are more curly and slightly rougher to the touch, but still much softer than lamb or sheep wool, and makes for adorably curly/wavy hair if you have the patience to pull the blanket (the shaved alpaca coat is generally called a blanket) apart and deal with the necessities of cleaning it and keeping it in good condition.

Side Note: I've never worked with alpaca hair before, but from watching video after video after video I've decided I will be working with it eventually, just to see how I like it!

Second: Synthetics

Plastics

Plastics are used often in place of alpaca or fur. Out of the plastics available, there is Saran, Kanekalon, Nylon and Acetate!

Saran is seen most often with barbies, and is popular because it's soft to the touch, has a huge variety of bright and dark colors, and it just nice to touch and play with. It holds it's shape somewhat well, but starts to lose it's color pretty quickly, especially if you leave it in direct light. Also, don't bother attempting to re-style the hair, what you get is what you get, it doesn't do much or hold up long.

Kanekalon is also a plastic hair, similar to Saran, but with the same issues, on top of often being crimped when you get it in the mail.

Nylon is weak. It's the hair that frays when you glance at it and any, ANY sort of heat will melt that stuff down until it's useless. Oh, it burns fast too. It's why ya don't wear nylon in a burning building.

Acetate! Even MORE flammable than nylon and the weakest. It's weak coloring, bad at being styled and is generally just not great for hair.

Acrylic Yarns are used a lot in making wigs, but are time consuming and can often just be frustrating if you buy the wrong yarn and it ends up becoming a pile of fluff on your desk, unusable.

I just wanted to get some of my opinions out there with this posting, I'll elaborate on hair in future blog posts, but right now my only real experience with doll hair has been with Saran and making yarn wigs. It's nice, but I personally find it hard or near-impossible to get good coverage with it for a wig. When I DO use enough to make the wig full and not thin so the wig cap shows through, it gets HEAVY, which topples my doll more often than not. ^^; It may be cheap, but it's not my favorite way of making wigs for dolls.

I'm still exploring materials, and I'll post as I go along!