Improving Mohair Quality

Sometimes when you buy a batch of mohair it looks wonderful in the pictures but when you get it in your hands its a bit dry and frizzy, at that point you can be a bit disappointed and worried that the mohair might not be any good to use.  

But just like our own hair adding a bit of moisture to frizzy mohair can make an enormous difference to its quality and at the same time make it much easier to use when you come to root it. 

When I mohair that turns out to be a bit dry the first thing I do is separate it into managable locks which I hold together with silicone bands, making sure the bands are twisted on really tight, you lose a lot less hair during the process using silicone bands as opposed to ribbon.  

I give the hair a good comb through with a small toothed comb, a pet comb with metal teeth or even a nit comb works well for this.  Once it's combed I use a leave in conditioner to moisturise the hair, the products I use are designed for Affro Caribbean hair so they really do moisturise the hair and improve it's condition enormously.  Once you have throughly soaked the mohair in moisturiser, comb it through again and then lay on tissue paper to dry out. 

 

As you can see the mohair goes from being dry and frizzy to sleek, shiny and soft. What looked like completely unpromising mohair becomes something special.

You do lose mohair during this process, specially in the combing out but it worthwhile to be left with such a soft usable product.

I find that this process also gives me a good opportunity to test the colour fastness of the dyes in the mohair, the last thing you want to happen is find the dye runs when you have already rooted half a head.

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Prototype Prestige

One of the biggest coups for a reborn artist is being able to do a reborn a prototype, to a non reborner that probably doesn’t sound like much, but trust me, it is!

Just for the sake of clarity, when a sculptor has a new doll kit out on the market the first 2 or 3 test kits are called prototypes and those are very special, they are used to check for quality and for the promotion of the kit, the photos of those prototypes will be used tp promote the kit and hopefully help sell it to the rest of the reborning world. So of course those prototypes are really important. I mean, come on, no one is going to buy a kit if the prototype looks like the Baby of Frankenstein now are they?

So being asked to do a prototype is a very special event and a real compliment.

Bethany is a preemie sculpt by Toby Morgan a really sweet 14inch sculpt with a very preemie look and curled up limbs.

There is a bit of pressure of course to feel like you've done a good job on making a sculpt look good and in a lot of cases there is a lot of pressure on the artist to get prototypes done on time.

I think it takes a lot of determination and a huge amount of commitment on the part of an artist to do prototypes on a regular basis.

Prototypes in general sell at a premium because although there are a number of kits made from any one sculpt, even the limited edition sculpts, the first ones, the prototypes are so special that people want to have them.

I am so pleased with how Bethany has come out, she is perfectly proportioned and I have weighted her carefully to give her that new born floppiness.

Her hair is the softest best quality mohair from Slumberland Nursery in the softest baby brown and I rooted her eyelashes in the same soft mohair

Bethany is still looking for a home so if you would like to take her home click HERE