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Shifuku's "cyber" foam and plastic hair tutorial

Posted: Mon Aug 25, 2008 7:06 pm
by IKickShins
This was originally posted on the old HH board by shifuku. Rescued from Google cache :)

"I posted this on livejournal today and I hope the people here get as much out of it as the people in elljay land have.




I recently made this crazy "cyber" fall set for a customer and friend that wanted something pretty extreme for a New Years fetish ball.

I logged 16 and a half hours making these. A 2 day marathon. I think they are pretty spiffy. If not HEAVY. Glad she'll only be wearing these for a few hours.

I used two tutorials I found online and incorporated them into the falls.

One is the stripey synthetic dread tutorial found here:
http://www.neonhair.se/tutorial/stripes/tutorial.htm

And the other is the foam tutorial found here:
http://www.extra-muffins.com/hair/viewtopic.php?t=878

The rest is my own ideas.
I had a good 3 day think before undertaking this project.
I think it's the most creative fake hair endeavour I've ever accomplished.

I hope this helps some people.

ENJOY!!!



Materials (I live in Vancouver Canada just for reference of store names):

thick currogated airline tubing for ponds (found at pet store)
thin currogated airline tubing for ponds (found at pet store)
thick clear plastic pond tubing (found at pet store)
thinner clear plastic pond tubing (found at pet store)
super thin fishtank airline tubing (found at pet store)
skinny pony lace tubing (found at Michaels)
5 colours/textures of rexlace (found at Michaels)
holographic ribbon (found at Michaels)
2 jaw clips by Goody brand (found at Save on Foods)
4 packs of fake hair (abantu.com)
6 sheets of white foam (found at Michaels)
6 sheets of black foam (found at Michaels)
6 sheets of grey felt (they had no grey foam) (found at Michaels)
1 large piece of netting used for hair weaves (abantu.com)
1 needle and black thread spool of weaving thread (abantu.com)
tape (found at Michaels)



Tools:

1 meter stick
exacto blade
scissors
hole puncher
silver paint pen

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How I did this:

First I took the weave netting and I cut it in half:

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(My foot is in there for size comparison.)




Then I cut about 150 pieces of plastic rexlace, pony lace, and holographic ribbon for each fall. So 300 in total. I cut some pieces smaller than others to give a staggered effect when it was all on the falls.

This part was easy just took a long time. I tied on each piece of plastic with a simple knot and then I taped on the thinner tubing with tape seen here in a macro shot:

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Make sure the knots are tight. Your hands will hate you for this later. hehe

Here they are with just the pony lacing, plastics and ribbon installed:

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I used the hole puncher and punched two holes in all the tubing near the top and laced some new pieces of rexlace through and tied them onto the netting multiple times. I made doubly sure these pieces were secure before continuing:

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Here they are with all the tubing and plastic installed:

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I used my meter stick to measure out inch increments on the foam sheets that I hand drew circuit board detailing on with the silver ink pen before hand:

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The foam is 12" by 8" so you should get 12 long 1 inch pieces of foam from each sheet.

Then I line up my meter stick and used my exacto blade to slice through the foam:

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Use a light pressure when you do this.
In this project I found that when you press too hard with the exacto blade it stretches the foam. Especially near the end of it and you get weird curved cut pieces.
So use a light hand and be gentle when cutting.
Foam is easy to slice through.

The felt was a little tougher but cut beautifully.

I "beveled" the edges off nicely with scissors:

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Here is all the foam and felt that I used for this project. I had about half the sheets left over after (yay for future project materials):

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This is where I used the tutorial I listed above for making the foam parts.

instead of elastics I used a my hole punch and punched holes throughout all the pieces and used more rexlace to tie the pieces together like so:


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I went a step further and cut some half pieces of foam and hole punched them at the top and inserted them in between where the foam strip of the same colour would folder over onto eachother. I did this to achieve more of a colour seperation.

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I also made more simple longer pieces of hole punched foam to create length:

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Then I use those rexlace pieces to tie the foam parts onto the fall netting:

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Here is one with foam and one without:

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Here they are with foam, tubings, rexlace and ribbons:

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textures:

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Then I made a bunch of dreadies for the falls. I used striped, solid and swirled dreads in black and white. I used the stripey dread tutorial I listed at the top of the entry for the striped dreads:


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(I don't attach these to the falls yet)


Now it's time to sew the jaw clip on.
It's important that you buy a clip with holes in the top to sew onto.
The netting needs an anchor:

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I position the jaw clip near the middle of the falls' netting. If you put it at the top the fall will droop and make it look pretty crappy. You'll see the exposed clip. Not fun.

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I start by sewing a few stitches of the netting through the holes at the top of the jaw clip and the bottom. Not too many because we are going to reinforce the jaw clip and then REALLY sew after. You just want to anchor the clip so it doesn't move while you are reinforcing it.

How I reinforce this netting is I roll the rest of the surrounding netting into a cylinder type of shape and then I wrap it around the base of the jaw clip:

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Then I take that needle and weave thread and I sew that netting onto those open hole parts at the top of the clip. This part is tricky because it has to be TIGHT and you can't be sewing the holes together. The holes are on each side of the part that you squeeze together to make the clip open so make sure you aren't sewing through both sets of holes. Just one at a time and make sure the stitches are tight so that the jaw clip with be incredibly secure.


Once I am completely done all of that I give it a few good tugs from different directions to make sure it's anchored firmly.

Then I sew the synth dreads on. I sew all the shorts ones on at the top to create a more voluminous and "waterfall" effect when the fall is on. This will also hide any netting or jaw clip that might possibly show through.

Then I sew on the longer dread pieces lower down on the falls to create length.


COMPLETED FALLS:

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When my client wears them for new years with her cyber costume she's getting professional pics done and sending them to me.

I'll post pics of her wearing them when I get them.




I hope this has been useful and helpful.

It was a fun project."

Re: Shifuku's "cyber" foam and plastic hair tutorial

Posted: Wed Aug 27, 2008 8:18 am
by rivetlicker_
Thanks for posting this up!

I had an order from a customer requesting circuit print on the foam, I did as shifuku and drew it on. Turned out lovely!
Thanks for the inspiration :D

Re: Shifuku's "cyber" foam and plastic hair tutorial

Posted: Wed Nov 05, 2008 7:52 am
by PoiZon
Well. this was rather helpful. Time to buy all the foam and relax from A.C Moore now. :i2:

Re: Shifuku's "cyber" foam and plastic hair tutorial

Posted: Thu Dec 18, 2008 10:23 pm
by Evil_Locks
Wow! They look spectacular!!! My head got a bit overloaded when i was trying to follow what you did, but im stupid that way! lol!

Very well done you!

Re: Shifuku's "cyber" foam and plastic hair tutorial

Posted: Fri Dec 26, 2008 11:12 pm
by XxDigitalDolliexX
best tutorial ever!

Re: Shifuku's "cyber" foam and plastic hair tutorial

Posted: Wed Apr 08, 2009 2:31 am
by sugarpain
Hoooooly crap. This is beyond awesome. <333

Re: Shifuku's "cyber" foam and plastic hair tutorial

Posted: Fri Jun 05, 2009 4:37 am
by invader_kittie
wow thats all i can really say!

did you ened up getting the photos of them on the girl?

Re: Shifuku's "cyber" foam and plastic hair tutorial

Posted: Fri Jun 05, 2009 9:26 am
by rivetlicker_
I believe there were a few photos of the girl wearing the piece on Shifuku's LJ, but I think she took them down.

Re: Shifuku's "cyber" foam and plastic hair tutorial

Posted: Fri Jun 05, 2009 10:06 am
by Sophrodisiac
Wow, they look fantastic, can't wait to see a picture of them being worn. I'm tempted to try making something similar, though probably without foam as that's not really my thing but you never know. ^^

Re: Shifuku's "cyber" foam and plastic hair tutorial

Posted: Mon Aug 17, 2009 5:46 am
by SpiralColors
Wow, Those are amazing! I never thought about sowing things on to clips, but now I can't wait to try it!

Re: Shifuku's "cyber" foam and plastic hair tutorial

Posted: Tue Nov 24, 2009 3:43 pm
by rhiannon
The foam is a really awesome design! It looks like it took a LOT of effort but its well worth it!

Re: Shifuku's "cyber" foam and plastic hair tutorial

Posted: Tue Jan 19, 2010 9:21 pm
by WeaveWenchUK
That is one hell of a cool custom job of falls! Very nice, and I love the netting idea too. I have used various other 'net' type and looking materials before so I'll have to have a go with the stuff you used in your tut. Fab pix too, always makes a good, clear, & concise tut :i1: .