Ad Asstra Per Asspera

"Lunar faces." Drawings of the moon that bring out profiles of animals and people that can be seen on its surface. The Moon: A Summary of the Existing Knowledge of Our Satellite, with a Complete Photographic Atlas. 1903.

Wolf skull muzzle mask!

This one was bought by a local friend pup/furry last year (not shown here, this is a different friend), and it's become such a part of them that I almost can't think of this design as anything other than their face. Integrated into their fursona and everything. Truly an honor.

Safety warnings have been getting wilder as our world becomes more intricately dangerous. I've spoken about this before: fifty years ago, most warning signs were like "don't put your cigarette out in this." Nowadays there's a ton of cautions about radio interference with your Xbox controllers if you eat a cupcake the wrong way after having major dental surgery.

Part of this is because the demands of the customer have become more sophisticated. Every day, we're doing shit that would have pissed off a NASA scientist, and not even thinking about it too hard. Last week, I got mad that the free wifi on an airplane wasn't very fast. My buddy made some kind of special collar that lets us hear the thoughts of dogs, and then he threw it out with the other clutter on his desk when his in-laws were visiting.

Unfortunately, human brains are still basically the same as fifty years ago. Most of us would still be considered "kinda weird" in the 70s. There is a much wider gap of knowledge that has to be expressed to your average run-of-the-mill ding-dong in order to explain to them just how much trouble they are in. That's where the warnings are coming from: you practically have to include an undergraduate lecture to get people up to speed with the concepts involved, before you tell them not to put those concepts in their mouth.

For the first time, China has successfully landed an orbital reusable booster at sea.

basically all of my dolls have their hair glued directly to the head. i've made one or two wigs, but i don't really like using them because a lot of my dolls have visible hairlines & hair that lies very flat. i avoid gluing anything on top of the head cap seam so the head can still be opened, but it tends to be a hassle with the way i make dolls.

for materials, i love unconventional stuff like paper, fake plants, or craft foam.

silk clay is a fun new discovery i've used a couple of times & will use again. in both of the above examples i rolled the clay into a thin sheet, cut into strips, and then curled them, but you could do so many other things also.

feathers are cool & versatile because you can embrace the clear feather look, or use the fluffy parts to make something more like fine hair. i've also made feathers out of felt when i've wanted the vibe but not to deal with the finickiness of actual feathers.

all aforementioned materials are just glued straight into the doll head without needing to make wefts of any kind. then there is proper hair-hair, which i don't like working with, but sometimes we Must.

the few times i've done ultra long, sleek hair, i've used old wigs from either my own or friends' cosplay stashes. i've also harvested doll hair. i usually make wig fiber into wefts using hot glue, and then glue them to the head in whatever pattern works for the hairstyle. i hate wig hair though. it's thick and hard to style in doll scale and too slippery to stay put. very situational.

i vastly prefer acrylic yarn. it can be sleek when straightened with a hair straightener, frizzy when left as it is, or curly when styled with a heated metal stick. if you want to curl acrylic hair on a small scale, i would recommend gluing it into small wefts, curling them, and then gluing the hair to the head.

there are a million tutorials about making acrylic wefts, and i recommend following NONE OF THEM. i Do Not Get why the common method is to cut the hair to the length you want and then forcefully tear it open with a brush. you lose most of the hair that way.

instead, buy your yarn as thick and loosely spun as you can. i personally use this one with only two strands. cut it into 50cm - 1m pieces. while keeping the yarn under tension, unravel the strands from each other. then you can just pull the fibers apart gently, and get the maximum length of hair [usually a little over 10cm] out of it without wasting material. if you cut the yarn into short tufts and brush it open, you will get shorter fibers and also a lot of them will come loose and be an unusable ball of fluff.

after unraveling the yarn, i glue it into wefts with white glue on top of a plastic cutting board it's easy to pry of off when dry.

my favorite thing about acrylic yarn is that it can be posed with the doll, and can easily hold gravity-defying positions. also really the only type of hair that it's easy to do short styles in.

you can also do fun things like soak it in glue for a wet look.