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THE DIFFERENT KINDS OF HAIR SOLD AT DOLLYHAIR.COM
NYLON: It looks beautiful, it feels beautiful,
and it's one of the the easiest to style types of hair.
It is extremely strong, and it's less prone to breaking
than the other kinds of hair. It takes a curl very easily,
and can just as easily be straightened again, if need be.
It can be boil permed, but it doesn't have to be! Wet it
with room temperature water, set it in curlers, let it air
dry, take the curlers out, and you've got beautiful curls
or waves! If you want really tight curls, a boil perm will
never hurt, as long as you don't boil youir water at too
hot of a temperature. Nylon and polypropylene can only withstand
mildly simmering water, so when you see the air
bubbles just beginning to rise to the water's surface in
your pot, that's the temperature at which you should perm
nylon and polypropylene. Any hotter than that, and the hair
could frizz. Nylon can also be baked without having its
integrity affected! To read more about baking it, please
refer to the page.
Nylon hair is used primarily by Hasbro (My little Ponies,
Corn Silk Cabbage Patch Kids, etc.) and by the Ashton-Drake
company (Gene, Madra, etc.)
Dollyhair.com is the FIRST and ONLY website
to offer nylon 6 doll hair to the public on a retail level.
It has only been available on this website since October
2005.
SARAN: Saran hair is gorgeous! It is a long-time
favorite of many people, and it's the type of hair that
is most often used for Barbie dolls (but Mattel uses kanekalon
on Barbies sometimes, too). It has a waxy feel, which helps
keep flyaway hair strands at bay, and it's weighted more
heavily than other types of hair. It's somewhat resistant
to curling, so if you're going to curl it, I would suggest
overcompensating by about 50% by using smaller curlers and
smaller sections of hair than you want the final result
to be. It can be boil permed with VERY hot water... the
hotter, the better. Saran hair is used primarily by Mattel
(Barbie) and Tonner (Tyler, Sydney, etc.)
ACETATE: This synthetic more closely resembles
human hair than the other synthetic hair types sold on this
site. I don't know of any toys that were ever factory-rooted
with it, but it's very pretty. It can be boil permed, if
you wish, and it can withstand VERY hot water.
POLYPROPYLENE: In my opinion, polypropylene
looks and feels just like nylon hair, although many customers
have told me that it's more like a cross between saran and
nylon. They say that it feels like saran, but it has the
easy styling properties of nylon. Regardless, everyone who
tries polypropylene absolutely loves it. The only drawback
with polypropylene is that it's completely nonporous, which
means that it can't be dyed with fabric dye, or scented with our doll hair fragrances. Once again, polypropylene should only be boil permed with mildly simmering water.
KANEKALON: As I state on the kanekalon hair
ordering page, the kanekalon hair sold on Dollyhair is NOT
the human-grade kanekalon that you can buy at your local
beauty supply store. It is DOLL GRADE kanekalon, which is
very different! Human grade kanekalon is manufactured with
the idea of mimicking human hair. It is, however, manufactured
by Asian companies, so their effort is to mimic ASIAN human
hair. As a Caucasian person, I would much prefer to have
the gorgeous, thick hair of an Asian girl, rather than my
own Caucasian hair. However, you can probably imagine how
such thick strands of hair would NOT be to scale on a small
doll, such as Barbie. Human grade kanekalon ends up looking
inappropriate on dolls, and it's very stiff and bristly.
DOLL GRADE kanekalon, however, is comprised of VERY thin
strands, and doll-grade kanekalon is gorgeous. It's extremely
easy to style, and works well for both stick-straight styles
AND very curly styles. It can withstand very heat, so you
don't have to worry about melting it during a boil perm.
It's the easiest to work with type of hair for beginners,
and it's very versatile. Kanekalon hair is often used on
Barbie dolls.
MOHAIR: One customer kindly informed me
that it's not really mohair, it's wool! It's called "Cotswold
Locks". The two seem like interchangeable terms to
me, but what do I know about sheep? It looks and acts like
mohair. It's great for more ethereal creations (fairies,
mermaids, etc.) and, until dollyhair.com started offering
nylon hair to the public, it was pretty much the only option
for polymer clay artists who had to bake their hair. It's
really beautiful stuff, very organic-looking (because it is organic!), flyaway with a nice natural curl,
and the sheep are never harmed! It's shipped from the farm
of a friend of mine, one of the nicest ladies you'd ever
meet. She takes really good care of the sheep and loves
them dearly!
I am always happy to send out free samples
of the saran and nylon hair. Unfortunately, I cannot offer
samples of the curly hair and the mohair. If you would
like some free samples (very small swatches, just so you
can see the colors in person), please and let me know which
colors you'd like to see. We ask that you limit your sample requests to five colors at a time. If you stay within this limit, the samples are always free, and the postage (no matter where you are located in the world) is free, as well. All you need to do is send me an email with your requested sample colors, along with your mailing address, of course.
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