When we first saw the picture I was going to base my witch doctor off of, I had no idea what the hair was supposed to be like. We didn’t know if it was dreads, just spikes, feathers, what. We finally decided that we would make the wig two toned: Purple on the top, spiked, and then with longer braids going down the back (pink, but covered with ribbon so it didn’t matter) with large beads on them.

I don’t have an awful lot of progress pictures for this wig, so I apologize, but there ya go.

I started out with a Punky wig and (after I dyed it a darker purple) sewed a ton of pinkish purple extensions along the back part of the wig, to make it more full and long so I could have six good sized braids.

After the hair was sewn on and braided into evenly sized braids, I secured the ends and then cut up strips of a purple cotton fabric I thought would be perfect for wrapping the braids with. I decided not to go with ribbon because it would be too stiff or too shiny, and the fabric I used was just right, and stretchy too. (It was difficult to wrap the braids just right, and did take me several hours,  but after some tightening and adjustments the braids were fully covered.)

I used small rubber bands to secure the wrap at the bottom, I wanted the entire braid to be wrapped with no hair showing at the bottom.

After they were all wrapped, I made the beads out of Sculpey (for some reason I was insanely nervous about these; I wanted them all to be just perfect and big enough to slip onto the braid but not big enough to fall off, but they were all nice and secure!) and painted them the right colors, then carefully slid them onto the ends of the braids.

I then attacked the wig with lots of Got2B hairspray and voila! It’s a witch doctor wig! :D

I then attacked the wig with lots of Got2B hairspray and voila! It’s a witch doctor wig! :D

(And in case you were wondering how we did Mario’s witch doctor wig, I just used a Lavishly Wild wig (picture in the link is NSFW), threw it up into a ponytail, hairsprayed the heck out of the bangs to make them stay back, and teased the ponytail until it was a terribly matted, huge ponytail. We figured from the shadow behind the male witch doctor that his hair was huge, so we just went with that, and it turned out great!)