Ninjago elemental master Neuro’s hairpiece provided me with my first opportunity to actually cut and shape a LEGO piece. (Of course I found out last week that LEGO is releasing a Neuro minifigure in one of the Toys R Us Bricktober sets!) The hairpiece that Neuro wears in the cartoon was available, but all versions of it had attached ears. I chose the light elf hair version (it also appears in dark brown and dark green for other minifigures) and acquired one from Bricklink.

The yellow ears on the piece are actually attached right on top of the hair, so all I really had to do was shave them off. I got my craft knife, screwed up my courage, and actually cut a LEGO piece! After carefully scraping off the ears, I used the tip of the craft knife to redefine the hair waves that were underneath. Then I painted the piece black and white and this is the result.

My Neuro minifigure was still under construction so I enlisted Dareth, the Brown Ninja, to model it.

At this point I had all the Ninjago elemental master hairpieces ready to go, but still wasn’t ready to tackle decals for their outfits. I decided instead to start working on another missing section of our Ninjago collection – the Ninja in their casual, incognito outfits. They wear these outfits a few times throughout the cartoon series, but the best time is when Lloyd wears a fedora in Episode 56: Public Enemy Number One. Cole and Jay wear a hood and hat that are readily available but Nya, Zane, Kai, and Lloyd wear very specialized hairpieces.

First up: Fedora Lloyd. This one required cutting and painting. I collected a few of Lloyd’s regular hairpieces, for cutting trial and error. By the third try I got the right angle without cutting so close to the ear area that the front sections broke off. I did a lot of sanding to get the hairpiece to fit snugly against the black fedora that I had painted with a green stripe. Some super glue and two days drying time later, it was pretty solid. After a few clear coats to keep the paint on, it was ready for my model, Dareth, to try on.

Dareth makes such a good model I decided to use him to model the next three hairpieces that I will discuss in Part 2 of this post.