Next on my list we’re the hair pieces for Kai, Nya, and Zane. These required more extensive cutting and shaping and painting of LEGO pieces. So I stocked up on a few extras of Kai’s regular hairpiece, some LEGO Friends sunglasses for Nya, and a few hard hats with hair attached for Zane. I started with Kai’s hair piece and this is the result.
Kai’s hair is made of the rubbery plastic, not the hard plastic, so cutting and sanding was different than my first attempts. I only cut it too thin around the ears once, my second try looked great. Then I sanded it. Since it was made from the rubbery material, when I sanded it, it did not get a lot smoother and the part where I sanded was a lighter color than the rest of the piece. I tried again and left much more of the top of the hairpiece intact on my first cut this time. I had to carefully cut the piece bit by bit with the craft knife to get it just right. It does look like the hat is on top of his hair and not really his head, but that’s how he looks in the cartoon. The hat is a simple red cap, which was easy to acquire. I also had to be extra careful with the glue because it discolored the rubbery piece as well. It’s still shows a tiny bit, but Dareth doesn’t mind.
Zane’s hairpiece came next, and though it looks similar to Kai’s, Zane’s was twice as much work. The hair portion is cut from the bottom of a hardhat with attached brown hair. The hat took me a while to identify. It has a button on top and a curved bill with indented seems. I finally matched it with a baseball player from the Collectible Minifigure Series 10.
Cutting off the brown hair from the bottom of the hardhat was simple and straightforward. Then I painted it metallic silver. The hat was light gray with an “s” printed on the front. I got the “s” off with Brasso cleaner, which worked well and quickly. Then I painted the whole thing white. I glued the two pieces together and added a few clear coats and it looked great. The hair is even long enough in the back to cover the face on the other side of Zane’s head. His regular silver hair piece doesn’t cover it.
Nya proved to be the most challenging of the bunch. I looked and looked for a similar hairpiece to what she wears on the cartoon. I was about to give up when I matched it to the Eqyptian queen from Collectible Minifigure Series 5. I think the black threw me off. The glasses are from the LEGO friends line.
I washed off the printed crown from the hairpiece with Brasso and then painted it yellow. I mixed my own yellow and it is a pretty close match. It did need several coats since I was painting light over black. The glasses were pink, so I painted them red. The lenses are still pink though. I cut off a short bar from the center back of the glasses that was used to attach them to the hole in the top of another hairpiece. Then I trimmed the sides so I could attach it to the front of the hair at just the right width. It took several tries to get a strong bond. Dareth thinks it looks great.