I want to share with you the easy and quickest way to make a doll wig. Artisans rarely use a glue gun for wigs, but they should, because using it you can make quality neat wigs which are not afraid of water and a comb.

What is so good about a doll wig based on hot glue?

• Time savings. With this method there is no need to wait for a cap and then for a each row of hair to dry. You can do without pre-processing glued strands.
• Possibility of adjustment at any stage of manufacture. This glue is good because using the hot tip of the gun at each stage you can remove the excess, smoothen the cap, improve the already glued strand of hair, etc.
• The ability to achieve realism. If you catch the trick, you can make a neat wig even on a very small doll's head. A cap becomes quite thin and transparent, strands of hair are rather implanted in a cap than glued on top, without thickening it a lot. By contrast with single tresses it is possible to control the density of hair.
• The strength of a wig. A wig almost does not fall out while combing and washing. It can be washed with warm water, dried with a hair dryer, processed with styling products, you can even straighten hair with an iron (simply do not touch a cap). One of the wigs of my Albina doll is more than a year old, I often spent too much time on it, removed/put on, combed, watered, treated with sprays and gels, and it is still like a new one.
• A good fit on a head. A cap of the wig is solid, slightly flexible, follow the shape of the head of a doll (it sits tight like a helmet), the inner side is slightly sticky (not enough to leave marks, to stick forever or collect dirt, but good enough to help the wig to hold). If your doll has a head shape, on which wigs are kept poorly (in this DIY I have such a type of a head), it is possible to achieve a better fit by adding to a wig some hair on temples and on a forehead.

Of course there are some nuances that should be taken into account

• This method is excellent for polyurethane, vinyl, or bake plastic dolls. If protective film on them melts and glue sticks to a head, it will easily come off without any difficulties and traces. I can't say the same with certainty about the dolls by LaDolla or papier-mache dolls, covered with a layer of paint, glue can tear it off. I think nothing should happen with china dolls too. This does not mean that the method is not completely suitable, you just need to think about additional protection of a head, possibly wrap a head with a cloth or foil under film. In any case, if you have an opportunity, make a wig for the doll before make up, if you make dolls by yourself it is better to have a blank head for such things.
• A hot melt wig will fit well only the shape of a head, which it was made for initially, i.e. you can't make a versatile wig for doll's heads of a certain diameter. It is individual.
• One of the classic methods of making a parting in the middle or a top suggests pressing with an iron, you can't do that with our wig. You will have to act in other ways, use water/styling products. You can use a hair dryer.

I just want to say that I am not the first discoverer of this method, but like every artisan I have modernized the process for myself, I have made it easier and faster in some parts and more difficult for best results in other parts. Once I read a DIY about wigs with the help of a hot air gun by Lera Dormidontova and decided to try it, but she had all sorts of masochism steps including smoothing hot glue with your fingers. As it turned out in the process of working with this DIY it is not necessary to have these throes of art.

So, let's start.

To create a wig you will need:

• Hair for dolls. Any hair you prefer, they can be natural, synthetic, with tresses, curls or just a bun. In this DIY I use short synthetic hair with tresses, they are not heat resistant (a flat and curling iron spoil them, but a hairdryer does not), they are quite soft and manageable, it is easy to style them with water and a hairdryer, so you must not be afraid that in the process they will stick out in different directions, water will fix everything.

• A doll/a doll's head. If you have a doll, put it on a chair and wrap with film together with a chair, you can put a separate head on any suitable stick.
• A glue gun and sticks for it. I recommend to use a small gun with slim transparent sticks (0.7 cm if I'm not mistaken).
• Transparent film, a plastic bag. It is better to take strength film, non-food, but construction/wrapping.
• Tools for combing: a comb with frequent teeth and a toothbrush. I also used an eyebrow brush instead of a common round brush for styling.
• Scissors. You can use manicure scissors and scissors for thread. You can do with manicure scissors, but some operations are easier made with scissors for thread.
• A cloth/napkin. You will use it to wipe the tip of the gun.
• A sticky roller for cleaning clothes. Get ready, hair will be everywhere: on a table, on a chair, on you. This video will help you to easily clean all surfaces in the work process, we need hair only in one place — on a doll wig.
• A white sheet. For convenience I put it on a table and all the hair is visible and the table is intact.
• You will need little silicone elastics, hair crabs, a hairdryer, styling products.

The first step is to make a cap of the wig. To do this, wrap the head with protective film (keep in mind that most likely it will melt in the cap, but it is ok). Apply glue to the head in small portions. Wait until the extruded portion of glue hardens a bit, smear it with the tip of the gun across the head. Then add a new batch of glue close to the previous one, thus making the wig from the crown to the edges. The thickness of the cap of 1-1.5 mm is sufficient for strength and good fit on the head.
Once you have made a wig from all sides, do the final sanding with the nose of the gun. You don't need a perfectly smooth surface, it is important to achieve even thickness, without sags and holes.

We make a larger edge of the wig, to have the opportunity to draw and cut out the desired form. For painting I used a capillary pen, you can take a gel pen, the main thing is so that a pen draws on this surface and can be washed off.

Remove the cap together with the film from the head, if it is stuck somewhere, do not pull strongly, gently pry with something, pass between the head and the cap something flat, but not scratchy, and everything will come off.
Cut along the contour, remove the film where you can, wash off the pen form the cap, try it on the head. It is ok if the temples are a bit off, we will modify them in the process. Also, the cap should not have holes, look at the gap.

Next, we wrap the head in film again, to make the temples fit well you can use with a thin silicone elastic, securing it like this.

Now you can glue all the holes and correct/increase the temples. The cap is ready.
Proceed to the next stage. Before gluing the hair, think about the hairstyle. It is important to understand in which direction to glue the hair, whether the hair will be near the face or combed back, in what place they will be parted or you will make a round top, with or without a fringe. I will make a wig with a round top and a straight fringe.
I will tell you about the technology. Take a small strand of hair that you can confidently pinch with two fingers. I cut from a tress a strand with a width of not more than 1-1. 5 cm, otherwise the hair may fall out in the process.

Glue starting from the bottom, stepping back from the edge of the cap a couple of millimeters up. Apply a strand to the cap and with a nose of the gun (not squeezing the glue), smoothen hair to the head, slightly melting them in the cap. Now our task is not to permanently glue the strand, but to "baste" it to the cap, so you can unclench your fingers. Before releasing a strand, wait a few seconds for the glue to harden.

We must distribute and finally glue the strand. Sightly pull the strand in the desired direction and with a tip of the gun distribute the hair roots, melting them in the wig. If you feel that the hair began to float in the glue, it means that you overheated them, remove the gun from the strands for a few seconds and continue. If you think there is enough glue on the cap for a good fixation of the strands, add a small portion of glue from the gun, remove the excess up to the cap, smoothening them. After gluing be sure to comb your hair.
That's what you must get.

Glue next strands. Each strand shouldn't look separate, attach them to each other, the strands in the same row need to be mixed together. We can distribute hair in the desired direction, but take the side hair from two strands, pull and work on the roots with a tip of the gun. After each new strand comb the hair all together so they are mixed in a total mass.

Here is how a just glued strand looks like.

These strands are already distributed and combed, blended with other hair.

Glue row by row, until you have this bold spot.

Since we have a dense fringe from the top, make its first row.

It is time to work on the crown or the parting. There are many master classes telling us how to make a parting, the method with hot glue differs only in the fact that you can't use a flat iron for the hair near the parting. I will show you how to make a crown.
To start prepare a tuft of hair for our crown. It needs to be thick enough so that after the distribution across the head the hair cover the glue of the lower level, but thin enough that its roots can be impregnated with glue and melted hard in the wig.
The tuft is tightly fastened with a rubber band.

For convenience, I fix the tips of the hair together. Apply the finished tuft to the head, distributing the roots evenly in a circle, ensure that the lower, deeper levels also come under the glue, they should be slightly longer than the outer levels.

Carefully melt in the hair with a gun, you can't do without adding glue on top as the layer of the hair is pretty dense, and we need to impregnate them all. Glue the hair as close to the elastic as possible, but try not to touch the end. Work only in with the head, otherwise, you won't be able to style this "fountain".
After gluing the top continue to glue rows of hair in a circle, the closer to the center, the thinner must be strands of hair, so it will be easier to build a homogeneous circle of hair around the center (I took about 0.5 cm). The last row should overlap the glued roots of the crown, try to make the strip of glue between the hair and the end as narrow as possible.

Remove the rubber elastic, admire the funny hair. You can turn off and put away the glue gun, we no longer need it. Now we only have to style and cut the wig.

First, evenly distribute the crown and fix it with an elastic.

Further actions depend on what material your head is made of or if it is a doll. Since I have a separate polyurethane head without make up, then I mercilessly water it under a tap. If you have a doll, make up or it is better not to wet the material of the head, sprinkle your hair with water from a spray bottle to wet condition. You can leave the hair to dry or use a hairdryer. The most important thing is that before other manipulations the top must be already "nailed" to the head, not sticking.
I would advise you to remove the wig and the film from the doll after all the manipulations with the hair, so as not to spoil the head with styling products, pour water and cover it with cut hairs, or, if you prefer, work with a wig separately.
Proceed to the haircut. It's like in a barbershop, in layers, with thinning and so on. First, on wet hair, then on dry hair. If you have long hair with a middle parting, no special haircut is needed, just trim the tips, I would still recommend to do the thinning, the hair look natural like that. If the wig is made of curly strands of a goat/sheep and you need the full length, do no cut it, just process them with a spray/butter and press the tips with your hands to enhance the curls.

This time I decided not to go the easy way and made a bob with a fringe. It seems to me that I managed to do that, though I'm not a hairdresser and this is my first doll haircut, before that I had made only long hair.
I photographed the finished haircut in daylight to show that these synthetic hair doesn't have a spooky shine as it seems.

If you photograph the hair under the lamp, they shine.

I hope you enjoyed my DIY. If something is not clear, I am ready to answer your questions in the comments. It would also be nice if you share photos of the wigs that you made with this DIY and write if you liked this method.