if your bait has a super-ultra-crazy-insane amount of holes for plugs, you might want to tie your plugs ahead of time. i got in the habit of doing this anyway. just count (without going crosseyed) the amount of holes, and prepare that many plugs.

to prepare a plug, have your hair ready. i don't typically like to use donor pony hair unless the custom is a baby or my mane is going to be 'classic' length (ie, the minty/gusty/starshine). the other problem with donor hair is that you still don't want to have the guilt of a perfect pony being sacrificed on your shoulders, so you need to find a brutalized pony that somehow retained a perfect head of hair. good luck, it can happen, just rarely.

i tend to use colored hair intended for the 'gothic' extension. i buy the 'jumbo braid' from ragdolly.net. i can get about 4-5 adult ponies with longer-than-average hairlength out of one package.

now, if you look at nefermoon's hair design, it contains a bit of both blue and purple. this means i will be preparing variegated hair plugs. if you were adding tinsel to your hair, it would be a similar process.

the jumbo braids from ragdolly come crimped for easier knotting, so you'll need to iron your hair on a medium heat setting. comb the hair carefully and lay it out on the board so there aren't any knots or folds, then press down with the iron and either pull it across the hair (holding one end tightly in your other hand), or pull the hair (holding the iron in place). you'll probably need to separate your hair into sections to iron, and then iron each section a few times to get out all the creases. you only need it flat enough, at the point, to be able to handle it. you can flatten out any left-over crimps with a curling/straightening iron later.

now to, variegate the hair, sometimes rolling two sections of differently colored hair can work, but it usually leads to a lot of wasted, knotty hair. you can also just take about 5 strands from each color, make sure their centers line up, then tie a knot in the middle, fold it at the knot and tie another knot to form a <>< shape. you have a plug! now.. make as many more of these as you need to fill up that pony noggin, plus a couple extras in case a few holes tear and you need to fill up that 'extra big' hole.

with tinsel, i combine about one strand of tinsel with each plug of hair (to become two strands in each plug when folded and knotted).

next step - just pluggin' away...