Allison fumbles with the electricity on set and discovers the Magister hanging out with some lightup shrooms. They have an elliptical conversation in which he acts just as mysterious and frustrating as the Wonderland character he’s [probably] playing. If you remember which character sat on a mushroom and said to Alice, “Who are you?”, then you’ll know who the Magister is playing. The hookah might also give it away.

Yeah, I said hookah. I made him one with a glass paperweight as the water reservoir, a brass candle holder as the neck, the platter from the Battat Glitter Girls Sweet Shop that holds the candied apples, and a 1:12 scale TV antenna. A mini lava lamp would have probably finished off the stack of things more realistically, but I think a TV antenna on a hookah is funnier. The nozzle off the side and the mouthpiece are pieces of colored dowels. The tube connecting the nozzle and the mouthpiece is string hot glued to the nozzle and the mouthpiece. You’ll have to wait till next time to see what comes out of it! Sure, the whole thing looks out of scale, but this is Wonderland, so weirdness is standard.

Background mushrooms are just 2D decorations quickly made from scrapbook paper with colored pencil embellishments. If you’ve been following my doll photostories, you may have seen the lightup shrooms here and there. They’re Japanese gachapon that I got off Ebay, and they’re remarkably useful for adding a little strangeness to any scene.