Costumes and Cons: September 2011

I hadn't done an update in a bit, not since quickly recapping Otakon, I figure I can go into detail as to how the wig was made and the process I went into it. This was the first time I ever took on a project as big as this. Most of the wig stuff I've had to do were pretty minor. Even for my costume in this group I only had to trim the wig. But I wanted a group so as long as our Sissel paid for the supplies I would make the wig for him. I'll go into as much detail as I can on the process I went through for this wig.

Supplies
Bristol Paper
Tape
Plaster
Paint
2 Blond Wigs
Wig Heads
Spray Mount
Mod Podge
Wig Combs

The first step was building the base. The base was the Bristol Paper, which is basically a thicker stock of paper. It's a few pieces tapped together. The bottom part is one piece, and then to get the strange, curled up shape that's several pieces stacked and tapped on top. It's a bit hard to explain, but you basically want to make a cone shape. When you build up as much as you can on the base so you have more for the hair to stick to. The tape is black but we don't have to worry about that, all of that stuff will be covered.

Once I got the shape that I wanted, I took strips of plaster and covered it. You want to be careful not to use too much, because you don't want to make it too heavy, it will be resting on the top of the head. I just wanted it wrapped up so it could cover the tape. You really don't need to worry about sanding it or anything, since it'll be covered.

Once it was plastered, matched a paint to the hair as close as I could and painted it. This is just in case any sort of stray hair opens up and the base is shown. It basically helps everything look nice and consistent. Once the base was dried, I could begin the progress of fitting it to the wig.

When you're fitting the base of the wig to the head, you want to make sure you have a way of securing it. I ended up hot gluing it to the top of the wig, so it would hold there while I could work the hair along the base. This is a bit more complicated to explain, but I'll through the process I went to attach the hair to the base.

First thing I did was take a clump of hair and spray it down with hair spray to make it stiff. Then taking the spray mount, I would spray it onto the base and then press the hair to it. Taking a brush, I would paint the mod podge along the hair to help make it more stiff, as well as stick it to base better. I would repeat this process until the base was completely covered in hair. In the end it looked something like this...

Not...incredibly nice. But it will look better! This is where the second wig came into play. I harvested the second wig for wefts and attached the wefts in the same way I attached the hair from the wig.

I didn't really do much differently from the last part. The ends of the hair was painted with mod podge to make them stiff, so I could create a hairline for the wig.