Fully Hand Tied Wig Pictures - A Transformation

I have been meaning to post this for a while, but things have been really busy and I never seem to get around to it. I am rectifying this today!

Brushed out before washing & deep conditioning:

After washing, deep conditioning, cutting & styling:

I wanted to keep the long length for now, but it needed a good tidy up of the layers and length. I did a massive wash/condition routine on this wig. It needed some serious intervention! It has been shampooed, conditioned, deep conditioned and had 3 leave-in products on it. The hair is really soft now and has a beautiful wave. 

I am really pleased with this wig: it stays on with no bonding, it is a good density for me (not too full on top) and has a similar configuration in terms of part line and vertex/crown density to how my own hair was before any hair loss. 

The construction: 

Extended Nape: Super Fine Lace

Crown to Occipital: Honeycomb Lace

Crown to Front and Sides: Super Fine Lace

Edges: Whole Perimeter Monofilament Galloon

I am working on a lot of other projects at the moment, so will update on those at some point. 

Wig Cutting and Styling

As well as my passion for wig and hairpiece making, I have a more general 'all things hair' obsession too. This isn't even something that developed due to my hair loss, but is deeply rooted in my childhood. I have been pretty crazy on hair since I was a wee one, because hair was my thing, that I liked about myself and that people knew me for - rather ironic, given that it then started to leave me!

Anyway I digress, but the point of this is that to me, there is so much more to the whole wig making process than just making a wig or a hairpiece. That is just the starting point. Once the wig or hairpiece is completed, the magic needs to happen - someone has to turn that raw state into a hairdo. So there is the original styling of whatever has been made - what cut/style you wish to achieve for yourself or the wearer - and then the ongoing care & maintenance of the hair. For me, this aspect of being a wig maker has pushed me to further develop my hairdressing skills. What I have lost in being able to do with my own hair, I have gained in being able to do with other people's bio hair and with the wigs and hairpieces. I enjoy the styling and cutting aspect as much as making the wig or hairpiece itself.

One such project I recently completed:

1. Take one virgin European human hair wig in the style of a mullet (eek!)
2. Wash & deep condition the wig
3. Cut the wig into a bob (as that was what was required, plus it got rid of the mullet)
4. Blow the wig dry into desired style

So yes, I took the horrendous mullet wig style and rendered it into something more sleek and sophisticated (I think). Pictures below...

This wig needed serious styling help due to it's mullet style

The result is a far more comfortable wig, that looks rather chic. It can be worn in the classic bob style, roughed dried as shaggy layers, or even flicked out.

Wig Making Progress Pictures

As promised, here are the pictures I took with my digital camera the other day. It is so hard to get good light for photo taking at the moment, as Britain is enveloped in a continual grey fog. Using the flash when photographing wigs and hair is not the best option really as it creates a false sense of colour and shine. Anyway, I took these photos of the 3/4 finished wig on a brighter day than today - it is snowing at the moment, so no hope of taking any nice sunny pictures today! - and they have come out fairly representative. I have tried to take some pictures of the ventilation/knots close up so that anyone interested in that can see - it's amazing how the lace looks a lot whiter and bigger once you zoom in, than it does in person.

I am really pleased with my progress, although it has taken me ages and I do feel a bit like a snail or tortoise, as one friend has pointed out to me in the past: 'the tortoise wins the race' - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tortoise_and_the_Hare - and I would like to think that she's right.

I am not sure if I am being optimistic, but I am pressing on with this project and hoping that once it is finished I will have broken through my 'first wig' barrier. It does feel a bit like a barrier, because you have to motivate yourself to keep going, and only you can motivate yourself; no one else in my family is particularly interested in wig making and/or whether I actually ever finish this wig. Plus I have noticed that ventilating large chunks of a wig is quite laborious and time consuming. Therefore, I am always keeping the end product in my mind while doing it and I set myself mini-challenges, such as: finish up to 'here' by a certain time. That does seem to help. I feel like my own coach/personal wig trainer.

Hopefully (and here's the optimism again), I will have picked up the impetus and increased my speed by the time I start my next project. More about that when the time comes!

Lastly, I have decided I am unlikely to wear this wig, even if it does fit me well, as the hair is so poor I feel it will just be tangly and horrible after about 1 hour on my head. Maybe I will wear it, just to try the cap style on, but the problem is I can also already see things wrong with it and that bothers me. I plan to review those things (to remind me as much as show anyone reading this) when the wig is finished. As such, I am intending to use this wig as a wig to experiment with cutting and styling. If I do it wrong, I won't be crying about it! I know one thing I really want to do with it - pin curl it and then do a half up, half down style. I may also cut a side bang into it too... hmmm exciting... Okay, so I really must finish it now or I will never get to try all these things out!

 

Mini Challenge & Eventual Wig Cutting and Styling

I did some ventilation today in the comfort AND WARMTH of our office/studio room. It's far warmer in there than in the house right now (don't even ask!). We are still getting snow. Brrrr.

So I was looking at my wig block... and I keep moving a small pin up the back of the head and aiming for it, but it's like moving the goalpost... so I never quite get there! A while ago, I set myself the challenge of doing x amount of ventilation by a certain date. I can't even remember if I succeeded.

Anyway, on to my point. So I have decided that tomorrow I am going to go in the studio and create a new sparkly marker with a heart shaped pin (more visible that way) and set myself a target of ventilating to that pin by a certain date. I shall document it on here with some pictures... I like to challenge myself and motivate myself... no one else is going to!

I also think it is really important to set yourself targets with the wig making, otherwise it is easy to stop or to get bogged down and progress becomes really slow. I want to get this finished so I can move onto the next project! I have lots of wigs and hair pieces I eventually want to make.

My second topic of the day is: cutting and styling...

As I have a type of alopecia that results in partial hair loss, and I am not currently shaving my head, I still need to get my own hair cut/styled so that when I am around the house, I don't look a complete fright! I have a really nice stylist who does this for me; she runs her own salon. I have been talking to her about my wig making and she has agreed to cut the wig for me when I finish it. I think it will be a good experience for her and for me. If the wig doesn't fit me properly, I will get her to cut it on the block, otherwise I will get it cut on my head.

Have a great weekend y'all.

A Quick Update

I have to admit to having had a few rest days recently. For a while there, I was going for gold and doing some work each day on the ventilation. However, I caught some 'bug' or fluey cold thing and eventually had to just take a proper time out to recuperate.

The good news is that I am slowly on the mend. Unfortunately - due to medical reasons - I tend to take a while longer to shake viruses off than the average person. So finally today, I picked my needle up again and indulged in a little knotting action.

I am hoping tomorrow to get down to it properly and put a few hours of hard work into it. I shall take another set of updated pics because I will have progressed to working on the honeycomb tulle - by itself - section and will be figuring out density.

During my down-time, I have continued to experiment with styling techniques. I did a whole tutorial on Wigs and Head Covers on how to do pin curls on a wig. I acutally used the section of hair I have added on the wig I am making as my demo wig hair - it was useful as not too much hair to lose clarity for close up pictures of what I was doing. So I had a go at doing them on a shorter wig. I realised that I prefer the effect on longer wigs - so hair that is approximately 12 inches or longer. I don't really like the way they come out on shorter wigs as you don't get enough 'repeat' of the curl or wave.

Here's a few pics of my experiments with shorter hair...

I prefer the end result on longer hair - this was showing half a section done, and I had only left it for about 2 hours to set (normally I would leave it overnight):

The good thing about pin curls is that I don't need to use any heat to do them. For me, learning to style wigs is equally as interesting as learning to make them. I am very much a person who enjoys working with hair - no matter what... so I guess I will be doing more of these experiments in the future!