Earlier this summer (July I believe) NIL gave me an old wig to mess around and do what I wanted with. Now, I love wigs and I feel like I'm pretty good with handling them, so I got excited thinking about how easily I'd have a bitchin' new wig in my hands. Ha!
Let me tell you, fixing this wig was a lot of things.
Easy was not one of them.
***Considering I started this process months ago and have been doing it on and off since, I dont have many pictures. So I'll just be talking through what I did and why.
♚ ♚ ♚
This is what i started with. In its prime, this wig was smooth and luxurious, reaching a bit lower than my bust. How it got that way is a mystery, since it really didnt move or do much of anything when it wasnt being worn. But! I accepted the challenge and i wasn't backing down!
(sorry it's blurry)
I sectioned off the hair and slowly started detangling it. I used a vented brush and went through little by little from the ends of the hair to the root. I kept going through the hair with smaller and smaller combs until I was satisfied.
Then i trimmed the hair and thinned it out. Unfortunately I didnt have a razor back then, so I had to do this manually with the scissors. It took for-fucking-ever... the fact that I was using plain old craft scissors instead of hair shears didnt help either.
Since the hair was so damaged and puffed out, I couldn't leave it straight, so i decided to throw some curls in. But because it's a synthetic wig and not human hair a regular curling iron would do nothing but damage it further... destroy it, actually. So I needed to curl it a different way. I looked up some tutorials on ye old Youtube and found a method that required nothing but a roller set and some hot water.
I put the roller set wig in my bathroom sink (with the plug down) and poured hot water over it. Every couple of minutes I swished it around in the water to make sure all the hair got a decent amount of heat. Then i let it sit for 10 minutes before i placed it back on the wig head to dry overnight.
***It's veryveryveryveryveryveryveryvery important that you make sure the water isn't too hot for the wig if you do this. I always test a clump of hair that i've either cut off from the wig before hand, or a piece from the very back that I wont miss if I mess up. If the hair kinks up, it's way too hot. I usually use water that's cool enough that i can touch the surface of it, but hot enough that i cant leave my finger in it for more than a few seconds.
After the wig dried completely I took out the rollers and went throught the hair with a large-toothed comb. This was the result!
Normally I'd say this was the end and spam pictures til next week, but not this time. While it looked amazing like that, it wasn't practical. With the amount of volume this wig had it would look nice for the first ten minutes before it pyffed up and tangled all over again. So the smart solution would be to thin it out, right? Eh, Partially. Even thinned out, the hair would still be hell to maintain long. So Cutting and thinning was the way to go.
I cut off about 8-9 inches of hair (~20 cm), and then took off even more hair with my brand new razor ;D
Here's what it looked like after the cut&thin: [link]. Then i did the curling process again and got the final final result:
This is what i started with. In its prime, this wig was smooth and luxurious, reaching a bit lower than my bust. How it got that way is a mystery, since it really didnt move or do much of anything when it wasnt being worn. But! I accepted the challenge and i wasn't backing down!
(sorry it's blurry)
I sectioned off the hair and slowly started detangling it. I used a vented brush and went through little by little from the ends of the hair to the root. I kept going through the hair with smaller and smaller combs until I was satisfied.
Then i trimmed the hair and thinned it out. Unfortunately I didnt have a razor back then, so I had to do this manually with the scissors. It took for-fucking-ever... the fact that I was using plain old craft scissors instead of hair shears didnt help either.
Since the hair was so damaged and puffed out, I couldn't leave it straight, so i decided to throw some curls in. But because it's a synthetic wig and not human hair a regular curling iron would do nothing but damage it further... destroy it, actually. So I needed to curl it a different way. I looked up some tutorials on ye old Youtube and found a method that required nothing but a roller set and some hot water.
I put the roller set wig in my bathroom sink (with the plug down) and poured hot water over it. Every couple of minutes I swished it around in the water to make sure all the hair got a decent amount of heat. Then i let it sit for 10 minutes before i placed it back on the wig head to dry overnight.
***It's veryveryveryveryveryveryveryvery important that you make sure the water isn't too hot for the wig if you do this. I always test a clump of hair that i've either cut off from the wig before hand, or a piece from the very back that I wont miss if I mess up. If the hair kinks up, it's way too hot. I usually use water that's cool enough that i can touch the surface of it, but hot enough that i cant leave my finger in it for more than a few seconds.
After the wig dried completely I took out the rollers and went throught the hair with a large-toothed comb. This was the result!
Normally I'd say this was the end and spam pictures til next week, but not this time. While it looked amazing like that, it wasn't practical. With the amount of volume this wig had it would look nice for the first ten minutes before it pyffed up and tangled all over again. So the smart solution would be to thin it out, right? Eh, Partially. Even thinned out, the hair would still be hell to maintain long. So Cutting and thinning was the way to go.
I cut off about 8-9 inches of hair (~20 cm), and then took off even more hair with my brand new razor ;D
Here's what it looked like after the cut&thin: [link]. Then i did the curling process again and got the final final result:
Im very happy with it. Personally, I liked it more before I curled it, but it still looks nice so no biggie. The hair is a lot more resilient than I thought it'd be, the curls fell out a couple hours after i took these and i had to recurl it again, but the extra heat didnt give it any problems.
Well, that's it for my wig adventures. Until next time~
♚ Alex
Labels: [tutorial], wigs