When starting on Forrest, there were a lot of things that I would be doing for the first time (or pseudo-first time, at least!) and not least of which was the wig. Forrest has very distinctive, huge sausage curls in typical Nohrian royal fashion, so I knew rollers wouldn’t cut it. I’d have to go bigger and fuller for the right look.
The wig I ordered was an Eowyn in Fairy Blonde (CL-056) from Arda Wigs and an extra pack of long wefts. I found a midway point on the wig, pinned up the top half of the hair and got to work!
My idea for bulking up the wigs was to tease up some curl bases not unlike the old synth-dread craze from the early ’00’s. That style of teasing made dreads that were light and fluffy and would be the perfect ‘filler’ for these big boys. By making them out of the same fibre as the rest of the wig, any bits of the base peeking through would blend into the overall look of the rest of the wig.
Each base was made from a strip of the long wefts ~4″ in width, then doubled back on itself. I pinned the top to the mannequin, then back-combed them using a teasing comb. After each round of back-combing, I pulled the fibre back down to maintain the ‘sausage’ shape I was looking for. Once I had the basic shape, I took another ~4″ wide strip of wefts, folded it over the first and repeated the same back-combing to integrate it into the existing ‘sausage’ and to bulk it up a little more. Once that was to my liking, I sewed the curl base into the wig along the pinned part, attaching to elastic where I could and to the weft below it where it was bare.
Once the curl base was in place, I set out to carefully section 1”-2” strands of hair. I combed them flat and spread out, then carefully wrapped them around the curl base a few inches at a time. I pinned them, sprayed them with hair spray and then hit them with high heat from a hairdryer. I continued to wrap the sections around the base until reaching the end, then repeated with a new section. The goal was to get natural-looking but well-covered strips of curl set into place around the curl base.
Once all of the curl bases were in and covered in the lower layers of hair, I let down the top, sectioned it out for each curl and began blending the top layers down onto the curl. I paid attention to where there were thin or empty spots that showed the curl base and made sure to cover them with the new hair, giving a more solid appearance and shape overall.
Once the top was all blended down, there were only the bases of the curls to worry about. I trimmed off the excess fibre, then twisted the leftover tightly and, in some cases, went back up along the previous curl lines and stuck them down with hair spray like before. This gave a ‘capped’ look to the bottom of each curl without making it too awkward and unnatural looking.
Overall, I was super proud of how this wig turned out, especially since it was my first semi-successful Big Wig Adventure. Unfortunately, Nikki is way too energetic and bounced the curls loose as she ran around Saturday at Katsucon. I need to better secure the curls to make sure they stay in place and I’ll update this post once I figure out how to keep them where they belong!
