#rapunzel wig

I finally finished Rapunzel?

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Thank you so much! I got everything for the wig from Amazon! I constructed it using this amazing tutorial by echoing-artemis (1 2 3 4) as a foundation. Basically what I did was I bought a medium length blonde wig and three sets of this Hatsune Miku style wig in orange yellow (don’t be alarmed by the name, both the Hatsune Miku style wig and the medium length one are the same color). The ponytails on the Hatsune Miku style wig are 48in/122cm and attached to it’s base wig with clips so they’re easily removable.

[I hope you don’t mind, a simple answer to your question has kind of expanded into a full-blown tutorial!]

This is what all the ponytail clips looked like hanging in my closet before I messed with them.

The reason I bought three of the Hatsune Mike styles was so that I could have six of the ponytail clips total, which can be easily removed from the big butterfly clips they’re attached to and used as extensions. When taken off the clips, the fibers are attached to a pocket (which is honestly the best word I can come up with to describe them) of netting that I folded in half and sewed shut using regular thread. I did this for all six extensions and then paired them off and sewed the seams of two of those together (using wefting/weaving thread now to ensure strength– I got mine at Sally’s Beauty supply for roughly $1) for an end product of three really thick extensions. I suggest braiding these for easy storage and using the clips leftover to clip them onto a hanger in your closet until you’re ready to sew them into the base wig.

As for the base wig, I suggest holding off on styling that gravity-defying swoop until the end but go ahead and do those side braids before adding the extensions in. I just did a simple French-braid style on both sides and then combined the two braids when they met in the middle (though the picture only shows the one side braided all the way down). Don’t worry about any “bald spots” anywhere on the wig when you do this, whether you buy the same one I did or a different one, since any mistakes you make you can always cover with flowers with later. And believe me, you can use a shit-ton of flowers. ALSO, VERY IMPORTANT, PICK UP WIG CLIPS. THEY WILL SAVE YOUR LIFE. A packet from Sally’s runs pretty cheap– I think $2 or $3– and you get a good enough number to hold you over for a while. I sewed two into the hairline of the base wig and that wasn’t enough so I suggest sewing maybe three in the front– one in the middle and then two on either side aligned with your temples– and if you really want to make sure the wig is secure, two at the back on either side of the nape of your neck. I expected my wig to be heavy by the end of everything but I greatly underestimated just how heavy it would be. Bobby pins are a substitute if you don’t want to sew wig clips into your wig but I highly suggest the clips because they have a strong hold for such small things and they don’t move around or fall out like bobby pins might. I did the same with my other Rapunzel wig and it holds great– I only sewed three in the front, but I also sewed two of the same clips to the two extensions but vertically so that they could easily clamp on to the bottom of the hair. The extensions on that wig are the same ones I used for Rapunzel’s braid, as well! The base wig for the super long Rapunzel wig is this five foot long one that you can easily find from various sellers on ebay if yo’ud rather just buy one of those and braid it– it might be harder to work with because it’s all one length and it would be much thinner (a comparison picture is further down) but it would also be much lighter and cheaper.

You don’t have to include the fringe in the braiding– I didn’t with mine so I could tuck the ends of the hair into the braid and secure it with hot glue and flowers near the end of all this. The great thing about doing these braids before sewing any extensions in is that it gave me a frame of reference on where to sew the extensions in. When I did mine, I thought it would be a good idea to fold each extension in half and sew them across with one on the left, middle, and right side of the wig but that didn’t end up working out too well so if you decide to make your Rapunzel braid like mine, I suggest just sewing the entire width of the extension across and stacking each extension on top of the other.

This was what the wig looked like with one extension folded over and sewed into the wig. A quick note that sewing these extensions in was A BITCH and I highly recommend you have a helping hand or two with this. I had my mom hold the wig up for me while I sewed since laying it down flat on the table proved difficult, as did sewing with the wig on the styrofoam wig head. Sewing anything involving hair is a massive pain in the butt, though, and I admittedly cried at least three times trying to put this thing together but constructing a Rapunzel wig like this is kind of like childbirth. You think it’s a great idea and it’s all fun and games until you actually start the hard work and then you regret every life decision you ever made and scream and cry and there’s blood and sweat and a lot of wanting to back out but the important thing is that you remember your goal, what you’re aiming to create and why, take a few breaks, and remember to breathe.

This was after two extensions folded over were sewed in. As you can see, I also used one of those handy dandy butterfly clips the ponytail extensions came with to keep the rest of the hair from the base wig out of the way.

This was after I sewed all three extensions in, unbraided them, and sectioned the hair off to make up the three pieces of the braid. These sectioned off pieces consist of both the extensions and the hair from the base wig. This also shows a good view of the side braids that meet in the middle.

Here is the wig after those sections were all braided:

And here is the comparison of the newly constructed braid versus the 5ft long wig loosely braided for neat and easy storage. These were both taken in indirect sunlight so you can take that into consideration for color comparison,as well.

Since the constructed braid was significantly shorter, I made a tail piece out of a set of short wefts from Arda in Fairy Blonde that I had bought previously. The short wefts are an 8in strip of 19in long hair. Because mine were already cut into sectioned pieces, I stacked all but a narrow strip in descending order onto a scrap of plain white cloth and then cut the excess fabric off.

Here’s a demonstration of how I planned to attached this hair to the bottom of the braid, wrapping it around the bottom secure with hot glue, and to show how much longer this makes the wig.. The narrow strip of hair I left out is for wrapped around the top of these wefts to hide the track (aka that top strip on the weft where the hair is sewn into).

I secured the narrow strip with hot glue and glued flowers over the end to keep it in place and hide the fact that I trimmed it (which you can slightly see behind the pink flower, but I also added a purple flower later to really cover it up).

For the flowers, I bought four cheap packs off Amazon (100 yellow, 100 pink, 100 white, and 50 purple) as well as a bouquet of fake baby’s breath I got at my local Michael’s, some leftover leave piece, and a giant blue flower I had bought ages ago (I think I got that one from Michael’s, as well). Ordering the majority of the flowers from Amazon had some pros and cons (pros: so many and super cheap; cons: colors were slightly different than in the picture and they took AGES to get here) but whether you want to order the same ones or any flowers from Amazon or just pick some up in your local craft store is really up to you.

When it came to gluing them in, at first I wanted to be as screen accurate as possible and had tons of reference pictures to help me meticulously place the right flower in the right spot but then I realized how tedious and nerve-wracking that was and basically abandoned that entire concept for a free-for-all technique. Here’s the finished product. For reference, of the 350 flowers I ordered from Amazon, I only ended up using about 85 on the wig but depending on how thick you want your wig (I didn’t use any filler in mine but I know in echoing-artemis’s tutorial, she uses cotton batting to help make her wig movie-accurate thick) you may use more or less but it’s definitely nice having so many on hand just in case you need them.

When it comes to gluing in the flowers, at the end of the day, just go with your gut and place whatever you want wherever you think it looks good.

For a few final notes/tips:

If you decide to buy different wigs for your Rapunzel wig, make sure they are heat resistant if you plan on using hot glue for the flowers. Hot gluing the flowers in was a personal choice as I like the security of knowing everything is firmly in place but you can also try bobby pinning them in, as well, if you want a heat-free construction. Pinning them in opens the door to make restyling as needed much easier but basically whichever you decide to do is your choice based on what you think will be easier and better for you.

All the wigs I listed/added links to are heat resistant. All the hair I bought for my braid was from a seller named MapofBeauty on Amazon whose wigs are sometimes a hit or a miss but I bought two of the medium length ones (one for this braid and the other for my Alice cosplay) and they are both beautiful and decently thick. Out of the four times I’ve bought the Hatsune Miku style wig (three for the braid and one for the extensions on my super long Rapunzel wig), all four times the product has been high quality. It leaves you with a handful of short blonde wigs leftover but you can always use those for other cosplays or just have them on hand to cut up and use for something else if you’d like. Or sell them, whatever floats your boat. Arda Wigs is the other quality wig supplier I can recommend– they’re wigs and accessories (extensions, wefts, ponytail clips, buns, etc.) are gorgeous and super thick but depending on what you buy, the price can rack up really quickly. I would’ve gone with all Arda products for my braid if I wasn’t a broke college student who had oodles of cash to spend on this project. (For your consideration: the base wig I bought was $11.99. The similar Eowyn by Arda is $42.00. The price I paid for two 48in ponytail clips and a short base wig was $17 each. The price for one 40in ponytail clip from Arda is $15. The short wefts from them that I used for the tail were $9. If I had decided to use solely Arda products for this wig, and had decided to make it the way that I did, it would’ve cost me a total of $141 for the hair alone. The total amount I spent on just the hair pieces was about $72.) Basically however much money you have to spend on this project will ultimately determine what products you can use/where you can buy from.

Make sure you try your wig on throughout the construction process. I made the mistake of waiting until the very end to try my wig on and ran into some fitting issues that I wish I would’ve known about before I glued all the flowers in and everything. Since I don’t want you or anyone else to run into the same dilemma, I highly suggest trying it on throughout the process so you can make the necessary alterations while you still can.

Don’t panic if the thing looks like a total mess throughout the construction. When you’re working with this much hair, that’s kind of a given. My best tips to you would be to braid the extensions during storage to keep them as neat as possible, use those big butterfly clips they came with to clip them to hangers for easy storage, and brush through them with a wide-tooth comb from bottom to top– NEVER FROM TOP TO BOTTOM. If you brush them from top to bottom, it’ll only make the tangles that much worse. Work through them gently and if they ever get really messy and unbearable, you can make a simple detangling spray with water and lotion (I folowed this tutorial to make my own and use it on my wigs all the time and it works like a dream, especially on super long wigs that get tangled SO EASILY.)

Another way to try and keep your wig as neat and tangle-free as possible is to use hairspray. Before I glued the flowers in, I sprayed quite a bit of hairspray mainly on the underside of my wig especially where the hair will sit at the nape of my nape since that spot seems to get very tangled very easily. Since I won’t be able to restyle my wig because of the flowers being hot glued in, I made sure to spray the entire thing with some hairspray after everything was finished, as well in hopes that that will help keep it as neat as possible. I also know of a netting option to put over the braid to help keep it neat but since I don’t have any experience with that specifically, I’m probably the worst person to ask about that.

It’s all brushed out now. I have to wait for the second wig to arrive but I’ll use it to make the mini braids, make a smooth piece for the very bottom, and anywhere else that needs some extra.

I also did a test of the lights. It’s a 20 foot string of battery powered fairy lights. I’ll tuck the battery pack into the back of the dress.