Those Cosplay Gals

So the first thing you want to do is set the wig head somewhere it isn't going to be trying to escape from you so that you can have your hands free. If you don’t have a wig head stand you could maybe sandwich it between some books or get a friend to hold it. Otherwise just be careful later :)

You will also probably want to measure your wig head and your head so you have an idea about how much larger it needs to be I measured mine along the green lines, but you can take as many or however you feel necessary

Next grab one of the plastic bags and crumple it up. How doesn’t really matter, though if you get it so a smooth side is out, less will try to escape because next you want to place that bag on your wig head in a place that needs to grow bigger, and then pin it down. 

Remember when I mentioned smooth side out? If the crumply side is out you may need more pins to get it to stay there. Now repeat as needed! If you pin near the edges of the bags you can usually get away with using fewer pins.

An alternative to having the smooth side out, or something you can do anyways, is at the end take one more bag and place it over the other bags. You can also then kind of pull it down over the un modified parts of the head if you don’t want to get like hairspray or sharpie all over your head while styling ^.^

Now before you start using the modified head you would probably check that the head is the right size. Too small? Go back and more bags! Too lage? Grab those scissors and chop of a few pieces and check again. (this is also then nice if you use the last layer bag because you can just cover up the chopped edges to smooth it out again)

And walla! You have a closer to accurate wig head!

Couple things to keep in mind, this doesn’t change the face of the wig head so you still will want to be careful when cutting it so that everything is the right length, as the eyes might not match up with yours. But you could always take a sharpie and mark where yours are. And if you are sewing wefts and happen to catch some bag don’t worry (I know I sure grabbed a chunk!). Just carefully cut around the area and then snip and pull out the small pieces, the thread should be stronger than the plastic ^.^ bags can just be re-positioned to stay again, and then its ready for next time! Have fun with your wigs!

Let's start with the planning for Ashura's wig.  They always have their hair up in a ponytail, long bits staying down in the front.  While Arda has wonderful ponytail clips, I wanted to add length in parts of a Lulu.  For those of you who are new to wig styling, wefts are amazing!  You can hand sew them right in and get the exact look you want!  Arda has 8 ft lengths of wig fibers in all kinds of colors to match your base wig, so all you gotta do is take them out, cut off pieces, and sew right in.  Easy right?

Long wefts require the same kind of care as long wigs in general.  If you think you can just easily pull apart the string of wefts out of the bag without being careful, you'll get the lovely rat's nest like that in the first image.  Not fun, but easy to fix if you have the time and patience for it!  Like full wigs, wefts need to be separated into smaller pieces in order to effectively detangle.  Which explains the Gollum-looking set-up I have in the second image.  

When detangling a wig, even if it's just the wefts in small chunks like in the second image, please use a wide-toothed comb!  Hair brushes are extremely likely to pull out fibers and don't really help with knots.  Start from the bottom and work your way up.  It will take a while, so be prepared.  Sometimes, the ends will get a little frizzy.  If you have a heat-resistant wig, you can easily run a straightening iron through small pieces to fix this.

Once your small sections are all tangle-free and not so frizzy, you can set them aside (like my lovely pieces so beautifully pinned to the back of an armchair) so you can take each small piece one at a time and sew them into your wig!

If you look at the inside of your wig, you will see tons of lace and small strings like that on your wefts running across the lace.  These strings hold the fibers in place and will be the perfect guidelines for sewing in your wefts.  Decide where you want the first small row of wefts to go (smaller than the Gollum strands, I cut those up into fourths to sew in) and push the fibers above out of the way so you can see the string.  I suggest starting from the bottom that way you aren't fighting your previous layers.  Pin the excess fibers out of your way, and now you can sew the wefts in with a hand needle and thread that closely matches the fibers' color (I haven't used the machine sewing approach personally, as I think this works fairly easily).  You can use a straight needle, but a curved needle may be easier.  Make sure that the width between the lace pieces remain the same with every new weft you sew in, otherwise you will end up with a snugger wig.

Just keep working your way up until you have all the wefts in that you like (I ended up with a lot extra but I'll keep it in case I need it for a future project).  Finally you'll end up with something like the last image.  I still have to blend in the wefts by cutting some of the front-most fibers, but that's a tutorial for another day.