#this is the first time I've ever used EVA matting

[sweetmonsooncos]

Polnareff Wig Tutorial

ALRIGHTY, HAPPY NEW YEAR LADS, TIME FOR ANOTHER TUTORIAL 🥳

So I recently gave a glued hairline a go and it was strangely one of the most theraputic things I've done for a cosplay; it definitely can be improved on so please don't follow what I did too closely 😂 So here we go!

So first of all, I purchased two wigs from Mapofbeauty from Amazon in the colour Silver Gray. I picked up two because I wanted to use one wig to be the main base and the second wig would be harvested for wefts. When I made my previous Pol wig, I bought a very expensive lacefront which worked great, but I regretted spending that much money on it considering the styling I did. So I figured this way would be much cheaper for me to do!

I sectioned off the base wig where I wanted the hair to stick up and braided the rest of it to keep it out of the way. I then began teasing the ever loving FUCK out of the top to begin building a sturdy base to work with. I was swamped in silver hair for days...

Eventually, I teased some of the hair up top and sealed it in with the almighty Got2B spray. I left some unstyled to mold around and give a smoother look at the end.

For this wig build, I did something a little different to the first Pol wig; on my first go, I made a solid box which I then glued the hair onto, but I modified my method this time around. I built a little box out of cardboard and 5mm EVA foam, but left holes in the bottom so I could pull the hair through it. You could tell with my first wig that there was a box stuck in it, so this method made it much more subtle and worked out SO much better!

I then pulled some of the hair through and glued the bottom of the box to the wig with contact cement and this meant that I could start making the wig hairs stand up.

With my wig anchored down on my wig head, I went and started building the hair around my base. This took several days and was such a tedious process; I basically started by hot gluing the teased hair on the box base I'd made and building it up from there. When I got to the unteased hair, I would heat it up with my hairdryer, hold them upright in place with some clips, then spray them with Got2B to make them stay up. This took quite a few tries as the hair on the front row was short and looked like a terrible mullet 😂

When I got fed up of battling the wig hairs, I moved onto my second wig and began harvesting the wefts with a seam ripper. This was such a fun thing to do and seeing the wig cap get more bald was really funny because it looked so droopy and sad by the end. I kept around half of the wefts to use for the glued hairline and the other half to fill in the gaps on the base.

I also cut out some fabric to stick underneath the hairline of the wig so I could stick my glued hairline bits on it; I got some scrap fabric and measured it to my hairline so it would match up perfectly.

So doing the glued hairline bits was really easy when I got the hang of it! The steps were as follows:

I would grab a weft and fold it together to get a nice thick piece then cut the tracks off at the top and then cut in the middle.

With the cut piece of hair, I would lay it down on my cutting mat.

I then used Hi Tack All Purpose Glue and a popsicle stick to smooth down the top wefts.

Finally, I'd let them air dry for about 3 hours, but I did also use a heat gun for the times I got very impatient 😂

And I did that over and over again until I had enough hairs to work with, so my cutting mat ended up covered in hairs 🙈

With the other wefts that I had harvested and not cut, I used those to fill up the back and cover the tracks. I used hot glue to stick them on and went as close to the top base as possible. This left it looking so thick and luscious and it was gorgeous!

So when all of the glued wefts were ready, I went ahead and began sticking them on! I did the front of the wig first and used hot glue to pop them on and then some clips to anchor them in place while it dried. I had lots of different lengths of wefts to give the hair a bit of variety when it's styled.

When the wefts were in place, I went in with my pinking shears and very carefully neatened up the ends to make it blend a bit better and I styled the rest of the hairs back as well.

Eventually I was left with this 😂 I used a combination of hot glue, heat and hair gel to get the shorter hairs to stand up and blend in with the other hairs. I also began to trim down the hairs that were standing up to get a flat top; with a combination of my scissors and clippers.

It took quite a bit of chopping to get the length I wanted; I didn't want to fall into the trap of leaving it too long again like last time, but I also didn't want it to be too short either. Eventually, I found a nice middle point which was about an inch above the original box I had made.

And for the final step, I went and used my glued wefts to hide the parting at the back of my hair so it would look more natural.

And that was how I made my second Polnareff wig! I'm so happy with the result of this one and compared to my first wig, I think it's a MASSIVE improvement!

And to finish off, a little comparison between my first wig and my second one ^_^