So a couple of years ago I did a tutorial on how I did my hair for my Amidala Parade costume. I used my own hair, just put into little buns, teased, and pinned in a certain way. It wasn’t perfect but it worked OK.
I have been playing around with the idea of making a hairpiece for AGES. I started one back in 2010 when I was going to wear the costume at the WSMI exhibit, but ended up scraping it. I finally came back around to it this year, and finished it! It was pretty successful… and SO much easier than doing my own hair.
What you need:
1. Clip-on/Drawstring ponytail in your hair colour. The one I used was about a 18-20in ponytail. You can go a bit shorter for sure.
2. A tiny bit of worbla, or some craft foam, or even cardboard – something fairly solid you can cut and glue.
3. Wire. I used a thin, somewhat bendable craft wire.
4. Foam – as in the large squares of upholstery foam you can find at craft stores.
5. Some fabric that is similar to the colour of your hairpiece.
6. Glue gun/needle and thread.
7. Elastic bands (at least 10!)
8. Sew-in comb
9. Optional hairbun/sockbun.
I apologise for my silly drawings throughout this. There were places I didn’t take photos but I felt like they needed a visual!
Step 1 – Prepare Hairpiece
The first thing I did was to remove the clip from my clip-on ponytail, leaving just the drawstring as a closure. If you have a hairpiece with just the drawstring, you can skip this of course!
I’m using an old clip-on ponytail I had in my stash (in fact it’s my super old Slave Leia braid I don’t use anymore. Yay for reusing!)
Arda Wigs has a nice mid-length ponytail that comes in several natural colours.
Step 2 – Create framework
Next up I needed to make a framework to support each “petal” of hair. This is where my 2010 attempt failed – I didn’t do any kind of structure to build the hair around. Here is what I came up with:
(Some screencaps look like this may need to be 6 “petals” instead of 5 — one more at the bottom. If you want to go for 6, that’s easy enough to add another petal on at the bottom.)
We cut off lengths of the wire with wirecutters – 3 pieces total, one for the top petal, and then 2 longer ones sides – the upper right and lower left are the same wire.
Next we took two small round cuts of worbla – these were probably just under 2in wide. We laid out the wires the way we wanted on top of one of the worbla pieces, then laid the other worbla piece on top and heated them up with a hairdryer, to melt the two pieces of worbla together and cement the wires in place between them.
If you don’t have access to worbla, something like craft foam or even cardboard would work. You just need something that will remain stiff that you can sandwich the wires in between – if you use something like craft foam, you’ll just need to glue the two “sandwich” pieces together around the wires.
Step 3 – Insert into Hairpiece
I initially thought I would need to sew the framework into the hairpiece, but it ended up staying in place on its own! I opened up the netting of the hairpiece as wide as possible, and then worked each wire through the netting. Then I closed the hairpiece using the drawstring, and the piece stayed in place just fine. If you’re having some problems a dot of glue may work fine.
Step 4 – Separate hair into ponytails
I separated the hair into 5 ponytails, one for each “spoke” of the framework. When putting the elastic band around the base of each ponytail, I included the wire spoke as well – so the wire spokes would stick up from the back of each ponytail – this is important because it keeps the hair of each ponytail towards the front, where it will need to be when you start wrapping the hair around the forms.
Step 5 – Make some mushrooms
Next up you need to make the shape of each petal out of foam. I came up with a basic shape, traced it onto my foam with a sharpie, and cut it out using a knife. To get the shape slightly more curved, I trimmed along the sides with scissors. They do not have to be perfectly smooth and even, once you put the fabric and hair over, they will smooth out.
Don’t they look like little mushrooms?
I suggest making one and testing it out before cutting out all 5 – my first attempt was too small, so second time I made them a little too big, because you can always cut down excess! Once I got the size where I wanted it, I used that one as a pattern to trace out the other 4.
My foam was too thick, so technically I only cut out 3 of these shapes – then I cut them in half, and that thickness worked well.
Step 6 – Cover in fabric
I was in a time crunch while making this and ended up having to use whatever brown fabric with a stretch I could find at Hobby Lobby, so I ended up with brown fleece. It was not the greatest option, but it worked ok. I really recommend finding a knit material that isn’t so thick. (And if you can’t find a fabric that matches your hair colour, you can always paint it!)
So I cut out some large round circles of the fleece, laid each mushroom in the center, and then wrapped the fabric around it. I used some hot glue to hold it in place initially – and with the right fabric, hot glue may be all you need. Once the hot glue cooled I went back and sewed the fabric to itself on the “wrong” side, just tightening up folds and making sure it wouldn’t come loose.
And as you can see, they aren’t pretty. But they’re not going to be seen – they’re just padding.
I left the bottom edge of each mushroom uncovered, because…
Step 7 – Insert Mushrooms onto framework
(Everything going forward is MUCH easier to do if you attach the hairpiece to a wighead at this point!)
Take each mushroom and work each wire spoke of the framework into the foam at the bottom of each piece.
I found that I didn’t need to glue these in place or anything – they stayed on fairly well. The only issue I had was that a couple of them wanted to turn and twist – so I quickly hand-stitched each one onto the hairpiece netting to keep them from twisting. Just 2 or 3 stitches right at the back, nothing fancy.
Once they’re in place, take stock of how they are sitting – you may need to adjust some of the spokes to bend forward around the head, or bend them lower, etc. This is why I suggest a slightly bendable wire – but not so bendable that if something knocks into them, they get knocked out of whack.
Step 8 – Work the hair over each petal
I thought I would need to tease the hair slightly, but it really wasn’t necessary and this step was easier than I expected.
You want to make sure that the hair of each ponytail is situated towards the front of each spoke/petal – ie, closer to your head. Then take the hair and wrap it OVER each form. Don’t worry about getting it spread out to cover the forms yet – first, take another elastic band and work it over the entire petal, hair and all. These is where having the forms made of foam come in handy, because you can squish the foam up to work it through the elastic band.
Once you have that done, you can gently spread the hair out horizontally until the entire foam hairpiece is covered with hair. It may be visible at the sides – but that’s why we used fabric that matches the hair colour.
Repeat on the other 4 petals.
Step 9 – Deal with the Excess Hair
To hide the base of each petal piece (elastic band/fabric/etc), I took some of the excess hair of each ponytail and wrapped it around the base once. Even then I still had a ton of leftover hair in the back. And a lot of varying lengths.
So I got a sockbun and rolled the excess hair up into it. I finished it off with a hair net to keep it looking neat.
If you started with a shorter ponytail you may not need to do this! Or you may decide it’s easier to cut the excess off – it would certainly make for a lighter weight hairpiece.
Step – 10 – Finishing Touches
I wanted my hairpiece to be very sturdy, so I sprayed each petal with Got2B Hairspray, then applied high heat from my hair dryer to sort-of “shellac” the hair into place. (Make sure you test your hairpiece with some heat to make sure it’s heat-safe and you don’t melt it!!)
Finally, I added a sew-in hair comb to the netting, at the top back of the hairpiece. When I wear this, I take my own hair, put it in a low ponytail, braid it and pin it up into as flat a bun as I can. Then this hair comb slides easily into the top of the braid bun and it’s actually really secure all on its own like that. I do add some bobbie pins around the edges just to be sure!
The finished bun:
From the side:
The large bun in the very back is the excess hair I rolled into a sockbun, which is why I suggest just trimming it and skipping that part! It kept bumping into my parasol so I will likely remove the sockbun and cut the excess hair off for future wearing.
I hope this helps!