Elizabethan Hairstyle- Working on Human Hair

After creating multiple hair styles and learning a variety of techniques we creating a full Elizabethan hair design on our Kate heads. For a few weeks now we’ve been working on the Kate heads and our lecturers wanted us to start work on human head, and getting used to manipulating a person’s head. It’s much easier to work on a Kate head as you can move the head round 360 degrees and forwards and backwards however when working on a humans head you can’t. You also need to be delicate with your movements on a human head as it can be very sensitive as you can’t be as rough as when working on the Kate heads. In this design we had to incorporate at least a few techniques we’ve learnt over the past few weeks such as curling, crimping, frizzing, buns, plaiting and also using a rats in the hair. In my design I chose to incorporate curling, frizzing and crimping into my hair design. Once I chose my model I evaluated her hair, it was thick and long, it was in good condition as there was no breakage at the ends, and the hair was quite oily however this made it easier to style. We had a time frame of two hours however in this period we had to set up our work station and all of the equipment needed, pair up with a peer and create the full hairstyle.

I started with crimping the whole of the hair. I started at the bottom of the head and worked my way up the head until I reached the front of the hairline. I knew I wanted to curl the front of the hair and frizz the two side’s bits so I clipped them apart from the rest of the hair so they weren’t crimped.

Once I finished crimping the hair I then started with the two original strands I left at the side of the head by the ears. I used a geisha pin (because they are large) and put the hair in the pin and wrapped the hair round, in and out of the pin in a figure of eight. With the end piece of the hair I wrapped it around once more and used a normal pin to hold the ends in place.

I then started on curling the front of the hair I took the section I left at the front of the hairline and used small curling tongs. I separated the strands of hair at the front and curled them individually and put a grip in the curl to hold it in place while it cools down. I found this slightly harder to do on Human hair than on the Kate head as the Kate head is slightly coarser so it says in place a little easier.

I then separated the hair in the middle of the hair at the back along where the ear is. I then French plaited down the side, plaited the extra bit of hair and then wrapped the plait back up and gripped it to the head. This plait was in place to secure the rats to the head this is to give height to the hair when creating a beehive. The rats is basically a pair of tights cut and filled with tissue, you then put the grip through the tights and grip it to the plait. This is to secure the rats nicely to the head. I found it a little tough trying to attach the rat as where it was slightly on an angle it keep falling slightly so I had to place quite a few grips there to make it secure. When creating the beehive I literally brought the front crimped bit, back combed it and brought it over the rats I then gripped the hair into place and left the bottom part of the hair down.

Next I took the geisha pins out the side part of the head. When taking the pins out, all you need to do it take the bottom grip out and then slide the geisha pin out and it comes out like this. You can separate the curls to make a few more or even brush it out however then it goes very frizzy. I like this design because I think it complements the crimping very well as I looked like extreme crimping and it comes out very neat and goes well with the overall hair design.

With the curls at the front of the head I took all the grips out of the curls once they were cool and let them down. I then wrapped the curls up into their original small curl and gripped them to the head. I had around seven curls on each side of the head and gripped them up so they were sat on the beehive. This is the first time where I have created so many curls and had to pin them all up as normally I only do four or five however this time I used a larger section of hair at the front. I placed them in no particular place I just gripped them where I thought it would like nice and where the curls would sit.

For the final touch I back combed the back end of the beehive where it was gripped give to give a little more volume and dimension. Overall I'm very happy with the outcome of the full hair design, I personally found it harder to work on human hair as you can’t manipulate the head as much and the Kate heads hair is much coarser so it says in place easier than human’s natural hair. With the presentation of the hair I think the crimping is nice and neat and even with lots of volume, the frizz came over very well and stayed in the hair extremely well and is a fantastic technique, the curls were placed nicely and look very satisfying on the head. I think the only thing I slightly struggled with was putting the rats in place and pinning the curls to the head as it was hard to keep them in. However overall I’m very pleased with the outcome of the Elizabethan hair design and my time management has got better since the last session as I created this design in around 1 hour and 45 minutes.