Sara Hair: October 2014

Saturday, 25 October 2014

Creating an Elizabethan hairstyle

After we learned how to curl, crimp and do the padding we were trying to do an Elizabethan hairstyle in the last lesson. This time a full head. We could choose between doing a round or heart shape.I decided to go for the heart shape. Try your best to have everything symmetrical. As you can maybe see in the pictures I wasn't able to finish my hairstyle.Reason for that is possibly that I was doing the crimping quite slowly because I thought 'yeah I have enough time:)' which I actually had if I wouldn't have been so slow^^. I did the padding the same way like I already explained in a previous post. But this time I did 2 rows of curling. I used the second layer to put the curls over the padding and the did tight curls at the front. But I also wanted to use the new hair pin frizzing technique so I did some single curls with that at the front. I planned on laying them over the padding as well but I didn't have time to do it. But I think you can see the heart shape :)

Padding Hair

Padding

With padding you can achieve the typical heart and round shape you can see a lot in Elizabethan hairtstyles. To make your own padding just cut off a piece from some cheap tights and fill it with couch roll. If you want to create a heart shape make sure the padding are the same size. Elizabethan hairstyles were symmetrical so try to do everything you do on one side, on the other side as well.

You will need:

Hair pins
sectioning gribs
kirby gribs
pin tail comb
brush
hair crimper
barrel tong
padding

Just a quick note, I only did half of the head in our first lesson about padding but as I said just do the same you did on one side on the other one as well and you will get the heart shape. If you want a round shape use a bigger padding and place place it over the head(like you would wear an Alice band) Before you start think about the hair color you are working with so you can match your padding. After brushing the hair part it in the middle. Then prepare 2 sections on each side. One smaller one at the forehead for the curls and behind it a bigger one for the crimping. I started with crimping first. Make sure you crimp enough hair to cover the padding later. When you are done with crimping do a small plait (normal or french)behind the crimped section. Secure it tightly because now you will place the padding on it and secure the padding tightly on the plait. You don't want it to move when you place the crimped hair over it. Secure the padding on the plait with a kirby grib in the middle, top and bottom of it. Cover the padding with the crimped hair and tuck leftover hair neatly under the padding. To secure the hair use mostly hair pins and kirby gribs if needed.

Curl the hair in the front(as you can see in the pictures above) and leave the kirby gribs in until curls have cooled down. Then take out the kirby gribs and place the curls over the padding. But you can do different variations like leave some curls tight and fix them at the front.

As you can see in the pictures I took the outer curls and placed them over the padding and left the middle ones tight and secured them in the front. But it does look a bit boring , so either you do 2 rows of curling or if you didn't like me, separate every curl into two and put the second layer over the padding and with the first row do tight curls. That will male it look more Elizabethan.

You can see that the 2 layers now make already a difference compared to only having one row.

And some close ups of the curls

Curling Hair

Curling

This post is only about how to get tight curls for Elizabethan inspired looks.

But as I looked at my pictures after class I realized that my curls weren't tight enough. But I worked on that^^

For curling you need:

sectioning clips
brush
barrel tong
pin tail comb
kirby gribs

Start off by brushing the hair and make sure there are no knots. Wherever you start curling remember to have clean sections and the sections should be the same size. If you start curling at the back of the head,start in middle of the hairline. Get the hair neat and tidy into the barrel tong and hold it for about 12 seconds.If the person has damaged hair try to only hold it for 7 seconds and then check the result. Remember to curl in a side angle.Afterwards take a kirby gribs and put it into the curl to let it cool down and set. That's how you can make sure the curl keeps nice and tight. For the next section curl the opposite direction. For example if you start rolling it down to the left side, for the next section you have to roll it down to the right side. As I mentioned Elizabethan curls were very tight, so never ever brush them out! When you curl the front hair, roll down the tong straight first and then roll it in an angled/spiral movement. That adds some texture to the hair.Also when curling the front hair try to get as close to the scalp as possible.

As you can see in the first to pictures I secured the curls with kirby gribs to let them cool down. But you can also see that the curls are quite big and I should do smaller ones for the next time.

Yes the curls are definitely to big^^

Those are the kind of small, tight curls you want to have.

Both pictures are Cate Blanchett in Elizabeth - The Golden Age

(source: http://blog.thephoenix.com/BLOGS/outsidetheframe/archive/2008/01/26/oscar-nomination-scorecard.aspx)

(source: http://www.pinterest.com/tybeesparks94/elizabethan-time-period-make-up/)

Crimping Hair

Crimping

Crimping is good to get texture in the hair. Especially if you do Elizabethan hairtsyles you can cover the padding with the crimped hair. Which I will show you later.

To crimp hair you will need

a hair crimper
sectioning clips
pin tail comb
brush

Before you start crimping brush the hair. Again make sure you split the hair in clean sections. Start crimping as close to the root as possible but please don't burn yourself or the model. Don't panic if there is a lot of steam coming out of the crimper, that's absolutely normal. When we were crimping during lesson I saw that the waves in my crimped hair look rather soft then really defined. That has to to with the temperature of the hair crimper. So if you want nicely defined crimped hair put it on the highest temperature. I will show you some pictures so you can see the difference. But then again pay attention to the condition of the hair you are working with. If it is really damaged you shouldn't put the temperature too high. For my dolls head I used a temperature between 200°C and 230°C to get good defined crimped hair. I think it's enough to crimp the hair for about 10 seconds but then again I don't know if has anything to do with the crimper I used during lesson but I had to crimp it longer. after you are done with the crimping mess up the crimped hair to get more volume( that's optional of course, all depends on the look you want to create)

You can see the crimping is really soft and Using a temperature of 200°C-230°C

not good defined. The temperature I used you can see the crimping looks

was 150°C completely different. Very nice defined

The hair has a lot more volume after I went through the crimped hair with my fingers and messed it up.

Also, depending on the size of the crimper you will get smaller or bigger crimped hair.

(source: http://www.pinterest.com/gillybunny/rockin-red-heads/)

You can clearly see they used a bigger crimper here as the crimped hair bits/parts/waves(I am not sure how to call them) are bigger than usual.

(source: http://www.hairfinder.com/hairstyles3/evolution10.htm)

Here you can see that most of the crimped hair was brushed through to get softer curls and of top they layered some very defined crimped bits.

(source: http://www.blog.buyhaircaredirect.com/crimed-hair-80s-days/)

very soft crimped hair

Elizabethan Inspired Plaits

After researching the various hairstyles of the Elizabethan era, we were supposed to do Elizabethan inspired plaits during lesson. Which was quite fun:)

I started with thinking about what kind of plait I want to use and went for the french plait going down on each side. To give it an Elizabethan touch I plaited lace into the plaits.

First of all here is was you need to do this hairstyle:

brush
sectioning clips
pin tail comb
elastics
Kirby gribs
a needle
lace, pearls, threads, cord (anything Elizabethan related)

Begin with combing the hair thoroughly. You don't want any nasty knots while you are plaiting.

Because I decided to have on each side a french plait going down I split the hair in the middle. Then I laid the lace around the head and fixed it with sectioning clips on one side so it won't slip away while plaiting the first side. Before you start with the plaiting make sure the lace has the same length on each side.

Now it's time to start plaiting. Plait the lace normally into the french plait. Just make sure it's visible. After you've done one side do the same with other. What a surprise:) A problem that occurred while I was plaiting was that somehow I had hair leftover in the back and I was a bit too lazy to do it again so I had to find a solution. I decided to make a small fish tail plait out of it. I messed it up a bit to give it more volume and sew some lace in it as well to match it with the overall theme.

Then you take each of the plaits and put them up onto the other side. But I didn't want to fix them using Kirby gribs so what do you do?

I took a needle and used the leftover lace you have from each side. Then sew it up to the front of the head. When you have done it with both sides take the lace and make a small knot and hide it under the main lace.

And that's it! That's my Elizabethan inspired hairstyle. I think it's quite a simple look but also looks elegant.

Plaits and Buns, Last Part- Buns

Buns

How to do a bun without using a donut.

You will need:

sectioning clips
hair pins and Kirby gribs
pin tail comb
elastics
brush

During lesson I only used half of the hair for the bun but only because the dolls hair wasn't really long enough to do the full head. So my bun is quite high. With longer hair you can do the bun anywhere. In the back, on the sides, very high, etc. Comb the hair and do a tight ponytail. Make sure that all of the hair is combed nicely when you put it into a ponytail( if you want to do messy buns it's a different thing). Section the ponytail in 4 equal parts. Take one section and backcomb it from underneath to get texture and volume. Then roll it over( not to tight but also not to far as well) and fix it with a kirby grib. Do that to all section. Just keep in ind that all sections have to have the same height. Don't make the sections too high otherwise it will become flat. Now take the hair pins and join the sections together. Use hair pins to get the joined sections into shape and not your fingers! Put the hair pins in the base of the bun (where the sections join)

While I was doing the bun I had problems joining the sections. I couldn't join the front section with the side sections at all because my front section was too high. That's why you really have to make sure that they are the same height. Also I think next time I should reduce the overall height generally because you could see through at some parts. If you have quite long hair it's easier to do higher buns.

Some more buns.

From messy buns to side buns, donut buns, buns in the back, big buns etc.