by VioletLeBeaux | Mar 31, 2011 | Beauty, Hair, Hair-Tutorials, Hime Gyaru, Tutorial
As carrying on from yesterdays post on Fashion Addict here is how I styled the blonde one into a hime gyaru wig 😀
The technique I’m using is pretty much the exact same technique for standard hime style hair but because it’s a wig there’s no fear of damage so you can pretty much go nuts. Or if you are happy to brush out lots of tangles this is a perfectly fine way to style your actual hair.
As per usual with these I point out that this is just the way I do it and there are lots of other techniques or methods that you could use. I’m certainly not an expert!
So this is the wig to start with, it’s just a plain old multi-tone blonde wig. The cut is layered and it has a light wave to it. As you can see it has very little volume.
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The way the top of the hair is parted is also important, this one has a zigzag pattern. It would be better if it was a straight part of even no part so it’s less obvious when you brush it all backwards. So what we want to do is create a lot of volume at the top and sides to make the big lion’s mane effect. The first step is to grab a section in the middle/top and pull it up. I am using a teasing comb to do this, it’s awesome because it has alternating long and short bristles so it catches all of the short hairs and teases perfectly… which it should being a teasing comb and all.
Back to it, grab a section at the top towards the back of your head. Leave around 2cm of hair between the section you’re taking and where you want the fringe/bangs to start. At the moment we just want to create a lot of volume before we use the front to cover it all up.
Pull forward and tease the back of the section around 3-4 inches from the root. By teasing/backcombing what I’m doing here is combing from the middle back down to the roots. The teasing brush catches all of the shorter hairs and meshes them together into a tangle which gives the piece of hair volume and texture.
Once you’ve teased it a reasonable amount it should have volume all on it’s own, you will of course look like an extra out of a Dr Seuss book at this point.
So that’s the volume part but the front looks terrible so to fix that we need to smooth down the front. Take your comb and using light short strokes brush lightly back over the front section. You may need to hold the wig in place while you do this. Don’t let the bristles of the comb sink into the hair too deeply or you will basically be undo-ing all of the teasing you just did.
Once you have smoothed the front over it should look something like this from the side…
That’s really all there is too it, just a lot of teasing, smoothing and eventually hair spraying. This wig is perfect for styling like this because it has lots of short layers. Clip the section you just styled out of the way, we will come back to it later.
The next step is to give the wig more volume all over so it start to get into the right basic shape: lion’s mane XD
Starting with small sections from the sides, hold the piece of hair out at a 90 degree angle and tease the 3 inches closest to the root.
Repeat this until you’ve done every piece of hair on each side. Don’t touch the front area between the first section we did or the fringe.
Now keep going to the back. Pull the sections upwards and tease at the roots. You can see in this photo the individual tracks of hair and my pink tips showing through XD
Don’t forget to do the underneath sections too, they are very important because they hold the rest of the style up!
Below you can see how much volume is created just by teasing at the roots. Because this wig is more wavy than actually curly I decided to play up the curls by teasing them at the ends slightly too. To do this, you grab the end of a curl by the tip and run the comb from the tip up a couple of inches. Only do this once per curl otherwise you disturb them rather than accentuating them. Basically you’re pushing the curl up the strand of hair so it looks… curlier.
Now it’s time to finish the top section finally! Unclip it and we’ll get to work 😀
At this point it should look something like this…
The final step involves the sections between the top and fringe that we’ve been saving. Taking a small piece of hair from that area at a time, tease the back of it lightly and then sweep it backwards.
At this point hairspray will be your friend. I’m taking a lot of spray. You can see below I’ve started sweeping the front back on the left side but not the right yet.So it’s starting to come together.
Because you are trying to brush pieces of the wig in directions they weren’t designed to go in, doing this will take some trial and error. Getting mine to stay took a whole lot of hairspray and then a lot of teasing and smoothing over the front…. tease, smooth, spray, tease, smooth,spray over and over.
This is starting to look more like the finished product now but not there yet.
Half finished from the back it looks very messy so this area needs to be combed and sprayed as well.
After continuing with the combing and spraying, paying careful attentions to the sides as well as the top this was my finished product:
From the side:
Now looking at the photos I can see areas I intend to improve, for example cutting more layers into the back and using that to creating more defined curls.
You can see below that it definitely needs a few more layers to make the top pouf look more natural with the loose hair below. Until I do that (or if you don’t trust yourself cutting into a wig) this can be temporarily hidden with a big bow.
From the back:
With the addition of some accessories I’m quite happy with the way it turned out considering it was a first attempt. When I make the changes I’m planning I will be sure to post photos of that too 🙂
Bonus photo: Taking off the wig and scaring the hell out of James with by real hair because he was so used to the wig XD
The wig by itself from the front:
The back:
Side:
So there you go, that was my first adventure into wig styling and I’m quite happy with the outcome. Of course there are a lot of areas that I need to improve in and this isn’t the best example of a hime style wig but I can see where I want to go from here and that’s all for another post! I think to style the back and sides I will make James wear it so I can see what I’m doing better hahaha!
Hope you enjoyed my bout of Hime Gyaru wig styling ^_^ |
by VioletLeBeaux | Mar 30, 2011 | Hair, Review
Products in this post have been provided for consideration all opinions are my own.
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I’ve been chatting with the lovely David from Fashion Addict for a while on Twitter so when he offered to send me some pieces to review I was beyond excited. I pointed out a couple of things on the site that I liked and the second he mentioned “tiaras and wigs” I was pretty much jumping around in my chair XD
Fashion Addict is basically an online store selling fashion accessories and cosmetics here in Aus. They DO ship overseas and they stock BYS nail polishes and cosmetics which are a favorite of mine. For a long time overseas readers weren’t able to get BYS because of strict shipping laws here but now Fashion Addict has clearance to ship polishes overseas so yay that!
On to the review!
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ShippingAbove is the contents of the package that arrived in my letterbox. Everything was shipped express so took maybe 2 days to arrive. It was packed into a big cardboard box with crumpled paper wrapping protecting everything from being squished. Even though Aus Post manhandled the box and dented one of the corners severely everything inside was perfectly safe. Pretty good considering the fragile things like sunglasses. The hair ties were held in small plastic zip lock bags and all of the jewellery came in the little velvet bags shown below.Very happy with the shipping side of things and the service via Twitter. |
I’ll go through some of the smaller items individually first and then there are a *lot* of photos of me wearing it all and information about the wigs below that.
Ok wig time!! This was the part of the order I was most excited about so we’ll start there! James got a lot of new photography equipment and he wanted to test it out so you’ll have to put up with a lot of photos of my modeling the accessories and looking like a tool 😉
Product: Chocolate Brown Wig (Wavy) $39.95
Thoughts:
The packaging was the same for both wigs and it was reasonable. Both were in plastic boxes with hairnets. They both required styling before worn. When brushed through there was a bit of hair loss, more than my Bodyline hair pieces but not enough to be concerning.
This wig is a dark brown with chestnut highlights. It has a side parting fringe which could easily be trimmed into a straight one. The waves were easy to shape and look quite natural to me. There is a little bit of shine but I don’t think it’s more than you would expect from clean healthy hair.
I’ve worn this one out on a hot day and it wasn’t unpleasant. I think while it’s obviously not as good as the higher quality expensive wigs this is a good level to start at if you’re just getting into them like I am.
This wig has no real parting and no scalp piece..
The back when roughly parted is below. You can see a little of my pink hair peaking out at the top but I remedied that with a little teasing and styling of the top section.
The back when it’s all brushed through…
Product: Blonde Wig (Extra Long) $39.95
Thoughts:
When I pulled this one out of the box I didn’t like it as first, the colours are very varied so I didn’t think it would suit me. I also looked a bit messy before I gave it a good styling with a brush. To give you an idea of what I’m talking about this is what it looked like when it came out of the box first…
After brushing it looked a lot nicer and more natural…
From the side…
Again this one had a very light shine to to but not unnaturally so. These photos are fairly accurate in showing the quality.
The back when it’s roughly parted…
You can really see how layered the cut of this one is here. The back when it’s brushed back…
This one did come with a scalp section and a zigzag part…
While the quality of this was the same as the chocolate one I couldn’t get excited about the cut at all because I don’t think it suits my face shape. That said the colour really grew on me after a while! The box showed this wig as having a straight cut fringe but it was too long for me so I swept it to the side rather than trimming. Eventually I will probably give it a little trim.
I really liked how easy the colour was to co-ordinate.
Even better, I managed to style it into a gigantic hime wig in about 20 minutes so I was VERY happy with that! I’ll post a tutorial on how I did it tomorrow 😀
Another picture it after I styled it:
So the verdict on the wigs? I really liked both of them in the end! The quality is very reasonable for the price and they were easy to style. The colours were natural and they both had highlights and lowlights to look more natural. I would most definitely like to try more wigs in this series and I think this is going to be the start of a serious wig addiction for me XD
Now on to the accessories!!
Product: Cubic Zirconia Heart Studs $6.95 per pair
Thoughts: Very cute, these are big enough to pack a very sparkly punch without being over the top. The colours are very true to that on the site and at $6.95 a pair they are a great basic to add to an outfit. The metal is fairly standard for these kind of earrings, I don’t suggest buying if you have any metal allergies as after a couple of wears I noticed a little discoloration on the posts. Still I love them because they go with pretty much anything and there are a lot of colours available.
Product: Cubic Zirconia Stud Earrings (10mm Silver) $4.95
Thoughts: These are MASSIVE. Seriously they are huge. I was worried they would be too heavy to wear but I didn’t really notice them on because they are surprisingly light. Again, same issue with the posts discolouring so no good if you have metal allergies but otherwise for $4.95 you really can’t go wrong. From the side these look a lot taller than the gem actually is because the metal fixing they’re in is 1 or 2 mm longer than the gem itself. You can’t see that when they’re worn though. I am a big lover of large shiny studs so these are totally on my must have list.
Product: Flower Bobby Pins 3 pack $7.95
Thoughts: I was surprised how sturdy these were, most of the hair pins of these style that I’ve seen have been a bit flimsy but these ones are really solid metal. Very pretty and as they’re silver they would go with most colours of hair. I especially like the pearl with the painted rose on it 😀
Product: Rose Bobby Pins (Fuschia Tipped) $3.95
You’ve probably seen me wearing a light pink version of these flowers in my hair before. I bought them years ago and they have been worn and loved to death! I was really excited when I saw these ones in the store in several colours because now I can get a bunch of them 😀 I’ve been wearing my previous set for around 4 years so they are definitely durable and at $3.95 per pair they’re cheap enough to be able to buy several sets and go crazy. LOVE these.
Being worn with the blonde wig:
Product: White Rose Ring $6.95
Thoughts: This is a plastic flower ring with lots of potential. Obviously it would look cute with a lot of outfits as-is but I could also totally see myself deco-ing it or even adding a diamante to the middle. The ring part is also made of the cream plastic so it’s not adjustable but it fit comfortably on my thumb. It’s a fairly big fit but if you were worried about the sizing then you could always add one of those clear ring resizing bands.
Product: Blue Heart Ring $4.95
Thoughts: The first thing that I thought when I found this on the site was that it looks just the right shape to turn into one of those conversation hearts 😀 They come in a bunch of really nice pastel colours and I think it would work very well in a Fairy-Kei outfit especially if you piled one of every colour on! The band of this one is metal and adjustable, it’s quite large so even on the smallest setting it was too big for me, that was very easily fixed with a pair of pliers though 😀
Product: Fuschia Bracelet (Rectangular Stones) $7.95
Thoughts: Love my bling and therefore love this 😀 It’s much lighter than I expected but when actually looking there isn’t much metal in it and the gems are plastic so it makes sense. The only thing I’m worried about is the silver scratching off the back of the gems as they are unprotected. It’s on a stretchy band so very easy to get on and off and it packs a hell of a punch when you get it into the sun, very sparkly and eye catching!
Being worn…
Product: Silver and Clear Gem Heart Locket $9.95
Thoughts: Generally I’m not a fan of oversized necklaces but I really grew to love this one after wearing it for a few hours. When I saw it on the site I was expecting a small locket but it’s actually around 10cm from top to bottom, so funny how that can happen with pictures XD My main complaint with oversided necklaces is that they feel like they weigh my neck down, as this one is made of really light metal it doesn’t feel heavy at all. It’s lighter than a lot of my short necklaces XD It’s on a very long chain which would be easily strong enough to add some other charms on too. I absolutely love the filigree which has been stamped into the metal!
The inside:
So you can see the size:
Product:
Large Silver Tiara #2 (Diamantes) $14.95
Thoughts: Now this is one of the things I’d been waiting for! Every girl needs a gigantic sparkly tiara and this one has a heart design! What more could a girl ask for? It’s got long combs in the back to secure it to hair and the band is quite flexible so it grips well. The design itself I think is completely adorable and I think I’m going to need more fancy occasions to wear something this sparkly!
To get an idea for size…
And just because hell yeah I’m going to camwhore if I have a tiara damn it! 😉
Product:
Black Sunglasses (Round beige arms) $9.95
Thoughts: I was definitely not expecting this many pairs of sunglasses to come my way XD I’ll talk about the basic quality here so I don’t repeat myself, it’s basically the same for each design. Each is made of decent quality plastic/metal with reasonably thick lenses. The amount of sun they actually block out varies but the FA website gives the mandatory rating for each and states whether they have UV protection or not. I accidentally stepped on one of the pairs yesterday and it didn’t break so I’m giving it a thumbs up for durability haha! For $9.95 they’re very good value.
This pair is my favorite of the 4 because they are the darkest, it’s the kind of design you could throw on when you’re having a crappy make up day and no one would be the wiser. Definitely movie star glasses!
Product:
Brown Sunglasses (round) $9.95
Thoughts: I like the tortoise shell design of the frames in these as well as the shape. The lenses are tinted orangish so it makes everything look like it’s sunset. I like sunset and found it a bit soothing but if you’re not a fan then these might not be for you.
I’m ready for my close up etc…
Product: Cream Oversized Sunglasses $9.95
Thoughts: While being the same quality and everything as the rest of the glasses, I wasn’t a big fan of the design of these ones. There’s nothing I specifically disliked and I think they would look good on someone else, just not for me 🙂
Product: Black Sunglasses (with pink/purple) $9.95
Thoughts: Another pair with tinted lenses though these have a purple tint to match the colour of the sides. I like the shape and the design and the colour seems like it would go with a lot of my outfits.
PHEW! That was a long review!
So what’s the verdict? A resounding thumbs up. I was very happy with both the quality and the prices at Fashion Addict. There are so many items on the site in different styles that you could probably find something to suit most tastes. Definitely worth a look for the cosmetics too! DO WANT.
Wouldn’t it be awesome to have a list of all of my downloadable tutorials? OMG so convenient! I know right?