Why buy what you can make?

So after my last post, I've been plowing forward on planning the Madam Hooch costume. I've been thinking about the wig: this is basically what makes the costume. You can put on a short grey wig and any black robe and you will be the poor man's Hooch. (That doesn't sound right, somehow.)

At any rate, the thing about pixie cut wigs is that it's quite hard to find a cheap and attractive one. I've been doing research and finding some decent ones, but they are anywhere from $50-$150 (insert derisive snort here). If I had gone the buying-a-new-wig route, I would have settled on this one, but I still would have had to cut it and darken it a bit. (If you like wigs or anime, though, take a look through that store--they have some very cool stuff.)

It was after an afternoon of online wig shopping that it occurred to me that I would pretty much have to cut, color, and style any wig I bought. At this point, I turned the the costume closet of wonders (or, as I usually call it, my closet) and pulled out a wig that is basically this that I wore for my space cadet Halloween costume several years ago. And I decided I would see what I could accomplish with that.

I started by spraying it with silver spray-in hair color and the slightest bit of (more or less) black spray paint. To give it a bit of texture--synthetic wigs can be too shiny and slippery to work with. They are also (because they're plastic) basically molded into a shape, which is why you can abuse a synthetic wig pretty thoroughly and it'll fall back into the style it had originally. So you basically have to beat that out of it (metaphorically-speaking).

Then I started cutting. I started with the front and the top and worked my way down and around. I took small sections of hair and held them between my fingers and cut chunky layers by keeping the scissors perpendicular to my hand. I also re-learned a valuable lesson I've learned a few times before but seem determined to forget: if you drop a scissors, even a nice pair, let them fall. Don't try to catch them, dummy. Then I put a Band-aid on my hand. Then I continued cutting.

With the wig sufficiently shorted, I started to style it using a lot of hairspray and a little bit of Elmer's white glue. I did a few more passes with the black spray paint to darken it and set the style. Then I went over the black with more of the silver spray-in color. I found that rather than just tease it up, it worked best to form little spikes of hair and then curl them into short, very defined curls. This also hid the netting better than spikes that stood straight up. Then I sprayed it will all three of my sprays to firm up the style. I'm pretty pleased with the way it's turned out. I need to go in and trim out some of the messiness so it looks more defined, but I'm going to wait on that. I'll put it away, then look at it in a couple days and make the final trims. Here's a picture of it with all the products I used.