Cosplay: Styling the Wilson Wig [Blaugust 20]

Stormy and I have created a name for ourselves. What, what do you mean you took that figuratively? Quite seriously, we came up with a stupid team name over the course of making the faun costume. In real life, I'm called Red by some of my friends, and so from that we came up with Crimson Storm as a name for the both of us when we costume. Do you like how that sounds? ...anyways. I've been working on a cosplay of Wilson for this upcoming PAX Prime, and I've just gotten through one of the portions that will be the most prominent in the entire set: The wig. It's been a journey, so let's take a look at how it came to be the way it is now.

Originally, I was thinking of using my own hair. Back at the Faire, my hair was long and curly, which was perfect for making into three spikes. Unfortunately, I had to get a haircut to appear presentable at a non-geeky event a few weeks after the Faire and my fun ended. I was left with a choice - still attempt the hair, or just buy a wig? When I found a deal at the local Value Village, I went with the second option and brought home that looked something like this:

I don't tend to upload my face if I don't have costume makeup on, sorry

Geez, right? I had high hopes, though, and a can of hairspray to go with it. I initially began the styling by brushing all the synthetic hair out to make sure I wouldn't have too much loose hairs when working. I was greeted by almost nothing falling out, as well as discovering that the hair net was black enough to blend in with my natural hair. Problem evaded already. Then, I shaped the hair curls with leftover wire from when I made horns:

And it stuck up pretty well:

After that, I carted the wig off to the bathroom on my mannequin head to spray on actual, grows-from-scalp hairspray. Despite reading warnings online about effectiveness, I was pleased in how well it worked. If I could have changed anything, I would have bought much stronger hairspray, but this was what I had on hand.

After doing a stress-test photoshoot, I did some more spraying and left it overnight. I found little deterioration the next morning. I proceeded to re-wrap the curls for more definition in pipe-cleaners, which I always (always) have on hand in my repair kits:

I left it like that overnight again and found that I'd run out of hairspray. Luckily, it stayed up:

Now, I'm left to trim the fringes and put on another coat of spraypaint when I give in and buy a new can. I'm having really high hopes for this cosplay, and I'll update you all from PAX!