| Items Needed
Shown are a comb and brush, a small brown barrette with a *good* grip, a box of various sized hairpins, two different sizes of braided elastics, volumizing lotion (AKA "root lifter"), and a few things we'll have close-ups of next ... (Root lifter, by the way, is applied with the fingers to wet hair at the very roots before hair dries from a shampoo. It helps create a little volume so the hair stands away from the head a little instead of laying flat against it. Didn't work too well on me in these photos, but you can always try it. I used it at my hairline, since my perm is growing out and I just have NO body there at all.)
| 
|
| Yarn "Sausuage" Roll
This strange looking item is easy to make, and absolutely essential to do this hairstyle. I have no idea how I'd do it without it. I originally made mine for a Deanna Troi hairstyle. It isn't PERFECT for the Rainbow hairstyle on my hair, but I recently had to cut over two inches of damage off my ends, and my hair was too short at the time of this photo shoot to bother with making a longer one -- it wouldn't have fit. This one works ... *just.*
Go to a craft store and buy two packages of pipe cleaners and yarn ... yes, plain old YARN ... that match the color of your own hair as closely as possible. The form is made by creating a large hook in the the ends of two thick bunches of pipe cleaners, joining the hooks together, and then creating a solid form by wrapping, wrapping, wrapping the whole mass tightly in yarn. Start at one end and just wrap, wrap, wrap. You want the form to be a little thicker in the middle and a little thinner on the ends. This is because the end of the hairstyle tapers, and you don't want the other end to be too bulky because that's where it has to attach to your head. If it's too thick where it attaches, you won't be able to hide the join.
Because this form was made for the Deanna Troi hairstyle and not the Rainbow, one end is actually a little *too* thick. Be sure to wrap a little thinner on one end so that this end can fold completely back on itself. Put this end at the BOTTOM of your hairstyle. You can see that Natalie's does this at the tip of her seashell, but I wasn't able to do this with this form. If you can make yours fold properly, the whole hairstyle will lie flat against your neck better than mine does in these pics. Longer hair than mine helps as well. You will put your hair up with the form pulled out straight, and then bend the tip later.
| 
|
| Decorative Bands
These are the decorative bands I made to go in my hair. I made several mistakes making them. First of all, they aren't the accurate ones to go with the costume. By the time I had decent pictures of the movie bands, I had put so many hours into beading these that I had to go ahead and finish them the way they were.
Secondly, I tried to create the fullness the movie bands had by making tubular fabric bands and stuffing them with fiberfill. Looked good *before* I bent them around my hair, but once on my head they creased and didn't really look as good as the movie ones. I leave it to the seamstresses who visit here to figure out how to make better ones ...
Third, and worst, the longer ones were heavy and tended to slide out, and I found out after I had completed the first, and longest, that I had not included enough wire to make it stiff enough to mold to my head. And there was no place on these for hairpins to grab onto very well. I solved the problem of keeping the two longer ones in my hair by sewing gold cord onto the ends of each piece and *tying* them onto my head (details to follow). At least they stayed put. But I had trouble stuffing the second longest one and then getting the wire to go all the way down into it, so it ended up being half an inch shorter than it needed to be, and sadly the ends are sticking out in the finished hairstyle. I just ran out of time before DragonCon and had to go with it.
| 
|
Fur Roll
Odd though it is, I needed fake fur to help me out with this style. This is basically just a strip of fake fur cut to fit and rolled into a roll. It needs to match your hair perfectly. If your hair is long enough, you won't need it. We'll see what it's used for in a few ...
| 
|
|
| 
|
| This is the absolute minimum length hair you need to do this style without a hairpiece. As I said, mine's almost too short here for this to work.
| 
|
| 1.) First step: Brush your whole head COMPLETELY smooth. No tangles!
| 
|
| 2.) The second step is a straight center part and then a second part going over the head to just in front of each ear.
| 
|
| 3. and 4.) As I was trying to show how to do this completely without help, I needed to part these sections off, keep them apart from the rest of my hair, and still be able to see. My solution was rubber-banding them tightly under my chin like the ribbons on a bonnet. (Probably why that root lifter didn't work ...)
| 
|
|
| 
|
| 5., 6., and 7.) The next step is to section once more, about an inch thick, stopping just short of the crown of the head. Again, I needed to band these under my chin so I could see what I was doing for the next part.
| 
|
|
| 
|
|
| 
|
| 8. and 9.) Now bend over from the waist and gather all your remaining hair into a tight, *tight* ponytail at the very crown of your head.
| 
|
|
| 
|
| 10.) Once you band the pony tail, split it to make it as tight as possible without bringing tears to your eyes. If this ponytail slips, your hairstyle will end up sliding down the back of your head! So you don't want it to slip.
| 
|
| 11.) Now that you've split the ponytail, insert your pipe-cleaner and yarn form into the middle of it, and carefully fold the ponytail around it. Arrange the hair so the form is completely hidden in the middle. Admittedly, this can be tough and takes patience and practice. If someone is available to help, so much the better!
| 
|
| 12.) Once you've hidden the form, start securing it inside the ponytail with elastics. Depending on how long your hair is and how long your form is, this may be hard or easy! I didn't have too hard a time with mine, owing to hair and form being slightly too short. Again, outside help may be required! But you CAN do it ... it does take practice and patience. For this reason, I strongly recommend a few trial runs of this hairstyle BEFORE you need to wear it to an important event. Wear it for a few hours and see how it holds up. That way you will know how to modify it if something you are doing gives it a tendency to fall down, and how long it will take you to do.
| 
|
| 13. and 14.) You will be placing the elastics equidistant from one another, right where you expect to put the decorative beaded bands when you are finished.
| 
|
|
| 
|
| 15.) At the end, use a small braided elastic to hold the ponytail together behind the form and anchor the form in.
| 
|
| 16.) Now to hide the first elastic. Unband the second section of hair from wherever you secured it (if you find an easier way than under your chin, please let me know!)
| 
|
| 17.) Brush this hair up, and keep brushing and training it up, to get all the hair going the same way. You want to eliminate any sign of a natural part, if you have one, and keep pulling all the hair back, taut and perfectly smooth.
| 
|
| 18. and 19.) Ease the hair back to cover the first elastic. Blend it with the rest of the hair that already covers the form and hold it there with a second elastic placed over the first one that holds the form (not the one that makes the ponytail). If there are any bare spots where your hair doesn't cover the form well, this is your chance to cover them up. This is a tough maneuver, but if done correctly it will completely cover the base of the ponytail and look perfectly smooth. You can probably guess what we're going to do next ...
| 
|
|
| 
|
| 20. and 21.) Be sure to put the outer elastic bands right over the first ones you laid down, or as close to them as possible. That way it will be easy to hide them with the beaded bands, and you won't risk having a stray elastic sticking out.
| 
|
|
| 
|
| 22.) At the very end, secure with a small braided elastic as before.
| 
|
| 23. and 24.) Now to secure the whole piece to your head. I did this by twisting the tail and using a small barrette with a GOOD grip to hold the tail firmly against the back of my head. It will tend to feel funny and sort of flop back and forth. Don't worry, we'll deal with that in a few. It's easier to make it more solid the longer the hair you have.
| 
|
|
| 
|
| 25.) Now is the time to put the first two decorative beaded bands on. As I said, I had to tie mine ...
| 
|
| 26. and 27.) ... at the very back of my hairstyle. I used a great big bow, so it'd be easy to find it with my fingers to get it out, and then coiled up the dangling ends and pinned them close to the back of my head so they wouldn't show. If you have to tie yours on, be sure to use a type of thin cord that ties good knots that don't slip! in a color that is easy to see in case you have to ask someone else to help you take down your hair. But knot security is most important. If this slipped, the front band could fall completely out and ruin the front of your hairstyle. Bad news during a masquerade.
| 
|
|
| 
|
| 28. and 29.) Now for the second band ...
| 
|
|
| 
|
| 30.) Now it's time to do the front. Unband those front sections from under your chin (or wherever), and comb smooth.
| 
|
| 31.) Wind the first one back away from your face.
| 
|
| 32.) This leaves a long skinny twisted tail which you pass UNDER the seashell piece. It's hard to see in this photo, but ...
| 
|
| 33.) Hopefully this one is more clear.
| 
|
| 34.) Hard to see as well, but what I'm doing here is anchoring the tail in place with a single bobby pin going vertically down the head, alongside the seashell piece.
| 
|
| 35.) Do the same on the other side. What you will have is the two pieces crisscrossing in back under the seashell form and pinned securely down so they don't move.
| 
|
| 36.) What happens next depends on how long your hair is and how far your seashell form sticks out from your head or conforms to the back of your head. If you scroll up, you can see that mine, because the bottom of it is made too thick to bend so the whole thing lies right against my head, leaves some space between my head and the seashell part. I need to do something about this. This is where the fur roll comes in. I actually needed two for this style. I just stuffed them into the space between my head and the seashell form, and because they are so close to my natural hair color, you can't tell it isn't hair!
| 
|
| 37.) If my hair were longer, the leftover "tails" from the front would be long enough that I could just coil them up and pin them in place under the seashell, and they could fill in the space. Unfortunately my hair is too short to do that, so ...
| 
|
| 38.) Now, those pesky tails. These will help hold the seashell in place, if your hair is long enough. Mine is *just* long enough to cross one piece over the seashell form, and provide tension to stabilize it, so it doesn't waggle back and forth in a strong breeze. I anchored it by slipping it under the nearest rubber band. If my hair were long enough, I could anchor it with a pin on the other side, and then coil any extra under the seashell and pin. That would have stabilized the form on my head a lot better, but I had to make do. Repeat with the other tail.
| 
|
| 39. and 40.) Now to add the rest of the decorative bands, which were stiffened with wire and just molded around the hairstyle over the elastic bands. And that's it! I had trouble getting my beaded bands around the fur roll I had to use. I doubt those of you with long enough hair will have this problem. I wore this style around the con for several hours, and it was very comfortable and didn't slip.
Good luck with yours!!
| 
|
|
| 
|
