Hello!

I am cosplaying Daniella from Haunting Ground sometime in the (hopefully somewhat near) future.

However, she's one of those characters which has an awkward shade of hair and a rather dandy style of hair which I've never seen in her colour tone.

Here she is.



and from front and behind



So, from a quick search by myself and Angel Tear, and we found a couple of wigs the right colour. However, one was well over £50, and the other had the wrong front and did not look very good quality. Thus, it seems we're gonna have to dye the wigs.

Now I know the general idea of dying a wig; acrylic ink, rubbing alcohol/surgical spirit, spray bottle, wig brush and copious amounts of patience. But I need some questions answered.

Base wig colour; What colour should I use? I have a silvery gray wig, with some black strands though it (not like, black streaks, just some dark... lights going through it through the use of black strands). But should I use a white, or something else?

What is the best technique? For the shade I'm needing to get?

What percentage of surgical spirit/rubbing alcohol do I need, and where do I get it from?

Now, with styling. I do not know at all how to style a wig like that (I can cut them pretty well though).

How do I get those curls? Do I coil the hair around then dowse it in hot water? Would that wash out the dying? What length wig do I need?

Help!

Now, onwards with shard of glass!

Does anyone know any good techniques to make something that looks like a shard of glass (other than be a shard of glass)? What materials? Note: I don't have access to any heavy duty stuff, I only have scissors and a Stanley knife.

I'm afriad I'm pretty useless with wigs, so I can't help with that, but for the shard of glass, you could get some more heavy-duty tools and cut it from a piece of perspex / acrylic - even a tiny hacksaw would work but it would take a while. Alternatively you could try casting one out of clear resin (which supposedly sets to have the same appearance as glass). You'd have to make a mould though, or you could possibly get a cutting board with blocks on it to keeps the resin in the right shape.

I'll have a look at resin. If what it's on is flat (and clean) I ought to be alright with that.

Miiight actually have a saw somewhere, so the acrylic could be a fall back.

I second the acrylic. You can cut it with a stanley knife you just have to do lots of cuts over the same line and then you just snap it and especially as its a shard of glass it doesn't matter if it snaps randomly. You would probably want to sand down the edges a bit with some sand paper to make it a bit easier on the hands.

Or alternatively, if you know someone that is good with Adobe Illustrator you could draw it out on the PC and get it laser cut, these guys are the cheapest I've found, you upload your design, select your material and it will quote you with how much it will cost.

http://www.razorlab.co.uk/materials/info/?id=172

I made sugar glass very easily, although the ingrediants can be expensive. Sugar glass has the added bonus of being smashable, and if you are particularly masochistic, edible (it tastes like salty baking powder).

Well, Daniella does lick her shard of glass...

IDK about smashable being a bonus - it would look cool, but I'm also taking it to Japan Expo in Paris and I don't think it'll travel well.

Your base wig colour will layer with the ink you add. This means a pure white wig will result in exactly the colour ink you used, whilst a grey wig will come out darker depending on how dark the grey was to begin with. As the colour tint here is very subtle I think it'll look really nice over a silver grey.

For the alcohol make sure to get a bog standard no added oils or perfumes one.

Despite having done this once myself I got perfect colour but horrible slightly sticky texture to my finished wig which remains through repeated washing. I still don't know if it was the wrong percentage alcohol or the ink being old stock (both the percentage and the ink brand were recommended in tutorials), so hopefully someone who had a complete success will be able to help with more details.

On that note I use sharpies and get a lovely soft shiny result, so if you're interested in the 'cracking open sharpies for premixed ink/alcohol' route I can vouch for that, but it could be expensive.

I got a pretty similar colour result for my Ivy wig using Sharpie-type pens over a silver-white wig, but rather than cracking them open I used the Sharpie nibs to draw over very small sections of hair. It takes a long, long time and quite a few pens (I think Ivy took 3 in the end) but you can get quite a good natural look because it looks more like natural high and low-lights in the hair. I think it would work for this wig if you're willing to spend the time.

I used Letraset markers as they have a really nice wide nib at one end. I think the shade was Lavender. If you used them on a slightly more grey-toned wig than I did (comparison shots in my Ivy journal) you'd get a good result.

Odanga, your start wig is exactly the same shade as my wig from what I can see! I've got til Japan Expo, so if I work on it a bit at a time I should be done in no time XD Specially since it'll give me more control.

Also since Amy has made me a biiiit wary of the ink technique. I know the marker option won't ruin the quality of the wig :3

Bumping this to see if anyone has any knowledge about curling the wig like this.

Never done anything similar myself, but if I were to tackle that wig I'd adapt a drill curl tutorial technique. Here's links to a few that look pretty useful (though this is just from a quick Google search, you might want to do a more in-depth one):

http://classewig.com/wig/blog/?p=1287 (in Japanese but the photos are pretty self-explanatory)

http://ichigokitty.com/tutorials-and-tips-for-cosplaying/big-drill-wig-tutorial/

http://cosplayrune.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/wig-curling-with-ringlets.html