5.9 how can I make clip-on hair extensions and fake hair pieces?


From: Penny Dreadful
I hope Lady B. won't be annoyed with me for speaking up on her behalf, but since she taught me how to do the extensions/falls she uses, I feel I can share.

Go to your local "hair store" (around these parts, it's a beauty supply shop that sells wigs and extension-hair) and buy synthetic hair that comes in "jumbo braids." These are *large* packs of fake hair, very cheap. You can get them in "natural" shades like black, brown, burgundy, and in "wacky" shades like red, blue, violet, and chartreuse.

When you open the package, you'll find a bunch of hair gathered in the middle with an elastic, the ends folded down, then braided together (prolly to keep it from tangling up in the package). Un-do the braid and remove the elastic by snipping it with scissors. Gently tug on the ends of the hair in random, small sections, so that it is all different lengths (I think Lady B. does this with the hair laid out on a table; I did it by grasping the hair in the middle and letting it hang down); it will look more like natural hair this way -- instead of all being one blunt length.

When you have adjusted the length and added streaks of colour if you wish, take a regular fabric-covered elastic and squish it in the middle so it is long and skinny. Sneak it under the middle of the bunch of hair, then pull the bottom of the folded elastic up over the bunch of hair and up through the top of the elastic, pulling it tight. Now you have a loop of elastic sticking out, and a giant ponytail of hair.

Put your own hair in a ponytail at top of your head, or in two side-tails (yes, you have to have hair at least long enough to pony-tail to use this system!). Then attach the fall you have created to your own ponytail(s) with its loop of elastic. Arrange the hair with your fingers, and voila.

The more fake hair you use, the longer and fuller your fall(s) will be. Lady B's are *very* full, and at their longest are past her behind. The ones I did for Valentine's Day were about waist-length and fairly full.

It's fun! And when you're done with your hair, you just hang it in the closet or on a doorknob (if you have no cats) 'til you need it again.

BTW--synthetic coloured hair glows under black light. The red stuff I used on VDay was safety-cone orange in blacklight, much to my dismay.

About the type of fake hair: That "frizzy," cheap, Jumbo Braid hair is, in fact, the kind of hair Lady Bee and I (and some others) use to make our falls. The hair is sort of crimped and coarse, and meant to mimic the texture of African American hair (although I'm not convinced it is any more like A-A hair than it is like Caucasoid hair). It's good for us, because coarse/crimped = BIG.

That is the tradeoff you make for the cheap hair. The texture is not like yr regular old hair. The reasons I don't mind this are:

If you want falls that look like real hair -- sorry -- you have to buy the super-fancy hair which costs mucho buckos (or so I hear).


From: Aconite
'Jumbo braid' made by Sleek -- comes in several colours, and is kinky with braiding in mind. £2 a packet. And if you put it in loose, you will have one large dreadlock by the end of the night.

'Ponytail' by Austre -- comes in normal colours, and is very shiny and sleek, not kinky at all, also very heavy. £2.50 a packet. This is nice stuff to use as tie-in hair pieces.

Dome monofilament -- This is the real hair extension stuff; odd colours, straight, fine, and comes in one length (not looped). £25-30 a packet or 18ukp in Kensington Market. This is the *only* type of hair you should use if you are planning to have permanent, *loose* extensions (braiding doesn't matter so much, it can't tangle in a plait). It melts nicely if you use a heat gun to seal each attach, and it doesn't dread up or split too badly. It also looks like real hair, and you can backcomb it without it going into a solid nasty mat.

If you try and put the cheap stuff in permanently you will end up with a really nasty mess. The cheap stuff is fine to tie in for a night, but if you want either a hair piece which will really last, or permanently attached hair, then this is the best stuff to go for.


From: mari
At ricki's today, i got dream switch and j zee braid fake hair from the "loverly collection" by the same makers of jumbo braid stuff. the dream switch is black and the other purple, but they had lots of colors in the jzee stuff. the dream switch is basically about the same amount of hair in the jumbo braid, but it is much silkier and kinda in 8 thick locks of wavy hair... looks like my hair :) the other stuff is much crazier, but is still silkier and less a mess than the jumbo braid... it's in a lot of little crimpy looking curly things. kinda like zig-zags back and forth but more of a curl that a straight zig-zag. the stuff cost the same as the jumbo braid. $2.99.


From: Trystan L. Bass
I've made clip-on hair extensions by hot-glueing strips, braids, or curls of fake hair to metal barrettes. It's a little tricky to lay the hair in the glue just right -- if it gets messy, you can glue a piece of ribbon or bow over the top edge of the hair. These kind of extensions look good in combination with hats, bows, tiaras, and other head adornments.


From: Sparky
Been experimenting with the fake hair tonight, and found that the heat-gun-melted-loop trick doesn't work all that well on this particular hair, it seems to shrivel up and break instead of melting into a clump. However, a bit of heat shrink tubing with the loop stuffed into it, and then shrunk with the heat gun, works quite nicely. Next I'm going to try sticking a little alligator clip up inside the heatshrink tubing, then adding the loop of hair to the other end of the tube, then heating the whole deal so I have a nice hank of hair with an attached clip.


From: Amberella
First, you put your hair up in a big high ponytail, or not so high if you wish. Then take a piece of fake-hair-looped-onto-ponytail-wrappy-thingy and put that around the ponytail, too. (So you have phony hair and real hair in a big ponytail, basically). Then, take it and roll it in one of those Hairdini things (they work *miracles* for my looong thick hair). Roll the hair into a bun, so you have a real/phony streaked bun. And finally, take another hair-looped-onto-ponytail-wrappy-thingy, attach the loopy ponytail wrappy thingy to a bobby pin, and shove it into the middle of the bun so you have one big I-Dream-of-Jeannie bun w/phony-ponytail hanging out the back.



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