Asuna Kagurazaka - Wig - Negima

Hey guys! This is the first of 6 posts that will feature my Asuna costume. Starting with the wig, which was possibly the easiest part of the costume.

I got my wigs off of EpicCosplay, which is a US based online wig store that has good quality wigs and doesn't charge an outrageous amount to ship to Canada. (They are the place I normally buy my wigs from.) I ended up buying 2 wigs to make this wig, as I needed the extra wefts to create the part up the back. I suppose I could have just used 1 wig and extensions, but I wasn't sure how much I would need/how much extensions I would get with one order, so I thought it would be more economical to buy a whole wig. I ended up with a lot of leftover, but I have a character in mind that I will need the extra hair for, so it will probably be fine.

This is a different method than I used on my Presea wig (a costume that will debut sometime this summer) where I chopped off the bottom of 60" wig to make the wefts myself. In this case I couldn't do that, because I needed all the length I could get.

 I had a bit of trouble deciding on a wig for this character, because although the colour of this 40" wig is perfect, the hair is not nearly as long as the actual character's. I had located a 60" wig on ebay, but it was a more vibrant orange (not exactly what I was going for). Also, I was unable to find matching extra wefts from the same seller to make the part. (Meaning I would have had to take the hair off other areas of the wig, which is not exactly ideal.)

I started by carefully detangling and brushing out my wig on my makeshift wig stand. Then I separated out the sections of hair, including the 2 pigtails and an approximation of where I wanted the part at the front.
By pulling the hair into pigtails I was able to get a good idea of what it would look like when finished so I could style the front accordingly.

By gently feathering the hair to make it look more natural, I cut in the bangs and sideburns. (Only cut straight across if that is the way the character's hair actually looks, and even then you should still thin the hair out a bit.)

With the front now out of the way, I could start on the back. First I deconstructed my second wig, using a seam-ripper to remove the wefts from the netting. Once that was done I started adding the wefts in a line down the center back, hand stitching the wefts into the netting.

For the center of the part I took 4 wefts and whip-stitched them together to make an ultra weft.When pulled apart from the center, this weft would make a clean part, showing none of the ugly stitching that was holding the wefts together. (Compare above left to above right.) I used a needle to part the wig, ensuring all of the wig fibers were going to the correct side and that I had a perfectly straight part.

Then I added a few more wefts in to cover the part that was pulled away on each side. Particularly at the bottom edge behind the ears, where it is not covered by the bangs.

You may notice the mohawk that was formed on the back of the wig. This is because there are little short hairs in each weft to help cover the netting without making the wig too thick. They had to be sprayed down, but that came later.

Whenever you need something small, red/gold and ornamental, I highly recommend taking the time to scour chinatown. I picked up these ornaments for a total of about 12$, which is not bad considering the effort I would have had to put into making them. These were essentially perfect for this character. All I had to do was remove them from the tassels and tacky lotus ornaments and I had 4 bells ready to go.

Be warned: I used my own key-rings to replace the jump-rings that came with the bells. They were made of cheap metal and the weight of the bell alone was enough to bend them open, causing the bells to fall off.

I re-brushed the wig with the new wefts in place and pulled the hair into pigtails again. I added the bells and red ribbon on top. I used hairspray to tack down the little mohawk at the back, and used it to keep the hair under the pigtails from slipping as much.

This wig had it's own fair share of problems. Because I didn't do a stubbed wig, the pigtails would slip during the day, because the bells were quite heavy. This just meant every morning I had to re-tie the pigtails, which wasn't too much of a hassle. Additionally, I feel if I am to wear this wig again, I need to add in a wig clip at the front, because it was too back-heavy and kept slipping (if only I had more hair to clip to, but that's a different problem). Also, as a side effect of being such a long wig, it would get tangled fairly easily (which I had anticipated), I ended up leaving the hair braided for most of the weekend because it was just too windy.

I'm really happy with how it turned out though. :D The bells jingling on my head only drove me a little crazy throughout the weekend. Hahaha