Elizabethan Hairstyle Task

You will need...

• Crimpers
• Hair ties
• Hair pins
• Tail Comb

 

Today in class we had to design and create an Elizabethan hairstyle using padding, frizzing and curling, this needed to be done in under two and was also our first time working on each other rather than working on our Katie heads. This hairstyle needed to be Elizabethan rather than contemporary, the front must be curled or frizzed, and can be heart shaped or round padding could have been used if you wish, and then the back can be a plait, twist or a bun and we were allowed to use any type of adornment to give the hair an Elizabethan feel.

 

This was my original design that I took to the lesson with me, I wanted the hair to be crimped to give the texture, then the hair to be moulded into buns at the top, which would come into a bun at the back, with two tendrils down the sides.

However when creating  my hairstyle I changed a lot of things, this wasn't because of time management or anything I just got different inspirations along the way when creating my work. I really enjoyed working on a person rather than a Katie head, I was really lucky because my partner has really amazing long hair so it was easy to create volume and I didn't even need to use hair padding because she had so much hair.

Timing was not an issue with this task, the whole hair took me about 1 hour 30 minutes when we had minutes and we had an 2 hours to complete it in, so I created some plaits at the front of the hair to make It more elaborate, however if I wanted to make it better I would have brought in some embellishments to put on the front of the hair as you can see in my initial design.

To create this hairstyle I first sectioned it into 3 parts, a small section at the front for the braids, a middle section to create the heart shape and then the back section. After this I divided the middle section into a centre parting, crimped it and thoroughly backcombed it, then I rolled each side into a heart shape and pinned it securely to the head. Then I split the front section into 6 and created 6 little plaits at the front of the hair which I secured under the hair rolls.  Then for the back section I was going to create a bun, but my model had so much hair and my pinning technique was also slightly messy so I tired to disguise it by splitting the back section into 2 and wrapping each plait around the head into a milk maid braid, and then pinning to the head to secure.

If I was to do this hairstyle again, I would have focused on making the heart shape a little bit neater, although I was happy with it at the time as I look back I can see that is not as precise as it could have been, I also need to be more careful with my pins as you can see from my bottom right picture. I would also add a jewelled coif to the back of the hair and adornments as these would really bring the look together. However I am really proud of the amount of volume I have got into the front of the hair without using hair rats and overall I think it is a good first attempt with room to expand.

**HEALTH AND SAFETY**

• Make sure you put the crimpers on a heat proof surface.
• Do not heat the hair for too long as this could cause damage.