Technical File: First Attempt at an Elizabethan Hairstyle

Elizabethan Hairstyle

Prior to this session, we were told that we would be working on others in the class rather than our Kate heads for the first time and that we were to do an Elizabethan hairstyle that had to be curled or frizzy at the front with a bun at the back. For mine, I decided to go with a heart shape at the front of the head. To do this I sectioned off the hair at the front of the head and then crimped it, splitting the hair into a middle parting. I really liked the way this turned out as I felt that it did look very Elizabethan and I found it quite easy to do.

I then backcombed it in sections, twisted and then pushed it up and pinned it on each side to create the shape of the heart.  For the back of the hair I decided to do a plait bun so I put the hair up in a ponytail, plaited it and then twisted it and secured it in place by pinning it with Kirby grips.

As there was still hair that was crimped being pulled into the plait I decided to undo the bun and redo it as it looked a bit strange due the different textures of the hair with some of it being straight and some of it being crimped. I decided to plait the crimped pieces of hair and pull them back into the bun. I much preferred the way that this looked and I really enjoyed this session as it was different to work on another person and it was interesting to be able to come up with our own designs for a whole hairstyles.

Technical File: Crimping

Crimping

In our next session, we worked on different ways of crimping the hair. For the first way, I used fine pins and wrapped small sections of hair around them, in a figure of eight motion. I then held the hair in place using Kirby grips until I’d finished using all of the sections of hair at the front of the head that I wanted to crimp. Then I held hair straighteners on each of the sections of hair before letting go and taking out all the pins. This created a crimped piece of hair that I decided to brush through to create frizzy hair at the front of the head, much like the Elizabethans would have. I personally preferred this method to using the crimper as I felt the crimps in the hair created a better frizz to the hair than the crimper did.

After this I crimped the hair using a crimper. This was done by sectioning off hair that wasn’t currently being used and taking smaller sections of hair to hold the crimper on down the length of the hair. I started at the nape of the neck and the underneath of the hair on the sides of the head first, before finishing at the top in a centre parting. After all the hair was crimped, I shook it out and then brushed through lightly with a paddle brush, like with the pins, to create a frizz through the hair. We were then told to create a heart shape hairstyle at the front of the head so tried out two different techniques to do this. For the first one I sectioned off part of the hair at the front of the head and then backcombed in smaller sections from the parting and down the side of the head. I then brought all the hair together, twisted it around and pinned it at the back of the section of hair to create the bun at the front of the head. For the other side of the head I used a rat (tights stuffed ith either tissue, fabric or cotton wool) and rolled it around a section of hair at the front of the head and then pinned it into place. Another was of doing this is to make a small french plait underneath where the rat will be placed and then to pin the rat into place using kirby grips and the plait. I personally preferred the side that had been backcombed as I found it a bit more difficult with the rat as it was difficult to disguise under the hair. I feel that if I were to do something similar for my assessment I would probably use backcombing. 

                                       

Technical File: Curls

Curls

During this session we focused on curls. I did two different types of curls on each side of the head using curling tongs. On one side I held the tongs vertically (spiral curls) and held in sections of hair for twelve seconds. I then removed the tongs and pinned the curls into place using Kirby grips to help them set. The other side was similar but I held the tongs horizontally (lift curls)  and then pinned them into place after the curl was created. After the whole head was done I took out all of the grips and shook the head to make them looser and lightly brushed them through with a paddle brush. I personally thought that the curls on the left side of the head (the spiral curls) looked better because there was more volume to them. I also found it easier to section the hair for these curls.

      

Next we moved onto brick work. This is a technique of sectioning the hair to get even curls, for example, one on top, then two underneath then three underneath that and then one underneath that.  I felt like this helped me when it came to sectioning as it’s something I struggle with.

Technical File: Ribbons

Ribbons

In the next session we worked with ribbons and other things to put in the hair much like they used to with Elizabethan hair styles. For mine I used a green ribbon and plaited it into a French plait down the side of the head. I was happy with the end result as I felt that I have improved with French plaits and felt that the end result did have an Elizabethan feel to it.

Technical File: Plaits

Plaits

We then moved on to doing plaits. The first was a French plait. I did this by first sectioning off the hair that I wasn’t working with to get it out of the way. I then took the first section of hair I was going to use and divided it into three sections then brought the hair over from the right to the middle and then the left to the middle. I then brought another piece of hair over from each side and brought it into the middle while I was plaiting the hair in order to create a French plait. We had to try to make sure that all the sections of hair being brought over were at the same height to avoid drag in the hair. I personally found this quite difficult and struggled much more with this plait than the fish tail one as I found it hard to make sure all the sectioning as at the same height.

I found the fish tail plait much easier to do. For this I had to section off the hair I wasn’t using again and then divide the rest of the hair into two sections. I then took small pieces of hair from behind each section and brought them over to the other side. It took a while for the plait to start taking shape but I personally found this one a lot easier to do. I did also feel that the end result may have looked more effective on longer hair so would like to try it on someone with longer hair.

Technical File: Buns

Buns

For our first practical session for hair, we were show three different types of buns and how to do them. For the first one, the modern bun, I sectioned the hair in half and tied the top half into a ponytail. I then used a pin tail comb to section part of the ponytail at the top and slightly backcombed it before rolling the hair into a curl and pinning it on each side with a Kirby grip. I then repeated this on each side and at the bottom to created four separate curls. I then used fine pins between each curl to pull them all together close to the scalp to create a bun shape. This was my favourite bun to do out of all three because I personally felt that the end result looked the best out of all of them because it had the most volume.

Another bun we did was the twist-in bun. For this I put the hair in a ponytail (although it can be done without a hair tie for a softer look) and twisted the hair round itself. I then used one Kirby grip to hold it in place. We learned that the nest way to secure the hair was to grab the hair with the pin and then turn and pull the pin towards us.

We also learned how to create a plait bun. This was very similar to the twist-in bun but was done by putting the hair into a plait first. This was probably my least favourite to do as I felt that there was not enough hair to work with to have enough volume for the bun.