Bride of Frankenstein - Halloween Tutorial

Hooray Halloween is almost here!

Although it's not part of our culture in New Zealand or Australia, Halloween is becoming more and more poputalr, and is fast becoming one of my favourate holidays.
What other time of the year do you get to dress up as anything you want to be?
I LOVE any chance I get to dress up, and Halloween is the best excues in the book!

So without any further ado, may I present to you, my first Halloween tutorial for 2012.

The Bride of Frankenstein!

This is Part 1 - The Hair.

Ah the hair, the hair.
I really like this style, and it's actually not too hard, although it is time consuming.  Now that I have done it, I can think of a lot of way's to improve it, and I almost wish I had done a test run before I filmed it.  But as I said, it is time consuming and free time, at the moment I don't have a huge amount of.

You'll need:

- A teasing comb
- Hair spray
- Some padding
- Fringe or wig pins
- Bobbie pins
- Coloured hair spray, in Black and white
- Triple barrel or curling iron
- A clean cloth, paper roll or light fabric to protect the hair

So to give you a basic break down of the hair:

Start by clurling the hair all over with a triple barrel curling tong, or a curling iron.
When I did this, I curled my hair after I had applied the padding, but you may find it easier you could do it first.  Either, or - it won't effect the end product, it's just what you will find easier to do.

Section of a portion of hair at the crown of the head.  Create a small ponytail with this.  Thread the ponytail through a hair dounut, pulling the ends up.
Split the hair into sections (2 - 4 depending on how much hair you have in the ponytail) and pin it down to the roots to anchor the hair dounut securely in place.

In small sections, working your way in a ring around the hair, begin backcombing or teasing the hair into "hair rats".
Pin these seconds up and over top of the padding to create volume.
Repeat with another layer of hair all the way around.  Pin these guys up as well.
Try to focus on creating height rather than creating heaps of volume.

For the final layer, while the hair is down, go all the way around and very lightly tease it.  Don't create hair rat's like you did on the first 2 layers, just tease it slightly to spread it out and to give yourself more to play with.
Take a little more care when you pin these section up, and where possible, try to maintain the curl in the hair so that it has a bit of a wave to it, and leave it looking smooth on top.
Work out where you want your white streak to be, and leave this bit down and out of the way while you pin the rest up.  If this section of hair has been teased, I would suggest combing it out so that it is tangle free.  It's going to help in the next step.

When your happy with it, take your black coloured hair spray (give it a good shake!) and spray all over.  Hold the can about 6 - 8 inches away from your hair so that you don't oversatureate it and end up with it looking all wet and patchy.
Remember to try and get the top and back of your hair as well.  Try doing the mirror mirror thing, and take a handheld mirror to hold so that the reflection of the back of your head can be seen in the mirror in front of you, and check for any spots you may have missed.
Take a face wipe or damp cloth and wipe away and of the coloured spray you may have gotten on your skin.  Particularly around the back of the neck where you can't see.

If you have light coloured hair, you shouldn't find this next bit as hard, but if you have darker coloured hair, you may struggle to get it looking white a little more.  I did.

So first of all I dipped my head down, and just aimed the spray at the sections of hair I wanted white.  That didn't work so well.  Because my hair is a little darker, it didn't take to well and it was all wet and nasty looking, and still it was not very white, so I decided to work on plan B.
I got a clean chucks cloth, and pinned it to my head over top of the hair that I had already sprayed black so that it was well protected.
Then I pined up the section I wanted to spray white.  (See the video and it will make a bit more sense)

I was a little optimistic about this, and wanted to try and keep the wave that I had put into my hair with the triple barrel tongs.
Don't even bother with that.
Instead comb out the hair so that it is smooth and as tangle free as you can get it.
Pin it up over top of the cloth that you have pinned over the black hair, and start spraying.
I started off working in light coats trying to build up the colour and keep it dry as I did with the black, but it didn't really work.
I ended up going through a whole can on the two sections and the hair was pretty wet afterwards and didn't hold any of it's shape.  Because it's hair spray it's also pretty sticky.
So unpin it and go back in with a comb (I would suggest a wide toothed comb) in an upwards direction, try to comb it so that the hair is sitting smooth and neat.
Get it as smooth as you can, and try to keep the fly-away's contained.
Now start working it up in small "C" Sections or waves.  Each time you get to the bend in one curl, pin it down with a fringe pin, and then turn in the other direction, pin and repeat.

With any luck, it should look something like this (only neater because you combed the section out so that it was nice and smooth before you started pinning in the waves):

Once it is dry, it should be pretty set and you should be able to take the pins out without it loosing the shape, but if you are worried about it, you could leave it in.  If I was going to go out - particularly if I was to go dancing - I would probably leave the pins in.

Hope that you enjoyed this and found it helpful!

Stay tuned to for the makeup :)

xox