Skip to main content

How NOT to Create Drill Curls


by Laura Lee

Now this is the story all about how
My living room got turned upside down
In an attempt to make some big drill curls
But instead I just failed.

The rhyme got away from me there at the end.

So I wanted to create big drill curls for a cosplay I am finishing for DragonCon. My costume is Dragon Trainer Lulu from League of Legends. A drill is a big tornado-like curl. If you click on the Lulu link, you will see her hair has 4 big drills. That was my task. I set out to follow a great tutorial, and to be honest I'm not sure where I started going wrong, but I know I did, in fact, utterly fail.

(I will be posting my own actual tutorial with images later, by the way.)

Anyway, let's start with the mistakes:

1. I went too fast. Always go slow.
2. She says in the tutorial to use clear packing tape. I started off using masking tape. Which shows up through gaps in the hair strands. Which looks stupid.
3. She says to cut off the hair to attach to the tape and then reattach those into the wig. I decided to try to glue the hair to the tape without removing any hair from the wig. It was all attached. It looked stupid.
4.She suggests to brush the hair with a mix of glue and water. I tried this and it definitely didn't work well for me.
5. I did 2-3 pieces of hair like this before I realized this wasn't going to work. I then had to remove the hair from the tape it was glued to and wash the wig out, trying to get all the dried bits of glue and tape out of it.

Here's what it looked like before I scrapped it:


That is a wig with pieces of hair glued to tape held straight with wire.


















How did that work for you, Laura? 











Well let's take a look at the aftermath, shall we?
Uneven, scraggly split ends
Dry glue stuck in hair

What I learned:
1. Go slowly. Check everything twice before you make a permanent action like cutting or gluing.
2. Read tutorials and write down your steps to be sure you understand.
3. Use the right materials for goodness' sake.
4. Don't assume you know what you are doing.
5. You can wash out wigs with hot water. You can use gentle shampoo and conditioner on them too.
6. Don't be afraid to admit your mistake, stop, and start over.

And now you know how I utterly failed at making drills. But thankfully that is not the end of the drill story. After starting over, I worked carefully and correctly and now have 4 beautiful drill curls! Tutorial and pictures to come!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Cloak Girl

So back in college, there was a girl who wore a forest green cape every day. I don't remember her name, though I roomed across the hall from her one year. She was obviously very into fantasy. She loved Lord of the Rings and had a whole fantasy village set up outside her room window. Most people thought she was a little weird and quite a few made fun of her. I remember just thinking she was a little different. I mean, I liked LOTR too, but I didn't wear a cape. No one else did. She was a nice girl though. I know she MUST have known she was the object of a lot of jokes. Despite what people think, you're never oblivious to that. Well, today, I made a green cloak. Now, I'm the "cape girl"! I guess some people might mock me. Honestly, I don't care. Not at this point. I've learned how to sew and can make a cloak! In fact, I did so in just a few hours today. So I'm pretty proud of myself. The character I'm cosplaying is Kvothe from The Name

Mom of the Year

Before I write this blog post, I want to say a few things. By its nature, this post is exclusive. It is about one thing and not about other things. But it is not meant to say that one thing is better than another. It's just not about all those things. All of us who are parents are doing the best we can. I respect and admire those who choose to stay home with their little ones full-time. You're doing hard work, and it's a great thing.  I see a lot of posts from parents who stay home with their children talking about how they love it and it's the best thing. They can't imagine not doing that. Wonderful! I see posts that get shared that extol staying home full-time with your children. That's great, too.  But this post is specifically for the mom who works full-time outside the home. I don't see much for those of us who do that, so this is for us. I know "working mom" is a bit of a misnomer since all moms are working moms, but for clarity's s

Fibromyalgia: My Journey of Health, Perspective, and Trust

This is less a post about failing, although I certainly had those moments. It's just something I'm sharing. I hope it helps someone in some way. It started back in May of 2011. Around the time of this picture on the lake. I randomly started having trouble breathing and realized I was coughing a lot. Of course, working at WebMD, I began a long process of self-diagnosing. (Something I try to never do now.) My symptoms seemed to point to asthma, although I imagined a dozen worse scenarios. The doctor thought it could be severe allergies so he gave me some medications to try. It didn't help.  I went back and he gave me an asthma test. It did not indicate asthma but did show some improvement in breathing with a breathing treatment, so he put me on inhaled steroids and a rescue inhaler. That did seem to help a bit... but when I say a bit, I really mean that. It was minimal improvement. I spent the whole summer barely able to breathe and unable to be outside for more than