By Willow Enright

By Willow Enright

Sometimes when you are putting together a cosplay it’s easier to acquire a wig for the character in order to have consistent continuity for your character’s look. I used to try and cut, color and maintain my own hair for every cosplay, but that starts to take a toll on your own luscious locks. Especially when you want to do multiple characters with different hair styles and colors, possibly for the same event. ​

Lexa has some seriously long locks which she keeps tied back with a series of various techniques. The wig that I acquired for her look was a 24” heat resistant lace front wavy synthetic hair, medium brown. I bought it on Ebay for a really decent price, and I couldn’t be more happy with the quality of it, especially on camera. It has a sewn in cap with clips and an adjustable strap for under the skull, dense locks with a natural variation of color, and the hair feels extremely soft and natural. The most important part is that there is enough hair on the wig itself to do all the details we need to fully embody Heda. ​

I used a behind the scenes reference photo of Alycia Debnam-Carey (Lexa Kom Trikru) from the TV set of The 100, and I also referenced two YouTube Lexa hair tutorial videos. The main video, Commander Lexa Hair & Makeup Tutorial! | The 100 by Jackie Wyers, and the second The 100 Hair Tutorial for Commander Lexa by Silvousplaits. I mostly wanted to match the reference photo but really liked some of the added details from the two tutorials. ​

In order to carry the front five ponies back over the top of the head, and to give some more of that defining poof of Lexa’s front section, I did a loose weave of two braids created with the five strands into one. I used the middle ponytail for one of the strands with both braids which nicely guided it along the middle of the head. This was then tied into a ponytail right where the slicked back hair was, leaving one ponytail on top of the other. I then implored the pull through braid technique. By dividing the top ponytail into two sections which I looped over the second ponytail before bringing them back together at the base of the second pony and into a new ponytail underneath. This process was repeated three times and can be found visually at around 3:22-4:13 in Jackie’s video. Once you are done, tug on the separate pieces to puff out the loops. It gives some nice added detail and poof to the crown of the head. ​

To give each tied ponytail section some added detail like in the show, I used a malleable 18G aluminum wire. Using pliers I twirled a section of wire around the plier head creating some cool spiral details and then cut the wire about 2-3 inches away from the spiral design. I then wrapped the remaining wire around each hair section, being careful to tuck in the sharp wire ends so that they don’t end up poking me. ​

Time to add some accent braids into the mix! I choose to do one on each side of the head in the back, and two underneath on each side so that you can see them from the front. I didn’t use any fancy braids since my braiding skills aren’t that great, traditional three plait braids did the trick. Jackie does a lovely dutch lace braid, around 7:08 in her video, but I wasn’t feeling that fancy with mine. If you have thinner hair or your wig is slightly thin, Silvousplaits video is a great reference for this hairstyle. ​

You can also choose to attach the dutch lace braid to the main braid, or leave it to hang free. I also like the idea of possibly adding in some dreaded sections for additional details. I noted a small section of four on the TV show reference photo, and Jackie used dreaded hair extensions in her tutorial. I’m fairly confident that I could get the wig synthetic hair to dread up pretty easily. However, I want to make sure that there’s enough hair left over that it doesn’t end up looking way too thinned out from all the detail braids and ponytails before I make that choice. ​

​www.facebook.com/leatherworksbywillow/After all the careful detailing and braiding, be sure to store your wig appropriately to avoid unnecessary entanglements. I left mine pinned on my styrofoam head and covered it with the hair netting that came with the wig, carefully tucking the ends up into the net. I will likely find a cloth to also drape over it to avoid dust gathering on it. I now have my Lexa hairdo ready for every time I need to suit up for battle! Kom wor! (To War!) 

The next blog will come out on November 4th! I'll be getting into the  holiday spirit next Saturday. I'd love to see you Halloween outfits in the comments, or on our Facebook Page. 

By Willow Enright

There are times in your life where you really feel like making a change. Coloring or cutting your hair can be fun and give you a new outlook on life, however there are times where going blonde just won’t work for you. Clarke Griffin (The 100) has some ever changing blonde locks, and we’re going to transform an ordinary wig into a version of her combined hair-do’s. ​

The wig that I started with was a super cheap synthetic Halloween wig that we got at Goodwill one year ago. So, the quality to start with wasn’t great, in fact it was a pretty typical bad wig. However, it was what we had to work with and I figured that I would at least give it a shot to see how it would turn out. After all, I love a good challenge. Only, if I were to repeat this process in the future, I would definitely invest in a higher quality wig. ​

Since the coloring process involves rubbing alcohol it’s important to use a glass head instead of styrofoam, otherwise it will simply melt. I also covered it with saran wrap beforehand so that the paint wouldn’t stain the glass. I used a cardboard box to make a three sided place to spray, and placed paper towels underneath the glass head to soak up the alcohol. I mixed 1 cup of rubbing alcohol with about 10 drops of paint in order to get the richness of color that I wanted. Always start with your lightest color, Antique Gold in this case. I spritzed the entire platinum wig with this light color first. ​

By Willow Enright

Wearing the wig, I applied two different hair care products, Alterna Life Curls Detangler and Avon’s Curl Goddess Curling Mist. The detangler helps the synthetic hair to avoid knotting up. While the Curling Mist gives some body to the flat wig. I spritzed the products over the wig and used my fingers to scrunch it into the synthetic hair. ​

By Willow Enright

The stretchy denim jeans were dissected into four parts. The legs of the jeans were cut off just under the pocket lines so that all four pockets could still be used. The front button and zipper section were cut off since the Steampunk pants already have a button/zipper combo, and the back pockets were separated by cutting along the seam leaving the original seam on one pocket’s edge. Each leg was opened along the inseam, and then pleat folded until the entire leg of the jeans was one huge denim pleat. This process took several pinning, un-pinnings before the pleats were even on both sides and could be sewn to make them permanent pleat panels. ​

Clarke Griffin from the CW's The 100 has more outfits than she does plot lines. It certainly provides a vast array of cosplay ideas to choose from when creating your own Clarke. Since I'm making this Cosplay for my girlfriend, Erin, it was her choice and she decided to go with season two's classic quilted bomber jacket with all the blue accents. We'll be adding other ensemble pieces to this jacket to create the whole Clarke Griffin for Erin as a Cosplay character, but today I'm going to focus on her bomber jacket since this really is the main piece. 

I happened across the BCBG Maxazria Black Faux Leather Quilted Bomber Jacket on Ebay by chance. When I saw it I knew I had to snag it to save myself the hassle of building the jacket by scratch since it was the perfect base starting point. Of course I scoured the internet in search of several reference photos to use before I began to actually transform it. I attempt to get pictures from all angles if possible to be sure that my reference is accurate enough. 

Since this jacket already had white accents where we needed to have blue ones, that's where I started. I used Angelus Blue Acrylic Leather Paint and craft paint brushes of various sizes to painstakingly make all the white areas blue. This took quite some time since you put on one coat of paint and then wait for it to dry before doing another, doing as many as are necessary to get the shade you want. I did 3 coats over the white until I was satisfied with the hue of blue. The black areas only required 2 coats to match the white stripes. For the horizontal arm bands on the sleeves I mixed Angelus Blue with a dab of Acrylic Heavy White to slightly lighten the blue to match the reference photos. The black faux leather only needed 1-2 coats of this color, especially since I wanted these arm bands to look more worn than the darker blue stripes. You can use a painter's tape when working on something this intricate to keep paint off the jacket and zippers, but I didn't simply because I knew that I would have to mess up my beautiful paint job in the end anyways. Once the initial transformation from white/black accents to blue ones was done I waited for it to fully dry, 24-48 hours. 

The next step was to add the blue highlights that appeared to be spray painted onto the jacket. For this step I again used Angelus Blue and Acrylic White only a very small amount on a sponge so that I could lightly dab it over the jacket, which I zipped over my body double so that I could see exactly where I was highlighting with the blue in comparison to my reference photos. I didn't blend the paint on the sponge but rather used a downward motion while dabbing with the sponge to mimic a spary paint can pattern. When I was done with the first pass, and while I waited for it to dry, I checked my reference shots again to see how accurate I was on the first blotching. I felt that it required more color so on my second blotching I used a medium amount of pressure to dab the same spots with more blue paint before leaving it to dry another 24 hours. 

In the meantime I did some mild experimenting with different materials trying to figure out what would mimic Clarke's patches closely enough. For the left shoulder I found that using jean material would best match, only the scrap pair of jeans I had in my sewing scrap bin were blue. So, I took a good ol' Sharpie to the square of material transforming it into black denium. I left the edges to naturally fray, but colored them to match before hand sewing this patch into the diamond stitch pattern on the jacket. I realized after the fact that I didn't double check my reference picture, so my patch is diamond shape looking while Clarke's is actually a bit more square shaped... hence, the importance of checking your reference shots even when you think you know what you are doing. Alas. I wasn't going to undue all those hand stitches to turn it, so mine's a bit unique. 

The right shoulder patch was tricker to mimic because whatever the material was that was actually used in the T.V. show is unknown to me. I first tried bubble wrap painted silver thinking that using some sort of alternative material would be more post apocalyptic, but it was too obviously bubble wrap. In the end I used a black Italian Lambskin with a bubbled texture that I painted with Angelus Silver. However, I was careful not to paint the leather fully, leaving the black leather in the cracks of the design black for a more weathered appearance. After it was completely dry this patch was also hand stitched onto the right shoulder. 

Antique Black Leather Stain was used on a sponge to go over areas of the blue stripes to add some additional weathering before leaving it to dry fully yet again. The painted areas were then treated with Chamberlain's Leather Milk no. 3 to help protect and perserve it so that when Erin takes it into the woods to give it that final weathering effect all my hard work won't be undone. 

​This is how I created Clarke Griffin kom Skaikru's post Apocalyptic bomber jacket! If you too are a fan of CW's The 100, which character have or would you like to do as a Cosplay? Stay tuned for more blogs as I will be working on more Clarke Griffin in the future, as well as Lexa kom Trikru! "Aai badan yu op en nou moun (I serve you but no other)!"