Curling My Black Widow Wig

This method is good for lightly curling any wig. It uses heat, which technically the tag for my wig said not to, but it's very low heat and not for long so it's not problem.

I got the Leslie 2002 from Amphigory in #130 for Natasha. It wasn't quite curly enough for my taste, so I set about searching for how to curl wigs. After a lot of hunting and not a lot of luck for non-heat-resistant wigs, I sort of combined methods and came up with this.

What you need:

• Wig
• Styrofoam wig head
• Wig pins (to hold the wig to the stand. I just used extremely large sewing pins)
• Large clips
• Bobby pins (the flat kind)
• Dual setting hairdryer
• Hair spray

Pin the wig to the stand in the general area of the temples. You don't want to sliding around when you're trying to work with it. Put the stand on a counter at a comfortable level, preferably someplace you can sit down. This'll take a while. If you've got one of those clamp things to hold the stand in place, even better.

You'll want to start with bottom layers, so pull aside the top layers and clip them back out of the way.

Now for the hard part: pin curls! Take a small to mid sized lock of hair (depends on the size you want the curls) and twist it around one or two fingers until the coil is tight against the scalp. Carefully slide the coil off your fingers, making sure to keep it pressed flat against the scalp, and pin it down with a bobby pin.

Repeat this until you've got a whole bunch of them. You can do as much of the head at once as you like. I had a shockingly small number of bobby pins so I was only able to do it in chunks. 

Once you've finished pinning, it's time to break out the hairdryer. Set it on low heat so it won't over-melt the fibers, but put it on a higher speed because otherwise it will take literally forever. Hold the hairdryer close to an individual curl and hold it there until the fibers are warm, almost hot, to the touch (not too hot because then they'll start melting). Repeat with each coil.

Once you've heated all the curls, wait until they cool. Once the hair is cool to the touch, you can remove the bobby pins. Gently tussle and place the curls as you see fit. Then lightly hairspray the curled section to set.

Repeat all of this until the whole wig is curled. You may want to carefully tussle and scrunch the hair a little while the hairspray is still wet to perk up the curls. Also, I don't know what will happen if you use the hairdryer too soon after hairspraying, but I recommend waiting until the hairspray is dry to use any more heat just so you don't accidentally catch your wig on fire. Because that would be unfortunate.

And there you have it! A freshly curled wig! I did soft, casual curls for Natasha, but you can do your curls however you need, just varying the amount of hair you coil and pin down. 

Good luck and happy cosplaying!