hairspray

Okay, so I didn't actually work on the flag fan last night as I sort of implied I would. However, I did finish off my veil and play with my hair. I don't have a whole lot of hair, so I bought myself some. Now, I know this isn't the most elaborate or authentic hairdo in the world, but I thought a tack-on bun would be a handy start, so I got one here. It's in a color that more or less matches my hair when relatively recently dyed, which it's currently not. I'll rectify that before the deadline. Anyway, this was cheap and easy, and I'd planned to cover it with a veil anyway.

One of the Venetian oddities was a horned hairdo. Bella has a really wonderful description of this phenomena at her website, located here (towards the bottom of the page). For whatever reason, the Venetian women thought it would be really attractive to roll and twist the front of their hair into sort of a v-shape that got worse and worse until it was horns. Oh my. Anyway, my personal opinion of the look aside, this is a unique look for Venice, so I thought I'd try to recreate it. I'm sure they didn't have hairspray to work with, but I'm equally sure I can't do this without hairspray. I don't even dry my hair on the way to work normally, so hair isn't really my area of expertise. Anyway, to do this style, I divided my hair across the top ear-to-ear, then pulled the back into a ponytail to anchor the fake bun. The front I then doused with hairspray and teased to within an inch of its life. Once it was 5 times the normal volume, I just kind of made a roll of it while encouraging more of the hair to go outward towards where I wanted the "horns." Then I tried to smooth over the front a little. It's got a couple of bobby pins in there for good measure. This stayed up all evening, which kind of surprised me. I think for wearing it outside, it'll get a whole lot more bobby pins and a lacquer-like coating of hairspray on the surface.


 

Here's the show from the side to kind of show you how the bun works out. The veil's just attached with a comb. It may get attached with a couple more combs actually.


 

There are exceedingly cool pictures of Venetian women wearing huge enveloping black veils that practically hit the ground and wrap around the front. I like those a lot, but realistically, there's no way I'll tolerate that in the heat, so my veil is white, made of really loosely woven cotton, and only comes down to my derriere. Actually, it was supposed to be a bit longer than that. We won't really discuss what happened. Tip: when you even something up, it's better to cut off of the long side, not the short side. Duh. The edging on it is by machine. I know it's against my "no machine stitching showing" rule, but it's a really long edge, right? I zig-zagged over some leftover metallic embroidery floss. It's subtle-ish, but kind of gleams now and again in the light.


 

And for the entertainment of those who know me, here's what my hair looked like when I tried to take it down. Helloooooo 80's. Why couldn't I figure out how to do this in the 80's, I ask you? Maybe I'd have been in with the cool kids. Just needs some mall bangs.