Wild star eyes part 1

 Hi everyone!

I was packing my cosplay stuff and during that process it hit me how much stuff I have accumulated over the years and years of cosplaying. There's so many fabrics and wigs and it just feels ridiculous that I never have anything I need for the next project, so I decided to build a cosplay from the what I already have. I actually have multiple projects in mind, but here we are focusing on one of them. There are some smaller things I still need to buy, like zippers and lenses etc., but at least I have wigs and most, if not all the needed fabrics. Let's go!

Today's project is going to be Hoshino Ai from Oshi no Ko. I picked this anime recently, but was planning on watching it for a while. Ai has many cute outfits, but I decided to make the one outfit seen early in the first episode.

Concept art

So yeah, this outfit is pretty simple, but I'll try to make it look interesting. I'll start from the wig this time though.

As you can see from the reference, Ai's hair is pretty interesting looking to turn into reality. Those pink highlights and all other color shifts in every reference picture, this was definitely a tough nut to crack.

My base wig is actually Firith's old dark blue wig he had for Chikane Himemiya from Kannazuki no Miko. We gave up on the Priestesses, but the wig remained.

The base wig!

Ai's haircolor ranges from dark blue to dark purple, so I thought the easiest would be just to give the blue wig a purple tint. Not a full color change, but just a hint of purple. So once again I throw myself to the world of wig dyeing. I've done it a couple times, successfully and unsuccessfully. The tutorials I looked through all required a dye for polyester, so Rit Dye or iDye Poly. I don't really have an access to those in here, so I would have to order online, but before I opened my wallet, I found another way to dye a wig... Crepe paper! It sounded so crazy to me, but I found a couple tutorials on it, so I decided to give it a go. Crepe paper is way cheaper anyway than dye, so if this doesn't work, I don't loose that much money (literally 1-2€).

I bought this pack from Prisma, probably cost somewhere around 3€ (they didn't sell separately)

The tutorial I watched was from Just Chinny Things, so with her video as my support I started dyeing the wig on my own. Their dye job was an ombré, so I would have to do things a little differently.

First step, I freed the fibers from the braid and combed it through, tried to make it as neat and knot-less as I could.

Cihllin'

Usually with dyes, if you use a pot to mix your colors in, you shouldn't use the pot for cooking. This is definitely common sense for many, but I mentioned it here too just in case someone didn't know. I didn't want to ruin any of my pots, so I took this plastic dish my boyfriend got from work. It was a good call, because the color ended up staining.. a lot!

Woaah ☆

I filled the kettle to it's max and boiled the water, then ripped some purple crepe paper while I was waiting. I don't know exactly how large the pieces should be, but in the tutorial they were neat squares, so I tried to mimic that.

I don't know have many papers were in there, just took the whole purple thing from the pack and cut it.

Once the water boiled, I poured it to the plastic dish, it survived the heat just fine! :3 The color dissolved immediately from the paper. I removed them before dunking my wig in.

Soup

While the dye bath was hot, I put my wig in. Yes, it burned a little, so I would advice to use some tool, a stick or something to stir and move the wig. I didn't have anything, but I can handle a good amount of heat on my hands. Something you learn as a cook. Please, use gloves with this! 

What your unemployed friend does at 3 am

I don't know exactly how long the wig should be in there, but I kept it until the dye bath was cold. The dye stained the plastic dish, my cloves and the skin top on the wig. The fibers? Not so much. There is a small change, but not much. Ngl I was a little disappointed, but I will try this experiment again with a light-colored wig, so stay tuned for that! 

I moved the wig from the bath to a towel. We all have that one gross towel we only use for dyeing our hair, so please use that. While I was patting the wig with the towel I detangled it the best of my abilities, taking the integrity of the fibers into account. Not a perfect job, but at least it's not that much of a knotted mess. In the tutorial, Chinny uses a hairdryer, but the fibers has gone through so much already, I really don't want to ruin the wig, especially since I'm going to use heat tools on it later to style it.. I decided to let the wig air dry. Maybe the color would have been more noticeable if I have used a dryer? Idk, 

It can dry overnight.

Once it was dry, I took my trusty straightener to help me further detangle it and make the wig look neat again.

Here¨s the after, not much changed.

So this dye job was a failure, but as I said, I'm going to try this again on a lighter colored wig. A blonde at that, since I'm planning to cosplay K/DA Ahri from League of Legends. And now because I talked about it here, I have to make it happen at some point! :'D Moving on!

Since I'm not going to dye the wig again, it has to do as is. I cut out a few wefts from the lower parts of the wig and set aside for the ponytail.

!!!

Once the wefts were removed, I started styling the base wig. First I cut and shaped it to my liking. Crimping iron was my friend again, as well as my trusty straightener.

First progress

Side curl done. I like to cut the bangs while wig is on my head.

Shaping the bangs, only heat tools are used here.

Once I was happy with the style and length, the tedious work started. Adding tinsels. This is all new to me, but for an idol, extra sparkle on her hair would fit nicely. I found the perfect ones from Normal.

Kira kira ☆

I knew nothing about installing the tinsels on a wig, so I looked up a tutorial. The one I watched was by Mirella Manelli. She showed three ways to install tinsels, I decided to use the slipknot method. One by one I would add these thin af tinsel, make a slipknot and tie them to a small hair section. This took forever.

This was torture

RAAAAH

Once I was happy with the amount of tinsels, I started adding the pink highlights, which I made out of yarn of all things. I eyeballed the amount of yarn I would need for a highlight (and doubled it) and unraveled it. Then I would put my straightener on a low setting and straightened the highlight. Then I hot glued it to place. Didn't even test the fit first, just eyeballed it.

Here's the yarn, literally the cheapest you can find!

Unraveling it, this also took a long time.

Unfocused pic, but I glued it to where the weft is.

After all this work plus hairspraying everything to place, my base wig was done. It took me about 2 days total (not counting the botched dye job). Honestly, I'm happy with the result so far. I'm worried about the ponytail, but I have leave it for later. I have some of the stuff in my new apartment, so stay tuned for that. Anyway, here's the result.

Sparkles!

The back, yes the wig collected some dust and dirt from that table.

This is what it looks like on me! :3

There's still so much to do, but this is the progress so far. Thanks for reading and stay tuned for more to come.