Show Us Your Moves Submission: Ashbrie as Pearl

Ashbrie submitted her positively EPIC Pearly cosplay to us! We were astounded with how much work she put into the wig to get the look she needed! She started out with our Dionysus wig in Caramel Blonde along (or Theia in Caramel Blonde) with two packages of our 15″ wefts in Caramel Blonde and 30″ wefts in Caramel Blonde. Read on to see how she obtained her Epic Cosplay!

Cosplayer: Ashbrie

Character: Pearl from Legend of Mana

Photo credits: PsykoGerbil (https://www.psykogerbil.deviantart.com/)

https://psykogerbil.deviantart.com/art/Pearl-1-Legend-of-Mana-318994186?q=gallery%3Apsykogerbil%2F32026199&qo=21

https://psykogerbil.deviantart.com/gallery/#/d59x7s3

I’ve encountered a lot of strange hairstyles in my time as a cosplayer—and Pearl is definitely one of the stranger ones! Not only does she have these strange pieces of hair and random pearls that float above her head, but she also has what is basically a giant hairball in the back! But hey, I’m not here to judge—I just wanted to cosplay one of my favorite characters from one of my favorite games of all time!

I had quite the adventure in styling this wig. I originally tried to style it with a very old Elora-fiber wig I’ve had lying around for a long time—but my first attempt at styling was a mess! The ‘floating’ pieces looked sloppy no matter how carefully I tried to style them, and they just wouldn’t stay in the wig right. Even though I was running low on time for Otakon, I scrapped the old wig anyway and ordered from Epic Cosplay right away. I wanted to start fresh with a better quality wig, and I fell in love with the Caramel Blonde color for Pearl.

I used a Caramel Blonde 22” Straight Long wig, 2 packs of short wefts, and 2 packs of long wefts.

 

https://psykogerbil.deviantart.com/gallery/#/d5a751n

 

Because my first attempt to make the floating hair pieces went so poorly, I opted to do braids. I used the long wefts to create 7 braids—each of which had a piece of wire slipped into them in order to make them defy gravity as fictional hair just loves to do!

 

The wires were fed through the wig mesh. The wire ends were curled and glued to a piece of fleece to keep them from falling out (and to keep the wires from stabbing into my scalp!)

 

The pearls against my head were all attached with the elastic that also keeps the braids from coming undone. The ‘floating’ pearls on the braids were twisted to the wire hidden in the braids with even more wire. Since there really isn’t any way to 100% hide the wire, I used a very pretty golden/coppery jewelry wire that blends nicely into the wig color!

 

The wefted ends of the braids were all collected down at the base of the large braid holding up the hairball and were hidden in the fabric hairpiece. Pearl doesn’t really have a hair accessory like that—but when I tried to hide the wefted ends inside the wig or braid, it just made the wig look far too bulky! So, I added the hairpiece for the sake of having a smoother looking wig.

 

https://psykogerbil.deviantart.com/gallery/#/d5a7560

 

Now, how about that hairball? The originally base wig was first braided with a hidden wire that holds up the hairball. The wire was stabbed into the hairball, and then curved up to create a ‘hook’ to keep its hold on the ball. The wire was then hidden with hair and a single pearl.

 

The hairball itself was made from a Styrofoam ball, covered in fabric, and spray-painted a similar color to the wig. The shorter wefts and some of the longer wefts were then used to cover the whole ball. The whole process is rather time consuming—basically you just sit there and dab pieces of hair onto the ball with sink caulk, then hairspray the heck out of everything! And you just keep doing that until the ball is completely covered—then you wait to see if any pieces are loose (and there will be—especially at the bottom). Stubborn pieces that don’t want to stay attached to the wig are either caulked some more, or are bobby pinned to keep them in place.

 

Although the hair on my wig was pretty secure, wearing the wig for a long span of time during Otakon certainly took its toll on it, and toward the end of the day I started having pieces hanging off the ball. To prepare the wig for a second wear, I made sure to secure more of the hair with more bobby pins, and also spun some clear thread around the ball. The clear thread especially helped A LOT in keeping the hair intact—no more weird hairball flyaways for me!

 

Once all the hard stuff was done and over with, I cut the bangs into the wig, gave them a little spritz of hairspray to give the bangs a little of that ‘anime lift’, and my Pearl wig was done!

 

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