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through you decide to change up your look. Different dress, different wig because...
Why not? If you are feeling very careless and you just
toss that first wig in the back of your car and it stays there for... Say... About a week...
It may look something like this. Okay, so that actually happened to this poor
wig but I wanted to film this wig brushing tutorial
anyway so let's just say I sacrificed this wig for YouTube
wig knowledge and not because I was just feeling really
lazy at the time. Let's brush a wig. That mangled up wig is actually a perfect
candidate for a worst-case scenario kind of tangle.
A wig doesn't have to carpool in your backseat
for a week to get that messed up. A long day at a convention can easily get
a wig all tangled up and knotted just like that. So I figured, I could show you how to brush
this monster out, you can easily use this demo to tackle whatever
smaller, day-to-day tangles that you may have. So here is what I'll be using.
For tangles this extreme, it is helpful to have some conditioner that
is made for synthetic wigs. You an find this at your local beauty supply
store. Either a wig brush or a wide tooth comb is
an absolute must. I prefer a wide tooth comb because they are
very gentle on wigs and are also very affordable.
Regular hairbrushes will ruin your wig so
fast. It's optional but helpful to have duckbill
clips or clips that look like this to hold the hair out of the way. And for my stand I am using a styrofoam head
stuck on to an old crappy tripod handle to hold my wig. You really do not need anything fancy.
You could even just put the wig right on your
head and go from there. All you really really need is a wig and a
comb. Start by putting the wig on the styrofoam
head, or on your head if that's what you're using. If you are using styrofoam, pin the wig to
the styrofoam with a straight pin to hold it in place.
So for wigs that need this much work, I spray a generous amount of wig conditioner
all throughout the wig to make it easier to brush out. For smaller, every day tangles, I don't always
use conditioner if I can comb the tangle out easily without
it. Usually I will then section off the wig and
brush one area at a time. It helps me from getting too frustrated when
I have small sections like this to focus on.
So let's start with this little chunk here. So the most important thing when brushing
a wig is to always start from the bottom and work your
way up. Meaning, brush out the ends of the section
first. Once that brushes through smoothly, move up
a few inches.
Once that length brushes through, move up
again. And so on, and so on. It can be time consuming, but caring for your
wigs properly- like not throwing it in the back of a car
for example- will make them last so much longer. If you start at the top of your wig and brush
down, you can really quickly ruin a wig because it will just turn into a hugely damaged, knotted
mess which is the exact opposite of what you're
trying to do by brushing it.
So once I've worked my way up and this section
brushes through easily, I take my little clip and clip the section
to the opposite side of the head. This will keep it from falling back into the
knotted hair that I haven't brushed yet. Then I section off another piece and start
working on the bottom of that one, again moving upwards as it starts to detangle
and brush through. If you run into a big knot, take your time
and work through it.
Just jabbing at it and trying to rip through
it can damage the wig and it will lead to the ends being frayed
and damaged. A better way to tackle a really stubborn knot
is to see if you can free some hairs by hand just by pulling them away from the center
of the knot with your fingers. In really extreme cases- which is rare. I
didn't even run into it with this wig- you'll have a knot that you cannot get to
untangle.
If that happens, sometimes I will take a pair
of scissors and just trim a single hair or two around the
knot to see if that loosens it up. Sometimes just cutting one little strand will
unravel the whole knot. But I've also had times where I just cut the
knot out all together. But these instances are very uncommon.
I can almost always brush through a wig with
a little bit of patience and wig conditioner. Really taking your time with it helps so much. If I have a wig like this blue one here that
needs some serious love and careful brushing, I will usually put on a movie and just brush
it out while I totally zone out watching TV or a movie or something. So once I get about halfway through, I can't really fit much more hair up in that
clip up there, so what I'm going to do is to put the tangled
hair into a ponytail to keep it separated from
the detangled hair.
And then I'm going to let down the detangled
hair and put it in another ponytail so that you have two contained sections: tangled
and detangled. Then I free the tangly hair and repeat the
same process that I did to the other side. Split it up into small sections and comb it
from the bottom up, clipping up each piece as you finish detangling
it. Again, I feel like it's important to emphasize
that this is not the every day kind of wig maintenance.
If you are just wearing a wig around town
or whatever, you'll get tangles maybe at the ends of the
hair or sometimes up underneath around where your
neck is. Isolated tangles. Then you can just address those parts of the
wig and the rest should be easy and quick to comb
right through. I know this video looks intimidating like,
"wow, what a lot of work!" So remember, this is worst-case scenario.
Every day care is much, much easier. Once you're all done detangling, let all of the hair down together and work
through any remaining tangles. The comb should be able to brush through all
of this hair pretty easily. Its pretty amazing to see this wig bounce
back from that knotted mess it was at the beginning of this
video, isnt it!? I wear this wig all the time.
Probably more
than any other wig that I have. After you have a wig for a while, no matter
how much you care for it, eventually the ends may start to get a little
frayed. When I notice this starting to happen, I will
use some shears to trim off the damaged ends of the affected hair and it instantly
looks healthy and again. Usually this is just little tiny cuts.
It's
not like a full trim across the whole wig, but you could do that too if you want! And that's how I brush through wigs! Both every day tangles and extremely knotted
up wigs can be approached the same way. Being patient, being gentle, and taking care
to brush the wig from the bottom up. Surprise, there is more! I know you guys will
ask about curly wigs too, so let's briefly talk about that. As a general rule, it is best not to brush
a curly wig if you can avoid it.
But sometimes they just really need it. So in that situation, I gently comb out each
curl individually the same way - from the bottom up, with a wide tooth comb
or even sometimes I will just use my fingers, and then I will return it to its curl in
one of three ways. The first way is to just kinda let go it and
sort of just guide it back into its natural curl. The second way is to wrap it around your finger
to help it get back into a ringlet shape.
The third way is the spin it all the way up
and release to get it back to a spiral shape. And if none of these things work, I will re-curl
it with a curling wand. Its safe to do this as long as your wig
is heat-resistant, which all of the wigs from Gothic Lolita Wigs and RockStar Wigs are. If you arent sure if yours is, do a heat
test on an area of the wig that isnt noticeable or contact the company you bought it from
and ask.
I hope that you found this video helpful
and has cleared up any questions that you may have about brushing a wig. If you are enjoying these demos so far, make
sure to give this video a thumbs up and subscribe to my channel so that you don't
miss out on any of future wig demos. Thanks so much for watching! I will see you
guys next time! Byeee!.
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