I tried something new with my hair for the
Austenland showing, and I am very happy to say it worked! I was finally able to create perfectly perky little face-framing curls to peek out from under my bonnet brim, which had always been a challenge since I have rather long hair.
I had debated cutting bangs, especially after seeing Dames a la Mode's recent fabulous
Regency hairstyle, but I know me when it comes to bangs. They just end up annoying me until I grow them out long enough to get back into a ponytail. Thus began the experiment to simulate short curly locks without actually cutting my hair.
First, I gathered my materials. This particular bottle of hair gel has lasted me several years, but the curved bobby pins are new. It was one of those things that I didn't know I needed until I found them, and they are so much better than straight bobby pins! (For the purposes of this experiment they don't do anything special, but for normal usage they are fantastic. I'm just excited about them.)
So! I started by sectioning off a very narrow line of hair around the edge of my hairline, and put the rest up in a bun. I did this while my hair was dry, unlike previous
Regency hairstyle attempts. I decided this would be better, as I only wanted to curl a small portion of my hair, so I wetted one strand at a time with the little spray bottle of water hiding behind the hair gel in the above photo. Then I added gel to hold the strand together. My hair curls great with just water, so I don't need the gel to hold the curl, but in this case I wanted the hair to stick to itself because I was folding it in half:
And wrapping it around my finger to make a very tight, short curl:
Then the bobby pins held the curls in place until dry:
And when I took them out they looked like this:
I was very careful when removing the bobby pins to not disturb the curl, but I did have to pin a couple of them up because they started to separate and hang too long on my forehead. But all in all it seems to have worked!
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