Padding and Backcombing

In lesson we did crimping on the dolls heads and when I had completed crimping the hair I decided to see what it would look like in the traditional 'heart shaped' style. 

In the image you can see how neat the hair is around the face, soft and pulled back. The hair is prob sly wrapped around a rat to keep the shape and hold better. 

In the Elizabethan times they would see hair rats, they would be a pile of old hair shaped in to what ever shape you wanted and that was pinned on to the hair and the hair on the head brought over it. Today we have bun rings and padding which does exactly the same thing but maybe a little more hygienic. 

This is a modern bun ring which is the padding, you can also use old hair from a hair brush and mould into shape or you can put toilet roll in some feet of tights and use that too. 

What I did was, I back combed one side of the hair, making the hair stand on end giving a little stiffness to the hair. I then wrapped the hair around my fingers and rolled down onto the head making the bottom tighter than the top looser, to make the heart shape. I pinned in to place and fixed any stray hairs. 

On the other side I didn't back comb but I got a 'rat', which is a hair piece you can pin into the hair, it looks like a sausage and you can get big ones or small ones and ones in different shapes too, to wrap the hair around to create volume and stiffness. The one I was using was long like a sausage. At the back of the section of hair I took a thin section and did a French braid across the scalp, I pinned the rat on to the braid to give it a stable base for it to sit on. I then wrapped all the hair back over the rat, not backcombing it, but just adjusting the hair to the heart shape and pinned into place. 

Looking at both sides you can see the difference in them both, one looks very soft, yet still stuff and firm where are the other side looks really hard and stuck on to the head.
I preferred the side which was back combed as it looked much more natural and softer. I did like how the other side looked, but personal opinion I really liked the back combed side more. I feel that the rat makes the hair look strange and hard looking which is what Elizabethan hair looked like.