Venti's Glowing Hair Breakdown (Patreon)

one aspect of Venti I refused to compromise on while deciding which elements of him I could realistically recreate was his glowing hair. I'm absolutely obsessed with Venti's glowing hair and I was DETERMINED to figure out a way to make my wig glow. 


My first attempt to make the wig glow was using basic clip-in fiber optic extensions from Amazon. When I burried the clips into white wefts, the white fibers did an amazing job of diffusing the light and making the entire braid glow. I had hoped that if I left the hair at the tips of the gradient light enough, they would glow just as bright.

I used an Arda Hansel in the Color raven for the base wig. Raven is mostly black with a mix of dark blues and teal strands which I figured would work perfectly for Venti's hair that teeters between black and dark blue. For his braids, I ordered a pack of short wefts in pure white and dip dyed a gradient onto them.

To dye the gradient, I started by dip dying the wefts using Rit Polydye in Tropical Teal. I held the wefts by the tips and carefully and quickly dunked the base of the wefts into the dye in increments to create a gradient from white to bright teal then submerged the entire wefts for only a very brief second so that the tips would also be a very light teal instead of white. After the wefts were rinsed and dried, I repeated the process with black dye, careful to only gradient the bottom half of the wefts. Be sure to always wear proper safety gear while dying wigs or fabric and safety dispose of your dye water afterwords! 


Once the wefts were dyed, I tried tying them into braids with fiber optics in the middle the way I had while the wefts were white and was disappointed to find that they no longer had the same glow. I struggled with possible solutions for weeks. I even tried rigging my own fiber optics with my own led, but first I had trouble finding fibers that were thin enough and then I had trouble finding less and battery packs small enough to hide under my wig. In the end, I ended up using a combination of the original fiber optics I bought online and led fairy lights that I backed up and concentrated on just the end of Venti's braids where I glows the most. To better hide them in the wig, I used a combination of electrical tape and black paint so that the underside of my wig didn't also glow. I used Got glue to add the wefts into the wig and then braided them with the fiber optics and fairy lights tucked into the center of each piece of the braids. 

I'm very happy with the results of my Venti wig, however I might make some small adjustments before the final cosplay is done. 

If there's anything I didn't explain super well or if you have any questions, please let me know!!!!