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The ultimate modern fashion accessories are hair extensions – whether they be a wig, a set of clip-ins or even hairfalls. With hair extensions you can alter your look daily. They are as versatile as make-up and often far more easy to apply. However, hair extensions don’t have to be boring and uni-coloured. Here you will find a step-by-step guide to making your very own hair extensions, customising them to truly reflect upon your personality.
Hair extensions are fairly simple to make for yourself or for friends – once you have a bit of know-how and providing you are handy with a needle, thread, and tinting comb. Synthetic versions ofthese can always be bought, but in the main they come in one colour. However, these colours are often bright and shine well in the light, and although they can’t be combed, washed or styled, synthetic extensions may prove to be a slightly less expensive way of obtaining some super-cool hair extensions for yourself.
The first step toward making your very own hair extensions is to buy hair wefts. These can often be very expensive. To achieve the greatest versatility from your hair, it will need to be 100% human hair, which will allow you to dye, cut, style and wash your new set of extensions. The methods below require that you dye the hair; so buying a human hair weft is imperative. They may seem very expensive at the time, but in reality you can craft several pairs of extensions out of a single weft of hair. Perferably, the hair should be platinum blonde to achieve vibrant results with the hair dye.
Next you need to buy some hair extension snap-in clips. These can be found for rather cheap on eBay and have a great hold on your natural hair, so there’s no need to worry about your new extensions falling out. These snap clips come in various sizes, with the most common being 1.5″ – a size which is ideal for making the extensions described in this hub.
Once you’ve purchased your hair and snap-clips, you’ll need to cut the weft into 3″ strips. Fetch a needle and thread, which should be in a similar colour to the hair, and begin to sew it on to the snap clip. To do this, simply fold the hair double to create a nice, thick extension when using 1.5″ snap clips. Then, sew through the top of the hair weft and the holes on the snap clip. If your clip doesn’t have holes, you can alternatively sew through the teeth of the comb.
Now that the hair is firmly secured to the clip, you have a single uni-coloured hair extension! Congratulations. If you so wish to keep the extension plain, then by all means do so. However, you can follow the methods set out below to achieve some really trippy designs.
Funky-coloured Hair Extensions:
To jazz up the colour of your extensions a little bit, you’ll need just 1 cool colour of dye. This dye may be permanant or wash-out – whichever you choose. However beware that if you want to wash your extensions and wear them often, it is best to use permanant dye, otherwise the colour will fade.
Fetch a piece of good, sturdy cardboard to work on. Set out your extension on the card and lay it flat. Using either a tint bruish or your hands [gloved, of course], apply the dye to the entire length of your hair extension. You may wish to turn the hair extension over and apply dye to the other side to ensure full coverage. Leave the hair to process for the amount of time stipulated on the dye packet and rinse out under a tap.
Raccoon-style or “Coontails” Extensions:
Coontails are highly popular these days for their awesome colours and styles. They’re great for when you want to jazz your hair up but wouldn’t want anything so outrageous permanantly in your hair.
To make these trippy hair extensions you’ll need to employ a similar method as above. Before starting work, use tape to cover strips of the hair so that they won’t be dyed. Make sure the hair is straight otherwise your stripes will come out crooked.
To proceed from here, all you need to do is apply the dye in your choice of colour. Do be careful so as to not get the dye under the tape and therefore ruin the stripes. Once the hair is done processing carefully remove the tape and rinse. When rinsing, hold the coontail straight horizontally, with one of the dyed sections under a running tap to avoid dying the rest of the hair. Repeat this until the coontail extension is thoroughly washed and once again, leave flat to dry.
If you want coontails with two funky alternating colours instead of just your chosen colour and blonde, simply tape off the previously-dyed bits and apply a second colour to the remaining hair. Follow the above procedure for rinsing.
Leopard-Print Extensions:
Leopard-print extensions look awesome but require a fair bit of work. To make them, you’ll need to have your weft of hair sewn onto clips. Tape both ends of the extension onto a new piece of cardboard to keep it straight and flat, so you won’t mess up your design.
Once this is done, choose your dye and paint a leopard print design onto the hair. You can do this using either a tint brush or a cotton bud, whichever you prefer. You may wish to study leopard print patterns or practice them on paper with paint until you get them just the way you want.
Since the pattern varies, its hard to wash the extensions and not accidentally get dye on the other parts of the hair, but your extensions should be fine so long as you wash them quickly. As with all the extensions, lay them flat to dry and enjoy.
Additionally, if you want your extensions to be two-toned, follow the above method for dying your extensions a single colour, then add the leopard print in another colour.
Rainbow Extensions:
Rainbow extensions look amazing and are easy to create. You’ll need to have several bottles of dye in various colours to create a rainbow. While these may seem expensive to attain all at once, they will last you a long time.
Set out your extension flat on a piece of cardboard and get your red, orange and yellow dyes out. Paint the hair dye onto the sections you wish to dye and leave to process – going no further than yellow. Here, you should rinse your rainbow extensions before proceeding to do the other half of your rainbow. Make sure to tilt the extension so that the yellow is being washed first, with the water running downward from yellow into orange, and so on. This will prevent the darker colours bleeding into your yellow.
Once your extension has dried flat, you can paint on the rest of the rainbow. After letting the hair process, rinse it once again, with the yellow at the top and the water streaming downward. Your rainbow hair extension is now complete.
