Wig Tutorial: Edward Elric of Full Metal Alchemist

The wig was bought from China, which came originally as a white toyokalon wig (best fibers ever!) which I had to custom dye to a sun yellow color using Katie Bair's wig dyes.

I'm totally skipping the whole "dying the wig process" but I will give you a tip though, I didnt have the instructions with me at the time when I dyed the wig as I bought the 48oz bottle which at that time didnt included the instructions for purchase. And you know how she usually gives you a spray bottle to spray the wig. I found that spraying it was a harder task at achieving a more even colored tones for the wig, and so, I ended up with a blonde wig with highlights which gave it a more natural looking tone. But for overal coverage (i sprayed the dye on twice) for my third and final try at dying the wig. I dunked all the remaining wig dyes I had into a basin and dunked the wig in it as well. That coated it well as it pretty much soaked up the whole thing @_@ but remember to squeeze out any excess dye from the wig first! Let it sit and then rinse it off. I usually let it sit for a good day. So while I'm sleeping in class, my wig is drying nicely, sitting on the wig head looking pretty. And remember! Rinse with COLD water.

What you need:

scissors
hair spray or aquanet. Pomade even works well :D
Any kind of hair spray works, and aquanet is really cheap so you dont have to buy really expensive wig 'hair spray' or anything like that! Aquanet runs for atleast $2! :O but for this, I used Suave hair spray, max hold 8. But I usually prefer to use 10 so super extra mega crazy hold! XD
wig comb
Katie Bair sells special wig combs but when I didnt have the wig combs, I like to use the wide teeth combs usually used with people who have afros. I try to make sure the comb I use has their ends filled down or very very blunt as to not to damage the wigs sensitive fibers! :D

So I initially started with this wig and moved on with dying it.

So moving on. I started with parting the front bangs to create the little archs of bangs he has. As you can see, I held it with my hands and from the bottom (inside) I sprayed it with hair spray both inside and out until it held on firmly. If your not happy with hair spray, try pomade or even glue! but I believe hair spray does the trick!

You can apply how many layers of hair spray you want on it until your happy. The next thing I did was grab a strand or three of the wig, held it up high and sprayed like crazy to create the antena thing sticking out of his head.

If you really want it to stick out, use pomade or even glue. yes, craftsman glue.

On with cutting the lil sidey burns!

I obviously tried to create as much of the layers as possible but thats not easy to achieve with a wig whose fibers are pretty thin and I was obviously not paid enough to add extra wefts into it.

so you part some of the wig just enough to curse around the wig head, and cut away! I made the cuts uneven purposely to create the uneven side burn effects. And do the same thing on the other side.

I left some of the wig fibers hanging to show how I cut it and on the later photo, you can see that I finally cut it completely off.

Now that we have the side cut and stuff, off to work on the braid! The braid was what gave me the hardest task as I tried to make it look as similar to the photo reference above as possible. So the wig is atleast mid shoulder lenght, that I had to cut off some parts of it. Heres what i looked like unstyled.

I wont go into details on how to braid a wig as I hope by now you should know how to braid hair! So what I did was, since I do not own a wig stand, I stuck the wig head inbetween my legs to pin it down and keep it from moving and parted it three ways.

...and braid away! If you do not know how to braid a wig or hair, then why the hell are you even cosplaying as Ed?! lol, joke. If you need help on the braiding, I will be more than willing to post a tutorial on how to braid hair/wig.

After you braid it, then it should be done! Just cut off the excess hair sticking out of the braid (remember, Ed has atleast 3-4 braids) so a mid back lenght wig is more than enough.