Wigs How do you deal with cutting the lace off your wigs?

Well, my mommy had to help me do mine, haha. My doll's wig is styled, so it came on a little doll-sized styrofoam head. My initial plan was to plop the wig on that and carefully trim the excess lacefront with a box cutter, but my mom walked in on this operation and was like "hmmm, no, don't do that". She grabbed her hair scissors and held the wig in one hand while carefully trimming with the other. I supervised, just to feel like I was helping. I had her cut close to the hairline, following its shape, but not right up against it-- I was afraid of cutting too close and having hair fall out!

I rummaged through the pictures I have of him in his wig for some before and after shots:

 

Seconding the rec for using hair cutting scissors. Mine offer a little more precision than other scissors I have on hand, so I tend to reach for them when cutting lace front wigs. I follow the contours of the hairstyle with the wig in my hand off the doll, and it’s worked out fine. Leave a lip of lace around the edges when you cut, pop it on, and you’re good.

 

I also use scissors, but little nail scissors since they are sharp and small and have a curved edge.
I cut the lace while holding the wig, so not on the doll.
And I leave just a very thin edge. Like one row of the netting pattern.

 

Possibly very small scissors and while the wig is off the doll's head.

 

I use small manicure scissors with a sharp and pointy front. Start cutting in the middle and leave a 2mm gap to where the hair starts.
It should be invisible if you do it like that.

(I wonder why the wig creators leave this work to us. It always feels a bit unfinished to me)
(And also many wigs have much longer hair than on their promotion pics. You always have to cut them too...)

 

I've given up on buying lace fronted wigs becuase it makes no sense to me to buy a wig with a more natural looking hairline, only to have to leave a visible row of lace around th edge which just empahsises that it's a wig.

It works on human wigs becuase the lace is finer and less obvious at human scale, and you can use makeup to blend the lace edge into the skin of the forehead, but on a doll, the scale of the lace is too large and obvious to be unobtrusive. It's fine if you want to mess around with every photo you take of the doll to disguise the lace, but I want my dolls to look good in person.

For me, photographing them is a necessary evil if I want to share them online. It's nowhere near to being high on my list of reasons I have the dolls. I'd rather a doll that looks better in person than it does in pictures, than put them in a wig that makes them look naff in person and needs the pictures manipulated in order to disguise that.

I do still have a lace-fronted wig that has only ever been tried on a doll to see what its like, and I didn't even bother cutting it. I think I might experiment - cut it down to a narrow strip of lace and see if I can fold that little strip to the inside along the hairline, so it's less obvious. If that fails, I'll give up on it.

Teddy

 

I’ve had some come already cut, but mostly I think makers leave it to give you control over how much of the netting you want left. I wouldn’t leave as much as @Youzen did up there, for example, but maybe if someone like me pre-cut a wig for someone who more preferred it her way they would be worried it was too close to keep the wig in one piece!

 

What everyone else has said. I'll add though, for LoongSoul especially, use the 2-sided tape on the wig box. BUT, also use some of the drier, tan/white eye putty on top of the tape once it's around the doll's hairline, and hold the wig edges and sideburns down.

For me, this has been greater to keep the edges down. And those color putties are better so there's no color bleedthrough through the lace (as opposed to the green eye putty).

I haven't tried eye putty instead of tape altogether though as I don't want the eye putty against the face-up directly to avoid any color transfer or oils from the putty on the face-up. But, that might be an alternative.

 

@marci12 Aaah I hadn't realized that orange strip that came with the wig was double-sided tape! I didn't realize you needed to use tape to keep the wig on, but I guess that makes sense. I was wondering how to get the sideburns flat against the doll's head like in the official pictures, haha. I still haven't gotten around to trying, but I guess I should just buckle down and try to tackle it soon.

If you don't mind, could you explain why the eye putty is necessary as well as the tape? And if you have any pictures of how the whole arrangement works? Hope I'm not being too demanding, I'd just really like to make sure I get it right.

 

@bickazer @dragoneye1300 Essentially, the tape helps, but it's not strong enough to keep the sideburns and edges from coming up. If you use only the tape, you'll find you have to keep pressing the sideburns and edges down periodically. I find the putty grabs the lace of the wig better and keeps the wig in place:

2-sided tape on the edges of the face (lifted the wig, so you can see the putty on it):


For the demo, repositioned the putty on top of the 2-sided tape:


And press the lace wig down. Again, keep the putty on the hair parts of the wig, not the edges of the lace so the putty isn't visible through the lace:


Hope that helps

 

@marci12 Seconded, thank you so much for the detailed pictures! And aaa I would love to see more of your Black Dragon too!

 

Thank you for posting this. I just got my first lace front wig as was wondering how to deal with it

 

Hello!
That would definitely be helpful, but I cannot see the photos :-(. Could you please post them once again?
I've recently got a wig for my very first BJD (not here yet), so while waiting, I'm thinking of the best ways to attach it. Please, let me have a look, too! :-)