How to Make Your Own Victorian Memorial Hair Art
About a year ago, I was at an antiques flea market in Chicago. Almost every seller had several glass cases full of sparkling vintage costume pins and rings and necklaces, and I spent hours nursing my iced coffee and oohing over everything. One seller's display was peculiar, though: just 2 glass cases, 1 filled with vintage silver rings and the other with…what looked like jewelry fabricated of brown and black thread. Delicate thread intricately knotted to class watch fobs and earrings and bracelets. Huh. They were weird-looking, and outrageously expensive. Who would pay $250 for a set up of teardrop earrings made out thread?
I asked the woman continuing behind the counter about the weird thread-jewelry. "Oh, they're hair," she said.
"Alibi me?"
"Man pilus, dearest. This is Victorian mourning jewelry—people took locks of their loved one's hair and had it made into these perfect works of fine art, and then they could keep and vesture a role of them forever."
"Oh," I said, simultaneously grossed out and fascinated. "Really? That'southward…hair?"
She reached into the case and pulled out a brooch with a braid of bright blonde hair pressed under glass. It looked a lot like this:
"This one'south from the early on 1800s," the seller said, and handed it to me. The little complect was as shiny and bright as it must have been the day it was snipped from someone'due south head over 200 years ago. I of a sudden felt how amazing it was to be holding information technology, this entirely unchanged slice of a person who was no longer alive. I felt like I was fourth dimension-traveling. The past wasn't in black-and-white anymore—it was every bit brilliant as new straw.
The brooch cost $375, then I couldn't buy it, just my interest was piqued. The idea of making jewelry out of the pilus of someone yous loved was so CREEPY and Cute and semi-morbid. I went home and immediately started googling "Victorian mourning jewelry," and discovered that while hair jewelry and pilus work became something of a craze in Victorian times, the idea of article of clothing keepsakes out of hair has actually been around for centuries.
Pilus has long been attributed mythical and magical powers—in the Bible, Samson's hair holds his ability, and information technology'due south long been idea in folklore that spells can be cast over a person if you possess a lock of their pilus. Hair goes everywhere with u.s., and think near all the songs, poems, and stories that involve hair, not to mention the amount of time we devote to maintaining it. And when information technology's preserved correctly, pilus lasts most forever! Hair is and so personal, a piece of us. Case in point: My first girlfriend had hair that roughshod all the way to her butt, and I demand to tell you that I was and then in love with her, and then obsessed with her, that I was actually jealous of her hair, considering information technology had been with her longer than I had. YES.
Anyhow! Since our theme for this month is FOREVER, I thought it would be fun to practice a less-morbid DIY version of hair jewelry using your and your friends' pilus! I hateful, sure, there are friendship bracelets and necklaces, but if this isn't an intimate and conversation-starting way to declare your FOREVER Beloved for one another, I don't know what is. A way to testify off how close you lot are without the potential sharing of blood-borne pathogens inherent in condign "blood sisters," you know what I'thousand saying?
Why braid bracelets out of embroidery thread when you can make this:
or this:
out of your all-time friend'due south hair and feel all witchy-cool?
OK, so!
You will need:
• One or more locks of your ain or your friend's hair. Any kind of hair, in whatever texture, will work. If you desire to make a spiraled braid-coil, like the eye necklace I made above, yous'll need at least 12 inches of hair that's still length. That much hair is a little flake longer than shoulder length. (If you only want to take a tiny lock of hair in your jewelry and don't care about making a braided coil, or are making a ring, short hair will piece of work fine.) Basically, y'all need the longest possible pilus yous can get without making your friend's head expect like it's clearly missing hair. With your friend's permission and solemn vows to trust you, cut a snippet of pilus from the back of the head, under the height layer of hair, so what you've taken won't show. The lock of hair should be about ¼ of your little finger thick. Subsequently you've cut information technology, necktie ane finish tightly with a bit of thread.
• A jewelry frame (sometimes called a cabochon setting). I establish mine in the jewelry-making section at Michaels, just you lot can society settings online.
• Superglue that dries articulate (Non insta-dry superglue).
Duct tape.
• Pair of scissors.
• Tweezers.
• Q-tips.
• Assorted tiny gems/pearls/dried flowers/glitter/cuttings from magazines–anything that you lot might use to decorate the necklace when you've got the pilus in place. Nail art gems work neat!
• Optional: a clear cabochon dome to cover and preserve your hair artistry. Lends a professional touch.
• If it's a necklace, you'll too need a clasp, a chain, and jump rings, all likewise widely available at crafts stores or online.
How to brand a necklace:
ane. With the lock of hair pinched firmly between your fingers, brush or comb it gently.
ii. Rip off a modest slice of duct tape and tape one end of the lock of hair down to the edge of a table. Smooth the tape down hard—we don't want any hair escaping.
3. Separate the lock into three equal parts, and so begin braiding information technology. The key here is to make a tight braid—no fooling around with loose braids, or you'll take trouble getting the hair to stay put in the jewelry setting.
4. Braid every bit far down as you tin can get before the ends get messed up and uneven and splitty. Then grab your superglue and carefully apply a bead of glue to the end of the braid. Use your fingers to smush the mucilage into the hair, finer sealing the braid shut. Wait for it to dry.
v. Slowly peel the duct tape off the table and pull the height of the hair off the tape. Apply a bead of superglue to the point where the braid begins, smush it in to seal it, and await for it to dry out.
6. Now y'all take a braided swatch of hair. With your scissors, trim off whatever strays ends and the (many) flyaway hairs from the braid.
7. Apply a bead of superglue to your Q-tip, and so use the Q-tip to spread a thin, even layer of superglue all over the setting.
viii. Allow the glue to get a piffling tacky (fifteen–30 seconds), so carefully push the top of the complect into identify, following the outer rim of the jewelry setting. Then just follow with the rest of the braid, coiling information technology around into a tight coil. Use the Q-tip to apply more glue if needed, and utilise your fingers to hold the hair tightly in place until the glue sets. Be slow and patient—pilus work does not get fabricated in xxx seconds.
ix. Leave a little hole in the middle, then snip off the rest of the braid. Put superglue in the hole and constrict the ends of the braid into information technology and concur it there.
x. Encompass the hole with a decoration, bedazzle the pilus, then attach your chain, squeeze, and leap rings!
It's up to you how you decorate, or if you decorate at all—for the ring you see above, I embellished the tiny braid of hair with a teeny rhinestone flower. For my necklaces, I cutting an eye and a cat caput out of a mag and glued them over the holes, because the friend whose hair I took to make these likes both eyes and cats, and I wanted to impress her with how I used her cede. I glued tiny boom-fine art pearls and studs to each of them, and…TA DAAA! Inherently loving and creepy jewelry!
FRIENDS FOREVER. AND Ever AND EVER AND E'er… ♦
Source: https://www.rookiemag.com/2013/12/diy-victorian-hair-jewelry/
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