Developing My Final Design

After learning how to create the intricate plait, it made me want to incorporate something like it into my final design. I thought the plait would be an Elizabethan influence, but if I used the slightly alternative intricate plait, it would put a modern twist on it. 

I experimented on my dolls head how I thought the plait could be added around the bun. The best method I found was to leave a section of hair at the back (that was original going to be used within the bun). I then created the bun, compensating for the missing section by moving some hair around - I thought this would be possible on myself because I actually have very thick hair. 

I then tried plaiting this section normally and wrapping it around the base of the bun, which worked, apart from the dolls hair was not quite long enough the reach the whole way round. However, I believe my hair is slightly longer so this may be possible on m own hair. 

I then used the same idea, but this time using the intricate plait. The problem I found on the doll's hair was that creating this plait makes you lose a lot of length of the hair, so it reached about half way round the bun, but I thought the design worked well and looked very unique. 

However, realising how much length would be lost made me question whether this would work on my own hair, so I tried something slightly different.. I sectioned the piece of hair, left out of the bun, into 2 pieces and plaited each and wrapped it around the bun from either side to then meet in the middle. This worked on the doll quite effectively when using a standard plait. 

Looking at the design from the back actually made me think that the plaits formed almost a heart shape, which I thought could relate to the Elizabethan era because they favoured heart shapes used within the hair. 

I then repeated this technique of having 2 strands of hair and experimented using the intricate plaits. Again, this just about reached for the doll's head, so I am uncertain as to how it will work on my own hair. 

To help me finalise my decisions, I am going to ask a partner to create my design on myself (like I did for them), and ask them to try the different plaits, and different ways of doing them so that I can assess what works effectively in terms of time, difficulty and the overall look.