Bad Mane Days: A Guide to Fixing That Mess That Came Out of the Box by Scaradango

Transcription

1 Bad Mane Days: A Guide to Fixing That Mess That Came Out of the Box by Scaradango So you ve finally caved. You went to the store and bought yourself a plastic pony in celebration of the first episode of season two. Or maybe you ve had your collection for a while, and you ve just let that hair go because you re not sure what to do with it. I m here to fix that. Hey Rarity, am I a crime against fabulosity? Rainbow my dear, we deserve Nuremberg for what we re doing to fabulosity right now. What we re doing to fabulosity is illegal in forty-eight states and three principalities. Much better, no? This is a style guide for the Mane Six Friendship is Magic characters, as well as some general pony hair advice. As I acquire more ponies, I may update this guide. I am going to apologize now for using Luna in so many of these pictures. Before I started to make the guide, I mostly had my ponies hair done. But hey, bronies are all about the Luna, right?

2 Getting Started To set the hairstyles, we re going to be using the boil perm method. Go find yourself a teakettle or a microwave. We ll also need some regular water, a comb (I just use the combs that come with the pony), securing devices (your tape or rubber bands), two drinking straws, and several bobby pins. The last two are only necessary for Rarity and Pinkie Pie. You will also need a pair of small, sharp scissors. We ll start easy with Applejack. Before starting, comb all the tangles out of your pony s hair! It is easier to do this when the hair is dry, I think. The basic chronology of my styling is this: Comb the hair until the tangles are gone Wet the hair with warm water to smooth it down Style the hair how I want it to dry Secure the ends of the hair Boil by dipping the pony into a teacup of boiling water I know it might seem like a lot of steps, but it really doesn t take much time at all. There are some basic terms you need to know before we get started. Bangs: Hair that comes out of holes that are arranged horizontally between the ears. In the main Playful Ponies line, Applejack, Twilight Sparkle, and Rainbow Dash have them. Bangs fall forward. Boil Perm: this is when you dip or pour boiling water over a pony s styled hair to set the style. Hair Plugs: how pony hair is rooted. Each bunch of hair coming through on of the holes in your pony s neck or head is a plug. Leg Curl: wrapping part or all of a pony s mane around their leg. This gives a tighter, rounder curl than a eck curl and looks very nice. Neck Curl: when the mane is secured around the neck before boil perming. This gives a nice soft curl, like Twilight Sparkle s mane. Rollers: Bits of straw or other cylindrical objects thinner than the leg used as hair curlers and secured with bobby pins. Thatch: Creating a solid hairline by picking up individual plugs of hair and flipping them so that they lay facing the opposite way of their factory default. This is done alternating from right to left so that your pony isn t left with any embarrassing bald patches. Wet-comb: Getting a pony s hair wet, then combing. This is what I do before securing the hair into position. Some people like to do this to style the hair, but it won t hold like a boil perm will. Pony goodness starts on the next page!

3 Section I: The Ponies Everypony Should Know Applejack AJ s hair is the easiest to do because it s a simple straight ponytail and then just a trim-and-flatten of the bangs. To do the ponytail in the mane, remember that unlike a human, AJ s hair grows vertically. If you pull it all straight back, it won t fall nicely. You need to pull the hair down at an angle so that it falls nicely over her shoulder. See how I ve done it here? Also, if you ve purchased a toy AJ, be merciful and give the poor girl her freckles. I used paint. You can even use whiteout. Notice that the ponytail kinda spirals. This gives it a round dimension, like on the show. If you like, you can pour boiling water on it, then drape it over her shoulder to give it a nice shape when dry. Secure this with a little rubber band and you re done! The next thing to deal with is her bangs. They look very poofy and ridiculous here. Let s fix that. First, get them wet and pull them straight out. See how even when the hair is wet, they curve? We ll fix that in a bit, but first a trim. Caution: Pony hair does not grow back! Always envision twice and cut once. You want to give AJ s bangs a nice, shallow angle, like so:

4 Then pull them flat over her forehead and hold them down. You need to hold them down right under her ears and at the base of the angle. Once that s done, brush her tail, dip it in boiling water, put in a rubber band, and trim the base of the tail. It s much easier to do this when her tail is wet. Let her dry- I put her under a sun lamp, but any warm thing that won t melt her will do- and then gently sweep the bangs to one side. The result: Ah still don t have my motherbuckin hat. Should you want to find a hat for AJ, you ll find that the plastic hat from a Sheriff Woody toy will work wonders. Also, does anybody else out there have an Applejack with eyebrows? Mine has eyebrows. What s up with that? None of my other ponies have eyebrows! Twilight Sparkle I could probably do this without pictures and you d be absolutely fine. I d already done Twilight when I did this guide, so Princess Luna, whose hair I am not doing, is filling in for everything but me fixing up her bangs. Luna has a Rarity head type, so she has no bangs. She misses her abacus already.

5 Twilight s mane is just a simple loose neck curl. It is vital that you do not trim this until it is dry! Otherwise, you run a serious risk of cutting it too short. Also, be sure that the mane only curls on one side of the neck. On the show, it s the same side as her cutie mark, but I almost always put my plastic Spike on her back, so I had it curl around the other way. See how the hair is just laying over Luna s neck in the picture? That s exactly how I did Twilight s mane, just wrapped it around the neck. I didn t even have to tape it. The nice thing about this hairstyle is that it can flip around to the other side, too, if you want to switch it. For her bangs, do what you did for AJ, only cut them straight across and arrange them on either side of her horn. For Twilight s tail, just pull the tail out straight, dip it in boiling water, and then secure the end to her back hooves. This will create a curve like in the show. You can trim it after it s dry. And the result?

6 Rainbow Dash Rainbow s hair is also pretty easy to do. For the mane and tail, do exactly what you did for Twilight. The difference here is in the cutting. Cut them at an angle and feel free to be a little rough with the scissors. Tuck this between her wing and neck and do secure the end to her neck this time. That will pull the hair straight. For Rainbow s bangs, you ll want to do similar to what you did for Applejack. Get em wet, pull them straight, and do some trimming! You want a nice sharp angle here. Then, lay them flat on her forehead and secure them. Gently sweep them off to the side to give them volume once she s dry. Results?

7 Fluttershy Alright, this one s the big leagues. Sure, neck drapes and ponytails are easy. But Fluttershy, cutest and sweetest and most graceful of ponies, has curls. Three of em. She has the piece that drapes over her far eye, the piece that comes in front, and then that little bit at the end of her tail. Fortunately, Fluttershy is not a sea pony and comes with legs. This makes doing those curls easy-peasey! But first, let s start with her tail. Start by doing what you did with Twilight Sparkle to create that curve. Then, wrap the bottom of her tail around one hoof and secure it. Then, separate her mane and get it wet. You want to flop the hair in front of her ears over to the non-cutie mark side and the hair behind it so that it is pinned between her neck and wings. I should probably explain what s going on with my Fluttershy here. I m redoing her mane and tail after she got messed up when I was moving her up to school. This is why you can see that weird tail curl in the second image- it isn t that big when you re done with it- and why her hair s already curled in the first image. Anyways! Once you have Fluttershy s mane separated out, it s time to curl her mane. Curl the two pieces in opposite directions around her legs- you want to maintain that heart shape she s got going on. The piece that drapes over her face will naturally be shorter than the long bit, but if you want to make sure that it s shorter, then just curl it tighter.

8 The easiest way to secure the mane for drying is not to tape or rubber band the two pieces individually, but rather to wrap one long piece around both front hooves and hold them tightly together. I ve found that Fluttershy s bangs really look a lot better if you dry her upright. I m not sure why. They just floof nicer. Y-you don t have to dry me upright if you don t want to

9 I m pretty sure that Fluttershy has the second-best hair of any pony, and the results show this. But who has the best hair? Rarity There s two really good ways to do Rarity s hair, and I ll be showing you both of them. The first depends entirely on rollers; the second is two leg curls and a roller curl. Before I jump into showing you Rarity s hair, I m going to discuss Rarity s hair. That gradient is fascinating. Rarity s hair is unique in that it shows a specific inside and outside. The flat purple is out; the iridescent stuff is in. Be sure when doing Rarity s hair that you take this into consideration and curl it the right way. Rarity s hair is also unique in how amazingly gravity-defiant it is. I d say that Pinkie s is pretty gravitydefiant, too, but hers makes sense. Think of Little Orphan Annie s gingerfro when you think of Pinkie s hair. While the curls aren t tight like that, the basic principle is the same. But Rarity s hair curls and bounces in a really weird way, and to mimic that takes caution. Also, that tail? If you do that exactly like it is on the show, it looks really terrible. It does not translate well into pony hair. The way I m about to show you looks much, much nicer.

10 Method 1: Rollers I ll tell you now, I don t like the way this one looks as much. It looks kinda strange with the way the nylon falls but this is the more show accurate of the two, so whatever rocks your world. To start, get Rarity s tail wet. Pull it out straight, then using a piece of straw, start rolling. To do this, place the roller on top of the flattened piece of hair, roll the end over, secure with a bobby pin, then roll the rest of the way up to the top of the curl, adding more bobby pins as you go. It s way easier to start in this position than to have the hair on top of the roller. Don t roll all the way up, but do get pretty close as the curl doesn t really start until the bottom of the roller. Secure it with bobby pins, as many as you need. If you turn this at an angle to dry (tucking the bundle between her hind legs), it will fall much like it does on the show. Turn it so that the curl points down. Then, separate out her mane like you did with Fluttershy and trim a bit from the front section. You want this to be shorter, otherwise it won t have the necessary lift. Put in a roller and flop the front section over to the non-cutie side. In the terrible Hasbro vector, her head is turned so that it is kind of difficult to tell, but normally the long barrel roll is on the cutie side while the smaller roll hangs over behind her horn.

11 It is important that you don t put the roller in all the way. Make sure that you ve got it about like this, so that there s enough mane to drape over her face. Then, secure the bundle to her face so that it dries with a curve. Rarity also dries much better upright.

12 After that, it s time for the big mane! Use another roller and roll it up to where you want the mane stops curling over her neck. In this picture, her tail is pointed the wrong way because I knocked it when arranging her mane. Tuck the bundle in between her front legs and stand her up to dry. When you take out the curlers, be sure not to separate the curls, but do tease them gently between your fingers to give them some bounce.

13 Method 2: The Good Way If you want a Rarity with more naturally-falling curls, then change up the way you do the tail and the larger section of mane. You definitely want to do some trimming here. Here s how long my Rarity s hair is when it s dry. I am pretty dang happy with it! To do Rarity s tail, do a leg curl and wrap the whole tail around her leg. It s just like what you did with Fluttershy, only tighter and using the whole tail. To do her mane, do a front leg curl, similar to Fluttershy. The difference here is that you turn the head to get a super-tight leg curl, like so:

14 Keep doing her bangs like you did in the roller method, though. I ve seen it done where you wrap it around her horn, but I find that it dries with a strange angle to it and doesn t curl out; it curls into her face. This is what she looks like in the end! Rarity is not my favourite pony, personality-wise (that honour goes to jeez, I don t know, Discord Fluttershy/Rainbow Dash/Twilight Sparkle), but she is definitely my favourite when it comes to her appearance. I am a sucker for purple hair. And, much like Fluttershy, her hair is very fun to do. But there is one pony who is my favourite in almost nothing. She s too hyper, too pink, and I m afraid that she ll figure out where I live and murder me in my sleep. Fourth wall? HAH. She showed knowledge of internet memes in the first episode of season two. It s only a matter of time, bronies. Oh, and her hair is a total pain in the flank. But! I am finally in possession of a rooted Pinkie Pie, so now I can show you- without using Luna- how to make her look like her happy hyper self. For Pinkie, the goal is bounce and volume. You will be doing tight roller curls, but once they are dry, you really want to tease them to give Pinkie as much of that zazz as possible.

15 Pinkie Pie For the tail, wrap the whole thing around one curler. I guess you could do it with two, but with one, you get this big, fluffy corkscrew. Dip it in boiling water and get ready for the hard part. Pinkie s mane is in four major masses of curlsthe front bulk, the behind the ear, the middle forehead, and the swoop. You want to split the mane into four sections based on this. The first section should be the smallest, and the lowest section should be the biggest. The second section, that one in the middle of her forehead, should be a bit bigger than the one behind her ear because there s more definition. The curlers should be short- you don t want long curls, you want bundled ones. It s also ok if they frizz a bit; that adds to the volume of the mane! Start with the front section and alternate wrapping directions. You can do this with the hair wet or dry. Dry gives it more twist, but doing it wet makes the curlers way easier to manipulate.

16 Pin everything into place using your bobby pins or whatever. I used some tape to hold her tail in position and instead of bobby pins, I used binder clips. Why? Because I couldn t find my bobby pins. Afterwards, do the boil perm. I found it easier to just lay her on her side and pour water over her. If you can dry her upside down, gravity helps pull those curls into an upright position. Once you take the curlers out, tease the curls until they look just how you want them. Results? One hyper pink pony with crazy cotton candy hair.

17 Princess Luna Just brush it out and don t do a damn thing. After Lunar Eclipsed, we finally see why Luna s hair is multiple shades of blue with shiny bits in it. You can trim it if you want, I guess, but why would you? It s sooooo pretty! Oh, and if you wanna be supah-cool, color her crown blue. Paint or Sharpie. I used Sharpie. You could also get her some stilts, seeing as how that cute little thing up there could never possibly master the Royal Canterlot Voice.

18 Section II: Hasbro Done Goofed, or Exercises in Thatching This next pony isn t really a character, per se. Rather, this hairstyle is an addressing of a little oversight by Hasbro. See, there s two styles of pony heads: Bangs and no bangs. In addition, these heads can have or not have horns, creating four basic head shapes. Now, it would make sense that Twilight Sparkle and Rainbow Dash would have the head styles with bangs, right? Not anymore, as Hasbro has phased out the heads with bangs. But two thirds of the ponies in this series look really weird without their bangs! Luckily, there is a way to fix that! It s called thatching. Thatching is a trick much beloved by people who make customized dolls or rehair ponies on a regular basis. It allows you to change the direction of growth of the hair and covers up any unsightly bald spots you get from dividing the hair. Thatching can be confusing and somewhat time- Hey, Rainbow Dash! The 90 s called. consuming, but you ll get the hang of it quickly. They want their visor back. Before you start thatching, you need to separate the hair along the part line; that is, flop the stuff on the right of the neck to the right and the left of the neck to the left. You might want to get a thin nail file or some other slim tool to help with the next part. Once you have the hair separated and combed out, separate out the first plug. I usually work top to bottom, right to left, but you can switch that up if it s easier for you. Take that plug and flop it over to the other side. Then, take the first plug on the other side and bring it around to the side you started with. The diagram might make it a bit clearer. Each numbered segment is a hair plug. Repeat until you ve thatched as much of the hair as you want. For the next pony, I thatched her whole mane because I thought it looked nice. But for bangs, you don t want to thatch near as much- just the forelock in front of the ears.

19 I m going to briefly return to Cupcake for a moment here because her mane is divided pretty perfectly. See that purple section there? That s what you want to use for bangs. For the unicorn model, the horn acts as a perfect backstop for making bangs where no bangs previously existed. For Rainbow Dash, you ll want to pull the first two or four plugs forward instead of two the sides, then get creative with your scissors to make her pointy bangs perfect. It s not the easiest thing to do, but it is doable. The pony I used for thatching practice is a unicorn by the name of Dewdrop Dazzle. With her pastel colour scheme and violent eyeshadow, she reminds me very much of the 1980s. Her special talent has something to do with umbrellas, and she has a pet duck that is actually pretty cute. Her back card says that she enjoys splashing in puddles, and her box art makes her look like a bit of a Twilight clone. Her hairstyle is sort of a play on Twilight s; short bangs with a double neck curl, only longer and curling the opposite way, with a leg curled tail. To begin, I started by separating either side of the bangs. Then, I began to thatch them! You can thatch either wet or dry. After doing this for like, two minutes, I realized it was way easier to thatch hair when it s wet. It also helps to hold the plugs down once you have them on the proper side. Once you have the bangs thatched, a little tape over the eye and a rough trim to shorten drying time are in order. I then thatched the rest of the hair, taped her up, and stuck her under the heat lamp.

20 Once she was dry, I trimmed her bangs pretty short to show off that lime green eyeshadow. The verdict? Is she truly outrageous? Truly, truly outrageous? Whoops. Seems I inadvertently made her look like a little like Babydoll from Sucker Punch.

21 Thatching Exercise I: Twilight Sparkle II: Electric Boogaloo This Twilight came with a haired Princess Celestia (her hair looks pretty good if you leave it alone, like Luna s, or you can put waves in it) and another Spike. She s in the bent-knee pose I like so much and comes with her big crown thingy. She s got vertical hair, and so thatching needed to happen! As you can see, I just thatched the first segment and a half of her mane down, using her ears as a guide. I taped them down tightly, then curled the rest as I had in the original example. I trimmed the hair under the tape line, leaving it a little longer than I had in the first example. I didn t thatch past the bangs. I think it looks a lot nicer than the original way of doing her bangs! You d do a similar thing with Rainbow Dash or Applejack, only instead of parting the bangs around a horn, you d pull them down the center and use them as the starting point for the v-shape that their bangs make. Also, for her tail, I used a tube of chapstick. It was all I had out in my garage. I did this one at home, instead of at school, which is where I usually do them.

22 Thatching Exercise II: Sweetie Belle So now that you ve got the basics of thatching down, let s style another pony. How about Sweetie Belle? Sweets presents a bit of a challenge because she s smaller, but that also means there s less hair to thatch. There are currently two Sweetie Belles in circulation: the one that comes with Pinkie Pie in the Sugarcube Corner playset, and the one that comes in a couple new playsets. The original one has horizontal bangs; the other has the vertical hair line. I got my hands on the Sugarcube Corner set (for six bucks! I love clearance!) and did up some Sweetie. To make forelock d Sweetie Belle s bangs look really good, you need to do a three way thatch. I went Pink-Top Purple-Bottom Purple. The bangs are made of the back pieces of purple thatched forward and pieces of the mane. The front pieces of purple were thatched backwards, then thatched into the main part of the mane. I know this sounds confusing; here s a diagram that explains how I did the bangs. This is phenomenally easier if her mane is wet first. This is a very tricky process. As you can see, I used the medical tape to hold the hair down while I was working with it. Above is a detail of the left half of her mane; to the right is what the whole thing looked like when I was done with the three-way thatch.

23 Once you have the mane thatched down, boil it, dry it, and let it set. The thatch needs to set before you manipulate it further. Once you take the tapes off, you can comb the mane some and move on to the curling. Get the hair wet again and trim the pink parts so that they re even with the purple. The picture here shows about how long they should be for a good curl.then wrap them around something to curl them. I used a colored pencil. Tape it up and move on to the rest of the mane. To approximate the sculpted bulk of Sweetie Belle s mane, you re going to trim it up some. First, divide the mane into two parts. The top part will have that thatched-back purple and some pink. The bottom part will just be pink. In the pictures below, the left is the top and the right is the bottom. I know that s pretty much the opposite of how it is on the show, but Hasbro really didn t do a good job on making her mane s stripes look good, which is funny because all of the recolours have lovely stripes. Trim these unevenly. You want the top part shorter than the bottom part so that it layers right. Once you have them trimmed up, wrap the parts opposite ways around something thicker (I used a slightly thicker colored pencil), tape them down, and do the tail. (If your Sweetie Belle doesn t have a forelock, just make some thatch bangs and leave them long enough to curl.) For Sweetie;s tail, you want to split it into two sections, top and bottom. Curl the top section one way around one leg; curl the bottoms section the other way around the other leg. The trick is where you start the curl. For the top curl, start it right above the knee. For the bottom curl, start it below. Now it s time to boil the hair and leave her out to dry!

24 To the right is how the final taping looked for me. This is the initial result. Teasing it out with your fingers will result in a Sweetie Belle that looks as close to showaccurate as you can get her, I think. Once you ve teased her out, she looks pretty good! Even Rarity really likes her mane. Say it with me now: D awwwwww!

25 Section III: General Pony Hairstyles The Pinkamina Many of the ponies have multiple hairstyles on the show, particularly when they a) go to the gala or b) have a mental breakdown, which everypony has had at least once. And nopony is more famous for their breakdown than Pinkie Pie, who s got this creepy schizophrenic breakdown in her spotlight episode, Party of One. Pinkie is also notable for her turn in the fanfic Cupcakes, which seems to be the brainchild of Martha Stewart and Eli Roth. Cupcakes is pretty universally known throughout the fandom, and Pinkamina has sort of taken on a life of her own, which brings me to introduce the next pony I ve styled: Cupcake. According to the back of her box, Cupcake is as sweet as anypony could be, and loves to bake yummy treats and share them with her friends. She comes with a yellow saddle and a purple raccoon, and her box art makes her look like a Fluttershy recolour. However, she is not a Flutterclone; rather, she s a Pinkie Pie recolour. She s a slightly darker shade of pink with the same eye sticker So it just made sense to do her up as Pinkamina. I cut her hair a little short; this straight hairstyle works with any length, really. The first thing to do is wetcomb the mane really, really well, then separate the hair into segments. For the Pinkamina, you want the bulk of the hair on the far side, with a little bit flopped over her front shoulder. Using the ear as a general guide to what hair should go where is usually a pretty sound idea. Next, you want to straighten the hair. The way I do this is to take a piece of cardboard just a bit shorter than the hair piece you want to straighten, lay the hair on it, straighten it with my fingers, and tape it at either end. You want to leave a little hair at the top so that it drapes properly, and a bit of fringe at the bottom. You are going to trim it in the end, after all.

26 Do this for the three main segments of hair: Bangs, front shoulder, far shoulder. Then just do the tail like Twilight Sparkle and let her dry. You could be done there, or you could take it a step further. I ended up thatching the shoulder pieces because I didn t like the way it laid; see the previous section for an explanation of how to thatch hair. End result?

27 Braids Fun fact: Even though I m a girl, I m pretty terrible at doing human hair. I can t braid my own hair to save my life but I can braid pony hair pretty easy! Braids are a nice style for ponies like Applejack or any side pony you like. It works really easily with the recolors because their hair is frequently in three easily-discerned sections. The first thing to do is separate those sections. I didn t get the hair too wet for this- I just spritzed it with that water bottle you see up behind Pinkie. It worked nicely to keep the hairs together. Once you ve done that, you want to cross the top section over the middle in front of the ear. The top section is the new middle. Then, pass the bottom section over the new middle section. It becomes the new middle. Just keep going with this until you get pretty close to the bottom. Then tie it off with a rubber band. I like to curl the tuft of the braid by gently wrapping it around the pony s hoof while it s drying. Result? All nice and out of the way!

28 Princess Waves I did this with the haired Celestia that I like to call Princess Burn Victim. (Protip: painting ponies with spray paint is hard and a bad idea unless you know what you re doing.) It s a nice way to get big, fluffy waves. To begin, just braid the mane and tail. I was out of small rubber bands, so I just clipped them with barrettes. If you re doing this to Celestia, remember that she has that little swoopy thing of hair that comes down in front of her eye. Pull that out separate, wrap it around her horn, and hen braid the rest of her mane. Dip in boiling water and then let dry. Once you untape the bit wrapped around her horn, trim it to the appropriate length. Celestia s crown works pretty well as a headband to hold it in place. Not bad for a burn victim!

29 The Great and Powerful Hairstyle Trixie s hair is pretty awesome. Note: For Trixie and Lyra (who comes after Trixie in this guide), I d run out of medical tape and so used blue painters tape instead. 10/10, would tape again. That stuff works pretty wonderfully, you just have to use a lot of it to make sure that it doesn t fall off. Also, I was working on a green towel for a bunch of these to keep my kitchen counter dry while wet-combing and boiling and such. Sorry for the weird color. Step one is to trim that tail to just a little longer than hoof-length. I found it easer to do this after getting the hair wet. Put a straw curler in, but don t curl all the way up to the flank. Just curl the end of it, then tape it to Trixie s back hooves. From there, go work the mane. Divide it into two sections at the ear, about where it is in the little picture of Trixie s head, then flop the front section to the side opposite the cutie mark. Trim the section so that it falls a bit past the top of the leg, then take a straw curler and wrap up just the end of it- to about where I put the curler in the picture.

30 Afterwards, prop the curler in place so that it hangs about even with her eye. This is kinda like what you do for Rarity s bangs, the difference being that Trixie s little swoop is a lot smaller. Then, take the portion of the mane that s left and pull it around to the cutie mark side. Do a leg curl. Let it dry. You can trim the main portion of the mane so that it s shorter, but I wouldn t recommend it, as the weight helps hold it down. Anyways, the result! She turned out a little frizzy, so I ended up getting my fingers wet and then just running the mane through my fingers.

31 The Shag/The Lyra/The Rainbow Dash II/The Derpy-Ditzy-Bubbles Rainbow Dash s hairstyle gets thrown on so many background ponies. It s a pretty nice easy hairstyle to do, so let s get to it. Our sample pony is Lyra Harpass Heartstrings, who is a unicorn. For a pegasus or earth pony, you do the same thing there s just not a horn in the way. The tail is super easy. Trim it roughly so that it falls a bit past hooflength, then put a curler at the top of it. You can also put a half-curl in at the bottom for another dimension- basically just put something of a pretty large bore (like a marker lid) at the tip and only roll up a little bit of it. For the mane, you need to do some thatching to make bangs. Basically, just thatch forward everything in front of the ears. Then, get rid of the gap between the bangs by basically just pulling them across the pony s face. With the unicorns, make them cross right in front of the horn. With a pegasus or earth pony, make them meet at the front of the rows of plugs. Then, take the rest of the hair and do a neck curl. Tape them to place and then do the boil perm. Let them dry and untape them, then trim them at an angle. It s easier to show than tell how to trim the bangs.

32 Trim the the mane that lays over the neck at an angle and you re done!

33 Cheery Curls Cheerilee is sweet and kind- she s the best teacher we can hope for. However, her hair s kind of a pain to do because it s really hard to get vinyl to look like it does in the show. Cheerilee s tail has three sorta swoopy things- two little ones and then the main body of the tail. To make these, separate the tail into three sections: one big one and two little ones. Trim them so that the long one s a little longer than hoof length and the two shorter ones are a little less than hoof length. Then put curlers in- a fat one in the main body of the tail and two straw-sized ones in the other sections. Position them so that the main body is sandwiched between the two smaller sections For her mane, separate it into four sections: one section made of everything in front of the ears and then three other sections roughly equal in size. Thatch forward everything on front of the ears and put the two sides in straw curlers.

34 After this, take the three sections of hair and put them in straw curlers. Don t roll them up all the way, though- just enough to curl the ends. You need enough hair left to do a neck curl. Stagger the curls so that each one is slightly longer than the one on top of it. I know it s kind of a convoluted mess, but bear with me for a bit.

35 Anyways, when you re done with all the curlers, it should look a bit like this... And when she s dry, she should look like this!

36 Pony Hair Tips and Tricks The first thing you need to realize about doing pony hair is that it is not like people hair. It is vinyl; in other words, plastic. It also produces no natural oils, so you don t really need to wash it. I ve seen style guides that recommend a full shampoo and condition of the hair, and then use hair gel to hold it in place. Why would you do that? Hair gel will just make the hair get gross eventually. Maybe if you were going to do a permanent display, you could use hair gel or do that horrible glue trick, but seriously, you shouldn t do that. If you want to wash your pony s hair- maybe it got dirty or something- then that s fine. Use a TINY bit of shampoo or liquid soap, though. Conditioner can also be nice, too, but there is a trick to that. If you choose to condition your pony s hair, you need to use a tiny bit- just touch the stuff with your finger and what comes off should be enough- and not wash it out all the way. That way the hair will stay soft and silky. Never use human heated hair care products on your pony. You will melt her. Tiny rubber bands for doing pony hair can be found at most chemists/drug stores, your orthodontist, or your pet store. For holding hair in place while it s drying, I like to use the little rubber bands that come around the bags of crickets I buy for my pet lizards. They can also be found on some of the ponies- AJ comes with one red one, Shine Bright Fluttershy comes with one yellow one, Luna comes with a clear one. The new recolors- Flitterheart, Feathermay, Honeybuzz, etc.- they also come with a couple of rubber bands, usually yellow. When securing pony hair, you can use small rubber bands or tape. If you are going to use tape, though, use a thin masking tape or my favourite thing to use, first-aid tape. First-aid tape is waterproof, meaning it won t come off when you do the boil perming, and it doesn t frizz the ends of the hair like scotch tape or packaging tape would. To do Rarity s hair and Pinkie s hair, you need curlers. The best way to do that is to get a plastic drinking straw and some bobby pins. Depending on how you dry the pony s hair, you need to be careful about bobby pins. Most bobby pins are made of metal, and if you leave that on wet hair for too long, it ll leave gross rust spots. I never have left bobby pins in for more than an hour or two- the lamp I use for drying is pretty closerange- but if you are just going to let the hair air-dry without any additional heat/air movement, then use coated bobby pins. That s what I use on my hair, and I found a 150 pack of them for a dollar at Walgreen s. If you have a mylar-haired pony, such as Princess Luna, this guide will work a little differently. Mylar hair doesn t hold a style like nylon hair does. (Also, I am also of the opinion that Luna s hair is way too pretty to cut._ If you have a Shine Bright pony (like the Rainbow Dash you ll see in this guide), be mindful of her electronic components. Always dip into the boiling water; never pour it over or you ll short her out. If you have a Shine Bright Fluttershy, which has electric bits AND mylar in her hair but is pale yellow and pale pink and super cute, even if her saddle is a little ridiculous, well you re outta luck, I m afraid. I figured out how to do mylar. You need a hair dryer. Do a boil perm, carefully. Then blow dry it. Do not touch your pony s head while blow-drying, because she gets very soft and squishy. Stop blow-drying if your pony begins to melt.

37 It s not really a good idea to submerge your pony in water. There s a chance that mildew might happen or the washer holding the tail in place might rust. But pouring/dipping won t let enough in to cause a problem. The way I do boil perms is by filling a tea cup with boiling water and then dipping. I hold the hair in the water for a few seconds, pushing it down with a chopstick or bobby pin or spoon or something if it doesn t all get wet. If your first style attempt doesn t go so well, have no fear! You can always try again. It s why you should always be so careful with your trimming, though.