Turnip's hair feathers

Remember when I posted the how to color feathers using food dyes recently? Well, Turnip Girl thought rainbow feathers sounded good. So she used those instructions and cheap food coloring to do these.

This photo was taken after she shampooed with the feathers in her hair once, the color held. 

These were done using the food coloring that comes in little bottles that you can buy very inexpensively at the grocery store. 

The extensions themselves are held in with micro links. I got them on Ebay. It was the first time I bought from a seller in China, and it went very smoothly. I got 1000 micro links which is probably more than I'll ever need, and the confirmation email had a tracking number that I could track using the USPS site. 

Micro links are crimp beads for hair. These are aluminum lined with silicone. I combed the parting line she wanted the extensions in, then put the beads on a small steel crochet hook and picked up small sections of hair and pulled them through a link. I kept the links about a pinky nail width from her scalp, and put the tops of the feathers into the link, then used pliers to flatten the link to grip her hair and the feather.

According to a lot of websites, you should be able to remove these with pliers. I tried but couldn't get a good grip on the link to remove them. Most of my pliers are for jewelry making and have smooth jaws. So instead, I use my wire snips carefully on one side of the bead to open it up and remove the links. She can wear these for a couple weeks at a time. She just shampoos normally and uses a wide tooth comb when she's combing her hair. 

She loves having this as an option for temporary color, and gets compliments on her hair feathers. I'm loving the price of being able to do it ourselves. At the salon locally that does micro link feather extensions, the feathers are 7 dollars each, and each "placement" (micro link put in) is 5 dollars. The above style has 2 feathers each in 6 placements which would be 114 dollars! 

The seller I got the micro links from on Ebay is human-hair, and the links were 15 dollars for 1000, free shipping. So one and half cents each. I keep thinking of all the things that could go in these. Pretty yarns, different kinds of feathers, strands of beads etc. 

This picture with the way her hair is blowing shows the dark brown micro link beads. They are 5mm outside diameter, and 3mm inside diameter. When I snip them out, I cut carefully on the edge of the bead with wire snips, and so far they haven't damaged her hair at all. Click the image to see full size for a better look at the links in her hair.