Surprisingly, when worn, it doesn't feel particularly heavy - just quite hot! But the fact I've got loose extensions underneath it doesn't help with that.
I snipped all the hair off a blue fun party wig (bought from ebay for $13), but left the fringe, and also the 'roots' of the wefts that had been sewn on as a guide to the pattern of rows I should be using. I think I put about 18-20 rows of plastic in. I ordered all the plastic from craftswholesale. I ordered two lots of plastic at about £40 a time from them, though I only used about 2/3 of what I'd ordered for the wig, and about 3/4 of that cost was the postage alone! I think I used about 1.5 km of rexlace altogether.
I fed both ends of each piece of plastic through from the inside to the outside of the mesh cap, and patterned in such a way that every other mesh hole had a piece of plastic going through it in each row. The plastic ends were snipped at a steep pointy angle, which made it much easier to thread through the holes. I then knotted twice on the oustide - so the inside of the wig is quite smooth, just with lot of little flat plastic 'loops' showing. The holo plastic is thicker, so I only knotted that once. It's also much more of a bugger to get through the holes 'cos it's slightly wider.
I used royal blue, baby blue, neon blue, clear blue, holographic silver and blue, silver-glitter-clear and turquoise. The plastic is layered so that it's very long (mid-bum length) at the back and graduates up to being shorter and thicker, around shoulder length. Then, at about ear level on the base, I switched back to very long pieces with the intention of pulling most of the top part into bunches. Then as I got closer to the crown I switched back to shorter pieces, so there would be shorter tufty bits at the top of each bunch.
I had to snip the wefts off, the closer I got to the crown, because with the doubled mesh that features on the top part of the wig, and the greater frequency of weft 'roots' the higher up you get, it becomes quite hard to guide any plastic through.
The finished item is balanced OK weight-wise if worn loosely - then it does actually sit on the top of your head. But it does slide off if you tilt your head backwards or forwards. I plan to stitch some combs to the inside, to wedge into my hair.
It's very hard to get into even bunches. There's a lot of bulk plastic there, so that's quite hard to handle anyway. It's also hard to pull up into bunches because the wig lifts off your head or slips around if you do it when it's on your head. if you try doing bunches with the wig off your head, then you tend to pull the mesh cap into a flat shape which then doesn't fit on your head very well. But it's too bulky to be worn loose - there's so much plastic that it drapes over your face.
So, total time, hm, probably about 30 hours. Quite a nice thing to sit down and work on for an hour here and there - I'll probably end up doing tapestry when I'm an old biddy - it's a similar process!