Annual mannequin fundraiser to take off

Mannequin heads decorated as scary characters will be popping up around campus on Wednesday as MHCC cosmetology students and the Image Makers club rent them out as part of a fundraiser.

Students use leftover mannequin heads to create spooky Halloween looks for hair and make up and then allow students and staff to pay to have one delivered to a person of their choice on Halloween.

Kati Miller, a second-year cosmetology student and Image Makers president said, “We kinda just started it because we always get weird looks just walking around campus. Just holding random heads and Halloween is always kind of a big deal for us because it’s fun to do the hairstyles and the makeup and everything for it, and we have all these heads that go to no use once people graduate, so they just donate them.”

Miller said the haunted heads fundraiser began about three years ago.

“It’s $2 an hour per rental and they’ll be delivered. We have girls that will be running around the college like chickens with their heads cut off, giving people heads,” she said.

People can begin Monday to order the heads through the salon.

The money is being raised to pay for lodging at a Bellevue, Wash., hair show next spring. A year ago, “the hotel we stayed at was kind of an iffy place, so we’re really working on raising enough money to be somewhere where we’re comfortable with boarding our girls,” Miller said.

All cosmetology students are encouraged to participate in decorating heads. It’s not a requirement, “but it’s a fun thing to do,” Miller said. The time needed to decorate one head “depends on what you’re doing,” she said.

The heads are available for rent only on Halloween day, to help reduce stress on participants. The heads may be delivered only on campus, because students must be able to use them again.

Miller said she hopes there will be at least 15 heads rotate on campus this year, slightly more than last year, when a row was featured in front of the salon.

The Haunted Heads fundraiser works “because people are weird and they like to creep people out,” Miller said. “It’s the same basic principle of sending somebody a dozen roses on Valentines day to tell them you love them, on Halloween it’s ‘Hey, thinking about you, let me send you this head.’ ”

There is no accompanying card, which keeps the head anonymous and “more of a surprise thing,” she said.

Aside from the heads, another service the cosmetology students provide is makeup application for any occasion – including Halloween events. The application costs $3.50 and students receive a 10 percent discount.

The mannequins are important tool for cosmetology students, Miller said. For a while, at least.

“Throughout the program we do haircuts on them, we do hairstyles, we have different ethnic hair and synthetic hair to practice braiding on. ” Miller said “By the time that people graduate either they just don’t want the heads anymore and there’s still a little bit of hair left so one of us can use it to finish our haircuts on or use for this kind of thing, we have a few we use for facial practice.”

“A lot of us will use them for target practice after we are done. There’s all kinds of interesting pictures on Facebook,” Miller said.