morgan, what i do is either use curlers or a curling iron, medium size barrell, like 1 inch or 1 1/2 inch.
if you use curlers, make sure to roll all the chunks into the same direction and pin facing the same way. you can do the overnight spongy kind on wet hair, then blow dry before removing in the morning, OR the hot rollers. oh also make sure the rollers are vertical, NOT horizontal. you want them to be pined in the same direction the spiral will hang, up and down
either way, once you remove the curlers, dont shake out your hair. put it in a pony right away with a nice tight rubberband, then twirl your hair with your whole hand in the direction of the curl. it ends up looking like a cindy brady spiral ponytail!
after i do that i also take a small section of hair from the under-middle part of the ponytail and wrap it around the rubberband a few times, then push the tail of the strand up and back into the underside of the base of the pony using a short, tight bobby pin, it looks really cute and polished!