Trim Your Own Bangs At Home!

I can't be everything for everyone, and I understand how busy people's schedules can be. It's hard enough for me to get my own hair done, so I understand the need to stretch out your visits to the salon as much as you can! Who wants to drive all the way to the mall for a simple $5 bang trim? I wouldn't even want to do that! So when in desperate need, I decided to give you a few tips on how to safely do it yourself. 

•  First of all, get yourself a good pair of scissors!!! Everyday use of any type of scissors will not only cause them to dull but they may actually accumulate a layer of gunky dirt and yes, rust. Definitely not a good thing for any hair to experience. Whether your household scissors are clean or not, if you plan on trimming any part of your hair on a regular basis, invest in a pair of good quality hair cutting shears or scissors.
• Always start with dry hair. You never want to cut your bangs while wet because they'll shrink when dry and look too short.
• Using a comb, precisely section off the hair you don't want to cut. You can either pin it back with bobby pins or clips, but only your bangs should be left loose.
• If you have straight across, or face-framing bangs, pinch them in the middle of your forehead so they are just one small section of hair. If you have side-sweeping bangs, pinch them to the opposite side - ex: if the shortest part of your bangs is on the left side, gather them all together on the left side, and pinch together. Start 'point-cutting' or snipping the hair at a 45-degree angle, going into the ends of your hair.
• Work slowly, doing a bit at a time. Never cuts bangs straight across since it's impossible to keep a perfectly straight line. My motto is you can always take more off, but it's hard to put it back. Check, check, and triple check. Remember, this is just in case of emergency or time restrictions! Always keep your regular trims every 6-8 weeks.

Hope this helps. When in doubt, have someone else (like a friend or sister) do it for you. Then you can blame them if something goes wrong. And I'm always here for you to help. Come in for a $5 bang trim and I can teach you myself how to do it yourself at home!

How to Blowdry You OWN Hair!!

Blowdrying my own hair is one of the hardest things I've ever had to learn to do myself. It took about six months of frustration, giving up, and throwing brushes across the room until I finally figured it out. And I'm a professional!!! I can blowdry someone else's hair no problem, and I can give you the best blowout you've ever had! But trust me, everyone struggles with this. Don't give up. You'll get it!

• Shampoo and condition, and towel dry hair. Blot! Do not rub!!! Dry hair on low, warm setting until hair is 50% dry. (Some may say 80%, but if you are a novice, it'll take you a bit longer to get through all your hair.)
• Apply the desired styling product to your hair.
• Continue by sectioning hair into three sections. Top, sides, and back.
• Alright, let's pick up that brush! The bigger the round brush, the straighter the style and easier to use. If you have thick, long hair, do not use a small round brush. It will get stuck in your hair! I recommend starting in the back at the bottom, clipping hair out of your way in each section as you work your way up.
• You should work with 2 inch wide sections, and an inch thick, this is a pretty good size section for most types of hair. Dry on high heat, brush should come from under the section, pull the brush root to tip. Once at tip, wrap the hair around brush.
• Direct the air flow from the dryer down the hair shaft from the roots to the ends. This means using a concentrator/targeting nozzle on your hair dryer and holding it above your head to project the air flow down. You always want to use a concentrator on your hair dryer so as not to fry your hair from it being so close to the heating element inside. It is no easy task to hold a hair dryer above your head for an extended period of time, and can be tiring. Take breaks. Get 1/2 way through your hair, stop, and apply your makeup. Then pick that brush back up and get back to it!
• Use high heat to get hair dry, then either hit the hair with your cold air nozzle, or remove the dryer from the hair completely and let the hair cool. The heat opens the cuticle, which helps to style the hair and get it dry fast, and the cold air locks cuticle, locking in the style and shine.
• Continue throughout the rest of your hair, section by section. Determine for yourself and what kind of style you have in mind whether you want to dry your hair towards your face or away from it in the front. I usually do both, starting the drying process by pulling it away from my face, and ending it with pulling it towards. This creates more movement and isn't set to one particular direction over the other.

The more often you do it, the easier it will become and you'll figure out how to do it faster and faster! Plus - added bonus - you're doing amazing things for your biceps! ;-)

Top Ten Reasons Hair Color Box Kits Suck

Or... Do you honestly think Heather Locklear shops at Walmart for hair color?

1. When shooting the photos for boxes, they don't use 1 color, they use multiple. Applying 2 or 3 different types of colors to produce results is common. Finished photos are fabrications - from an arsenal of hair tricks accumulated over years by hair professionals.
2. Directions on some kits promote "fast" processing. Professional color requires 45-55 minutes, taking that amount of time to work correctly - period. Do not look for "fast" hair color. The technology does not work that way, and incorrect coverage will result.
3. Kits leave public to believe that anyone with any color hair will end up with the photo on the front. None make proper exclusions - MUST be exclusions. For example: Light blonde boxed kits should say, "Customers with level 1 - 5 virgin hair should not use this Tint. - Please use 'such and such a color.'" Is that really so bad?
4. Manufacturers have chosen one volume of developer for customers hair without knowing the level it is. When formulating hair color properly, the color of hair one begins with must be part of the equation - first and foremost. No where does it say that on the box. With many different volumes of developer available for formulating hair color, manufacturers cannot pick one (put it in kit) without knowing the clients virgin hair color. That's leaving a crucial amount of information out of the equation - period.
5. Kits do not clarify the category of hair color they are, and customers are mis-led. There are 4 categories of hair color, and each hair color must fit in one. Otherwise how to you know what you are using? One manufacturer of boxed hair color kits (Clairol) claims to be a "non-permanent" hair color on the front of the box... ??? This is not a hair color category! The categories are: Temporary - they only sit on the surface of your hair and rinse right out. Semi-permanent - last 4-8 shampoos depending on how porous your hair is. Demi-permanent - last 6-8 weeks and tend to fade off slowly. And Permanent color - intended to last as long as the hair on your head, including covering grey completely. FYI: no hair color is completely permanent. All hair color fades - every single one. But as I said before, no color is ever truly out of your hair (fading or otherwise) until it is cut out!!
6. The charts and instructions on the box are confusing and meaningless, professionals cannot figure out what they mean or the goals.
7. One of the most important things you learn in beauty school about hair color is "color cannot lift color." This means that if you have a dark color on your hair, not your natural color, but an artificial color, there is no "color" that is going to make that lighter. You have to use something to lift it (make it lighter) which is usually bleach. So let's say you colored your hair a medium level 5 brown for the winter, and now that it's spring time you want it blonde. You cannot use even a highlift blonde color to do it. And let's say too that you have newgrowth. Well, that newgrowth, since it is your natural color and doesn't have artificial color on it, will lift, but the rest of it - the hair with color on it - won't. That's what we call "hot roots."
8. Almost all boxed kits tell you that if you are just touching up your newgrowth the same color, that you should put it on your newgrowth only, and maybe run it through the ends the last 5 minutes of the process. But with these new brands of color, including the foam kinds, how is that possible? Anytime you run color on top of color on top of color, the darker (or lighter, depending on what you're using) it's going to get. Thus making it harder to get out of your hair later on. I can't tell you how many times I've had a client tell me "I've been using this color for years and all of a sudden my ends are black." Yeah. Go figure.
9. Boxed kits only come with a certain amount of hair color. If you have short hair, most of it can go to waste, and you end up dumping it down the drain. If you have thick, long hair, you may need to use 2 or 3 boxes, thus spending around the same amount of money as you would have at a salon.
10. And finally, why stress about trying to figure out what and how to do it? Isn't it so much easier to just find a picture of what you want, take it into your stylist, and say, "I want this." ? Your stylist can figure it out, taking the pressure off of you, and if it doesn't turn out exactly as you imagined, it's on the stylist and not on you to fix it. If you screw it up, and have to go to a stylist to fix it, color correction can get pretty pricey, and it rarely looks perfect after the first process. I've done color correction before that's taken over 9 hours over the course of two days and cost almost $300. Spare yourself the headache and let the pros handle it. ;)