Change is a good thing right?

It official I'm leaving Click Salon and its very bittersweet to say the least. Why am I leaving? Well let me put it like this-have you ever know a couple who really love each other but, break up because they want different things or are going in different directions? That's exactly what happened with me and Click. I love the salon and my coworkers dearly, but I want to be doing different things like education and its not possible there. I've accepted a new position at a salon where I will be working behind the chair part-time as well as doing education part-time. I will be educating the new stylist right out of beauty school. It's an Aveda salon which I'm very excited about. I'm still an Aveda junkie at heart and I love Aveda color so much! Wish me luck on this new adventure which begins September 10th!

Fore Now Golf-Photo Shoot

Here are a few pictures from a photo shoot I did with
Denver start-up clothing line called Fore Now Golf

It's a very youthful golf line so they wanted fun hairstyles. Left model is rockin a pony tail with a french braid in the front. Middle model is wearing a curly low side pony and right model has waves with a braid on the side.

Left model has half up with lots of height in the crown.
Right is my side pony tail again.

Here's a group shot

And the funny group shot. I was totally laughing at this one!

Style Wars-Fashion Show

Usually my Friday nights consist of family dinner, putting the 2 kiddos to bed and relaxing with the husband catching up on some DVR'd shows.
Well 2 weeks ago this was not the case! I was rockin out some fierce hair with Charlie for the Style Wars Fashion Show. If you watched Shear Genuis you know this is a twist (soft serve style) on Charlie's Marge.

We built these styles over the models natural hair with colored fake hair and then put on the head bands to cover up the hair line.

This is the winner Mondo with his model. He loved the pink hair!

This color was my favorite one. This style made our 6'1"model over 7 feet in heels! ROCK!

Smoke and Mirrors

Have you ever seen a celebrity updo and thought to yourself -WOW I didn't think she had that much hair. Well you are probably right, she doesn't. Hairstylist have many tricks up their sleeves to make an updo look, which sometimes requires some smoke and mirrors! Here is a chignon I did on myself using hair extensions aka fake hair. I know the color is a little off, but I did that so you can see where the fake hair is. Of course if you do it you want hair the same color as yours.

Back view of finished Chignon

Side view

I started with curled hair. Nothing fancy just quickly done in large sections

It's then pulled back into a ponytail

Take a weft of fake hair and fold the ends to meet each other
This hair isn't anything fancy just some from Sally's Beauty Supply

Wrap the weft around your ponytail and secure the end with a few bobby pins

Make a "bungee" cord with a rubber band and 2 bobby pins

Fold the ponytail up and use your bungee cord to secure it. Push the pin on one side. Then, holding the other pin, pull the rubber band across the underside of the ponytail and secure the pin on the other side

Now your ponytail should look like this

Take another weft and create a hair pad with it-this will give the the chignon a really full look You can also use a hair rat (awful name I know) close to your hair color to get the same effect

Roll up the weft to make the hair pad

Pin the hair pad to the underside of the ponytail

Use several pins to secure the hair pad into place

Fold the ponytail back over the hair pad and fan out to cover it

Pin around the chignon to hold its shape

Here are a few different celebrity versions

Taylor Swift with a soft side part version

Anne Hathaway with a tight side part version

Reese Witherspoon with a loose deconstructed version

Now go give it a whirl and let me know how it turns out!

The Red, The White & The Blue

Here are some shots from my first solo photo shoot. I came up with the concept, cast the models and photographer. I also did all the hair (including color) and make up. I will never do both hair and make up on a photo shoot again, unless it's just one model. It was way too much work for just one person! I spent 6 hours coloring the blonde and black haired models the day before, then over 2 hours creating the red wig. The day of the shoot I spent hours just doing the hair and make up and then we still had to shoot it-I lost my voice from all the stress! Lesson learned: For a shoot with more than one model do the hair OR the make up. It was a very good learning experience to say the least. I'm pretty happy with the way it turned out. Would I change a few things? Absolutely, but overall I'm happy with it. And now for the pictures:




The concept behind this was a hair-centered shoot with a twist on red, white and blue by doing red hair, blonde hair and blue black hair (black haired model does have blue streaks in the sides it's just not visible in all the pictures). It is all about the color and texture of the hair. Still trying to decide if I should enter into NAHA for 2010. What do you think?

Foundations of Updos

With wedding season in full swing I felt it would be a good time to talk about the foundations of updos. Updos fall into 3 categories: ponytail, French twist and free form.

Here are some examples of the ponytail base

All of these styles were created by first pulling the hair into a ponytaill. The updo was then created off of that ponytail base.

Here are some examples of a French Twist base:

All of these styles began with a simple French twist in the back. The rest of the style was built off of that French twist base.

Here are two examples of free form hairstyles:
Free from is where the style was not started with either a pony tail or a french twist

Sew it UP

I did this beauty shoot for my portfolio a couple of weeks ago. I sewed the models hair into an updo rather than using a million pins. After I sewed it up (using a blunt plastic needle and extension thread) I did use a few pins (like 4 or 5) to make it the shape I wanted. Added the cute headband from Urban Outfitters and BAM-super easy updo!