Makeup School: Day 23-24 - Hairstyling

Reverse French braid (left) and normal French braid (right)

Now that everyone needs to be multi-talented to gain an edge in the industry, we're being taught some simple hairstyling techniques. So over the next fortnight or so, we'll be learning to section, trim, blow-wave, curl, style and set hair.

The first two lessons were fun and introductory to get us familiarised with our human-hair mannequin heads. We started with a simple ponytail and then spent most of the time learning different styles of plaiting and braiding. I did a reverse French braid for the first time and was surprised to learn I'm not the only one. There were some girls who have never done a braid before!

Plus, can you believe the amount of work that actually goes into a ponytail?!

1. Section hair on top and sides of head, then backcomb at roots for volume.
2. Brush hair back into a ponytail grasped with one hand and secured with an elastic.
3. Insert a tailcomb just under the first layer of hair and gently lift for volume. Do this repeatedly until the head has a nice rounded shape.
4. Spray a comb or hands with hairspray and smooth down any fly-aways.
5. Take a small section of hair from under the ponytail and use it to wrap around elastic to hide it from view. Secure with a bobby pin.

Half head of hot rollers and GHD curling underneath

And you thought it was just grabbing the hair back to be tied. :)

Oh, and I learnt a cool trick with an elastic and two bobby pins:

1. Attach two bobby pins to an elastic band. Move the pins so they are on opposite sides of the band to each other.
2. Brush the hair into a ponytail and held in one hand
3. With the other hand, push a bobby pin downwards into the top of the ponytail
4. Wrap the elastic around the ponytail until it can't stretch any further, then push the second bobby pin in to ponytail to secure.

This method is much faster and less messy than pulling the ponytail through an elastic, where it's likely to catch or pull on the hair.

xxEva