Assessment - Practicing My Partners Design

Today, my partner introduced and explained her hair design to me. She wanted a very big bouffant (made up of crimping, frizzing and padding), along with a bow at the back of her head, and finally some ringlets with the remaining section of the hair. 

However, this was not actually her initial idea - originally she wanted very tight french plaits at either side of her hair so that the bouffant at the front stood out and the sides were flat, but as we created the design, she actually decided that she preferred the hair just sleeked back and that we would use gel.hairspray to ensure the hair was totally pulled back and neat. 

At first, I was quite overwhelmed by the design and I thought that I would find the design quite difficult as well as hard to complete within the time limit. However, as I actually got stuck in and attempted the design, the easier it got. Luckily, I have agreed with my teacher that I am able to prep the hair beforehand (e.g. crimping) in order to complete the design to a good standard. 

The first thing I did was section the hair, so that I was able to crimp the correct parts of the hair. I tied the rest of the hair out of the way.

I then crimped the top section of hair (using small sections at a time). 

I divided off a very small section across the hair line, and used the frizzing technique on this hair to add even more volume and thickness. 

I backcombed the front section of the crimped hair quite dramatically. I then removed the grips from the frizzing technique, once the hair had set, and brushed this out. 

I french plaited the section of hair where the padding was going to go (just behind the section of hair that I had backcombed) and gripped this into place. 

I then inserted the padding. I placed any remaining crimped hair, from underneath the plait, over the padding, and then pulled the hair from the front over the padding and gripped this into place. 

I took the remaining uncrimped hair out of the hair band and sectioned this at the top of the ears. I repositioned the pony tail and the hair from the top section into the hair band, leaving half of the hair down. 

I used the hair in the pony tail to create a bow. I did this by taking 1/3 of the hair and rolling it around my fingers, and then gripping it into place (very similar to when you create a bun), I then repeated this on the other side, and left the final third to represent the ribbon that hangs at the bottom. I thought this actually worked quite well and I was able to get my head around it quite quickly. 

Finally, I used curlers with a very small barrel to create very tight ringlets, as the designer required. 

Overall, I was quite satisfied with how the look turned out because I think it works well and looks effective, and I think I was able to follow my partners design very closely. 

The only thing I would change, is that I would use a slightly smaller padding next time, because some of the hair had to be stretched in order to reach all the way over and cover the padding; this meant that the hair lost some of its height and volume. 

I think with being allowed preparation, I will be able to complete the design on time and to a good standard. I am looking forward to practicing again and perfecting the look and my techniques.