Practial - Curling

During our second practical, I again worked on Mimi's hair using a cylinder barrel curling tongue to create two different types of curl. I enjoyed this session more than the previous lesson as it was something that I have wanted to try doing for a while now. I have never had a set of my own curling tongues, I have had numerous different curling wands and don't like using them. Not only are they the easiest thing to burn yourself on ever invented, but they also create really tight curls, which I don't particularly like the look of on myself. Furthermore, you are often left with straight ends unless you're utterly fearless and are willing to hold your fingers so close to the barrel. I have instead been creating curled styles on myself with straighteners for the past 6 years instead, so I feel very confident when doing this. I find it a lot easier to control the tightness of the curl when using straighteners and if I do create a curl too tight then I can just run the irons back over it and drop the curl. An added bonus is that I have, as of yet, had very few incidents where I have managed to burn myself on my actual straightening irons.

If I had to place the curling tongues on a scale of how many times I burnt myself, with straighteners being at one end and curling wands at the other, I think I would put them dead in the middle. I think with a little more practice though, they could easily start moving down the scale towards my straightening irons. I found I was mostly being burnt because I was holding the curl when it was fresh off of the iron and still steaming not because I was getting to handsy with the barrel.

The first curl that we created was a vertical curl. What I used to create this style was:

• A paddle brush
• Cylinder barrel curling tongues (medium)
• Kirby grips
• A pin tail comb
• Hair clips

Step 1:
Start by brushing the hair through with the paddle brush so that there are no knots or tangles as heat will make them a lot harder to get out later on. This should be the first rule when attempting to create any hair style.

Step 2:
Separate a small section from the back of the neck away from the rest of the hair. Pin the section that you won't be working on for the time being, on to the top of the head with a hair clip so its completely out of the way of the smaller section you just created.

Step 3:
Take a smaller square section from the loose hair you sectioned off. Take your curling tongue and open the clamp on the barrel and wrap the hair around the barrel while keeping the top of the iron pointing straight up at all times. Make sure not to twist the hair onto the barrel as the heat wont be distributed as evenly and your curl wont be sleek. When all of the hair is wrapped around the barrel, release the clamp so that you don't have to hold the hair anymore, still keeping the barrel pointing upwards.

Step 4:
Count  6-10 seconds while holding this, depending on the thickness of the hair and the size of the section you wrapped on the tongue. Then open up the clamp again and wiggle it side to side slightly while moving the iron downwards, to remove the hair from the tongues. If you're having trouble getting the hair off of the barrel, use your pin tail comb to push it off to avoid burning your fingers.

Step 5:
Take a Kirby grip and while the curl is still holding itself in the same cylinder shape that it was on the
barrel, pin it to the head and allow it to cool.

Step 6:
Having repeated this technique all over the head, starting at the bottom of the head where you created your first curl, remove all of the Kirby grips from your models hair, allowing the curls to fall loose.



The second type of curl we created was using nearly the exact same technique with only one small difference that creates a completely different look. This curl is called a horizontal curl and it creates more lift and volume. Follow the exact same steps that I just listed for the vertical curl but in step 3, instead of holding the barrel pointing upwards at all times, hold it horizontally, with the top of the barrel pointing to the side at all times.

Due to the fact that curling is quite time consuming, during this practical we all created half a head of horizontal curls and half a head of vertical curls. We then moved onto brick work. Brick work is a type of structure used when creating curled and crimped styles to make sure that there aren't many gaps in the style where the hair is curled away from itself. Its called brick work as it is the same pattern used by brick layers when building a wall.



To practice creating brick work, we sectioned off a triangular section at the back of the head and pinned the sides up with a hair clip. Using this technique you need to think of the section in rows and how many curls will go into each row so that it looks like brick lay as you can see to the right.

The curl that I like the look of and enjoyed creating the most was the vertical curl. It falls more naturally and looks more sleek than the horizontal curl. I feel that if I wasn't to create lift I could use other methods to create volume before curling the hair instead of trying to create both at the same time and having a confused looking curl as a result.

This is definitely a style that I will be incorporating into my work and from here and I intend to try working with smaller and larger barrels and sections to see the variation in looks I can create.