Padding and styling on your partner.

Today I practiced my partners final design in our practical session, as my partner has dreadlocks she brought in a model for me to work on. My partner showed me her design and talked me through each instruction step by step, alongside showing my pictures of previous examples she had done on her Katie head which was very helpful. The process of the look was to section the hair into 3, creating a fish plait in the back section and then curling the two other sections which would later be styled. 

As I began to create the fish tail plait I told my partner I had never done one before, and felt like I struggled slightly at first to understand the technique. My partner decided to show me first how to do the technique and the way she wanted the plait to appear at the back of the head, which was thick at the top and smaller at the bottom. Creating this plait consisted of me sectioning the hair into two and then taking a small strand of hair from each side so that it overlapped the next section. When I first began to do this I got confused in the middle of the plait and mucked it up, so I decided to start again and this time making the plait a little tighter, the second time I attempted the plait was very successful and I constantly asked my partner If i was doing it correctly and if she was happy. Once I had made the plait my partner wanted then band that secured the plait to be discreetly hidden with a strand of the models hair, me and her both tired different ways to hide the band but because the models hair was very soft It was difficult. The next time I practice the hair style I will attempt to try and different method of holding the clip in the hair to hide the band. After creating the plait I moved onto spiral curling one front section of my models hair. Each time I created a curl I secured it with a bobby pin so that the curl remained tight and defined, after finishing the whole section I removed the pins and began to ask what shape my partner wanted in the hair and what technique to use.

My partner explained she wanted the curls to be backcombed enough for them to appear large and full of volume and also be able to stand but keep the curl shape. Whilst discussing this Helen came over and spoke to my partner about her ideas advising her that It may be an idea to crimp the models hair and then curl the ends as her hair is very long and also very soft. I began back-combing the hair and observed that as the models hair was so soft it would take a while to back comb the hair enough for it to stand the way my partner wanted. I carried on back combing sections of the hair but as we were running out of time I had to quickly create a plait secure it to the scalp and then practise placing the padding my partner wanted in the hair and then observing the direction and style she wanted to achieve by wrapping the curls around this padding. Her desired look is an amazing design and is possible to do but I feel that the only factors that may make it difficult for me is the type of hair my model has and also the time frame we have to complete the look in the assessment. We discussed this with Helen and she advised that we may want to create the spiral curls before the session so that the hair is prepped and then create my partners design in the assessment which would be much easier. My partner and me agreed this would be best and plan on practicing her design again in our own time to perfect and practice the look before the assessment. I feel fairly confident I will  be more then able to create the style my partner wants, but for the time being I plan on practicing it on my Katie doll head.