My Journey with the Elizabethans - My Partner's Hair Design

For the assessment, we will be working with our partner's hairstyles that they have designed and we will be creating them on them.  Ashleigh's design contains lots of different textures, including crimps, curls and plaits.  Her design is a french plait on the left coming back to the nape of the neck and pinned with hair grips.  The right side of the hair is loose, with different sections crimped, curled, plaited, left loose and sprayed red.

Ashleigh's design has features that I feel confident in creating, and that I feel I will be able to create well and to her liking.  In order to understand Ashleigh's design properly, we went through it together in our studio session this week.  Ashleigh provided me with a set of instructions, telling me exactly how to recreate her hairstyle.  I then practiced her design on her hair and we went through any problems that occurred whilst I was creating her look.  For example, she originally wanted me to thread a wire of pearls through her hair to incorporate within the french plait, however the wired pearls weren't long enough and didn't thread through the plait very easily.  We decided that it would be best if she attached the pearls to hair grips that I could then pin into place within the plait.

Below is the step by step that Ashleigh provided me with:

Equipment needed:

Crimpers

Large curling iron

Sectioning comb

Sectioning clips

Hair grips

Hairband

Pearled bobby pins

Red colour hairspray

Step by step guide:

- Begin by placing the parting more to the left hand side of the head

- Create a French plait on the left side of the head and pin when you reach the nape of the neck

- With the rest of the hair, create clean layers of, working from the bottom up, using a sectioning comb and sectioning clips

- Take your first layer and alternately crimp and curl the hair in sections, leaving some bits loose and untouched

- Using the red hairspray, spray a section or two of hair in the layer, ensuring to hold a piece of paper behind it to stop the colour from running anywhere else

- Repeat this method for the other layers until the whole head is crimped, curled, and coloured in various sections

- When you reach the top layer of hair, back comb it underneath at the roots and then create three normal plaits within the very top section

- Once the whole head is crimped and curled, spray with hairspray

- Going back to the French plait, take your pearled bobby pins and pin them into the middle of the plait, creating a row of pearls down the center