Friday, November 21, 2008

Technique---Curling with a flat-iron

Finally! A new post, and a tutorial to boot! I have had many, many, many requests for this. My apologies. I have been waiting for my husband to be home long enough to take pictures. That hasn't happened...he has been a little busy with a work project, so I pulled out my handy dandy tri-pod and my old camera with a remote. Unfortunately, the remote wasn't working. You really need both hands to do this so I hope explain it well.

I put in some Garnier Curl Sculpting Creme and went to work. When I curl their hair with a flat iron, I usually curl the ends under first. I can't always get the ends the way I want and this eliminates that frustration. So start at the base of the hair and slide the iron down and when you get almost to the bottom, twist the flat-iron just ever so slightly to get a nice bent under shape, more if you want more curls.
Like so.



Take a section of hair and separate it from the rest of the hair. Clamp your flat iron on the base of the hair. I take the end of the hair and wrap it around the flat iron, if only to give it direction and keep it going in the same movement. This is where the bevel on your flat-iron comes into play. You are basically using the bevel to curl the hair. So after I clamp onto the hair, I pull the hair on the bevel in the direction I am curling. Now, keeping the iron clamped, slowly slide it away from the base of the hair towards you. As you are sliding it out, you slowly twist the flat iron like you would when wrapping hair in a curling iron


See how I have my hand holding onto her hair and it is wrapped around the iron? That is not a necessary step...HOWEVER...it makes for more control AND it keeps the hair together to make more of a ringlet. If you don't do that, the curl ends up being unpredictable.


Here is where I am twisting and sliding at the same time.


Follow this same fluid movement to the end of the hair.





And let go.





This second one shows more detail than the first.


Clamp



Twist



Twisting and sliding


Now I find as I get towards the end that sometimes the hair gets tight, so I loosen my grip on my flat iron.


Like so


Then pull your flat-iron out of the hair towards the ground.



Finish the hair



All this took me two minutes, tops.






But I didn't want to leave ringlets, so I ran my fingers through the curls.



And separated them by pulling the top from the bottom.






Then sprayed

And scrunched


Tada!


I hope this helps for those who have questions. When my husband gets home...a video as well.