Toys!

Ok so I waited a bit longer than I would've liked to get this second entry up, but here it is! And isn't the new layout wicked awesome? Tiana made it for me =) I've spent a couple days thinking about what I wanted to write about for this sequel entry, and that lead me to thinking about why I wanted to keep this blog going in the first place; I'm still playing around with ideas in my head as to how to focus this thing. That lead me to thinking about why I love doing hair so much, and so that's what I decided to write about for this next entry!

Then I thought that that would be a little too all over the place still (like if George Lucas has stuck to trying to fit the original trilogy in one film! (that's right, I made a Star Wars reference. +10,000 nerd points)), so I'm giong to chip away at the subject, and the first thing that came to mind was the tools! What guy doesn't love tools? Hairdressers are no exception.

There's so many different kinds of everything out there, so I'm gonna take you through some of the toys I have that I use everyday. I'm not saying these are the best best best out there, but I'm really picky and I've found that these are the best for me!

My flat iron:

I use a Paul Mitchell Express Ion Style 1.0. What I like about this one is it gets super hot super fast, up too 400F. And i've never timed it, but I always just turn it on then by the time I get my client clipped up it's already hot!
One of the other cool features of this iron is that the plates get hot (not burning burning hot, but hot) on the outside as well (see the cresent shaped ridge in the middle? everything above that heats up), so it's super easy to use to do curls! Sometimes after I pull the curl through I'll even roll the hair around it kinda like a curling iron to seal the deal. And! I burn myself all the time with this, but the burns never blister no matter how bad it is! No idea why, but it's good for a klutz like me!



My brushes:

When I very first started doing hair and learning how to blowdry, I had so much trouble. I couldn't figure out how to get a roundbrush to grip the hair and it flew everywhere and was a big bad mess. Then these new PM brushes came out and that was all I needed. The bristles are corkscrew and really grip the hair. So that's why I started using them, but then once I got better and didn't need the grip as much I still kept using them cause they're ionic and the shine you get off of them is amazing; your hair never felt so smooth and silky!

But before I start sounding like a Paul Mitchell add, they're not the only brush I use. I find with more diffucult hair the PM round brush are a little too griptastic, so I also have my hot pink Denman square round brush (which I bought at a hair show in New York City mostly because it was pink and I get tired of all my tools being black, and then later realized why it was such a good brush). What's the difference between round and square? The square gives a different kind of shape to the hair; instead of the nice smooth effect a roundbrush gives you get a nice smooth effect with a bit of an edge, the corner ads a bit of a kink into the shape and it's just a little more fun! =D And it's AWESOME for getting volume, especially right at the root. I have one client that's a lot of fun, and everytime she comes in we challenge oursleves to see how big we can get her hair, and the winning combination of products/tools definitely includes this brush.

My Blowdryer:

I've gone through a few blowdryers already; I feel like it's one of those things in hair that follows your learning curve. When I first started I used a Paul Mitchell Ion dryer cause it didn't get as hot and it helped me to now burn people! It made the hair feel really nice but it just didn't cut it, the airflow was too weak and y'know, you really just need the heat to work the frizz out of hair sometimes. Do when I was at a hairshow I bought myself a snazzy white T3 Evolution. I found it to be a lot better than the PM cause it was HOTTTTTT. And it weighed about as much as a toonie. When I first got it I had fun letting my cilents hold it and seeing how shocked they were at how light it was! My boss was pretty impressed with it too, for the first week or so he kept stealing it from me; it did make you hair feel really really nice and smooth. And boy was it hot, I let another styist's client use it once to diffuse her hair, and gave her the T3 and a universal diffusor to stick on it and the dryer got so hot that the casing melted a bit and you could see the marks from the diffusor permanently on the end of the dryer. It was actually a really sad moment, but I still kept using for a while after that.
Until one day I did a color on our receptionist who has big curly curly hair and I was trying to roundbrush it with my T3 and it just wouldn't get her frizz out no matter how hard I tried, the airflow just wasn't strong enough. So I went and grabbed just an extra Elchim 2001 Classic we had lying around the shop and that did the trick, and I've been using it ever since! Just yesterday I ordered one for myself, a white one! My boss Greg had always told me they were the best and I can't deny it any longer, I'm sold on it. It gets super hot and has an awesome airflow to smooth out even the frizziest of hair. The only thing I don't like about it is that the nozzle is a little narrower than my T3, but no dryer is perfect!


Oh man, and I haven't even gotten to my scissors yet!! I'm gonna cut it off here and talk about them later, they're a whole entry to themselves! So TO BE CONTINUED...

ps. please feel free to ask me anything about tools in your comments! I'll follow this entry with a Q&A post if there are questions.

first post!

Mind the appearance!, this blog is still under massive construction, but I've registered the domain name www.scissorface.com and made a header image I like for now so I figure I should get this underway!

So, this is my hair blog. What can you expect? Stories from the salon, pictures of my work, techniques, tips, info on tools, my own insights on the industry, you name it! I love what I do and I love babbling about it, so anything goes!

But first, a little background about me. Right now I've been working as a junior stylist at Greg May Hair Architects (see link on your right ->) for just over a year, but I took a very roundabout way of getting myself there. I like to think I was raised as a barber's assistant. My mother is a barber, and I spent a lot of time in her shop when I was young up through high school. She owns the cutest little barbershop back in Massachusetts called "Hats Off" in Northboro. It's a small place, only four chairs, four barbers and one sink. She's owned it for probably just over ten years now and really made it into her own. It's a family-oriented place, mostly men's and children's cuts, and the Red Sox account for about 99% of conversation. I would go in with her on Saturday mornings at 7:15am and there'd already be a line outside the door! I'll take another entry to go into more details about the place, but the point now I guess is that I grew up in a very inspiring hair environment, seeing my mom take a shop, but herself into it, and have it thrive like it has.

She knew since then that I was gonna get into hair, but I had no idea. When I was in high school I was very math/science oriented; I wanted to be an engineer and design rollercoasters. Then when I moved up to Toronto and went to U of T, I got into languages and started a degree in linguistics and Japanese. By my second year it had dawned on me that I really just wanted to go into hair. There was no big epiphany or anything like that, more felt like it was just something that had always innately been there that I was then growing into. So I rushed my bachelor's degree in three years(I still felt it better to have it) so that I could move onto what I really wanted to do.

Graduated back in May of last year (2008), and a month later I went in for an interview with Greg and have been working for him ever since! And boy, it amazed me how life can change in just a year when you find something you truely enjoy doing.

So this here blog will be more or less the ranting of a total HAIR NERD.

Be sure to check back regularly as I will be updating frequently, and please lemme know if there are any questions you have or topics you'd like to see talked about!


.mike