A Good, Trustworthy Place to Order Hair Shears

Hey, internet savvy hairdresser types. Sorry it’s been so quite lately… Life, you know how it is. I’m moving, most of my energy goes into work, had a number of side projects eating up my free time – Been recording the audiobook version of a friend and salon owner’s ebook, I tried making my own scissor pouch (Out of leather I cut out of an old trashed leather sofa I saw in a junkyard!), bought a ukulele… all sorts of distractions.

But I wanted to give my official bump to an online shear/accessory store I’ve dealt with a few times now. Precision Shears. Check it out if you’re in the market for shears. I really don’t know what to write about the store, I tried thinking of stuff but it sounded like the stupid customer testimonials you see on other websites. Plain and simple, every time I’ve dealt with Guy at Precision Shears I’ve been impressed, he really stands behind his store and the service he provides. And they always have the best prices on the things I want, which helps too.

And for the record, I’m definitely not being paid or bribed to promote them, I’m giving them my seal of approval because they really did impress me, and whenever anyone asks me where they should order shears from, I always recommend Precision Shears.

How good are they? Well, I ordered my Kasho shears from them, in the  States… When I live in the same city as the official Kasho importer for North America, because they have a better deal than I can get locally.

Anyways, there’s the second of my only two business endorsements. (The other being Hair Maven’s instructional DVD’s)

DJ Muldoon & Friends

Last night I witnessed a bona-fied event in the new world of hairdressing – DJ Muldoon, with two other stylists, doing a live class/demo/presentation and streaming it over the internet, Josh XO style!

I found it from a link a friend posted on Facebook, they found it from a link their friend posted on Facebook, and so on. I started watching immediately, told all my friends, and within 30 minutes everyone was watching – and 30 minutes after that Hairbrained.me had found out about it and put it on their front page.

Now that is some real social networking at play. It was very cool, and really made me feel like I’ve come to this industry at the perfect time. It’s all shifting, adjusting, and redefining – and it’s fun to be involved while it’s reconfiguring itself to what the industry will be in the future!

But all my blabbing aside, go here and click on archived videos to watch what they were broadcasting live last night.

DJ said at the end that they’re doing another class on the 27′th – hopefully it will be broadcast too!

Moar Photoshooty Goodness

Click me to see full size!

I did another photoshoot with a friend when she came down from the “big city” last weekend. I’m not happy with how the photos turned out – tell me what you think?

I couldn’t cut her hair, only style it. If I could have cut her hair I would have fixed the symmetry and weight of her fringe.

Click me to view full size!

Also, that big split between her fringe and the rest of her hair in the second photo bothers me! And the whole thing imho lacks a concept. I was like:

“Ok, I don’t know what to do. I’ll just curl hair until I figure out what I’m doing”

15 minutes later:

“I still don’t know what to do, so I’ll just fluff up the curls while I figure out what to do.”

15 minutes later:

“I still don’t know what to do. I’ll just start taking pictures and something will come to me.”

/sigh

The lack of direction is obvious in both the hair and the photography. It’s bland and soulless, and I know I can do better! I just need to get better at expressing myself through air. If hair is a language, I can passably carry on a conversation with someone now, even if I have to run back to the dictionary every now and then. But I need to become fluent, and lyrical.

Actually being artistic is hard.

Photoshoot Numero Uno – and Website Update

Finished my first photoshoot for my website last night. I’m a bit hung over today, although I learned a lot of valuable things from the shoot last night:

#1. Don’t cut short hair in the kitchen wearing socks.

#2. Don’t invite friends that are silly.

My first model was a friend of mine, and I figured I’d invite another friend of mine over and we could all hang out while I cut his hair and do the shoot – WRONG!

My other friend (the one not modeling) spent the entire time trying to make my model move his head while I was cutting his hair. He would start conversations on things that my friend modeling was very opinionated on, and then argue with him so his head would move more while he talked! And then I told him to shut up or get out (things you can’t say when you’re working with people you don’t know), and he stopped talking as much but started tossing things at my model. It was crazy!

The haircut took twice as long because of it. haha

And then the photoshoot was insanely rushed and hard because of my friends goofing off. UGH. No more!

I ended up only having about 30 mins for the shoot  – that time includes setting up!

I didn’t get exactly the photos I wanted, due to my hyperactive friends goofing off, but I got a couple that look alright. Even if they look like they’re from a Sears catalogue. lol

Click to see full size!

Click for full size!

Also, I’m getting closer to having my site ready for launch. Give it a look if you like, and give me some feedback! Antimullet.com

It’s still pretty skeletal, and the photos on the site need to be replaced (hence the photoshoots I’m planning.) because those photos are from before I did hair, and I need something fresh and sexy-like to entice people with.

I’m still planning out what I should put on my site  – obviously the “about me” stuff, and the contact info, and a gallery of work… But I feel like it needs more. Maybe a blog? I don’t think I can bring this blog over to that site, because this is kind of backroom chat… not entirely kosher for the clients to hear. Not that there’s anything bad on this blog of course, but… you know. You don’t want your clients reading about how nervous you were when you tried _____, or how aweful the ________ turned out that you did last week!

*crickets*

Hey err’body!

I’m back!

Had a nice two weeks off, and started my new job apprenticing at Crop Hair Boutique, a Bumble & Bumble salon. It’s good, occasionally straining, and occasionally frustrating to not be able to do hair (mandatory 1-3 month assisting period).

So I’m trying to plan my ascension to awesome-ness while I’m mandatorily de-sheared. And I’ve come back to the idea of a website for myself.

Obviously I’ll have to learn to hit the mean streets and chat people up, and do all the legwork and networking… but in the mean time, a website would be a good thing to have. And I think I want a Joomla based website.

Joomla is a free CMS (content management system). And my reasoning for picking it over WordPress (undoubtedly the most popular free CMS) is just to make my site feel different – no matter what extravagant theme a site uses, I can always tell when the site uses WordPress. I can smell it. (Smells like bacon, incidentally)

And WordPress is slow. Sure there are pretty themes out there to transform it from a blog into this or that, but they all seem to load slowly, the javascript addons are laggy, and it just doesn’t feel…professional.

Joomla on the other hand has some very fast loading, pretty templates. (Joomla themes are called templates. Because they’re special.)

I figure the site will cost me something like $70-$100 to set up, then a monthly fee for hosting (probably around $7 a month).

But that’s just for the website, the framework – I’ll need content. That means…

Photoshoots!

I’m gonna need to do some sexified hair, and take some sweet pictures of it for my website. But this will be doubly hard, because instead of just experimenting and snapping pictures until I find something that works, I’m going to have to have a game plan before I start, so all the pictures have a matching theme – they’ll have to be a collection.

And to make it doubly, doubly hard (quadruply hard?), I’ll have to find good models, not just the first people I can get… and that might require some dough…

Oh well, nothing worth doing is easy or free. Can’t wait to get started! And I hope to find someone to get some behind the scenes footage too, so I can share some photoshoot tips & tricks.

Fixing my Rusk Blow Dryer’s Broken Cord

ATTENTION CITIZENS OF CALIFOR – sorry, couldn’t help it. Seen that video too many times.

Attention err’body. Don’t be taking any appliances apart y’all. You will electrocute yourself and you will die.

That is all.

What’s It Like Being a Guy in Hair School? (Also, MyChair iPhone App)

One of the questions I have heard a lot since going to hair school, is “What’s it like being a guy and going to hair school with a bunch of girls?”

I’m going to answer that in the form of a music video:

Also, I’ve been on the lookout for a good iPhone app for hair stylists. I want something to quickly and easily keep track of schedules, services, tips, etc… And all the stuff I’ve found is either free/cheap and sucks, or expensive and part of a complete salon management system. (Do I look like I want to run an entire salon from an iPhone app? Do I really need to swipe credit cards directly on my phone?)

I’ve been sorting through a whole bunch of them, and so far the one that has most piqued my interest is MyChair. Check out their website to see some great videos of it in use! Their website is quite well put together, and the videos were sufficiently enticing to make me want to buy the app… except that I can’t afford to right now. (Yes, that’s how tight my budget is – I can’t afford a $14.99 iPhone app. That’s what hair school will do to you!)

But it looks like it beats the other stuff out for what I want, so I’m sure I’ll buy it eventually and I’ll put up a review of it when I can.

Shaving Heads for Breast Cancer

I was at the mall last weekend shaving heads for a breast cancer charity event.

It was fun all around, the people who were brave enough to get their heads shaved all did very well raising money. I was on TV (again) and missed it (again), but I’m hoping I can get a copy from someone. I cut a radio guy (or tv guy)’s hair off, and I totally didn’t know who he was. Sorry, radio guy!

The absolute highlight of the day for me was right near the end I was packing up to leave, and a guy asked me to do one more. It was this cute little redheaded girl, 11 years old, with the most beautiful curly red hair ever. She was so cute and perfect, she was exactly what I pictured my daughter being like in my daydream fantasy life. She made me want a daughter soooo bad! (Although having a girlfriend is kind of a prerequisite for that I think)

She cut off most of her hair, it was past her shoulders and we cut it to a short jawline-level bob.

Why can’t all girls be redheads? They’re so much cuter than regular people.

Finals = Kicked In The Teeth

I lived through my finals. Pretty intense couple days, thems were… This was the exam schedule:

Men’s Taper Cut – 30 mins

Women’s Color – 60 minutes (From application to shampooed and back at chair)

Women’s Cut – 30 minutes

Women’s Airform & Iron – 30 minutes

Perm – 90 minutes (From start to rinsed and back at chair)

Rollerset – 20 minutes

Fingerwaves (on mannequin) – 15 minutes

Combout – 15 minutes

Final written exam (200 questions) – 90 minutes

There was a lot of adrenaline pumping through everyone during the exams. It’s interesting watching how everyone copes with the pressure – a lot of people get nervous, stressed out, some people panic. I get excited and happy. I don’t understand why other people don’t get excited… I think I annoyed some people by being chipper and upbeat when everyone was all doom and gloom. Haha

In the end, I did a bit better than average, but not as good as I’d like to have done. 80% overall on my practicals (the cut, color, perm, etc were high…but I bombed the rollerset and combout.), and 82% on my written final. (Pretty good considering I didn’t study)

 

Boobs

So all three classrooms in the lower level of my school are full. I’m in the middle one, new hair girls are in the right one, and esthetics girls are in the left one.

From about shoulder height (or a little lower maybe, only the short girls can’t see through) up, the walls are glass windows. There’s a black curtain that covers the windows from the back of the room halfway to the front, so that light from the other class doesn’t shine on the tv/monitor in our class if we’re watching a dvd or something.

So I look over the glass yesterday, and there’s some boobs.

Didn’t exactly get a detailed examination of the boobs, because my head went “UNEXPECTED BOOBIES IN THE BAGGING AREA” and I looked away, but I think one of the esthetics girls was just hanging out topless before or after practicing massages on each other. Usually there’s kind of a common sense thing, you don’t look through the glass if the lights are out. But the lights were on.

THE LIGHTS WERE ON!