How to Cut Your Hair

I was going through posts that I hadn't published yet and found this one...

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I haven't had a real haircut in almost a year, and since that time, my hair has been thinned out and grown back a little strange, I have quite a few split ends, and overall, it's probably a good idea to get a haircut. Here's the thing though: I hate almost every haircut I get, so I never go back to the same person. 

Needless to say, my hair hasn't been looking spectacular, but I have to wear it up for work, so it doesn't bother me on a regular basis. I've evened up the ends a little, cut my bangs here and there, and put a few layers in the front over the past few months, but I knew that I could use a real trim. 

So I asked around for recommendations, and nobody knew a good hairstylist. So then I googled for instructions and found a YouTube video that was very easy and straightforward. I can't remember what I typed in to find it, so I can't link to it, but here's what I did. 

I straightened my hair. I have think, naturally wavy hair and I think that wetting my hair before it's cut is probably why I've disliked my past haircuts. So I straightened it... this is midway through.

And this is what we were working with. Uneven ends, and since I lost a lot of hair last summer, the ends were pretty thin. I began with a thin bottom section of hair and brought it to the front.

I used my fingers to guide the scissors on one side of my hair, then grabbed the second section and cut it at the same place I'd snipped the first hair off.

And this is what came of that (it was even, I promise) - so much better!

I then continued straightening and cutting layer by layer, brushing my hair to the front and using that bottom layer of hair as my guide.

This picture from the back is not accurate, because I know that it wasn't uneven at the end, but maybe this was taken halfway through? Either way, I probably need to get layers cut into it by someone who knows what they're doing. Also, I don't wear it straight, so "mostly even" works.

(I took a sort of better picture of it straightened later...)

I don't like my hair stick-straight (I think it's too long to look good that way on me), so I curled it with my straightener. That's the only way I curl my hair and it takes five minutes and stays all day. I didn't use hairspray because I wanted my hair to fall out a little bit and just look like a nice wave later.

I finished that up with a waterfall braid in the back because I was feeling fancy.

I only cut off about two inches (in some places I didn't cut that much; I was just evening things out), so even I can barely tell. One of my regular customers noticed one day when my hair was in a ponytail though: "Oh, you cut off your hair for summer, huh?" "Um, I guess so. It was really just a trim." "Well that's a shame. I really liked it long!" I wasn't sure what to say to that!

I would do this again, most definitely. Number one, because I don't mind getting mad at myself for a bad haircut, but I really hate spending money and then being dissatisfied with the results. And secondly, it was really easy to do and not as scary as cutting hair when it's wet. I cut Carson's hair nine times out of ten, but this was a thousand times easier (probably because you can make mistakes and no one will know on my hair).