Video Tutorial: How To Trim & Reshape Naturally Curly Short Hair

By Marquetta Breslin

[DISPLAY_ULTIMATE_PLUS]

In this video I demonstrate how to reshape short naturally curly hair. My client's hair was growing out of a disconnected cut and needed a trim to reshape it for a flattering grow out. Check out the video to see how it's done.

Enjoy!

Be blessed,
Marquetta Breslin

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:

Hey, it’s Marquetta Breslin. I am here with yet another tutorial. In this tutorial, I’m going to be showing you how to shape a growing-out haircut.

This haircut was cut … It was a disconnected cut. This top portion of the cut here … I’m going to spin her around … This top portion was sectioned off, and everything else around was cut the same length. This top portion was cut a little bit longer, and everything was pulled to this side, as you can see here. It was basically cut even for it to fall asymmetrically. Short hair pushes long, so that short hair is pushing everything this way.

Since she’s growing her hair out, she has this little piece over here that flops over. It makes for an unflattering type of hairstyle. Since she’s growing it out, what I’m going to show you how to do is how to make everything through here look uniform, yet still hold a nice shape while she grows it out.

My client’s hair has been shampooed and conditioned. You can just co-wash if you want. She hadn’t had a good shampoo in a while, so I decided to go ahead and shampoo the hair. What I’m doing is I’m just combing through the hair starting from the ends, working my way to the roots, just to detangle anything that may be tangled. I’m going to spin her around so you can see. I’m just combing through the hair, making sure everything is easy to comb through.

With this cut, or this trim, or this shaping … You can see right here, this has already been tapered in a little bit on the sides. I’m not going to touch that, because I don’t want to make this any shorter. What I’m going to do is I’m going to section her hair off, only the part that is going to be cut. You always want to work clean sections and subsections. That makes a huge difference when you’re cutting hair. See how clean my sections are? You want to keep your sections clean, just like that.

I’m just going to come around to this side over here, and I’m going to section the rest of her hair off before I start cutting. She does have a little bit of residue in her hair, so we’re just going to go back and shampoo it again. That’s completely normal. Sometimes that happens. It doesn’t mean you’re a bad hairstylist, and it doesn’t mean you don’t know what you’re doing. It happens to everyone. Don’t let anyone tell you it doesn’t.

I’m just going to continue sectioning the hair, and then we’re going to start the trim. The trim is only going to be on this top portion. We don’t want to touch the sides. When you’re doing a trim, you always want to establish … Take a good, close look at the cut if you didn’t do it, and try to figure out how it was cut so that you know how to trim it. Dissect it. Look in there. Move the hair around. Feel for it. Section it. Pull it out. See if you can figure out how it’s been cut. That way, when you go in to do your trim, you know exactly what you’re doing.

I’m going to use my clips to section the hair. I like to use alligator clips. They hold a lot of hair, and they’re very sturdy. I’m just going to place a clip right here. Then, the camera’s going to come back up to me, and I’m going to talk to you about how I’m going to cut her hair in order to make her grow out, still look good, and not look crazy with the little part that was falling all over, like I talked about earlier.

I’ve taken the clip off of the hair. My goal is to make everything … starting here, because it’s so much longer because it was disconnected. You see the difference in length … I want everything from this point on to match this. Everything is not going to match this, but from here on, I want it to graduate to be lower. I want to connect the cut on the side that was disconnected, yet maintain the length while graduating throughout.

There’s a lot of different ways you can take these parts. You can go diagonal forward, you can go over forward. It’s all about how you want the hair to lay. In fact, I’m going to do just that because I want everything to be pushed this way. Short hair pushes long. I’m going to start back here.

My guide is this short hair through here. Okay? I’m going to pick up some hair from this side over here and pull straight out. You see where my guide is. I’m going to cut to my guide. That is now my guide. You want to be sure to pick up hair from underneath. Because her hair is short, I’m going to have to play with my sections a little bit. Never cut past that knuckle, and be sure to pick hair up from underneath. You just want to connect everything and cut it to your guide. This is my guide.

To retain her length, I’m going to be pulling everything back to my first section. Remember, keep your sections clean. You want to use the hair from the side as your guide. Keep your sections clean. That is very important.

I want you to pull everything straight back. No, you’re not going to be up here, and you’re not going to be down low. Just pull it straight back. Okay? Keep your sections clean. Pull everything straight back. When I cut, I can see my guide through the hair.

Once you’re done, another thing you can do is come back this way and trim the hair. Or, you could just leave it the way I did, if it’s everything you want. Then you can cross-check your work by pulling the hair in the opposite direction, just to check for the graduation. If you cut the hair at an angle going this way, you just part the hair in the opposite direction and check to make sure it’s looking the way you want it to look. What I’m looking for is this, is graduation. It looks good. I’ve already cross-checked before I came back on camera.

She’s all done, so we would just apply the product and style the hair as usual, As you can see, it’s a lot shorter through here, but when it grows out, it’s going to be a lot more uniform. See, it’s not that short, but with curly hair, you have to think, with curly hair, when you cut off a little bit, it shrinks. Her hair shrinks about 60 percent. I knew with the amount of hair I was cutting off that it was going to shrink a lot. Her hair grows really fast, so when it grows back, it’s going to look nice and uniform. She’s not going to have that big piece falling off like she did before. It looks a lot shorter, but it’s really not that much shorter. It looks good.

For this trim or shaping that I just executed, you may look at it and say, “Oh, I would have done that different,” or, “I would have done this,” or, “I would have done that.” That’s great, because you are supposed to be creative in what you’re doing. With this particular cut, though, I was the person who cut it previously. I know exactly how I cut it, so I knew how I wanted to trim it to maintain the shape.

When you’re cutting hair, you need to be able to work in different angles, if you’re going to come up at a 180, a 45, a zero. You need to understand what it means to be pulling hair at different angles. With this cut, with me pulling everything back to that shorter length and cutting underneath it, that allowed me to graduate the hair while maintaining the length that was on that side, and still connecting the cut on that side as well.

What I will be doing in the future, because she’s growing it out, is I will go to the other side, and I will connect that as well. If I do that now, she’s going to have a crazy-looking haircut. It’s going to be mohawk-ish in the middle, and we’re not going for that. As we’re growing it out, I’m going to start to connect the cut all the way around. Again, what I did this time is I just went to that side and connected it throughout this side. Then it still maintained some of the length on the side.

You may say, “Dang, you cut a lot of hair off.” I really didn’t. Short hair shrinks a lot, so you need to allow for that when you’re cutting hair. If you’re cutting straight hair, it doesn’t matter. But with short hair, it does shrink anywhere from 40 percent all the way up to 80 percent. Allow for that when you’re cutting hair. A good rule of thumb is to cut way less than you really want to cut off. You’ll see that once it’s completed, it’ll just look like they have a little bit of a trim. It’ll look shorter, but not as short as my client’s hair.

These are just some tips. These are just some things that I want to share. You can find even more information than just this little tutorial in my Cutting Mastery series.

There you have it. I’m not going to take up any more of your time. I hope you enjoyed this tutorial, and I’ll talk with you soon.

Avatar photo

Marquetta Breslin

Marquetta Breslin is the creator of Million Dollar Stylist, Lace Wig Training System, Fully Booked, and many others. While she is known for her knowledge and wisdom passed on to other beauty professionals, she teaches her practical and inspirational lessons to people around the world on how to better their lives, their businesses, and themselves. Be notified on new articles, news, and events by subscribing to Marquetta's Daily Journal.
Avatar photo

Marquetta Breslin

Marquetta Breslin is the creator of Million Dollar Stylist, Lace Wig Training System, Fully Booked, and many others. While she is known for her knowledge and wisdom passed on to other beauty professionals, she teaches her practical and inspirational lessons to people around the world on how to better their lives, their businesses, and themselves. Be notified on new articles, news, and events by subscribing to Marquetta's Daily Journal.

Get Marquetta's Journal!

Subscribe today to get Marquetta's Daily Journal. This is a personal email Marquetta's writes daily business, wig making, life, and so much more!

Something went wrong. Please check your entries and try again.