I did 12 heads of hair the day of Maggie’s wedding. In the weeks approaching the wedding, Maggie asked me a few times if I wanted her to find someone to help me with the hair. I knew I didn’t need one (plus, what if our work clashed?), because we had decided the look for the maids, would be braids.

Maggie gave me a few rules:
No Peasants or Pinheads (meaning, they need volume and don’t make them look like milkmaids!)
All updos, no tails.

Braids were a genius idea, because they are quick and you can do them on any hair type….and I worked with every hair type that day. Fine, processed, thick, silky smooth, curly, virgin hair…etc. Also, because I was doing 12 people, I could only allow about 30 minutes per girl. I started at 6:30 and finished around 2:30. The major time saver, was that I didn’t have to blow dry anyone. I brought lots of products, my kit and my cutting tools anyway, and just did touch ups when needed. (and two bang trims!)

Here are just a few pictures of some of the girls. (who are all my friends. it was so fun!)

And last but not least, an image of the maid of honor fishing the bouquet out of the chandelier. Have you ever seen the bouquet toss end up in the chandelier? It was glorious.

Braids were a beautiful way to have a theme, but avoid being too uniform. You can get so creative with braids. Once you get them down, they can take you anywhere. Just like Reading Rainbow!

Click here to see more about braids!

A few weeks ago I was at Target and I saw this shiny beaded headband in the hair accessories for $2.99. I thought about how it matched the shiny beads on the dress I got for my friend’s wedding and dreamt of some cool 1920s updos I could do with it that day.

Having been honored to be the on sight hairstylist for the entire wedding party, I was pretty busy. After putting the veil on the bride and kissing her and crying, I looked at my watch (also known as a phone) and realized I only had about 20 minutes to get ready for the ceremony. I ran to my room, showered my body, dry shampood my hair, threw on the headband and grabbed pinned grabbed pinned grabbed pinned and repeated. I ended up with this variation of the low messy side bun with a 1920s twist. The headband and the messy bun having a wider span and being less “low” helped with the 20s look the most. The red lipstick helped fake that I had lots of make up on, when really if you looked closely you’d see that there were giant patches of half smeared in foundation! haha. World’s greatest faker!

I was completely 100% ready for the wedding in less than 15 minutes. Showered, haired and make-uped. I can scarcely believe it myself.

When we walked into the chapel, I sat down next to my friend Bobby and he turned to me and said “You look like you’re straight out of Boardwalk Empire!”. And I screamed (in my head because I was in a church) with delight. My vision of a 1920s ‘do back in the hair department at my local Target in the Bronx had somehow been successful with only a 3 minute time slot.

I was able to cry and hug friends and dance like crazy at the reception with no worries.

I should write a book called “the art of fake-spending a lot of time on stuff”.

I did some hair at a music video shoot all day on Sunday. It was for a British DJ named Dego. The video was supposed to be set in the late 1950s/early 60s. I love that kind of hair, so I was thrilled to join in on the action. I only brought my phone with me, so these crappy pictures are all I have to show for it, but the producer took a few stills and I’m hoping to get them soon!

The is the lead girl, Gizem. The pretty blonde in the background, Stephanie had smooth soft waves after I combed out her set. I also did several mens’ hair, which was basically the Pete Campbell/Don Draper look. You know, loads of greasiness combed through with a side part.

This was the make up girl, Pam. She had pink, purple, orange and yellow hair. So I asked if I could Halo her.

I can’t wait for the music video to come out so I can show you all!

Thank you all for being so patient with this tutorial. So many people have asked about it, and I feel bad that it took so long!

I wanted to mention, that this style was 100% thought up by me. I’ve never seen this style before, nor anything like it. But the day after we filmed this video, another blogger (non hairstylist) posted a picture tutorial that is semi-similar to this one. I just wanted to clear that up since I had previously told you that I invented this for Jen on Tony night. Which is still true.

As always, send pictures!

Recently when I did the Half Up and Full Up Fat Twist tutorials, I told you that I’d do a hair pin tutorial. They are really great alternatives to bobby pins, and they don’t give you as much of a headache! So, we did this quick little video last night to show those of you who couldn’t figure out the pin situation.

Remember, this is a Hair Pin tutorial! If it had been a bun tutorial, I would have spent a little more time making it look nice. Haha

PS we didn’t go to DC.

On Saturday Jake had to run 20 miles for his marathon training. Sometimes I run marathons too, but right now I’m not feeling it at all. I let Jake have fun on his 3 hour run while Jen and I went to the Food Truck Festival in Southstreet Seaport. I love having a friend who eats all the same things I do, because that means that since we are sharing, we can try out double the food trucks, but split the calories/cost in half. Smarties we are. I’m sure no one on the face of the Earth has ever thought of sharing food before.

So, here we are with my first ever Lobster Roll. It was wonderful. Gourmet food trucks are kind of a trend right now in NYC (everywhere?) and I love it! This food truck ships their lobster fresh from Maine. Not a bad first LobRoll.

There were dozens and dozens of trucks, but it was hard to get a good shot. Here are a few!

I love to tie a scarf in a bow on my head during the summer. I do it now and then when the dirtiness of my hair isn’t fooling anyone.

So, while it might seem like my weekend achievement was downing a LobRoll, it was actually creating a beautiful 5 strand french braid on Jen. I plan on doing a tutorial for this, but keep in mind this is even harder to do than the Halo Braid….well, the french part. Once you are no longer frenching 5 strands, it’s quite doable. But the french part has me swearing and hushing anyone in the room who might be distracting my tangled fingers.

The 5 strander is really quite lovely though. I was pretty excited to run over to the blog to show all my hairies!

I should have made sure Jake got a shot of this hairstyle from the side and back, because this post might not make sense otherwise! This ‘do is called the UnElvis. Because from the side, you have a big horn on the top of your head like a unicorn, and from the front, you have a nice Rockabilly swoop like Elvis. It’s a crossbreed sent from heaven….~Cue singing angels~….The UnElvis. (Pronounced You-Nel-Viss).

This wasn’t the best day to take a picture of it, because I had already been wearing it for a full day, slept on it, half-a**edly smoothed the sleepy fly-aways and called it a day. Also, usually it’s a much bigger horn, but my hair had been blown out straight the day before UnElvising it. When this is done on curly hair, you can’t even imagine the beauty of the horn. The horn that puts the Un in the UnElvis. But I’m guessing that’s enough excuses and that you just might get the point.

Do you like the UnElvis as much as I do?

PS This ‘do is credited to Chauntell, and these photos are credited to Jake.

Here is part two to last week’s video. We played around with these videos at the end and they make me laugh so hard. Sorry if they embarrass you and you have to look away. Haha.

PS if you are having trouble with hair pins, just use bobbi pins in the mean-time. For all you thick haired girls out there, hair pins hold a lot more hair and you don’t need as many of them. So get excited for the hair pin tutorial we’ll be cooking up shortly.

Hooray for a tutorial. I really like this one a lot, I hope you’ll like it too!

A few things I want to point out…
~If you don’t have a teasing comb, a rat tail comb works just find. You can also use a regular comb or a pick, but I prefer a teasing comb or a rat tail comb.
~Hair pins work so much better for this look than bobbi pins, I know that they can be a little trickier to figure out if you’re not used to them. Let me know if any of you are struggling, and I can probably figure out a tutorial for that!
~Filming a tutorial backwards was my most awkward moment to date. And that is coming from a girl who got her first period at an 8th grade dance. Now do you know why I prefer to do tuties on my friends?
~I’m sorry I just talked about periods. That always happens.
~Sorry I just made up another nickname for “tutorial”. That always happens too.