Jen Atkin Taught Me How to Cut My Hair at Home, and It Actually Looks Great

I vowed by no means to chop my very own hair once more after a serious
mishapduring my freshman yr of highschool. Let’s simply say, I
discovered my lesson the arduous means. For over a decade, and up till a
few days in the past, I’ve stored that promise to myself. Nevertheless, it was
one I made at a time when the potential of a worldwide pandemic
was inconceivable to my teenage imagination.

I sometimes go to my hairstylist each three months for a trim
and highlights. The final time I saw her was in November. (Let me
help with the mathsâ€”that’s over five months ago.) Out of the blue, my
locks began wanting very dry and unhealthy, particularly on the
ends. So once I noticed
Jen Atkin share a few haircut-how-to movies on Instagram,
my interest piqued. My co-workers have just lately tried the whole lot
from DIY
waxing to professional-level
facials, so I assumed to myself, “How arduous might this actually
be?”

While I will not be giving up appointments with my stylist in the
future (Katie,
in the event you’re studying this I might never cheat on you!), however it actually
wasn’t that difficult. I wouldn’t essentially advocate making an attempt an
completely new coiffure on your ownâ€”in any case, I only gave myself
an inch trim with a couple of layersâ€”however an at-home haircut is
undoubtedly doable to get by until salons reopen. This is the way it went
down.

This
is what my hair seemed like a number of days ago earlier than my at-home reduce.
It sometimes grows shortly, and this size was undoubtedly a pair
inches longer than I wish to hold it. The ends start to cut up and
look a bit stringy once I go this lengthy and not using a reduce.

Whereas
I often get a dry reduce on the salon, Jen recommends doing it with
wet hair. I wasn’t going to stray from the directions before I
even started, so I used a sprig bottle to dampen my locks. Though
you will need the bottle to spray hair throughout the process because it
dries, in hindsight it might have been a lot easier to only
shower.

I
then used my favorite detangler and ran a dry brush by means of my
hair, parting it down the middle. Wanting again, I wish I might have
stored my normal aspect part, however I was nervous to stray from the
tutorial. For the rest of the process, I ditched my brush and
switched over to a comb.

Now
it’s time to get slicing with the sharpest pair of scissors
out there. The thought is to cut the front pieces in a approach that frames
the face: brief to lengthy. I first secured all of my hair back with
alligator clips, leaving out just about an inch in the front on
both aspect. I combed the hair collectively in entrance of my face and
then reduce straight throughout within the very middle and related the outer
items by slicing at an upward angle. “No one’s being graded on
this,” Jen reminds us. After the very entrance section was completed, I
parted my hair in the middle again after which added one other inch of
hair to every aspect. I trimmed at a downward angle, away from my
face, to align the now bigger sections of hair on either aspect. The
concept is to attach the longest a part of the entrance layers with the
length you need the remainder of your hair to be.

At
this point, I am on part two of the video now, I parted my hair back
on the aspect (for higher or for worse) and switched from clips to a
scrunchie. I slowly let extra sections unfastened and trimmed as I went,
checking my work once in a while by merely combing all of my hair to
the entrance of my shirt to see if the two sides seemed even. Jen
does not exactly clarify methods to reduce the back of the hair (the thought
is that this is just a trim in any case), so I went just a little
rogue.

Finally,
Jen dives into the right way to reduce some longer layers. I truly discovered this
half to be a bit bit simpler because these pieces blend into the
rest of the hair. (Read: the errors are less visible.) To do
this, collect a couple of inches of hair in the midsection of every aspect of
your half after which safe the front and back sections with a
scrunchie behind the top. Jen calls the tactic she uses to chop
this part of hair “slithering.” Watch the video to see her quick
motion, however she describes it as, “maintaining rigidity after which
opening and shutting the scissors whereas shifting down.” I swear it
sounds more difficult then it appears. As soon as I slithered off these
layers, I combed every little thing collectively and checked my work one last
time. Finally, I ran some heat-protecting serum via my strands
and blow-dried my hair per regular.

As
mentioned, the outcomes is probably not salon-worthy, but I am proud of
them general. I ended up eradicating a bit of over an inch of length
throughout, and my strands look lots healthier because of it. I
advocate watching Jen’s movies in detail to actually see how she
holds the scissors for every step, but I’ve religion that if I can do
it, anyone with a pair of really sharp scissors can, too.