Timed Assessment Peer Review & Self Reflection as the Stylist

Front View

Side view

3/4 view

Back detail view

Self Reflection
I was quite proud of myself during the timed assessment period, I felt I stayed under control and calm throughout and acted like a professional. Overall Im really pleased with the end result which we photographed. I truly feel like this was my best attempt, having improved on each practice session. I am delighted with how even the padded sections look from the front, Becky's design was meant to be very symmetrical so i feel I've lived up to the expectation, especially considering with how badly i struggled with this to begin with. However, I understand that the look isn't perfect. One of the things I'm most disappointed with is the bun section at the back of the head, I feel that the bun is sagging quite a bit and this could have been rectified through the use of more pins to secure it in place. I think possibly the reason I didn't put enough pins in is because it was he final stage of the design and I was concerned about running over. Overall I feel that this assessment was a success, even though it may not be as polished as some of my peers work I feel like this is a real achievement for me as I have little experience in hair and I do find some elements hard to come to grips with. 

Peer Review - Becky, The Designer
I found Becky to be a very clear and concise designer, I always knew her intentions and what she wanted her design to look like. She was very detailed in her instructions and provided me with lots of materias to help me complete the design, for example annoyed notes with pictures. I feel the only thing she could have improved on was by perhaps considering my lack of confidence with hair. Becky could have adapted her design more so to encompass my abilities, as I feel it was a fairly ambitious design, especially for someone who isn't hugely confident with hair styling. Despite this, she was a very supportive partner and actually she did help me improve on my skills which leads me to believe she was right not to drastically change her design. Becky has been a delight to work with, not only have we worked well together and been dedicated to our practice and communication but we've also enjoyed ourselves along the way.

Final Practice of my Partners Design

In this final practice we decided to iron out any remaining issues and to look at the timings for the 2 hour timed assessment period.  In this practice we also incorporated the addition of coloured hairspray which i hadn't tried before. I actually found it to be quite easy and didn't take very long at all. We decided i would use paper as a type of guard against contaminating the rest of the hair style with hair spray where it wasnt wanted. 

Front view

 I am so much happier with the evenness of the padded sections, they're a vast improvement from my previous practice, I just need to make sure I pull the front priced of hair taught underneath the padding and to secure with pins which i have done on the left side but not as well on the right.

Design from the back

Here is the design from the back, I think what i need to be aware of in the timed assessment is visible hair brands and tucking the end sod the plaits away so they can't be seen. Overall Im very pleased with the end result.
We found that completion the design after prepping the hair took about 1hour and 45 minutes which is roughly 15 too long. After discussing this with Becky we decided to leave out the side plaits as these are quite time consuming and not necessarily integral to the design as you don't really see them much under the padding. 

Fourth Attempt at Partners Design

By this stage in proceedings I was fairly comfortable about being able to complete Becky's design but my concerns laid within whether id be able to complete in the allocated time period.In this practice we decided to time how long it took me to prep the hair and complete the rest of the style. 

Was quite chuffed with the rat i created in the right side of the hair

Padding added and covered on the right side

Left side passing completed, need to fan the hair out a bit more the cover the padding

Final look from the front

Overall I was very pleased with the outcome of this practice and felt my padding was much improved. The thing that I need to work on is making  sure the padding is symmetrical in terms of height and width as in the final iage you can see one droops a lot lower than the other. I need to remember to be firmer in my hold of the hair. Becky said she preferred the left side of the style as she wanted the top of the padded sections to look quite flat. 

Third Practice of Partners Design

The Following are images from my 3rd attempt at my Partners design

I crimped the front section of hair

Although crimping is a fairly straightforward task, due to Becky's length and thickness of hair it takes a long time. 

I then sectioned the hair as usual 

Central french plait continuing in to two normal plaits

I created a 'rat' to secure the padding to

I secured the padding to the 'rat'

I folded the bottom section of hair around the padding first

I then wrapped the top section of hair around the padding

Above you can definitely see I've improved with the padding stage, on the sides the hair looks quite neat around the padding.

Back view of the padding

However from the back and from below it's another story. from these angles the padding looks horrendous, these are two aspects I definitely need to pay attention to. 

Front view of the left side padding

 I was really pleased with the way it looked fro the front, I found it to look really well finished.

Side view of the left side padding

Unfortunately the left padding section ended up looking very curved, although i don't think this was really my fault. i suggested to Becky that perhaps some longer padding would work better as currently the padding she supplied wasn't running the length of the section of hair she wanted included. 

 In this attempt I managed to complete the whole design which included creating a bun at the back of the head, this was fairly easy as it just involved twisting the hair and coiling it around itself and securing with pins.

I then wrapped the loose plaits around the bun at the back

Overall I found that this practice did boost my confidence a little and I felt better about completing the design, my main concern however was being able to complete it in the timed assessment period. We decided that in our next practice we would look at timings and making any changed to the design to ensure it could be completed.

Second Practice of Partners Design

In our second practice I found I was more comfortable with Becky’s design and felt a little mote confident and was able to complete more of it in the 2 hour period. Prior to this Practice Becky had decided that to help solidify some of the elements of her design, mostly the plaits and padding she would get me to crimp the front sections of the hair, leaving the back section which will form the bun straight. 

Crimping the front section of the design, 

I then sectioned the hair as before, I find sectioning is a skill I'm very confident with even in long hair

Front sections from above

Here you can see Ive taken the process further and go on to continue the central french plait down the centre of the head in to two conventional plaits which will later be wrapped around the bun.

                                                   

Left side padding included

When it got to the stage where i needed to add padding to the hair I began to struggle. Creating the rat and securing the padding in place was fine but because of the length of Becky's hair i just found placing it around the padding incredibly difficult. As you can see in the picture above my first attempt is very messy and even messier beneath. I found that I struggled to roll beck's hair and pin in under the padding and became frustrated quickly. Overall the process of covering the padding with hair took a long time and in this practice i only finished one side. Overall I went away from this practice feeling very down hearted and very worried about my ability to complete the design.

First Practice at Partners Design

Becky's illustrated design

Because Becky's design featured so many elements I had to first divide the hair in to several sections 

It did take a a while for me to get used to Becky's hair as it is incredibly long and thick, unlike any I've ever worked on before.

Side view of the sections created

This bottom section which has been tied off will form the bun in Becky's design

Becky's Design featured 5 visible plaits, two of which can be seen beneath the padding on the side of her head

Possible the most prominent aspect of Beckys design is the french plait down the centre of the head, diving the two sections of padding. Beckys also intends for these to be sprayed with colour hair spray to modernise her look.

Plait on the right side of the head

Because of becky's long hair i found my conventional plaiting wasn't as good as it usually is, I think ill get used to this over time though.

Bird's eye view of the central french plait

In this first practice I was initially overwhelmed with both the length of Becky's hair and the complexity of her design. Due to the limited space of time we had and the fact that Becky was taking me through the process step by step we only completed about a third of the design. I feel that through practice and determination I will feel more confident with the design and working with Becky's long hair and thus will speed up.

Timed Assessment Peer Review & Self Reflection as the Designer

As the Designer for this part of the project it's my responsibility to provide the Hair Stylist with the appropriate information to be able to complete the design to a high standard. This involved supplying my Stylist with an illustration of my design both front and back as well as a set of Instructions on how to complete the design.


Self Reflection
Overall I think Ive been a fair designer. I think I've communicated my ideas effectively to my partner and provided her with the suitable information to complete my design. I always knew what I wanted the overall look to be like from the beginning and only made slight adjustments during the process. In our practices Becky and I found that 'pin-frizzing' all the hair was a very lengthy method and would take far too long for the timed assessment, we discussed this and experimented together to find a suitable alternative that produced the same effect but wouldn't leave Becky worrying about timing issues. 

Front view

Right side

Back view

Left side

Peer Review - Becky, The Hair Stylist

Overall I feel Becky Executed my design very well as it looked excactly like my design. I noticed that she put a lot of effort in to our practices and had become very confident with it by her second attempt.

During the timed assessment  She was very professional, she never once tugged too hard or went to close with the heated crimpers.

There are only two things I am slightly disappointed with in the final outcome. The first is that if you compare the right and left side views you an see that the right side is less backcombed than the left. On the right side some straight crimped areas haven't been backcombed to the same intensity as the set f the head, I imagine this was just a mistake under the pressure of the timed assessment. I also found that the slicked hair at the front of my head needed to be more even, perhaps this could have been rectified is more product had been used to manipulate the hair. However, I feel that the looks comes together well and I am delighted with Beckys work. 

Final Practice of my design with Partner

In the few days before the Assessment we took it upon ourselves to practice the design once more to guarantee Becky was confident about completing the design within her allotted time period. 

Becky having completed all the steps up to backcombing & plaiting the hair

In our practice today I actually found that even though Becky followed exactly the same process as before, she was able to create even more volume in the hair. I think this is due to the fact that I had washed my hair the night before so my hair was quite clean and static and probably reacted more efficiently to being backcombed and frizzed then hair that hasn't been washed in a few days. 

For Becky's times Assessment I will wash my hair the night before to achieve this great volume again!

The final look

Overall really over moon with the volume created. The only things i mentioned to Becky that I would like her to take on board for next time;

- Some of the slicked hair on the top of my head has come undone a little so this needs to be slicked back dan right at the end of the styling process

- The pearls are a little too 'few and far between' for my liking and need to have more catered throughout the style. 

Partner Practising my Final design

Having shown Becky, my hair stylist, the finalised design and my list of directions she cracked on with putting it in to place. I decided that in this practice we would agree on what would be completed in the preparation stage of the assessment and I would highlight any areas that needed working on.

Image shows Becky sectioning the hair and slicking the top  half down to the scalp

Becky's split the bottom section in to two parts and begun crimping the underneath

Becky begins to 'pin-frizz' the top section of hair

We found previously found that the 'pin-frizz' technique is what takes so much time, so we decided that in the preparation stage Becky will crimp the underneath of the hair and pin-frizz half the head so that she can still demonstrate her skills in the timed assessment and complete the look.

Pin frizzing complete and brushed out.

Beckys taken the two sections from the front, plaited them and tucked them in to the decorative piece at the back

I found that my hair isn't long enough for the two plaits to meet at the back of my head and for them to hidden neatly, so I found this decorative clip which could be considered elizabethan as the jewels are very ornate and many portraits from this era featured costumes or hairstyles heavily adorned with expensive jewels. 

Finally Becky applies the pearls to the hairstyle.

Overall really pleased with practice, Becky has picked up the design really well and she seems very confident completing it.

The only few things I mentioned that I would like improving are:
1. Parting needs to be deadly straight
3. To backcomb the hair further on top and below to create greater volume

Practising my design & Intructions for my partner

Having finalised my design i thought it would be a good idea to practice it myself on a mannequin to make sure it looked the way i wanted and there weren't any issues. 

1. Brush through the hair thoroughly and part directly down the centre of the head. Spray the hair with hairspray and smooth down using a comb and your hands.
Begin to place grips horizontally around the head starting an inch above each ear and meeting at the back of the head.

2. Cross hatch these grips to really secure the hair in place and to stop the grips moving around.

3. From the part of hair below the grips, section off the top 1/3 which is roughly half an inch thick and clip on the top of the head.

So it will look like this once it is all gathered and clipped on top of the head.

4. Crimp this bottom section of hair, making sure not to leave any sections straight.

5. Brush this out using a barrel brush which will automatically create frizz.

6. Begin to pin frizz the top section of hair, taking roughly centimetre sections at a time. Pin frizzing involved taking section of hair and wrapping hair around a hair pin in a figure of eight, securing it with a grip and applying heat. 

As you go around the head it will begin to look like this.

7. Brush out the pin frizz with the barrel brush.

8. Take a section from above the ear approximately 1 inch thick, plait this and secure to the back of the head using a grip.

9. Back comb all the hair, starting at the underneath and create volume at the sides as well as height.
10. When you've finished backcombing, dip the decorative pearls in a small amount of gel and place one by one through the backcombed hair as seen in the design illustration. 

The finished result should look somewhat like this. Looking at this, Im not 100% happy with the allocation of the pearls and think a few more would solidify the look. Also, there some hair underneath that hasn't been fully combed and looks a bit limp which could be rectified by further backcombing.