Haircutting For Dummies. Jeryl E. Spear

Introduction

      If you’ve ever dreamed of becoming a painter, a sculptor, or a home decorator, you have a talent for cutting hair. The same holds true if you love designing, drawing, or helping your kids with their art projects. Haircutting For Dummies, 2nd Edition is designed to help you discover your inner artist — and put this artist to good use! With this book at your side, you can easily enhance your loved ones’ haircuts while trimming big bucks off your family’s grooming budget.

About This Book

      I wrote this book for people like you who want to cut their family and friends’ hair at home in order to save time and money, be creative, and do something nice for those who trust you with their good looks. Haircutting For Dummies, 2nd Edition offers good advice on how to do simple trims and styles, while giving your own creative spirit plenty of room to roam.

      Haircutting For Dummies, 2nd Edition is the most comprehensive yet free-spirited book written for the home haircutter. It lives up to its name by giving step-by-step instructions for the latest short, medium, and long hairstyles, as well as more advanced haircutting techniques like slicing, notching, and texturing the hair. To help you achieve these creative looks, this snip-and-tell guide provides insider information about the tools you need to support your handiwork, ways to follow lengths and angles, and above all, how to have fun while you’re creating your show-stopping styles!

      Anytime you find yourself hungry for even more haircutting knowledge, this book also contains a wealth of information about how to style your masterpieces, tips on maintaining your own haircut, and countless ways to shamelessly bribe young children into behaving like angels while you cut their hair. You should also be on the lookout for tips on ways to judge texture, strength, and the health of the hair, and how to find out what people really want their hair to look like before taking a single snip.

Conventions Used in This Book

      Before I throw you into the step-by-steps of any haircut in this book, I let you know how difficult the cut will be to do. I have based my ratings on a scale from the easiest cuts to the most difficult ones:

      Your current ability to cut hair — coordination with handling scissors, ability to judge length, and a knack for creating the correct shapes — should dictate the degree of difficulty you undertake. If creating accurate haircutting lines challenges you, for instance, or your hair sections still tend to drift to one side or the other, avoid anything higher than a Moderate rating until these basic skills become second nature to you.

      The illustrations in this book give you a good idea of what steps to take while cutting hair. Keep in mind that a solid line means that this is where hair should be parted. A broken line indicates where you should cut the hair.

      And finally, an italicized word means that a beauty-pro term is heading your way.

Foolish Assumptions

      Having been a home haircutter many times in my life, I’ve experienced most of the motivations behind trimming your little beauty queen’s hair, crisping the lines of a man’s haircut, or extending the life of your own haircut by taking a few strategic snips off the ends. All that was missing in my household was a fun, friendly book on haircutting. While writing this book, I assumed that you’ve found yourself in similar situations (and without a lively, straightforward book). I also made a few other assumptions about you.

If