How to Cut Curly Hair! (Melanie)

So I have this un-tamable curly hair. It has taken me years and years to even feel comfortable with it on my head, but I have grown to love it...and to only trust a few select people to cut it. Namely, my mom, and a certain lady at the Trade Secret at the Washington Square Mall in Portland, Oregon. Oh! And myself.

I cut my own hair more than anyone else cuts my hair, because I feel like if I let anyone else do it, they wouldn't do it quite right, and I would feel bad blaming anyone else for my hair not turning out the way I want. I've made some grand mistakes...and I think I've finally got it down to a point where I feel comfortable giving other people the tips! DISCLAIMER: By no means is this a perfect way or art. This works for my hair and I hope to give some tips that will help you in your quest to cut your own curly hair! (or straight hair, actually)

I am going to cut my hair shorter, and layer it. I'm kind of afraid of layering too high up, so it usually takes a couple tries for me to get the layering exactly how I want it.

This is my hair currently (pre-cut). I straighten my hair before I cut it. 

It makes the hair more manageable to me, and I can see exactly 

where I'm cutting and where my hair will lay and everything.

As you can see, I have my straightener, my hair brush, and 

my scissors from 4th grade (which I kept forgetting to return...oops).

Obviously hair-cutting scissors would do a better job, this is just

what I've been using for EVER. 

This is also a pre-cut shot. This is how I tried to layer my hair last time. 

I put my head down sideways and cut straight across. That didn't work. 

It gave me a kind of mullet-type ish thing. It was awful. DON'T DO THIS!

To begin, part your hair how you want it, and then cut everything the same

length. This is how long you want your longest layer to be. Keep in mind, 

this layer will get a little bit shorter, because you will blend everything later.

Next I pin up everything but the bottom, so I can make sure the bottom

layer is straight. You can see here that the front is longer than the back. That

will usually happen, unless you take the time to fix it. I basically just work it

until it's all the same length. I didn't have another mirror or a medicine cabinet

to play with to see the back, so I was just guessing and turning around a lot.

Yay! Everything is the same length! It looks like a shelf, which is a BAD thing 

for curly hair, but I promise, it's not the end yet!

I pulled a part over just to make sure EVERYTHING was the same length. 

This is all before I being layering my hair. Extra snipping and double-double 

checking is not a bad thing. This usually doesn't take me more than 2 hours

(which I know is a long time, but usually it's closer to 1 hour)

See how this is all the same length? Now we can start layering!!

So I pin up everything but the bottom layer. To layer, hold the scissors

so the point is upwards, and just cut upwards and outwards, so the flat of the 

blades are parallel to your head. You do this for every layer of hair that you

bring down. This helps your hair not have the 'shelf' look at the bottom. 

Mine still did after this specific part, because, like I said, I'm afraid of 

layering too much.

Terrible pictures, I know, but this is the end, after blending. I didn't take

a picture of blending. But, what you do is point the scissors upwards again, 

and instead of cutting outwards, put the blades perpendicular to your head 

and cut upwards in little snips so that the layers blend together. 

Let me know how it goes!