Don't Worry, 'Bout A Thing...

This past week I had a service day and decided to try something other than the regular blow dry, or curls. What did we do? Dreads. Yes, you read that right, dreads, as in dreadlocks, like Bob Marley...but not as gross. After about 3 hours of teasing and twisting and teasing and waxing and teasing and waxing some more, my head was covered in teeny-tiny little dreadlocks. I only left them in for a day for fear of them deciding to become a permanent fixture upon my head. People asked me why I wasn't going to keep them in, "they totally fit you!" I was told through out the day. "You're a chameleon," one of my teachers told me. "You've had so many different styles on your head and you've rocked them all, you seem to be able to make anything work."

Well, why didn't I keep them? As my teacher said, I'm a "chameleon", I change my hair way too much style and color wise to hold onto dreads. I'm just not ready for that kind of commitment!(!!!!) That, and the only way to get rid of them(once they've been on your head for a while and have 'matured' - yes dreads go through a time of maturity - is to shave your head, and that is the last thing I want to do to my poor head of thick locks.)

Anyways, I think I got the dreadlock fever out of my system...for now...
And now I shall share with you my great joy and love of this fantastic and unique style in pictures:

This was just after I took out box braids...they were my 'almost - dreads'

This amazes me!

Running with scissors

"It's a dangerous business, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where you might be swept off to."





Those were some of the words running through my head when I woke up the morning of December 15, 2009. I got up, put on black clothes (not knowing how sick of them I would get), and tried to eat something before I got into my father's car. We traveled about 20 minutes, passing over the Connecticut river and getting a magnificent view of Hartford's sunrise silhouette and arriving at our destination about 10 minutes earlier than planned. Finally, 8:30 rolled around. I took a deep breath, said goodbye to my dad, and stepped out of the car.

That was where it all started.

It's been 9 months since I first walked into that building, carrying nothing but a notebook and paper mate pen, and having hardly any knowledge of hair. Tomorrow, I walk into IIC with a head held high - and carrying about 50+ lbs. more than a notebook and pen. Tomorrow...

I. Am. SENIOR!

I am now over 1050 hours and will be doing practicals for the next 5 weeks. After that I will start studying for *dundundun* STATE BOARDS!!! They'll lock us in a room for six weeks and we'll study till our brains fall out.... Ok, maybe they won't lock us in a room. And maybe my brains won't fall out, but you never know, right? The point is: the end is near! I may have thought graduating high school and starting at IIC was the beginning of the adventure. No. It's part of the journey, definitely, but it was only training. Conditioning for all the exciting and very unusual experiences ahead. No my friends. This was just a taste, the real adventure begins when I take the state boards, and walk out of IIC knowing that I'm done, and hoping that I'm' ready for what comes next. I am chomping at the bit, and ready to run...with scissors in hand of course. ;)

light&summery

Today, I performed a service for one of the girls I know in the Sophomore class. Today's agenda: go lighter for summer...but how light? Blonde. Verrrryyyyy BLONDE! We started rounda'bout 10:15 this morning. When I first met this girl - it was outside of school a few years ago - her hair was like this: Since then she had a full highlight done. More or less, color was not in her hair, plenty of lightener though. With roots that went on for about two inches, our original thought was to just do a simple roots - to - ends process and hope that it was just that easy...pffft...yeah, no....

We set to work, and a teacher mixed up a level 9N w/ 30V developer with a sprinkle of lightening powder(bleach).
She pulled blonde alright, but it was so gold!!! (*gooaaaaaaaaaaaalllllllllldennnnnnnnnnn* - ;)
In other words, her hair pulled to probably the warmest tone possible. Now, warmness is not a bad thing....but it's not a one-size-fits-all sort of thing, and for this girl, a blonde this warm was just NOT going to cut it. Her hair is normally what a stylist would call 'ashy', and as we sat there with her head in the sink the teacher who mixed the color is leaning over shaking her head.

"I just don't understand! Why did she pull SO gold!?"
"Well, " I decided to add my input to see if what I was thinking was right "we did put lightener in the color..."
Blank stare for halfa second from the teacher..."YES!"

My guess is that if we had simply used color, no lightener added, it would not have pulled to such a warm tone. If left to my own devices I would have just done all her roots with lightener, let her process, rinsed her out, and then maybe thrown a level 11, maybe 12N or a toner with a violet/blue base over the whole head...foiling out just a few strands to keep dimension. My thinking is, that if she's only ever used bleach...er...lightener on her head, then applying lightener all over her roots would have matched the existing color pretty much perfectly.

But that's not what we did, so that will forever be a "what if..."

With her being SO warm, I applied a level 10 toner to her roots...it toned it down, but just slightly. In the end we were kinda short on time, so I decided to simply take a mohawk section and do what I call a diagonal brick lay foil, touching only her roots, with lightener and 20Volume(teacher's suggestion, I would've used 30V...)and a very fine weave.

I'd say that did the trick. With her roots being so 'long', the color that was applied initially was completely solid, which looked funny compared to the rest of he hair that, having been highlighted, held various strands of color, bringing movement and dimension. By retouching the highlights for the roots at the top of her head we broke up that solid strip of color. :) At 3:00, we were done.

Going blonde is a process. If you're thinking of undergoing this venture, just know that it's complicated, long, and you most likely won't get there the first time around. Just take it in steps. Don't be discouraged. To preserve the strength and integrity of your hair, don't rush it. It may take a couple appointments, and some long hours in the chair to get you there, but bring a book, listen to your iPod, take a nap.
Your hair will thank you for being so patient.
And when your hair is happy, YOU are happy.
And when you are happy about your hair, we're happy too. :)


She took this with her laptop, so it's blurry...but there's the end result. B-L-O-N-D-E!

Responsibility, what's that?

A couple weeks ago, my college friends started to come home. Now, more or less, they're all done and here. Next week is also my brother's last week as well as my two youngest siblings and pretty much everyone in the continental U. S.
Next week is also the start of my summer vacation. And the week after that? I go back to school. Just one week? Yuppers, that right. As much as I love cosmetology, I picked the wrong profession as far as summer vay-k's are concerned. See, all my friends who are in college right now get/got a four year transitional period into the shedule I call "real-life-adultness". Summers off from from school, but slowly wheening it away with a job here, some extra work there, maybe having a not so conenient work shift but still, summer.
I've seemed to have bipassed that. Sadly. After I've graduated, I'll be working, and apparently stylists have the tendency to become workaholics. I guess if you're loving what you're doing it's not really work right?

Now, if you know me, you've probably had your ear talked off about my school and the interesting people I've met there. I you have then you've heard me talk about the Guggliottis, the people who own a salon by the same name, as well as my school.
This Friday(6•11•10) I have a job interview with them. This is a pretty big deal. Although I'm only applying for a receptionist position, they almost always offer aspiring stylists in that position, an assuring position. After assisting(shadowing stylists and learning the ropes) you become a stylist.
Now this is a verrryyyy high end salon owned by THE WORLD DIRECTOR OF COMPETITION. if I get a receptionist job here, even if I decide not to go on to assisting, if that position is offered me, I've still got my foot in the door of hairworld, and made very good connections with people in high places.

I'm excited. Very much so, yes. But i'm nervous as a person could be. Never done an interview before. Don't know what to expect...

So those of you who will, pray for me? I'd really appreciate it. I'll keep y'all posted.


- Posted from emikel's iPhone -

A smile at NYC and beautiful weather

Early this month IIC took it's students to the IBCNY - International Beauty Convention New York - in New York City. We were all up early getting ready, after all, we were going to be seeing professionals at this thing, it's not like we could just roll out of bed and look like crap.
7:15 - Every one's at school, getting their tickets, and loading onto the bus.
7:30 - pulling out of the school parking lot. Not an easy task for a coach bus to do on the Silas Dean in a very narrow lot.
A few short hours later we were driving through the ever moving streets of NYC. At some point in my life I'm going to go there and walk around all day just taking pictures of the architecture - I liked some of it more than some of the hair styles I saw :/.

I walked around for a couple hours but left at the request of my grumbling stomach. At first my group and I were just going to walk a couple of blocks to a little pizza parlor someone had told us about, but once outside we met up with a few more people from school who were walking to Time Square for and early lunch. My feet did not want to walk for twenty minutes just to find food and come back, but the rest of my group was going and I had no idea how to get anywhere - and it's not like I was about to take off by myself...- so I went with them....and was glad. The weather was beautiful. Temperature somewhere in the sixties, sun shining brightly, not a cloud in the sky. I was able to tromp around in flipflops all day long! I can't wait till the weather is gorgeous like this all the time because I am SO done with winter...as of 4 months ago.

There is something really surreal about New York. The business of the streets, the architecture of the buildings, the characteristics of the people you meet, the high-end stores filled with millions of dollars of merchandise tucked away in the midst of grungy, sketchy areas. We found a place to eat lunch - I was surprised how bland my pizza tasted for being New York Pizza!!! That should've been illegal - and wandered around for a little bit more before heading back to the show.

The show itself was too overwhelming. I didn't know what I should be looking for, or looking at.I saw SO MUCH, but it all just went over my head.

Anyways, here's a couple pics from the show and other places...
enjoy :)


The weird thing around her head changed color according to her mood...?

right outside where we had lunch. Chevy's Villa.

Yes, Arrojo, as in What Not To Wear man. He was there...somewhere. probably popped up while i was out at lunch tho.

I'm old enough to know that time doesn't move slow enough...

It feels like just a couple weeks ago that my class and I reached the fabled '200 HOURS' mark. When an individual reaches 200 hours of training they are allowed to have their friends and family come in to have services done. It's also a little more than half way until we are allowed to take normal people (i.e: walk-ins, scheduled clients, absolute strangers, the bum on the corner) as clients. 450 hours is the next "milestone"

[If any of you are interested in visiting me I strongly encourage you to come in! Let me know a day or two in advance or something tho, but if you're interested in something other than a hair cut I advise you look at the Salon's Menu http://studyhair.com/services.shtml first. I'm more than willing to come help you with something - if I can - outside the Salon to help you save your mula.]

Only three of us have actually taken advantage of that, I brought my mom in for a cut :), the advantage being that we are actually performing services on live individuals that move, talk, and have to go out in public with the hair on their heads instead of being stuffed into plastic bags and then jammed into a locker in a backroom somewhere(not that my seven friends don't enjoy that, then again they don't talk much so I wouldn't know ;) ).

But today I recieved my progress report, a sheet of paper that has on it how many hours you have to date, and how many hours you should have if you came everyday, clocked in on time, didn't clock out for unalotted breaks, and clocked out exactly at 3:00. Somehow...I've reached 300 hours. Not quite sure how that happened so quickly. It really is quite amazing how time goes by so quickly. The older I get, the faster it goes. On one hand this is in my favor - this year of school will go by fast! On the other though....I don't want it to go by so quickly! On the 15th of March the new freshman class will come in and I will graduate to the sophmore class. *un-be-liev-able* I'm 1/4 of the way through and its flown by.

We're currently working on our Floor Exams. These are also known as Practical Tests. We have been given a list of the most popular services performed on the Clinic Floor and are required to do them all in a somewhat timed environment and get a passing grade. This list must be completed before we are allowed to be unleashed on the unsuspecting public. The thing is, they're giving us this exam early. It appears that the teachers feel that the Freshman class of Dec. '09 are ready a bit before the normal time. It also appears the the Freshman class of Dec. '09 do not feel ready before, or maybe even at, the normal time....but we have to do this at some point and none of us are failing, so why not?

Guess you'll be seeing a semi-professional hairstylist on the Floor in a week or two ;)

foiled again!

Lately the majority of my days at school have been filled with foiling hi lites. As far as grades go, they've been pretty high, so if you want a foil hi lite done, go out and buy foils and the color you would like and then call me, as far as interest goes...it's dwindling. This most likely is because I am slow. Slow, and precise. It's hard for me to do one and just go on. I like to make sure I've covered every hair, placed it neatly in the foil, fold the foil cleanly, without many wrinkles and such, and then check to make sure that the color(or colesteral as the case is now) is not leaking onto them clients(...mannequin's) head. This is all fine and dandy when one is only doing a partial foil to the top of the head, but when one is completely covering a whole entire head with foils...let's just say that my way of doing things is not all that time efficient.

On Friday afternoon, we started doing a Full Hi lite Slice - covering every-other section of hair with color(colesteral) and putting it into a foil, and doing this to the whole head. I got about 3/4 of the way through before it was time to leave - (I finished it up the next day, took out all the foils and then started again on a variation of what I had just completed.) Tedious. SO, tedious. By the end, the mannequin looked like she could pick up a radio signal better than the satellite station we were listening too. Not only was my Friday filled with foils(ALLITERATION!), but with what felt like impending doom. We had been told a week or so in advance that a test would be coming up soon. That we would have a pre-test on Friday, and the real test on Saturday.
So early Friday morning, we all went over our notes on Chapter Nine - The Theory of Haircutting - Salon Fundamentals and then sat down for the 35 question pre-test, the real test would be only 25 question, making every answer count.

I got 30/35, that translated into a grade would be about 85, maybe 86% (depending if you were feeling generous with your rounding.) Two of the five wrong answers were careless mistakes of circling 'a' instead of 'c' - I was half asleep, and simply not paying attention. I went home that night, tired out, and anxious about what was coming the next morning. I went to Leadership Core(a meeting where the juniors, seniors, and some the college age+ adults come together as the leadership for the youth group and have a bible study and discuss event schedules). That fellowship relaxed me until I got home...and studied till 11:00(with wonderful jazz music - thanks hedge) and then fell asleep with crazy dreams that I'm not quite sure helped me sleep well...

I was mentally prepping myself for the morning to come.

A Welcomed Weekend

Friday arrived and I was having trouble wrapping my mind around the fact that my 'weekend' didn't start until about 3:30 the next day. (The schedule for my school is 8:30-3:00 Tuesday-Friday, 8:00-2:30 Saturdays.) The end of the day came around and I did my sanitation duties, clocked out, then carried all my stuff to the car.

dingity-ding-ding-ding goes my alarm at 6:30 Saturday am. I lay there lazily for just a few minutes before I rolled out of bed, grabbed a towel, and headed for the shower. I emerge from the bathroom about ten minutes later to a very still and dark house. I'm not used to being the first one up - nor am I used to getting up at 6:30 on Saturday mornings - but the quiet stillness is surreal, gentle, calming.

I get dressed in under 30 seconds -making me appreciate uniforms very much - and dab mascara on my sleepy eyelashes. Downstairs is dark and quiet also as I grab a couple pieces of leftover pizza from the fridge and put it in a lunchbox. Today I would be driving myself to school and I was trying to go over the route in my head. It wasn't a particularly hard trip, but crossing Hartford traffic is one of my worst fears. But I'd been assured that on a Saturday, especially this early in the morning, there wouldn't be many cars on the road. I was also trying to remember exit and route numbers, I'm normally half asleep while being driven to school and I didn't feel like taking a detour through Hartford by myself today....or any day really but especially today.
I headed out a little earlier than normal, giving myself some thinking time, and was at school before I knew it(yay for no traffic!).
Now there had been much talk about an impending blizzard and we were all wondering if they would be letting us out early. The snow was not supposed to start until 2:00 and I was happy to find myself mistaken on the Saturday dismissal time.

2:00 came around and there was no sign of snow. At 2:30 I clocked out, lugged my stuff to the trunk and headed home as fast as I could. My youth group had planned an event(the Progressive Dinner) for that day to start at 4:30 giving me about 10 minutes to get ready before I left home for the event, but on one of my breaks I received an email telling me that the time had been moved up to 2:30. Terrific.

I rushed home, and changed quickly, threw on a pair of heals and jumped in my dad's car. The weekend had finally begun!

Sunday was lazy, the 18'' of snow I was promised showed up in a 7'' form. Nacho Libre was on TV...and I curled my mother's hair.
Monday(today) has been kind of odd for me though. Everyone has gone back to school and work and are all gone, leaving me home with my mom and siblings doing their school while I don't do much. Having the second day of my weekend be the first day of every one's work/school week is not exciting, but I'll live with it. This week I'll only have three days of school, then a four day weekend, then three more days of education, then three more days of relaxation. So far, I'm a happy camper.

some of the people at conventions will try to tell you you need a pair of $7,000 shears. You don't need those...YET

Today the owner of the school and salon, Carmelo Gugliotti, (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&rls=com.microsoft:en-us:IE-ContextMenu&rlz=1I7GGLL_en&ei=1icsS9rAOcnKlAew8q2TBw&sa=X&oi=spell&resnum=0&ct=result&cd=1&ved=0CA0QBSgA&q=Carmelo+Gugliotti&spell=1) came in and taught us a class on shears.

He started out by holding up a pair and asking "What are these?" (imagine a very thick Italian accent with hints of Argentina ;) To which we all replied "Scissors/Shears...?"

"Shears." He said, then he proceeded to pick up another pair and ask the same question, to which we gave the same hesitant answer. When he did it a third time we were all like Is this a trick question? After that he pulled about 75 more shears out of his square metal case, then took out a large, square, leather folder and unfolded it twice revealing a velvet lined case with three squares of shears. "I have problem," he says, "One, I have so many shears and never seem to have the one I want when I need it, two, I cannot go into a store without coming out with a new pair of shears." I met my first Shear Addict.

It was interesting , listening to this older Italian man teaching us the different uses of so many different types of shears, I sat there taking notes and trying to soak up all his wisdom.

He explained to us a little about himself, starting off with the fact that he is the Global Director of Competitions....GLOBAL! yeah. Pretty amazing stuff. I feel so privileged that he is my teacher. For a little more information(just a little out of a whole ton) click the link. He's a very renowned man, I highly encourage you to look him up. http://www.gugliottis.com/about-stylists.php, I think you can also see his profile on www.studyhair.com .

Yesterday we learned how to set a perm(this particular one is set at a 45degree frontal, for the most volume.)

Today, one of the things we learned was how to do a Finger Curl. Somehow, despite being shoved in a tight and suffocating plastic bag, and stuffed in my bag for about an hour, this specific curl is still quite alive.

In The Beginning

The fateful day arrived this Tuesday(12/15/09) and was greeted with some nerves and much anticipation. Monday night I set an alarm on my phone to wake me up at 7:30 (since I've been waking up sometime between 8:15 and 10:00 for the past five months.) Strangely enough as I went to bed that night I felt fine. There were no butterflies in my stomach or tense nerves in any part of my body. Even my brain, which normally runs crazy analyzing and over analyzing and over anticipating was calm and relaxed. The only thing that had me really "worried" was that I didn't know which room to enter when I arrived.

I went to bed with a peace I've only experienced a couple of times, a peace and ease of mind that only comes from God. (Thanks God, I needed that, really)


[This is what it says on the back of our school shirts. Neat huh?]

I slept soundly, though my body was still full of expectancy, but was wide awake come 7:00 a.m. My alarm hasn't gone off yet... I thought groggily as I contemplated just laying in bed, but my nervous system was too pumped and ready to go, so I hopped out of bed and headed to the shower. Surprisingly I was in and out before my alarm (which was now set for 7:15 after I added a Snooze Allowance [ ;) ]) had gone off. Hmmm, I did that really quickly!
It's not that I take long showers, but I do like to just kinda stand in the warm water for a while. But when ones nerves are excited and they know they're in a time crunch miracles can happen :D

My father and I jumped in the car and raced off to the International Institute of Cosmetology(herein after known as International or IIC, or just school). We arrived about 15 minutes earlier than planned. I tried to open both the front and back door and found that they were locked. We waited a little longer until we saw some of the other not-as-new-as-I-am students go in.
It felt odd getting out of the car, in an unfamiliar and strange place, and having my dad drive away with an "I love you" and "goodbye." Now I was on my own.
I walked into a room with stations set up along the entirety of each wall. Each station had a large black gym-like bag, a black and metal case(like what they use in special agent movies), and seven boxes stacked on top of the counters. I was directed to the space the kits with my name on top and took a seat. We were encouraged to take part in the "welcome" continental breakfast - consisting of DD doughnuts and coffee.
We all sat at our stations, quietly sipping our December 2009


We all sat there quietly sipping our very hot coffee as one of the directors explained dress codes and how to clock in and out of school. (It's pretty cool, we each have our own code and there's a machine that reads the length and size of our hands to make sure that someone else isn't clocking us in and out)

As the day progressed we went over all our equipment and mannequins, eventually wetting down one of our SEVEN mannequin heads. (It was really creepy loading them all into the trunk, individually wrapped in clear plastic bags at the end of the day...) That afternoon we learned two ways of sectioning, and how to section each part of those sections.

That awkward first day ended silently as we all packed up our 50 lbs. of new stuff and headed home with stiff backs and aching feet.

Here are some of the goodies I brought home that day :D

These are my Le' Marca hair shears. These are very professional, and very sharp, scissors that I will be using on real people when I reach the mark of 200 hours of training and go from mannequins to humans.

aren't they pretty?

This is one of my two straight razors. Don't worry, I'll be trained properly and have enough mental health so when I get to use them I won't pull a Sweeney Todd...on most people.

This is Jesus (or John the Baptist) my male mannequin. Each mannequin has it's own little punny name on the back of their neck, but this guy has some weird ghetto name that starts with M...but for the life of me I can't remember what it is, but it doesn't matter cause he doesn't look like the name they gave him, so I changed it ;)

Plop went the mannequins, ready for inspection by my family. My dad wanted to sit them in our windows, next to the Christmas window candles, to freak out the neighbors. Oh dad.

all my junk.

My fancy smancy kit.

this is the little emo guy emblem of IIC.