I do not cut hair.  I’m not a straight line kind of person.  If I cut my girls’ hair in blunt cuts, I just know that I’d have to straighten the cut and straighten the cut and straighten the cut until they have no hair left.  And my own – forget it!

But I have been desperately in need of a haircut for months now (just never get around to the logistics for getting one), so when I saw the “easy five-minute layered haircut” at Beautiful Life of Joy, I decided to just jump in with both feet.  If it was really bad, I could pay for someone to fix it (since I was expecting to pay for a haircut, anyway), and if it worked, I’d saved myself $20.  (Yes, I get cheap haircuts.  Many people don’t realize the barber will cut women’s hair. 🙂 )

I love it.  Because it’s layered, I don’t have to worry about the actual scissor cuts being slightly choppy, which is good since our hair scissors seem to be pretty worn down.  And I love the movement and texture of the layers.  (If you have a different bone structure, layers might not be for you.  Some ladies are more flattered by a very sleek and/or geometric cut.)  And because it’s essentially flipped over to the front to be cut, I can see it when I’m doing it.

So, here’s what my hair looked like right before I cut it:

It had some long layers in it already, but (even when they were  “fresh”) they weren’t to the degree of what I ended up with.  The ends were getting straggly (although they’re better than they could have been, as my mom had already trimmed off the old last layer before my sister and I went to get our maternity photos taken).  And it’s just…frizzy.  The layers are too long for the wave to handle, but it’s just wavy enough to turn into frizz.

Here you can see what I cut off:

The clothespins are there to give you an idea of length.  About three clothespins worth.  Keep in mind, that’s to the shortest layer.  There really wasn’t much, if anything, cut off the total length.  (I actually had intended to cut off several inches overall, but I had trouble sorting out exactly what was cutting what.)

And here’s what it looked like afterward:

You can see it’s still a little damp here.  If I let it dry, it’s still similar:

Unless I brush it (big mistake!).

Then it’s frizz city.  I observed almost immediately that with all of that weight taken off of it, it “behaved” more like curly hair.  This means it does best if I mousse (or gel) and scrunch it after washing, then leave it alone.  Unfortunately, I haven’t found a mousse or gel yet that I really like.  What I’m using now is pretty “crunchy” at first, but it softens out to look like what you see here (lousy self-portrait; sorry!):

And also in the photo at the top of this post.

A Facebook friend informed me that this is called “compact cutting,” and sent me this great link to more information.  It’s helpful for getting a better idea of what cuts what – which I wasn’t able to figure out on my own.  If you want the shortest layers less short, for instance, you can place the hair farther back on the head prior to cutting.

This is going to save me so much money in the long run!