 FreeSalonEducation.com invites you to join us every Wednesday morning at 10 a.m. Eastern Standard Time for live and interactive classes from your favorite FreeSalon Education Educators. So grab a mannequin, get set up, and make sure to share your results using the hashtag FreeSalonEducation. FSE live starts now! Hey guys this is Drea Bolen from FreeSalonEducation.com and this morning we're gonna do some formal styling. I have already kind of prepped my doll head this morning with a nice little invisible roller set to add some body up here and then we did some just loose curls to kind of help manipulate the shape of the updo. We're using brocato styling for today's style and then do we have the slide of the actual if we bring up the slide of the actual style we can kind of download as to what we're gonna be doing today. So it's just a nice, no it's up, okay sorry. So it's a nice it has a nice body through the top without being too be-high-vy and then we have a nice expansion of curls throughout the bottom and little rope detailing. What I love about this style is I have done it on people with super super long hair as well as those longer bobs. So it's a very versatile style which I think is great. So I think we'll just kind of jump right in. All right. So we're gonna start in the back here. Actually before you take that down you just want to go over real quickly. You said invisible roller set up top. Is there anything specific that you did? Oh okay yeah. Good job Brian. Thanks. So what I did is I used a one inch rod curl stick to go in and get an overdirect at the root area to really set in that body and volume before we even go in to just make the teasing a little bit easier. And then I set it and then I just wrapped it around my fingers and clipped it with a pin curl clip. And then as far as the front goes this is kind of up to you. I just did a really skinny front area because I didn't want too much of a parting but you can kind of customize it to your guests in your chair as to how much they want to see versus whether they want a deep part or just a little part or they want it all going back. So that's kind of customizable. I just wanted a little bit of a section going to the sides on each side. So I did about half an inch to an inch going down right behind the ear area so that can kind of help create that seamless effect because it's gonna cover up any partings that I have. And then in the back I just did a U shape parting right up to either right below the occipital or I did it kind of higher up for today's style just because I knew I had enough room to create the shape I was looking for but depending on the density of hair you can kind of change that around. All right. So I'm gonna start off with just glow it's just a nice little shine spray that's gonna help me work through these curls. I set everything with the Pocata Moveable hairspray and what that does is it has memory and but brushable hold so I can get in there and really do work and manipulate the hair. All right. So I'm gonna split this back section into two sections kind of a diagonal parting. I'm gonna clip this side out of the way and what this bottom section is is my focus is purely creating a base for my pins to go into. Traya, somebody asked do you prefer a hairspray or a thermal setting spray when using hot tools for this look? As far as this look goes I like a hairspray because it has a little bit more hold than a thermal setting spray as well as it's gonna give you a little bit more grip to kind of work with the hair. Cool. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna just twist the hair off to the side kind of keeping it about an inch above the hair line and I'm just gonna use my bobby pins to go in straight down to lock that in place. I'm not overly concerned at this point if I see parts of the bobby pin poking out because this is all gonna be covered up. So this is just to kind of lock everything in and I'm crisscrossing the bobby pins going one that way and the other in the opposite direction. I think one of the most important things about an up style is creating that base locked in there for you because then you can kind of work off of it and then you know all those little you don't always have to go back and lock each and every hairpin in place. So I'm gonna go just around and twist the other side making sure that it stays even pretty even with the height of the other and you can see already with just one bobby pin how that's already locking that side in place because I have the base kind of set up in there already. All right so this is the easy part we're just gonna start separating these curls. I like to work within the middle going from middle out so that that way you can kind of get that woven effect of all the curls and I'm just gonna loop around and pin straight down. I'm gonna alternate sides as I'm going into this weaving the loops back and forth. Now you guys watching can't see this but I just want to have a professional looks for the fact that I've watched so many different types of people do updo's or prom hair or wedding hair in the past and they use their mouth to open clips or hold clips and it's just it's gross it's like a bad habit I feel people picked up in school never like got over it and yeah one thing to keep them back your head people. Yeah try to keep things out of your mouth that are gonna be going into people's hair. Yeah you'd think that'd be common sense but it's not. And then you can kind of work it around bringing it to the sides really building out the shape and depending on how full you want to see this bottom half you can either make it really really big or you can kind of condense it in tighter that's gonna be up to you as to how you control the loops that you're creating. Now I know it makes a difference Jaya so because of how you're using these curls when you were making them did you you said you used a rod for this? Yes. Alright so if they don't have a rod that's the kind of deal where you can use a curling iron just a little bit. Absolutely and what I did because I knew all this was being pinned up I took really large sections back here you don't have to take minuscule step sections to make an updo this isn't gonna be down it doesn't need to be flawless as far as the curls go so you just need enough bend in that hair to manipulate it the way you want it to go. And right now I'm kind of leaving the tails out of it and I will be for today's look I will be going back up and pinning it in there but if you wanted to maybe not have as much of a finished look a finished style but have that looser messier tendrils coming down this would be a great way to achieve that but you can kind of just go in and fill in the spots down at the bottom the most important thing though is if you are looking for more of that finished style you do want to make sure that you don't have any of the little tails sticking out and a little trick that I like to do is you can actually just pin put your bobby pin in down at the bottom of your hair and work that in there. Alright so that was easy we have our basin right now now we're gonna go in and take out our invisible roller set. I think one of the big tricks is to make sure that I always put my pin curl clips on the same side no matter what just so that I know when I go back in to pull them out I'm not looking for the edge of it. I basically took kind of one inch squares to create this. Jerry if someone's asked how long do you think this look is gonna hold for and do you think you could achieve it with a hair straightener? The pin curl clips I don't like to use a hair straightener for invisible roller sets from the standpoint it's not gonna give the defined curl at the top it's gonna work more on the defined curl down the bottom it kind because when you curl with a straightener you're kind of curling it like ribbon and you're pulling down and removing kind of that body and volume out of that. Yeah I think that's true like my big thing is now when the straightening iron came out everyone thought it was so cool that you could curl with it but as soon as you grab with a straightening iron and you pull you twist and pull it it's so flat at the base right so really you're just getting the curl on the end so anything for like an up style if you're trying to add just a little kind of wave or bounce to the ends of the hair the straightener I think is fine but when you're working with a style like this that you're trying to create volume and movement at the base of the hair you really need to use a rod or curling iron or something that's gonna give it lift. So as I'm taking out the invisible roller set I'm gonna go in and tease each section because I'm trying to create a more rounded shape I'm not gonna overly tease the side sections I'm gonna build it up towards the center that way when I go to pin this all back I'm not fighting to kind of condense the one side it's already condensed for me. And somebody asked what I feel uncomfortable with this amount of pins I don't think it's necessarily the amount of pins that makes something uncomfortable it's whether or not you dig them into the skull. Absolutely. I think with the kind of body and texture that she's created with these curls and then the curls in the back and everything that she's doing to sort of get that hair together the pins are really more just holding it together rather than cementing it in place up against the scalp so even though there are a lot of pins involved in this I don't think that it's necessarily gonna create discomfort for whoever's wearing the style. Absolutely and because we have the base already in place like I'm using not as many pins to secure each curl because it's already locked in there. I'm also focusing on just kind of teasing through the back of each section so that I can smooth out the front so that I'm not worried about a lumpy mess in the front and that's also the benefit of doing the invisible roller set because I don't have to tease as much because the lift is already in there. So May Rose says good morning lovelies. I'm here because I love you guys so much since I work no weekends nor even do holiday hair. Interesting to watch exciting art though. Pretty cool that she's tuning in. Well thanks for tuning in. It's not even into this so that's nice. Thank you. It's funny because I don't do up styles or formal hair really either but you know watching techniques like this and seeing the finished result yesterday when I came in here what Dre had come up with it it looked very complicated to me but then watching her break it down it's very simple so it makes me feel like anyone could really do this style if they want to. I think one of the most important things with a formal style is doing that consultation with them. I've seen so many times and I've had it myself where somebody brings in a picture and you don't dissect what they like about the picture and you get done and it's this absolutely like super structured updo and then they're like oh well do you think you can add a little bit more texture through the top or through the bottom. It's one of those things that you just want to make sure that you talk to them just like a haircut or a color and really dissect what it is they're looking to achieve for their look. I think one thing too that I've learned over watching people do this type of hair is when you first get out of school you're very like dainty with your hands and you don't really get in there and and tease it and manipulate it but you really you kind of have to force the hair where you want it to go and you don't have to worry about messing it up so much if you have a good set so I think if you set it right and you don't have the flyaways to begin with and all that you put the work into it then when you start to get into this part you can see Jaya's really teasing it up and adding that kind of texture and volume but she's not she's not being I guess dainty with it if that's the right word. She's really going in there and she's getting in there. Yes I think one of the other really important things that really when I first started doing formal hair versus when I got good at it was doing exactly what she's doing about how sort of planning out everything before she gets there you know she had all that sectioning done she knew where there was going to be volume so that was sectioned off different from where she was just going to be creating you know the all the action in the back so that just helps to keep her work clean as she's going because you know sometimes I'll see it and people will approach ahead of hair for formal hair and it'll all just be down and it's supposed to go from all down to all up and you know I think this is a great way to showcase that not every formal style is built off of just some tight ponytail and what a little bit of pre-sectioning and planning can really do to just make your life so much easier. Right. Well I think so often people get in their head that they have to figure out how to curl less in an updo. In my experience I don't spend more than 10 minutes curling hair for an updo and I'll have the entire head done. All right so also I think people get afraid to use hairspray in between while they're setting the look in. I'm using the movable hairspray to go in and make sure that I have my flyaways down before I even finish this. That way I'm not leaving it all towards the end. Right now I'm just going through and creating a line of bobby pins. Kind of set in that bump that I'm going for. I also think with all the looks on the red carpet you're not seeing an overly smooth look on there. It's smooth but it's not plastered helmet. What? Are we doing a part on this look or no? Just a small part. Okay. Thank you. But you can see through that it's smooth but there's still a little bit of movement of the curl that I set in there and it's something that I don't have to overly work. I am going through with just the tail of my comb to make sure that this sets down and all those little loose hairs are kind of working their way into it. Now just like I did on the bottom I'm going to go in separate the curls a little bit and work on looping them around. You can also use, I'm still going to use the shine spray to kind of help with any flyaways, frizz. What I love about this shine spray is it's not heavy so it's not going to give you an overly greasy look by the end of this because they're shine and then there's just over shine. Another note that I wanted to just hit on that I saw Jariya doing and I want to make sure that everyone notices just a little piece of advice when you're doing formal styling if you're using a working spray throughout the look. Just like when you're blow drying head of hair you want the air to travel down the hair shaft so that it doesn't rough up the cuticle and that's what's going to give you a nice smooth blow drying. When you are working with any kind of spray during formal styling or really just in general you want to make sure you're also traveling down the hair shaft so as not to make flyaways worse or fluff up the hair and give yourself more work that you're going to have to eventually smooth out. So notice as she's working when she sprays it she doesn't just randomly spray at this you know formal style she sort of sprays in the direction of the whole thing which is back from the face. It's back away from the face and you want to make sure that you're continually moving whatever spray you're using because you never want to see that giant lump of hair spray that then it just knots up and that's never good. So I'm looping the hair up over that line of bobby pins so that those are nice and covered and don't be afraid to work the curls back into a form. As you're doing this you're kind of brushing them out you're kind of making them in there but because we have that memory in there by using that working spray you can kind of redefine each of those curls. There's a lot of chatting going on in the chat room. Oh yeah. So it's great but those of you that watch this video later just so you guys know we do this live every Wednesday morning at 10 a.m. so you guys can get involved in the chat room and asking questions out loud. Sometimes we answer it through the chat and other times we ask Drea the question. Now is there anything in particular that you're doing right now Drea? So what I said is that you would change like with a different density of hair. Like if they had a lower density would you do this the same or would you do more curls what? If they had a lower density of hair I would do my base down here would have been a lot smaller so that I could really work the amount of curl the amount of tighter curls through the top. I think that's where most people run into scary moments with formal styling it's never if someone is too much hair then no that's fine then you just end up with a huge bun but when you know it seems like it's in our in our world it's always the people that sit down that have the least amount of hair that want the biggest action going on in the back with their formal style so is there anything in particular that you would throw in there? I would actually go in and kind of back home the curls a little bit more to kind of create more of that look. Meaning back home and like throughout the length of the curl? Throughout the length of the curl to kind of fatten it up and give the appearance of having more hair than necessary. Cool um and then like you were doing through the top where you back home did a little bit but then smoothed it out before you worked the hair. All right and then you just want to be aware some of these curls I'm kind of just almost like the invisible rollers that taking them and wrapping them all the way around my finger so I get the ends in there to kind of create that and then I don't have to go back and uh find those ends to put up. What working spray did you say you were using again? I'm using the brocato movable hairspray. I did find out the information on that. Yeah. So the blend of proteins is soy wheat and corn protein. Oh okay so brocato has a strengthening base that they like to use in their hairsprays and this morning I was like Matt what does that mean? So we made some phone calls. We made some phone calls. Find out what the blend of proteins were and it's yeah it's soy wheat and corn. So it kind of helps you it also helps protect against elements like humidity and so you're not going to see it frizz up on you. That not everything's about protein tricks. So I'm just going in making sure that all these little tails of my curls are hidden. What's nice about that is it kind of allows it to cascade down through the bottom giving it a nice fuller effect. You can see the different shapes of the curl. So it's not all loops that are happening. Jaya Christine Moranto asks if you have any more tips for successful back combing. Honestly I love finding the right tool to use it. I've never been big on just using like a rat tail comb to tease the hair. I like things with multiple teeth to kind of go in there and oh sorry. And the one this is the YS Park. Yeah that's the YS Park teasing comb and you can get it you can get those at Hairbrain on Hairbrain's website. Oh okay. So if you go to Hairbrain.me and you check out their store they have those. I think they're like 15 bucks or something like that. This is the best one that I've had. I love that it gets in there and really he teases the hair but you can also it doesn't make a knot in mess. You can kind of comb that out over top to smooth it out. I definitely like working from behind the teasing. I never want to tease up front of the section just because then you're just setting yourself up for disaster. Yeah having those the different length teeth in there are what help when you go back to smooth it out it makes it possible. I mean in my experience I like when I first started when I heard teasing hair you sit there and you try to create this nest up against the scalp make it as hard as you can and I realized you don't really have to tease it that hard to get the look that you're going for. Absolutely. And then when you do it a little bit looser it makes it possible to smooth back out so that you can build the volume without sacrificing the polish. Now if I was going in with on finer hair and I wanted to fasten up those curls a little bit as far as the back combing goes I would use more of a dressing brush to go in there and soften the curl but that's not going to give it a hard finish. I think that's what you need to understand the difference of when you're using it to build volume at the root versus building volume throughout the shaft of the hair. I was looking up last night after I posted your picture a bunch of wedding Instagram pages started liking the post and so I started looking at their pages and this type of style is very popular right now on a lot of the wedding sites so I think if you're looking to kind of grow your wedding business this is a good tool to have to know how to do this type of style and how easy it is because you could bust out quite a few of these pretty quickly if you needed to. Oh yeah and it's one of those things as far as doing bridal hair goes the more confident you are the easier it is going to be to handle that bride she's already a kind of a nervous mess that day why I don't I don't know like it's supposed to be the happiest day of your life but so they're so focused on every single little detail that they tend to forget to relax and this part's cool what you're about to do because what I noticed with a lot of the bridal hair right now is it's a mix match of textures so you know there's the curl there's the wave there's the the kind of messiness at the base and then there's different types of braids within it so yeah so I'm just doing a simple rope braid and what that's allowing me to do is it keeps it so it's not skin tight against their around their face there's nothing worse than seeing an updo that is just plastered back and it just it looks like they're trying to get a facelift out of their updo um so this allows it to go in just a little bit looser because at the same time you don't want to go in and tease throughout the sides but you want to make sure your look is pretty those that might be wondering like me um how are you doing that so I'm twist I know you say simple rope braid but that doesn't mean it's simple for everyone I go in and I twist one side at a time as I'm overlapping it I do two twists just around and layering it on top pretty sure I can do this one yeah it's super easy I'm pretty sure I taught you this one Matt no you taught me the uh what was it oh the fish tail the fish tail braid at 2 a.m at the bar but you learned it yeah and forgot it so and you wonder what everybody thinks we're a bunch of drunks I was good at it at 2 a.m yeah I was braiding everybody's hair looked great everybody had fish tails the bearded bouncer had fish tail what I love about that is everyone in the bar then knew we were hairdressers yeah it's true all right so I'm gonna wait I'm just gonna kind of push that hairpin in on there and lay this over top and then bobby pin it to the other side I'm gonna wait to kind of secure the middle part until I get the other side done so we'll brush out this side and this is just the detail work as to what the bride's gonna what the bride or really anybody who's getting this style is gonna want to see sometimes they want to see it swoop down a little bit further I'm gonna do it kind of away from the face so I'm getting an idea here based on what everyone seems to be talking about in the chat room what's that everyone is asking for more braiding so I'm thinking we might need to do a video where we all get in there with our braids and do braids oh I love braids we'll get Matt to do his fish tail that he loves I will do the fad braid what's the fad braid um he has no hair so I'm not braiding okay so we can yeah let's do a video and we'll put together um just simple braids that can help because I mean like Ray is doing the rope braid right now but that's just because that's what she wants for this particular look oh yeah you could do a french braid um I love braids and upstiles because they're great foundations and you can lock them in there super easy and I know people get so nervous about braids but it's one of those things you don't have to know every single one if you know a couple of simple braids and you know how you can tweak it to make it look like a different braid than the one you just created then you're going to be totally fine so I think that's something that would be good for us to make a video on even if we just did three or four different braids and just showed ways to tweak them so that people feel a little bit more comfortable because I know for years when someone sat down they pull out a picture of a formal style on prom day or wedding day as soon as I saw a braid in there I'm like hmm we can do most of this but let's just skip the braid so what I just did is I lightly teased the front area because of course this mannequin's hair is growing straight down yeah Dray is fighting the I said it last night and it's really set it's really set forward whoops but that's a thing and so you can tease it and kind of manipulate it that way by back combing it like you're doing and you know that'll bring it up it's a mannequin so it's fine and we have it's fine it's fine it looks a lot better on claudia when I did this yeah Dray somebody just asked a pretty good question what would you change if the girl sitting down had bangs um what I would change or how would you approach that to still create this look I would do more of a nice little sweeping motion with the bangs like straight across bangs or like a soft like I think if they're straight across then she's gonna wear them straight across but if she has an angled bang then you would just you would put the bangs away that they are I believe and then you would take out of the temple area and do your rope braid to bring it back but leave the the bang fringe area the way it is maybe give it a little volume or whatever in my opinion yeah it depends on how they wear them yeah yeah I will just a second and everyone is loving your hair color Dray oh thanks I'm loving it too so I just kind of pinned that side down as I'm working it around to the other side and if you had somebody who had like super long hair you could kind of wrap this all the way around the bob that's what I think has been really great with the trend the past few years now that people have kind of gotten away from the super super tight slick every single crispy curl in place not a single hair out of place kind of formal styling it takes away what makes it so scary so more people are getting into formal styling because when somebody shows me a picture of something that's a little less you know perfect and sculpted and a little bit more natural feeling a little more organic of an up style then I know it definitely puts me at ease a little bit because it offers us a little bit more play and freedom to have fun with what we do and I always like to remind people when they come in with a picture unless it's a picture of their hair or you can kind of get away with saying hey we can do something similar what is it that you're liking about this style because there's no way of recreating an identical style on somebody who just brings in a picture off of the internet just out of curiosity are you using more bobby pins or hair pins with this so at this point because I'm trying to just I just want to get this little bubble of a hair I'm just going to use a hair pin to kind of lightly finish that off what's the difference for you like when and why um I like the hair pins when I'm doing softer more detail work because it's kind of just setting it where you need it to be whereas the bobby pin is going to be a little bit more secure it's going to tighten it up and really make sure that it's locked in there sweet so when you're looking for the areas where you want it to be still a little bit more dainty you want it to look like it's just floating there that's when I go in with a hairpin and how do you how are you opening the bobby pins as you go in um you just open them with both hands and I just use a little bit I use my finger to kind of open it up to put it on to the end of the hair that I'm working just to kind of get the bottom in there okay and then I just kind of slide it in there and making sure that the flat end is against the head instead of the ripple end all right then you can kind of just look around see where you want to secure things but what's great about this is it's not going anywhere it's not going to move it's not going to fall down um so then there's two ways to finish this off I'm going to finish it off with a little bit of the glow and that's just going to give a nice shine all over and then to lock that shine in there I'm going to use the maximum hold hairspray this is when you want to use a stronger hold just so that everything remains where it needs to be you're not moving it in anymore you do usually like to check with the person before you start going with the maximum hold because once it's in there it's not going and quick side note for the people that are saying they're still a little bit newer to formal styling the reason she's using the comb and the tail of the comb as she's spraying is because at this point your hands are covered in so much stuff one of the worst things on earth is to be just about done and then you use your hand to go smooth out some hair and completely destroy all the work you just did by your hand sticking to it also one thing you do want to make sure because I learned this from brian is you do not want to use a painted chopstick with hairspray because the um it will melt the paint and then you will put it in your client's hair yeah that happened all right so that's our little look for today do we have any more questions somebody asked what what do we do with the heads afterwards there's different types of mannequins so this is one of the pivot point long hair mannequins so this one you just keep it for long hair so it there are a little bit more expensive so you don't want to cut them into bobs like we would normally be in our braid video right so we reuse it we can wash it and reuse it it's all human hair and then you know the other mannequins that are a little bit on the cheaper side that's the ones you cut in color but this one has really long hair um and so we can keep reusing it for these type of things okay yeah so dad says because he's not mic'd that somebody use it as a flower pot but i think um there's a lot of different ways to reuse it but we're actually pivot points coming out with a new type of mannequin where you purchase the head and then the hair snaps on we're actually going to be getting those oh really soon yeah you lock on the hair and you can tighten it so you can have all different types of hair and all you have to do is replace the hair part and so it kind of cuts down on the waist of it's like whatever your hairstylist wants just to be able to take their hair off yeah it's called the snap cap so that's awesome we'll be getting that soon and and trying it out but yeah jerry i think you did a great job thanks and everybody else seems pretty as well so all right um any final thoughts nope nope no more final thoughts all right so