 Hold the hair so that you can see this little fold that happens right here. Hi everybody, my name is Danielle Downs. I'm here representing Free Salon Education and today we're going to go over how to do a silk press safely, what products I like to use, and also what tools and techniques I like to use. So usually I start off with my Hydramus Blowout Spray. So I'm adding moisture into the hair. There's already a leaving conditioner and then I finish off with my super skinny serum. So that way I'm sealing in all of the good properties of the other products that I'm using and that's when it's okay to use a silicone. All right, so let's get started. So as I said, she already has a leaving conditioner in her hair, which is the conditioner. So I put that in after my cleansing routine, which because my mom had dealt with possibly COVID, she had some fallout a couple of months ago. So we were talking about telogen effluvium a couple of months ago. She experienced that. So for that, I went with the Palmichel Tea Tree scalp care. So that way this helps to pretty much stop that telogen phase and prolong the antigen phase, which is your growth phase. Now I'm going to use my Hydramus Blowout Spray. I like to spray that in there pretty generously, lifting the hair up, making sure I'm getting in between. Okay, then I do about three pumps of the super skinny serum for her and for anybody else, I always say start off a little bit light, maybe with one or two pumps, emulsify that in your hands really well, even in between. So that way as your finger combing through the hair, you're getting that evenly distributed. So usually what I like to do is I start underneath because if you have too much product on your hands, it's going to get under here, nobody cares, nobody's going to see it. So I start underneath and I start working my way through with the ends. Those are usually the thirstier parts of the hair. Now I take my paddle brush and then just holding that vertically, I like to go through and I usually like to do what we call a directional wrap. So depending on where you're actually going to be parting the hair, that's where I actually like to part it and mold the hair first. Now it's totally up to you depending on what type of hair that you work with and your comfort level with it, you can section everything off. So for mom, I usually like to just take out her top section and work underneath first, put that out of the way. Now we have two different options. Now some people like to go through, give a little bit of a power dry with a comb attachment. The only thing with that is that the hair doesn't get perfectly straight, which is what you really want when it comes to your silk press. So as you can see, it really doesn't have like a whole lot of life to it, it's not doing too much and it's also not very straight. You can still see a lot of frizz through there. So for me, I always like to go through with my concentrator with my Dyson. I like to use the narrower one because it really directs the hair with an airflow onto the hair and gives me a little bit more control. So usually you want to get a really good grip on the handle. Some people like to grip it by the actual paddle so that way you can get a really good tension. Me, I just like to hold the handle, get a good grip on it. Now another key thing is I like to press into the hair with the paddle, pull the hair so that you can see this little fold that happens right here. It has a little fold right through the bottom and that's also providing a little bit of tension for the hair and I don't actually have to put the blow dryer right against the hair itself. I'm just using it to direct because my brush is doing all the work and as you saw, I don't start with the hair soaking wet either because again, if we're starting off with soaking wet hair and we're using a higher heat, we're scorching the hair and that usually leaves a little bit more of a heat damage and then you lose your curl pattern and once you lose your curl pattern, it takes a while to kind of perk that up or just grow it out and cut it. Okay so now that I've got the underside of her hair all done and same thing where I'm just going to press that into the scalp, roll the brush until the hair folds and I get that proper tension and then I'm just going to follow through. Okay so now that I'm moving onto the top of her hair, the bang area I had rolled forward and blow dried that way so that I have that nice directional memory going. Now for the top section, I actually take that horizontally and I'm taking that down to the side because that's where her hair is going to live. I want to already give it that memory but instead of bringing the hair down and like directing it basically at like 45 I guess, I'm going to bring that straight up because now I want to create a little bit of volume through the hair. So that is where I'm still going to roll but now I'm going to angle my nozzle upwards because we don't want to go right to the brush because that's actually going to push the air flow right onto the scalp and possibly burn and cause discomfort. So I like to angle my brush upwards. I'm still maintaining that same level of tension but now I'm creating volume by bringing that straight up off of the base. Now if it was someone that wanted to have a little flatter result, not have all of that volume, then yes, I would take that and direct that straight down so that it's not creating any volume right at the brush. Okay so I like to go through and spray a good amount of my Awapui Shine Spray, get that mist going around so that everybody, okay so then shake up my NeuroProtect. So these are my dry aspects and flat ironing heat protection products. I am always conscientious about how much oil I'm putting in the hair because we don't want to scorch the hair and just like I did before I want to make sure that I am going through brushing my product so that it's evenly distributed. That way I don't have one section that's perfectly glossy and silky and then another section that's like done it and run. And now I switch over to my Neuro Iron for my mom's hair especially because she was experiencing that hair loss. I know looks like she has a lot of hair right now but there's actually about like 30-40% less density than she normally has. So because of experiencing that hair loss and I want to make sure that the integrity of the hair stays the same because she does like to wear it curly when she goes dancing sometimes, I put it on to 380 and that's because again she's a 3B 3C. Straightens a lot easier, doesn't require as much heat. I usually like to make a little diagonal parting right over her ear so that way I can address that little coarser area that I was talking about before. Now if you're a little uncomfortable with your flat iron work then you can take that section in half so that way it's just this tiny little triangle here of hair and it's a little easier to work with. I always work with a heat resistant tail comb or a carbon comb or something. Get a good amount of tension and I like to grab that is that after I comb and get a little tension I just grab right at the root with my fingers to give that a little pull so that I'm already giving that tension and my iron has to do that much less work. So I get that in pretty close on an angle follow with my comb. Now you don't want to clamp your iron really really tight to where you can't see anything in between. You just want a little light cushioning to where the plates are touching but you're not squeezing it with all your might. So as you can see from this little section how the hair really doesn't have any life it's just sticking out whereas down here when I touch it it's now falling it's moving that's why it's called the silk press and that's why there's such a difference between doing the silk press method with the blow-dry and flat iron versus doing a silk press with say a lot of grease which was the method that was used when I was a kid and the hair was a lot heavier.