Practising Look 2 Hair (with hair piece)

After practising this hair design on my model, Natalie, it became apparent that her hair wasn't long enough to create the caged effect from roughly below the nose. Lottie suggested I cut a strip of hair from hair extensions to weave through the plaits to finish the caged effect. 

I took my time and used hair oil to create neat, tight plaits and I am pleased with the majority of them because they look even, slick and precise; however the dutch braid at the back twisted without me noticing, causing a random, messy hole to the scalp. I will need to make sure I am fully concentrating when doing each plait to make sure this doesn't happen again. I noticed there were some fly away hairs on the plaits and on the strips of hair for the cage which made the hair look messy and unprofessional. This concerned me because I used a generous amount of hair oil to smooth these away before plaiting. The hair on the model head is extremely dry and damaged so there are many split ends, whereas my model's hair is very silky and healthy so I don't think I'll have the same problem; however I will use even more product to saturate the hair to make the frizz easier to control. When I gather the strips of hair to create the caged effect the hair becomes messy and sometimes static because all the strips have been resting on each other. This then makes it difficult to make the strips smooth after they are tied together because the hair may bunch up into the plait if it is straightened out too far. To prevent this happening I will put gel through the strips and then ask my model to hold them individually to keep them from getting messy.

I cut a strip of hair the same width as the ones above, tied it to a big needle and wove it through the hair, trying to keep it parallel to the ones above. It looks very unnatural on the model head; however the blonde extensions match my model's hair so will blend in more easily. I was concerned how to secure the fake strips of hair as the hair unraveled when I tied it in a knot. I spoke to Lottie and she showed me a technique to loop the hair in a knot round the plait with a needle to secure it. This may be time consuming so I will have to practice this technique to get as quick and efficient as possible.