Tutorial for Swing Dance Hair! (French twist)

     So, tonight, my best friend, Jasmine, & I are attending a swing dance place called "The Duce". Neither of us have personally been there before, but one of my other friends is a regular, and she highly recommends going there. I don't know about Jasmine, but I am super de-duper stoked! We are going full out with our outfits (Possibly make-up, including red lipstick. Blech) AND hair! I'll be doing finger waves on her naturally curly, pixie cut hair! Finger waves are super hard, much less hard for me to teach, but here is a tutorial with both pictures & videos. I hope you learn something!
Tools: Curling iron, brush, teasing brush, tail comb (I ended up not using it), hairspray, heat protection, hairpins, bobby pins, duckbill clips.

Left to Right: Hairpin, bobby pin, & duckbill clip. Just for a reference :)

Step 1: Arm your hair with heat protection! Now, I have not experimented with different heat protections, but I have been using Rusk Thermal Protection. I have used it every time I curled or straightened my hair since October (?) & look how much I have! You really don't have to use much, and I have oodles of hair!

Step 2: Curl your hair in alternating directions. You can do this however you want, but I like alternating the curl direction layer by layer. Like this:

The direction of the hair in the left picture is counterclockwise, going towards the left shoulder, etc. The next layer, shown on the right, is clockwise, going towards the right shoulder. Make sense?

Oh, in case you wanted to know, this is how I curl the hair. Of course, you can do whatever you want. :) 

 Here is the finished product:

Step 3: Sectioning off the hair on the very top, tease the hair in vertical sections. Depending on how much hair you have, how much volume you want, etc. take bigger or smaller sections. Since I have a lot of hair, and I want a good amount of volume, I teased medium-sized sections. *I took the whole section in front of the ears and teased the whole thing from behind*

Step 4: Smooth the hair on one side by loosely brushing the hair with a hairbrush. I would not recommend using brushes with plastic bristles; boar and/or nylon would work better. Hairspray to tame the fuzz.

Step 5: Using bobby pins, pin the hair going straight up, making sure you get ALL of the hair. this will make it easier to do the twist part. As you can see, it is not perfectly straight. *If you smoothed the hair to the left, make sure to put the bobby pins off-center to the left. It just works better this way trust me :) *

Step 6: Smooth the hair on the other side. If you have the bobby pins in well, they should not fall out. Plus. only brush to smooth, not remove the tangles! Hairspray.

Step 7: Roll the hair up! Step 8: Cross the bobby pins with hair pins! Put it in pointing to the head, then turn the hair pin towards the bobby pin. Trust me, it really secures the hair, especially ridiculously thick hair like mine! 

Step 9: Do the bangs! Now, you can totally do whatever you want! Braid them, leave them be, poof them back, the choice is yours! I wanted to add a more vintage feel to the style, so I twisted my bangs back, pinned them, then with the remaining hair, I twisted it to the point it was raveling around itself, and pinned/hair-sprayed that. :)

Step 10: "But Mary, what about the rest of the hair?" Again, you may do whatever your heart desires! I put the remaining hair in a loose ponytail right above the twist, teased tiny sections, and placed them around. Oh, to hide that "line" between the twist part and the top part, I left out some hair and pulled them back between the bun and the twist. 

Finished Product!

I accessorized with a feather! Isn't it cute???

Stay tuned!!!