We Tried Hair Stenciling and This Is What Happened
Colored hair has to be one of my favorite trends of the past five years. Long before the day I went purple, I had dreamed of having a peacock feather dyed into my hair. I knew that was close to impossible since my hair is always moving and no one would ever know what that random colorful blob was, but hey — a girl can dream, right!? Flash forward to the newest trend, hair stenciling, and now my dream can finally come true :)
I brought in three models and we played around with some stencils to figure out tips and tricks for stenciling your own hair. In general (TL;DR), hair stenciling is definitely more wearable on guys and gals who have short or shaved hairstyles. Ladies and gents with long locks — stick with posed Instagram shots only.
Materials:
— colored hair spray
— normal hair spray
— stencils
— hair cape or sheet to protect your clothes
For you long-locked blondes out there, prep your hair by separating it evenly onto either side and using hair spray to hold it in place.
Once the hairspray is dry, start layering the stencils and colorful hairspray. Spray the colorful hairspray about seven to 10 inches away from the stencil. I found this hard to do on myself. You need to hold a stencil completely still to get crisp lines, so hair stenciling is best done when the gang is around ;)
Julia was our shapes gal. We started with the white honeycombs underneath and then layered colorful triangles on top. It’s clear that the deeper colors worked best on Julia’s hair. For the lighter green and yellow, I would recommend putting down a layer of white first, then spray the second color on top.
Julia was happy to be the shapes gal because she loves to “throw shapes” out on the dance floor.
Sean was up next, and I was excited to have shorter hair to work with. Just like Julia, we prepped Sean’s hair with tons of hair spray to hold his curls off to the side.
Since Sean has darker hair, we started with a layer of white hair spray. Once that dried, we went ahead and added chevron stripes in rainbow order.
We loved how this one turned out. This is a great way to show your support for Pride this June.
Caitlin was our last model and gave me a run for my money. We started by prepping her hair with hairspray and then coating it white just like Sean’s. However, spraying it all white was a huge fail. There was just way too much dark hair to really get everything white, and the brighter colors that we tried to layer on top showed up very dark. We ended up brushing all the white out and instead giving her some white poppies. Sorry long-brown-haired girls, this trend works best for lighter hair.
That being said, the subtle white flowers are extremely cute. Grab your gal pals, stencil on a few flowers and get ready to strike a pose for an epic hair stencil photo shoot.
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Photography: Chris Andre