The next bun was a twist bun which is where the hair is twisted in order to wrap the hair around the ponytail to create a bun. You shouldn't create too much tension and twist too much as you will get a small, tight bun. We were trying to create a looser bun so that we could use finishing pins to create the shape we wanted. Once you have twisted the hair you wrap it around the ponytail in the direction that the hair naturally falls in and then secure it with a bobby pin using a technique where you slide it in away from the hair and then back towards the bun to really secure it in place. Then using finishing pins we can shape the bun to the position that we want it to hold and slide the pins in to create the shape.

The next bun is very similar to the twist bun except instead of twisting you plait instead. I found that this created a more messy look than the twist bun and was easier to hold because of the pins gripping to the plait. Similarly to the twist bun you wrap the plait around the ponytail and secure with a bobby pin using the away and towards slide technique to secure it. Then using finishing pins again you can created the desired shape. I struggled with the securing of the bun initially using the technique where you slide the bobby pin away from the hair and then slide in back under itself to secure it. I found the hair to just slip out and it took a few attempts to get the technique right so that it would hold. To make this look better in the future i need to practice the pin techniques so that my hair in fully secure in the style.

 I had done a lot of french plaits before on myself and some on other people however i have always found them difficult to do. So when Lottie showed us some new techniques as to how to get a better french plait it helped a lot. The first plait on the left had a lot of gaps in it as you can see however the tension and structure of it went well, the plait was quite neat. On the right i used Lottie's technique of taking pieces from the middle and alternating the outside pieces so that those gaps wouldn't occur. It helped with no gaps however for the future i need to work on keeping that tension all the way down and neatening up the sections of the plait to make it look better. Toward the end it also got a bit loose, which is why i need to practice so that i can keep the tension throughout.


The fishtail plait was a lot easier to get to grips with than the french plait as it's not as complicated, just very repetitive. The part that didn't go so well for me was the beginning, i didn't know how to make the top part smooth and even, as you can see in the picture it has almost twisted and it to one side. The only down side to this plait is that because you are just replacing hair on each side all the way down it takes much longer to complete this than a regular plait or a french plait, this could affect timed assessments as it could take up the majority of time.