Grant: Hey, guys! Welcome to another edition of The Cutting Edge Hair Show. I am Grant, you can call me scissor boy, scissor boy snip! So, today we are going to be meeting with my good friend James from Salon Blu. He has some really cool techniques, he is going to be sharing with us on coloring. Some really interesting techniques, I have never seen before and then James is going to be showing us some really cool thinning techniques. Welcome to Salon Blu.

James: We are going to be doing some really fun stuff with coloring and cutting. This is my model Brooke. Kind of like what's happening here and I am not going to make it huge departure, as far as, the cut goes. But I am going to play around with some more texturing techniques, using some of the channeling and thinning shears available from scissorboy.com. What I would really like to do is emphasize fullness in the crown and I am going to use color and texturing techniques to do that.

I also want to really emphasize this loose shaggy perimeter here. The way I am going to emphasize that is by taking panels underneath and I am going to incorporate some lighter colors into these panels to really show and highlight the length of this perimeter here. I want to accentuate the crown here with color as well. I am going to do some -- like a star shaped keyhole of lighter color up here to accentuate that crown and really visually give that a lot more fullness and interest up there.

As far as the cutting and texturing, I am going to try and really build that shape up by removing some of the length and the thickness here, the weight really, it's going to come off. I am going to use a variety of channeling and thinning shears. Brooke is somebody, I would really be hesitant to use a razor on because of the very fine hair texture. I feel like the razor will degrade that hair shaft, a little more than I really want to on this texture. So, we are going to use a high-lift tint that is designed to lighten over previously colored hair.

So, the old school approach to this is that you always have to bleach and tone once the hair is colored. There are several new products out now by different manufacturers that will lighten the hair without using bleach. So, you can break up that synthetic pigment with some of these new high-lift tint. I always mix a little bit of developer with these cream colors. Because it just seems to be easier to blend to get them started that way.

I am going to create a little star shaped section of lighter hair here. And I am going to do it with an unorthodox tool, my chopstick that I stole from my favorite old Sushi Bar, sorry. Anyway, we are going to draw this star shape section on here like this and it's really easy, just outlining it with that and then separate the hair. So, it's very easy, just outline the hair you want to get and then just separate it.

What we are going to get is 360 degrees of these little sections, that are going to taper off here. If you are doing spot colors and blocky sections, you maybe getting some really great placements, every once in a while. But what I often see is, a section of hair that goes out very blocky, or it's pretty cool when it's on but then later after the cut is done, I am seeing this very bluntly sectioned spot type colors.

So, we have got this star shaped section separated here, isolated. I am going to split it down the middle, just so it's easier to handle. I am going to go from zone 2 out, then we are going to come back and hit zone 1 later, so that this color will have a chance to catch up.