Tag: before and after

DIY: Cutting My Own Hair Super Short with Updates

writ­ten 12/29/25, updat­ed 6/8/26

What

DIY hair­cut. I like super short hair

Why

Sav­ing mon­ey and time, get­ting the cut I want not what the hair per­son thinks

Time & Effort

Time: 1–1.5 hours

Effort: Easy-Mod­er­ate

Direc­to­ry

Click to Nav­i­gate!

Materials & Cost

Bought Supplies

Wahl Prof Mag­ic Clip V9000 Cord­ed

The 360 Mir­ror

Alli­ga­tor Hair Clips

Hair Styling Scis­sors

Total

$82.99

$39.99

$5.99

$11.99

$140.96

Owned Supplies

Hair Cut­ting Cape

Comb (clip­pers come with one)

Water Spray Bot­tle

Broom and/or Vac­u­um Clean­er

Process

What fol­lows is the orig­i­nal, very first hair­cut I did myself Decem­ber 2025 where I was real­ly ner­vous. Skip to the bot­tom for Notes and details on my sub­se­quent cuts

Prepping

  • Gath­er sup­plies and clear any rugs or any­thing else in the cut­ting area. Lit­tle hairs will fly! Keep every­thing with­in easy reach
  • Secure the cape
  • Fol­low man­u­fac­tur­er’s instruc­tions on oil­ing the clip­per. The thing I read before­hand said to put one drop on either side of the blades and then back
  • Grab the spray bot­tle and comb, then mist the hair so that it’s mild­ly damp but not sop­ping wet

I could­n’t find a spray bot­tle, so I used a wet comb and that does not work very well

  • Then comb straight so that all the hair lays flat
My hair is at least 2 inch­es too long
  • Know the game­plan. Appar­ent­ly, the rule of thumb for close cuts is to do the sides then the back first. Because I want­ed to keep the top a bit longer, I need­ed to alli­ga­tor clip the hair there out of the way so I could deal with it lat­er

The prob­lem with such large clips is that they get in the way of the clip­per

Cutting!!

  • Start­ing time!! The rec­om­men­da­tion is to use the clip­per guards and to go more con­ser­v­a­tive first. You can take away hair but not put it back.

To start, I used a #4 guard to address the sides. The tech­nique is cut straight into the air and to NOT fol­low the curve of the head just yet.

Deep Breath! LET’S DO THIS!

Right Side

Before
After

Hmm… Did­n’t wet the hair enough, so it was real­ly dif­fi­cult to cut the strands

Left Side

Before
After

Wet it more this time and it was eas­i­er. The only hard part was using my left hand instead of my right

  • Now for the trim­mer! Using the trim­mer and/or the cor­ner edge of the clip­per (no guard), fold the ear and trim around the con­tour

This trim­mer was TERRIBLE. The on/off switch was lit­er­al­ly impos­si­ble to flip and for the num­ber of times you need to do that, it was super obnox­ious and hurt my fin­gers. That’s what hap­pens when I decide to go cheap

left
right

Inter­est­ing­ly, my hair is dif­fer­ent on both sides. In the end, I knew I’d need the help of scis­sors to pol­ish it off

  • Now for the back. I stuck with the #4 guard to take the bulk off. Uti­liz­ing the side mir­rors by turn­ing either left or right to see more (you have to use the mir­ror in the mir­ror effect), I was able to take off the bulk of the length. The straight back, I used a two-hand­ed motion sim­i­lar to that dumb­bell exer­cise
Before
After
  • Now there are those lit­tle strands in the back. I decid­ed to use the trim­mer again. This part was super hard because I could­n’t see any­thing and no amount of phone or mir­ror could help me. In the end, I just used the comb as a straight edge. I knew I’d want anoth­er per­son to help me out lat­er.

They sell these back of head guides that you can secure around your fore­head

  • And for the riski­est part: Fine tun­ing. With the bulk gone, it was time to do detail work. If the length was good for a trim, I would’ve been fine, but I did­n’t want that. I want short­er!

Stu­pid­ly, I went straight from the #4 to a #1 for what­ev­er dumb rea­son. If I was sea­soned, it’d be fine, but I was brand new to this!! So, of course, I made a mis­take.

Whoops. Too much, too fast

  • After laugh­ing ner­vous­ly, I decid­ed to fix it. Slow­ly this time. I went from a #3, to a #2, then a #1. Each guard num­ber I went all over with until I got used to wield­ing the clip­per.

I actu­al­ly was­n’t intend­ing to ever go back to the #1, but I did in the end because it was the only way to get the bot­tom of the back to hug the skin and look more nat­ur­al.

Help­ful: Just because you use a guard does­n’t mean you’re lim­it­ed to it. On the side of the clip­per is a lever that fur­ther con­trols the length. So, using a #3 plus the lever effec­tive­ly gives you #3.1 — 3.9. This allows more con­trol to fine tune and is how I end­ed up fix­ing the hair and feel­ing com­fort­able with the rest of the fine-tun­ing process. It ends up being a tri­al-and-error/prac­tice thing.

  • After fix­ing every­thing, I felt much bet­ter and things were look­ing good as a whole. Now for the mid-tier! I swapped to the #6 to do the curve of my head, then the #4, and even­tu­al­ly #3 (only a lit­tle)
  • For the oth­er side of my head, I removed the clips, combed, then added the clips the oth­er way this time. Time to cut!
Before
After
  • More fine tun­ing all the way around. This is where I final­ly fig­ured out how to prop­er­ly use the tri-fold mir­ror.

The female head has a much more pro­nounced dip/roundness in the back than a typ­i­cal male head, so I had to take that into account

Hmm. I missed some on the right side
  • Hap­py with the sides and back, nor­mal­ly, this is where Hair Scis­sors come into play. Alas, I did NOT have any. I also knew bet­ter than to use reg­u­lar scis­sors or the clip­pers. I would have thinned and lay­ered the top using a 2‑finger hold and cut method, then fine-tuned the con­tours of the ears.

And DONE!

Go clean up and take a show­er!

Before and After Pictures

Notes:

1st Cut — 12/27/25

Very free­ing and so much eas­i­er than I thought it would be! A few hic­cups in the learn­ing process, but over­all, I can see myself doing this for years to come. The tri-fold mir­ror was instru­men­tal in all of this! I would high­ly rec­om­mend it! I’m already imag­in­ing oth­er styles I can try in the future! It’s nice to not only save mon­ey, but do this at my own leisure, in my own house!

  • I need­ed some­one else’s help for the scis­sor-work and con­tour­ing of the back and ears, so I have yet to try that myself. Should­n’t be too hard. I’ll update when­ev­er I do that in the future.
  • While the longer top style-wise was­n’t too bad look­ing, I can’t staaaaand hair in my face, so it just got annoy­ing
  • If using the large hair clips, make sure to push them way up high or they’ll get in the way of the clip­per
  • Def­i­nite­ly use a spray bot­tle
  • I did­n’t real­ize the back of my head is so bumpy. If the pic­tures look like I chopped to much in some places, it’s actu­al­ly because of my head struc­ture

2nd Cut — 2/21/2026

Dura­tion: 10:30am — 11:14am (45 min­utes)

Cut in the kitchen this time which was much bet­ter and brighter than the bath­room. Messed up AGAIN in the same spot because I for­got to return the clip­per lever to the low­est lev­el which means that, yet again, I need­ed to use the #1 guard to smooth it out. It went much faster than the first time because I not only felt more com­fort­able as a whole, but I prop­er­ly uti­lized the 360 Mir­ror. Vac­u­um clean­er is much eas­i­er than broom and dust­pan. Short­er to start this time around and short­er to end with. Also did not have scis­sors and had help for the final touch­es yet again.

LEFT: Pre-cut; CENTER: Messed up in the low­er cor­ner, so had to cut on guard #1 to smooth it out; RIGHT: Post-cut (you can see how the top is very long)

3rd Cut — 4/12/2026

Dura­tion: 11:21am — 12:26pm (1 hour 5 min­utes)

Hair was short­er to start with, but longer to end with than pre­vi­ous iter­a­tions (most­ly because I did­n’t mess up as bad­ly). This time employed scis­sors to help, so it took a bit longer to com­plete, but the detail work is bet­ter. Still messed up when try­ing to use the comb + clip­per method to detail towards the top. Looks bad, but not as bad as the bot­tom of the hair­line. It’s real­ly nice to be able to cut when­ev­er I feel like on my own. This time, I’m going to add some more notes to the process now that it’s more stream­lined.

  • Wet and comb through­out the process
  • Pin hair as desired
  • Choose a Guard - Used #3 with the clip­per lev­el on the short­est set­ting
  • Clip the sides and the back using the 360 mir­ror — Use the mid­dle to start, then the mir­ror-in-the-mir­ror images (i.e. When cut­ting the right side, look to the left; When cut­ting the left side, look to the right). Use an under­hand hold and cut upwards.
Under­hand hold for the back
Mir­ror-in-mir­ror image with scis­sors
  • Ear and Back Detail — Wet, comb, then use scis­sors and/or mini clip­pers. BE CAREFUL!! This is the eas­i­est place to mess up!
  • Short­en and Fade as desired. Used #2 guard ON THE LONGEST CLIPPER LENGTH first, then at half lever for the mid­dle, and then the short­est on the low­est por­tion of the head. Use a scoop­ing motion with the clip­per to pre­vent sharp edges
  • Detail Time — I removed 2 hair clips and then went in small incre­ments with the clip­per lev­el. Be care­ful if you’re try­ing to use the comb as a guard to help. That’s where I messed up this time… heh… heh… Sigh.
  • Scis­sor Work — First time using scis­sors. I read some­where that the best way to cut bangs is to use the comb as a guide and do ver­ti­cal snips to make it look more nat­ur­al. I’m not going for bangs here, but I fig­ured it worked sim­i­lar­ly?
  • Final Touch­es — Look all around for even­ness. I ran the guard­ed clip­per around again to make sure all the areas were cut and found that I’d missed the upper back cor­ners near the top of my head

Com­plete!

Pre-cut
Post-cut

4th Cut — 6/7/2026

Dura­tion: 12:05 — 12:52pm (47 min­utes total)

I was amazed at how long my hair got in such a short time, but look­ing back, this is actu­al­ly a longer inter­val than usu­al. Appar­ent­ly, with hair this short, I need to cut it every 1.5 months. This was clos­er to 2 months. Used the notes from the last appt to help and, over­all, I felt extreme­ly con­fi­dent now that I’ve done it sev­er­al times. I think next time I’ll just start with the #2 guard… Using #3 first helps cut down on bulk so it does­n’t over­whelm the clip­per, but I’ll try to start with it next time. This ses­sion, I did­n’t even both­er using the mini clip­per at all and just used the scis­sors. It is high­ly rec­om­mend­ed and I took it away from the orig­i­nal post. It’s safer, more detailed, and I even test­ed out lay­er­ing a lit­tle. Most­ly hap­py. Still need­ed help to touch up lat­er because the hairs around the ears are too hard to get, that back and top of my head are hard to reach, and espe­cial­ly because I’m right-hand­ed. A lit­tle ner­vous about lay­er­ing. Will do more of it next time. Much short­er time dura­tion than last time! Because the detail work is much bet­ter, I was very hap­py with the out­come and with­out major mis­takes, I don’t have to wear a hat when I go out!

Left: Before; Right: After (I can see lit­tle fly aways in the very top back, but the top has much less bulk than pri­or ses­sions)

Poison Ivy, Poison Oak, Poison Sumac

writ­ten 6/1/2024, updat­ed 6/17/2024

Family Anacardiaceae

The Cashew/Sumac Fam­i­ly: Decid­u­ous trees and shrubs that pro­duce an oily or milky sap that can be high­ly poi­so­nous. Resin canals that exist in stems, leaves, and roots are found in all plants in the fam­i­ly. Their fruits are called dru­pes (stone fruit) where the fleshy part of the fruit sur­rounds a sin­gle shell which hous­es a seed

Com­mon Plants: Anac­ardi­um occi­den­tale (Cashew); Mangifera indi­ca (Man­go); Pista­cia vera (Pis­ta­chio); gen Cot­i­nus (Smoke Tree); gen Rhus (Sumac); gen Tox­i­co­den­dron (Lac­quer Tree, Poi­son Ivy, Poi­son Oak, Poi­son Sumac)

Note: The Tox­i­co­den­dron genus used to be lumped under Rhus. Tox­i­co — den­dron means tox­ic — tree.

Poison Ivy (Toxicodendron Radicans)

Native to most of the USA and south­ern Cana­da, it can be found in many types of envi­ron­ments from wet to dry, wood­lands, val­leys, clear­ings, road­sides, and back­yards. Poi­son ivy can exist as either a shrub (trail­ing, erect, or bushy) or a woody climb­ing vine with aer­i­al roots. It exhibits woody under­ground rhi­zomes. All aspects of the plant are poi­so­nous, con­tain­ing the per­sis­tent oily irri­tant, urush­i­ol. It is said that the vine ver­sion can cause 10–100 worse symp­toms than the shrub vari­ety

Size: 6 ft shrub or 62–150 ft climb­ing vine

Loca­tion: Var­i­ous areas from wet to dry, wood­land to ditch­es to back­yards

Uses: Food and shel­ter to ani­mals, birds, and insects

Iden­ti­fi­ca­tion: Leaflets of 3 where the mid­dle leaflet is longer than the oth­er 2. Leaves can be smooth, ser­rat­ed, or lobed. It has gray, red­dish stems, and glossy green leaves that turn vibrant red­dish yel­low in autumn.

Flow­ers and Fruit: Flow­ers are many and clus­tered; Fruit look like waxy, green­ish-white berries

Con­trol: Do NOT burn. Ful­ly cov­er the skin, pro­tect face and eyes, wear a hat. Remove any gear and cloth­ing that come into con­tact with the plant. Cut and remove roots of plant. Do NOT put in com­post pile. Rather, place in trash bag. Use of her­bi­cides on exposed roots/stumps.

Note how the mid­dle leaf is set out longer than the oth­er 2 leaves. This is char­ac­ter­is­tic of Poi­son Ivy

Here you can see the Poi­son Ivy inter­spersed amongst oth­er plants and vines. The red are Poi­son Ivy, the pur­ple is Eng­lish Ivy, and the blue are Vir­ginia Creep­er

There’s a mas­sive Poi­son Ivy prob­lem at this house. Can you spot it amongst all the oth­er plants here?

The vine vari­ety

Poison Oak (Toxicodendron pubescens)

Source same as below

Low-grow­ing shrub native to Cen­tral and East­ern USA, it is found in dry, sandy loca­tions in wood­lands and thick­ets. The word pubes­cens is latin for “cov­ered in hair,” and the plant is named such owing to the fine hairs on stems and leaves. The plant roots are rhi­zomes and often form dense colonies. Yel­low­ish-green flow­ers appear in the spring­time, result­ing in green-tan­nish white dru­pes (fruit) by late spring. All aspects of the plant are poi­so­nous, con­tain­ing the per­sis­tent oily irri­tant, urush­i­ol.

Size: 2–4 ft shrub on aver­age, can be as tall as 10ft

Loca­tion: Pre­fer dry, sun­ny areas. Wood­lands, thick­ets.

Uses: Food and shel­ter to ani­mals, birds, and insects

Iden­ti­fi­ca­tion: Alter­nat­ing green, lobed leaflets of 3 that crowd towards the end of the stem. The leaves look sim­i­lar to Oak tree leaves. Often, the mid­dle leaf is ful­ly lobed while the oth­er 2 are irreg­u­lar­ly lobed. Fine hairs cov­er the both the under­sides and upper parts of leaves as well as the stems. Tend to grow in clump­ing colonies. Leaves turn vibrant red­dish yel­low in autumn.

Flow­ers and Fruit: Flow­ers are hang­ing yel­low-green pan­i­cles (like rice or oats), and fruit are clus­ters of hairy green or tan­nish-white dru­pes that appear waxy

Con­trol: Do NOT burn. Ful­ly cov­er the skin, pro­tect face and eyes, wear a hat. Remove any gear and cloth­ing that come into con­tact with the plant. Cut and remove roots of plant. Do NOT put in com­post pile. Rather, place in trash bag. Use of her­bi­cides on exposed roots/stumps.

SOURCE. You can see how they grow in clumps. Notice how the 2 leaves are more irreg­u­lar­ly lobed than the mid­dle leaf which, like poi­son ivy is set out a lit­tle

Poison Sumac (Toxicodendron vernix)

Decid­u­ous small tree or shrub, it is native to east­ern and cen­tral-east­ern USA, and east­ern Cana­da. There are many look-alike plants. Typ­i­cal­ly, Poi­son Sumac will not grow in clumps and since it prefers wet areas, will not be found in dry loca­tions, nor will it be com­mon­ly found along road­sides and fields. While it is the least like­ly of the big 3 to be exposed to, effects of the urush­i­ol from Poi­son Sumac tend to be more severe than its Poi­son Oak and Ivy rel­a­tives.

Size: 5–25 ft tree with sparse, open form, or erect shrub

Loca­tion: Pre­fer marshy, bog­gy, wet loca­tions like river­side thick­ets, acidic soil, and full to part sun

Uses: Food and shel­ter to ani­mals, birds, and insects

Iden­ti­fi­ca­tion: Long, smooth, paired leaflets of 7–13, with a sin­gle leaflet at the end. Stems are red­dish, bark is smooth, gray-brown in col­or, and con­tain lenticels (small holes or lines on trunks that facil­i­tate gas exchange). Leaves turn red­dish yel­low in the autumn. Black sap

Flow­ers and Fruit: Green­ish-yel­low, 5‑petal flow­ers hang­ing in pan­i­cles (think rice and oats). Fruits are yel­low­ish-white dru­pes that hang loose­ly down­wards in clus­ters

Con­trol: Do NOT burn. Ful­ly cov­er the skin, pro­tect face and eyes, wear a hat. Remove any gear and cloth­ing that come into con­tact with the plant. Cut and remove roots of plant. Do NOT put in com­post pile. Rather, place in trash bag. Use of her­bi­cides on exposed roots/stumps.

SOURCE

Red­dish stem, leaflets end­ing in a sin­gle leaflet, gray­ish brown bark

Urushiol

Urush­i­ol is an ole­o­resin (oil + resin) found in the sap of plants in the fam­i­ly Anac­ar­diaceae. It has potent aller­genic prop­er­ties that affect most humans on con­tact, caus­ing urush­i­ol-induced con­tact der­mati­tis. The chem­i­cal is per­sis­tent and can last for months on cloth­ing and gear unless cleaned thor­ough­ly with soap + water or rub­bing alco­hol.

Its irri­tat­ing effects are only applic­a­ble to humans and a few pri­mates. Oth­er ani­mals like dogs, cats, deer, birds, etc. are not affect­ed. In fact, birds, deer, cat­tle, goats, and oth­er wildlife ben­e­fit and feed from the plants.

Sci­en­cy Stuff

ChemSpider 2D Image | Urushiol I | C21H36O2

Mol­e­c­u­lar For­mu­la: C21H36O2

Mol­e­c­u­lar Weight: 1584.4 g/mol

Aver­age Mass: 320.509 Da

Monoiso­topic Mass: 320.271515 Da

Source & Source

Toxicohedron Control — Before and After

Vine­gar Solu­tion

Pros: Nat­ur­al ingre­di­ents, no harsh chem­i­cals

Cons: Strong vine­gar smell, eas­i­ly washed off with water/rain, must use strong enough vine­gar con­cen­tra­tion, for best results use when sun­ny and hot, not sub­stan­tive and needs reap­pli­ca­tion

Reg­u­lar white vine­gar is only 5% acetic acid (and 95% water). You’re def­i­nite­ly going to want a high­er con­cen­tra­tion for this which can be found eas­i­ly in hard­ware stores up to 30% (usu­al­ly in the clean­ing and/or gar­den sec­tions), but you can get them even high­er online. I end­ed up buy­ing the 45% con­cen­trat­ed solu­tion (there’s even 75% or 95%). The gen­er­al for­mu­la is:

1 gal­lon Vine­gar (read the label on the con­cen­trat­ed ones for dilu­tion ratio)

1 Tbsp Dish­soap

1 cup Salt

Get your­self a nice pump sprayer like the one I use (can be any brand, I just hap­pened to have this)

You can also buy pre-mixed weed killer solu­tions like this one that I tried for reg­u­lar weeds. Notice that it’s 20% vine­gar which I found to be good for most weeds, but not enough for some tougher ones like crab grass.

Results of Vine­gar

1 week apart

2nd treat­ment

3rd treat­ment

RoundUp and sim­i­lar prod­ucts

Pros: Strong, sub­stan­tive, 30-minute rain ready

Cons: Envi­ron­men­tal per­sis­tence and down­stream effects, pos­si­ble health impli­ca­tions

I real­ly dis­like using RoundUp, but I real­ly don’t want to mess with Poi­son Ivy espe­cial­ly giv­en my ter­ri­ble reac­tion to it. Ever since the issue with gly­cophos­phates and can­cer, RoundUp has changed their for­mu­la­tions away from gly­cophos­phates. Also, RoundUp does­n’t care if it rains (30 minute rain ready) or if it’s sun­ny out­side. It’s like­ly more sub­stan­tive than vine­gar, too. Just make sure you use eye pro­tec­tion and a mask

Active ingre­di­ents:

Tri­clopyr, tri­ethy­lamine salt (0.122%) — selec­tive her­bi­cide for broadleaf and woody plants

Flu­az­i­fop-P-butyl (0.097%) — selec­tive post-emer­gent her­bi­cide

Diquat dibro­mide (0.073%) — non-selec­tive algi­cide defo­liant, dessi­cant, and her­bi­cide

I chose the RoundUp specif­i­cal­ly for poi­son ivy. The built-in wand is rather sub­par. If you have one, it’s bet­ter to dump it into a pump sprayer and do it that way

Results of RoundUp

I was ini­tial­ly SHOCKED by how poor­ly RoundUp did, but now, look­ing at the image com­pare, I guess it did kind of work on spe­cif­ic plants. Did­n’t even touch the Eng­lish Ivy, but you can see wilt­ing and dry­ing of the actu­al poi­son ivy. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, they’re still there, just wilt­ed, so per­haps more treat­ments are in order.

Before

After

I drenched the holy heck out of this plant with the RoundUp. It did not work as well as I thought it would

Fun Facts

The name urush­i­ol comes from the Japan­ese name for the lac­quer tree, urushi.

In 2016 an inter­na­tion­al group of sci­en­tists dis­cov­ered that a mol­e­cule found abun­dant­ly in human skin, CD1a, is respon­si­ble for the reac­tion of humans to urush­i­ol con­tact. CD1a is expressed by Langer­hans cells in the skin. Langer­hans cells are part of the immune sys­tem, and the CD1a mol­e­cule it pro­duces acts by pre­sent­ing lipid anti­gens to T‑cells. Since urush­i­ol is an ole­o­resin, the now acti­vat­ed T‑cell releas­es cytokines, caus­ing both inflam­ma­tion and itch­i­ness. Inter­leukin-33 was iso­lat­ed as a key cytokine in mouse stud­ies, along with its recep­tor ST2 on the small to medi­um dor­sal root gan­glion neu­rons. By block­ing the inter­leukin-33/ST2 (IL-33/ST2) sig­nal­ing path­way, relief from the hor­ri­ble itch­i­ness of urush­i­ol can be attained. Inter­est­ing­ly, IL-33 is also asso­ci­at­ed with eczema/atopic der­mati­tis and asth­ma. With this infor­ma­tion, a vac­cine is cur­rent­ly in the works to help desen­si­tize the body to urush­i­ol’s potent irri­tat­ing effects.

Urush­i­ol is found in some mem­bers of the Anac­ar­diaceae fam­i­ly includ­ing poi­son ivy, oak, and sumac, as well as man­go skins, cashews, and pis­ta­chios

Sources

NC State Exten­sion

UF IFAS Exten­sion

Wikipedia

Amer­i­can Acad­e­my of Der­ma­tol­ogy Asso­ci­a­tion

Mary­land Bio­di­ver­si­ty