Work Experience at Your Hair and Hair Ideas magazines

So, this is where I have been for the past week and the reason why I haven't blogged in a while. I started a weeks work experience placement at Your Hair magazine on Monday and after working a full day and then having to travel home, I just couldn't be bothered to get on the laptop and start writing! At least I'm being honest here, I have barely been on the laptop all week which is quite a record!

The placement was actually at Your Hair magazine but the team work on a total of three magazines between six of them so I also helped out on Hair Ideas as well! I can't believe that such a small team manage to create content for three different hair magazines every month, when I've been to magazines that have huge teams just for one mag.

In my first morning at the magazine, I was given more to do than most of the other placements I've been at. I was given four celebrity images and asked to write a step by step guide on how to re-create the celeb's hairstyles. Now, I've never been to a specialist magazine before and I'm not too hot on hairstyles but I managed to pull it off and wrote the guides quite easily.

The girl who was mentoring me for the week was quite impressed with what I wrote and I was trusted to upload the content onto their website, so I'm pretty pleased about that!

For the rest of the week I did a lot of celebrity image sourcing, in particular images of Blake Lively for a 'Style Icon' piece, images of celebs with 'mid-length' hairstyles and a 'celeb vs' piece featuring messy vs neat hairstyles. It doesn't sound like much but it takes quite a long time to get just the right image, especially as the celebs had to be looking at the camera and looking their best.

And as if that wasn't enough I had to research an Organic hair product feature and source sample images of the products from a range of PRs as well as generally searching for great celeb hairstyles that can be used in a back catalogue.

I managed to complete all of the tasks given to me and I think the magazine will end up using a lot of the images that I sourced. I've also been assured that the images I sourced and clues I wrote for a 'Guess the Celeb' feature is going to be printed in the next issue!

I'm saving the best until last now and revealing that I shall be in Your Hair magazine! On Monday I was asked if I would be willing to take part in a 'Reader' make-over feature as one of their models had pulled out. I was a bit sceptical at first because I HATE having my photograph taken and I knew I'd have to pull some dodgy poses and fake smiles but I was told by Vince and my family that I should definitely do it. So I went ahead with it yesterday and got a free haircut and colour by the people from SanRizz, my make-up done and photos taken for the January issue of the magazine.

I was quite nervous but soon felt more comfortable when I had a lovely new haircut. It's not too much of a different style, just a bit shorter with more volume and red/chocolatey colours. I had my make-up done which of course, for a photoshoot was a bit OTT. I wasn't keen on the blue/black eyeshadow that I was given as I felt a bit of a clown but I went along with it and was first up to have my photographs taken.

It was SO embarrasing as I was made to pose with everyone watching me and the photographer kept wanting me to show my teeth, which if you know me, you'll know I can't STAND doing. So I'm a bit worried about how the pictures are going to look but at least it's all over and done with now! The theme was 'Girls Night Out' along with two other readers. We had solo shots taken first and then a group shot which was luckily over very weekly. It was a great experience from a Journalist point of view as I got to see how it all worked and it's a great experience personally as it gave me a little confidence boost and it's something I'll probably never do again in my life. I will have to keep my eye out for the piece in the magazine and will show you all when it's printed! In the mean-time, here's some shots of my new hair and the top that I wore for the shoot which I brought after seeing Zoe from The London Lipgloss wearing the Yellow version! Love it! (I always seem to take photos of myself with no make-up on, sorry about that!)

I had a great time this week and really felt like I contributed a lot to the magazines. The team were really friendly and urged me to keep in contact. They also advised me to contact Perfect Wedding magazine, of which they share an office, for some more work experience! I'm gutted it's finished so quickly but they were lovely enough to give me a goody bag at the end of it!

Blogging will now resume as normal and I should have a little giveaway for you on Monday!