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How to Mimic Balayage with the Slice and Smudge Technique by Nicki Bianco
Don't retire those foils just yet! This Slice and Smudge slicing technique can mimic balayage or the lived-in look.
October 16, 2019
Nicki Bianco's Slice & Smudge technique can mimic balayage or the lived-in look. Don't retire those foils just yet!
2 min to read
With the resurgence of the balayage technique and the lived-in look trending high, are slices and weaves a thing of the past? Is it time to retire those foils?
Not so fast, says Nicki Bianco, a colorist out of Huntington, New York, whose recent video transformations shared on her @nickiwildflower Instagram page prove that, even with the soaring popularity of the lived-in effect, there is still a time and a place for slices and foils.
Through strategic root smudging (check out this how-to for details), and variations on placement, section thickness and space between sections, slices are perhaps getting another moment in the sun.
Bianco’s Slice & Smudge technique is designed to save colorists application time, through using traditional slicing methods with a twist on placement and root smudging.
“For a more dimensional look, I leave out more space between foils, and sometimes slice in lowlights,” Bianco says. “For maximum brightness I like to work all the way up horizontally. For a more diffused look, I backcomb my slices.”
Next comes the smudge.
“The smudge is customizable—I can create different looks by personalizing the smudge,” Bianco says. “For a more lived-in look, I drag the smudge down, sometimes I work in different sections and placement to mimic a balayage, by dragging the root down only in certain places. For something less lived-in, I only tap the darker color on the root. Sometimes I work in horizontal sections and don’t smudge at all.”
Bianco teaches classes on her technique and you can get all the info you need to schedules and locations by following her on Instagram.
“When I say we can achieve almost any look with slices, I mean it, and we are able to make a huge impact/transformation in 2-3 hours total instead of 4-6,” Bianco says. “It’s really life-changing for many people.”
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