First things first: Make sure to evenly part the hair straight down the middle ensuring that your cut will be even on both sides. The best way to do this is with a pointed comb. When parting the hair, make sure to go all the way back to the bottom of your hairline separating every piece of hair onto one side or the other.

After your hair is separated down the middle, section off the hair in a top and bottom layer. Pull out your pointed comb to make sure that the hair is sharply separated. This bottom layer is the area where you'll start to trim the hair.

Now begins the nerve-wracking part. Try your best to keep a steady hand as you carry out the next step. "If you're looking to just trim dead ends, hold the hair between your pointer and middle finger, and slide it down to the bottom where the dead ends start," notes Nogueira. At this point, you can grab your scissors and begin cutting straight across. Nogueira recommends starting by trimming just a small length, as you can always cut more if needed -- but there's no going back if you remove too much.

Sidenote: You'll get the best results using a pair of professional hair-cutting shears. But then again, paper-cutting shears work in a pinch.

When it comes time to trim the back of your hair, things get a bit more complicated. For this step, you'll want to grab a section of hair again between your pointer and middle finger, and slide it down to the same length where you made the cut on the front of your hair. "Bring the hair to its side and cut straight up so that the hair will make a straight line when you let go of it and it returns to the back of your head," advises Nogueira.

Now that you've parted with most of your dead ends, you can try your hand at a more adding layers to the top portion of your hair. Trimming the layers of your hair is not much harder, but you need to use a different technique to maintain the texture of the hair. At this point, you can let down the top section of your hair. "Use the two fingers to grab a section of the top layer of hair and again, slide it down to the ends," Nogueira says. "When cutting the ends of this layer, do not cut straight across like you did on the bottoms." It's important that you're cutting parallel to the direction of the hair with the point of the scissors. This step takes a bit longer than a simple straight-across cut, but makes the layers look more natural and textured.