Short Hair Advice

With strand by strand, some of the locks and shells will lay flatter than the shrinks- and therefore can be placed a little higher on your head. They also will not involve any glue at all. The shrinks do have a little adhesive to them.
You may want to see shrinkies.net or yourhairshop.com to see some of the strand by strand application methods and tutorials.
It is possible to bled short hair with extensions, yes. IT is a litte more difficult than if you were to have longer hair. With strand by strand you will have to add a lot of hair to have natural blending- probably at least 7 +  oz. of hair- so be prepared. I would purchase 8 or 9 just to be certain I had enough, if I were you.  yourhairshop.com has very nice and affordable pre-tipped hair(you will want I-Tips, or shoelace tips NOT nail or U-tips) for using shrinks or locks/rings/shells.'
As for the "all one length' style, you will have to have the extensions cut in and blended by a stylist- someone who knows how to blend extensions hair. It is a little different than working with a normal head of hair. If a stylist is familiar with extensions, he/she will be able to cut them in so you can acheive the style you desire.
If you want all of the hair to be one length, I would purchase hair that it slightly longer than you want as a final result; that way you will be ale to have it cut and blended in to a one-length style without losing the length you want.
HTH- :)

I think we had a talk somewhere about it setting off metal detectors, lol, I think it's not enough to set it off.

I've did microlinks when my hair was really short, it is just hard to blend it all with strand by strand. In retrospect, I should have did all weft installs, because it's much easier to blend. I think micros you can place pretty high, even if some poke out, if they pretty much match your hair color, people probably wont even think twice about it, but the other ones sometimes stand out a little more.

Shrinkies do have some adhesive, and personally, if you have darker hair, it pops out because it looks like you have....yeah...something nasty in your hair (think "there's something about mary" type stuff! )

But you can do it, it will just take more blending!