It’s that time again…time to redo Brianna’s hair. I have no idea why I wanted 2 daughters, I mean, can you imagine doing two heads of hair??? I mean, I know it can be done, I have a few friends who have more than one daughter and they manage…but for me, yeah her head is more than enough! I’m not very creative. I lost that somewhere along the way between highschool and college. I used to be very creative, drawing pictures, writing stories and poems…but I’m not so much anymore. One of the areas I need help with, is coming up with hairstyles for Brianna. I usually have to turn to youtube or see little girls at her school and get ideas. Suprisingly in the year 2010, you can’t just google black girl hairstyles or little girl hairstyles or any variation of that, and come up with pictures of appropriate little girl hairstyles. What you will find, is a few pics that are promoting chemical relaxers or are showing styles for girls with relaxed hair. Well, that’s a no-brainer. It’s not hard to come up with hairstyles when the hair is the same as yours. That’s why so many moms put relaxers in their daughter’s hair, to make it easier to style…but I’m not one of those mom’s. I’m not putting in any chemical treatment until she requests it. If that’s not until she 10, 13, or 21 then I’m fine with that. In the meantime, the most practical options for her, is to have braided styles. Good luck trying to find good ideas online. So that’s why I created the Brianna’s Hair Series, because I have a few mom readers who have young daughters like myself, and maybe you’re in the same place I am…looking but not finding. So in my lack of creativity, today I’m going to be braiding her hair without looking at any youtube vids. I’m just going to come up with something on my own and I’ll be adding the pics to this post.
So here’s what I came up with. I usually start in the back of the head, especially if I don’t know what style I’m going to do. I knew that I wanted a long lasting style which means that I would be doing smaller braids. The smaller the braids, the longer the style lasts, but on the flip side, it’s also the more beads I need and the longer it is to take them out. So I did a mohawk in the back and when I was finished with that, Brianna said she wanted the hair to come down to her sides. So to jazz that up a bit, I did a zig zag part in the middle. I like the way it came out, just wish I had more beads. I have plenty of beads, but when I’m doing the same color combo, I need a lot more…so I only did 2 beads per braid. I usually wouldn’t do less than 3.
In case you’re interested in the step by step:
**of course this is after you have washed and blow dried the hair**
- part the hair in half horizontally and clip or ponytail the top section off.
- part the bottom section of hair vertically so that each side is equal portions of hair.
- choose a side, lay the head down on your lap and braid towards the center to the part, making sure that you are shaping the braids into a mohawk. (by this i mean, don’t just braid straight towards the center, bc you want them to lie down, so when you reach the part where you’re no longer on scalp, you want them to come down naturally–if that makes sense)
- do the same on the opposite side, trying to be even in placement and number of braids.
- on the top, I started of with a straight part using my rattail comb, and then made the zig zags. and then the same thing, start braiding off on one side and then do the same on the opposite side.
for me personally, and for how Brianna’s hair texture is, I use pink oil moisturizer on her hair before I braid it, and I use Kid’s Organics Gro Strong grease for the parts. I don’t necessarily recommend the Gro strong grease, you can use any grease. I bought it back when she was either 2 or 3 and haven’t used it all the time, but it works well for greasing while braiding, but not as a creme hairdress. Click here if you wanna see the pic of the product. also pictured are the beaders I use to bead hair. the smaller ones came in packages of the beads and the longer one I got from ebay. You can definitely find them in your local beauty supply store. I purchased the one from ebay because everytime I went looking for beaders I couldn’t find any other than the small ones that came with some of the beads. Of course after I ordered from ebay, the local store here started to carry them…just my luck.
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