The End of the Box Braids

Sorry that I've been MIA lately. The last couple of weeks have been strange for us. Syd went to camp for a week. The day after she came back, she went to stay with family members while I went on a mini vacation for a few days. We saw each other for a day and a half, and then Syd took off to go camping with my brother and his family. We finally met up at a family reunion the other day and I brought her home with me so we can finally spend some time together.

All this means that Syd (and her hair) haven't seen me or had my help for about 2 and a half weeks. As a result, Syd's box braids were looking kind of rough. I also only have a couple of picutres of her hair during that time.

The picture below was taken the day before she left to go camping, so the braids were already 2 weeks old. Her hair was slightly wet here because she had been caught in the rain just before I snapped the picture.

Later that day, I washed her braids and put them into 2 cornrows for her camping trip. I used Kinky Curly Knot Today as a leave in and then used Kinky Curly Curling Custard to hide the fuzz and hold the cornrows for the duration of her trip.

When we came home a few days later, I removed the cornrows and put the resulting crimpy-looking braids into 2 low pigtails. After 3 days of camping, playing with cousins, fishing, and bike riding, the fuzz was back in full force.

This was the last day of the braids. They could have lasted a little longer, but Syd isn't a fan of the fuzz and we were ready for something different. The 101 box braids were in for a total of 18 days.

Box Braids for Camp

Syd left this morning to spend a week at camp (insert nervous/sad mommy face here). Since I won't be there to help her with her hair, I had to figure out what would be easiest for her. I decided to give her some box braids. They should hold up even though she's going to be sweating and swimming every day.

I normally make crescent shaped parts when I do box braids, but this time I opted to just go ahead and part little squares. Here's what it looked like as we went through the process.

After the back was done, I threw the front of her hair in a couple of knots so we could eat dinner and run to the store. Then we sat back down that evening to finish up. We spent a total of around 5 1/2 hours on this style, not including the breaks. At the end of the evening, Syd had 101 braids and I had tired fingers.

I stressed the importance of moisturizing her hair every day...especially if she swims every day. This is the first time she will have to maintain her hair by herself for any length of time, so I'm interested to see how it holds up. But more importantly, I just can't wait to hug her and hear about her week away from home!

Sharing the Spotlight: Two Twists and Fishtail by Courtnee'

Courtnee' says,

 

"I'm Courtnee' and I'd like to share a photo of my 11 year old "mini-me" Keyona. We were in a rush this morning, so I wanted something that could be done quickly. I misted her hair with water and added a some Blended Cutie Butter Me Up. I decided to do two twists going back (one of our staple "in a rush" hairstyles) and instead of doing a regular braid, I jazzed it up with a fishtail braid and added a flower."

 

 

I love this look. It has a lot of different aspects to it that keep it interesting, but it's not overly complicated.  Thanks so much for sharing, Courtnee'!

If you'd like one of your styles to be featured on Sharing the Spotlight, click on Contribute at the top of the page to find out how.

Cornrows: Half-hawk, Half-down

When I sat down to do Syd's hair this time, I had planned on cornrowing her hair into a very basic mohawk style. I didn't want to do anything too intricate because I know it will have to come down at the end of the week. Tune in next week to see why.

Anyway, I'm not sure exactly how or why I changed from the planned mohawk to this style, but here's what it looks like. I didn't take any pictures as I was doing the actual style because the camera battery was dead (ugh!), so these are photos from the next day.

This is the style from the back. The parts aren't perfect, but again, that's because I knew this style would only be in for 5 or 6 days. It didn't have to look fabulous - it just needed to hold up through lots of swimming and running around in the heat and humidity.

The first thing I did was part out a triangular section in the front. I made that section into 4 cornrows going forward toward the side of her face.

Then I made a center part down the back of her head and started cornrowing one side from her edges toward the center. After a few cornrows, I decided to stop and do the same thing on the other side.

This is the point where I decided to stop with the mohawk and just braid the back half straight down. I have no real reason for this, but I often do things for no reason. :)

Syd likes the style, but I still owe her a real mohawk style. Be on the lookout for that in the upcoming weeks. :)

Dry Twists on Previously Styled Hair

You've probably noticed that I haven't posted much lately. Life has been throwing us curve balls every time we turn around and we have constantly been on the go. As a result, hair time has been pushed to the back burner for the last couple of weeks. That's not to say we haven't developed a system that works for us to keep her looking good. It's just been a steady stream of twists and twist outs.

For some reason, simple two strand twists don't look good on Syd's head after about 5 days. She frizzes up pretty quickly unless the twists are really small. And let's face it - I'm not doing tiny twists when I'm short on time. So I'll show you what we did today as we put in her third set of twists in the last 2 weeks. There is usually a day or two of twist outs at the end of each set of twists. There have been no washes or co-washes during this time, but we've been applying moisturizer to keep her strands from drying out.

We started off this time with a two day old twist out that had been in a ponytail, was frizzy, and had been rained on. Not exactly an ideal place to start a styling session, huh? Here's what she looked like after school today.

I didn't even consider doing an all-over detangling session before styling this time around. I simply picked up a section of hair where I planned to put the first twist. I didn't use anything to part the hair. I just used my fingers to separate that section from the rest of her hair.

I sprayed the section of hair very lightly with a spray bottle (probably only 2 sprays for the entire length of her hair) and added a small amount of Shea Moisture Styling Milk. Then I finger detangled that section, ran a wide-tooth comb through it, and twisted it. The section of hair ended up looking like this.

I repeated that process until all of her hair was again in twists.

Despite what the before picture looks like, there were surprisingly few tangles after her twist out, so detangling each small section was a breeze. The only thing I don't like about doing these twists on (nearly) dry hair is that the twists are kind of fuzzy at the roots. I could have prevented that by wetting her hair, but like I said before, I was trying to do this as quickly as possible. This entire process took less than an hour and she'll be good to go for several more days. Besides, the fuzzy roots can be ignored, hidden with hats, or hidden by putting the twists into ponytails, half-up styles, or something else that can be done quickly in the morning. Those types of decisions are left up to Syd. After all, it's her head. :)