Natural Updo

It's the dog days of summer and hair feels hat on my head.  The only way the alleviate feeling like I have a sheep on my head is to wear my hair up.  While watching youtube I came across this simple and cute style.  It's real simple and can easily turn into 3 styles. 

1.  Section hair.  You'll want to section a part on the side that you'll twist up. 

2.  Braid or flat twist up the sides.  I did 2 strand flat twists and secured with black rubber bands.  To get the rubber bands out I pull them away from my hair and snip them. 

3. Repeat on the other side

4. Twist up the rest of your hair

5. Starting from the bottom twist hair into a french roll  and secure with a large bobby pin

6.  Take the remaining hair on the top and tuck it under and secure with small bobby pins.  Now you'll have a mini hump on top of your head.

7.  Tuck and pin any loose strands in the back and you'll end up with this...

8. Tuck the front or leave it loose I tucked mine...

 

You end up with..

 

 

To smooth your edges apply some gel or shea butter and tie it down with a scarf.  You can curl the twists and pin them up. Wear a twist out or puff it.  The options are endless.  What's great about this is that it looks like you took so much time to do you hair and it literally takes 5 minutes.  

 

Natural Do 2 & Donut Making

I decided to do a variation on the up do I did here. Instead of crisscrossing my whole head I only did the sections of the front that were 2 strand flat twisted. To be honest the original style normally has me in tears by 3pm. Those bobby pins really, really hurt. I need to figure out a way to pin it with out stabbing my scalp in the process. So I did a pin/bun combo.

Flat twist/ 2 strand flat twist/ braid the front any way you like. I'm still trying to figure out a new style for my 2 strand flat twists so I just went with my old faithful.

I'll only be crisscrossing the 2 strand flat twisted parts.
   

Step 1: Start with whichever side you want, cross it over then pin it.

  

Step 2:  Repeat with the other side 

  

Step 3: Continue until you're done crisscrossing   

  

Step 4:  Put your hair in a ponytail 

  

Step 5: Take hair donut (more on this later) and pull pony tail through

 

  

Step 6: Spread hair around the donut and take an ouchless ponytail holder and wrap it around the donut

  

This is what you should end up with 

  

Adjust the hair to cover any gaps then tuck the hair around the donut 

Results:  

  

  

Scuse the laundry in the background... 

  

 

You can buy the donut at the beauty supply store or your local drugstore. I made my original donut years ago. It was old and too big so I checked my CVS for one and had no luck so I decided to make another one.

Step 1:  Get a  sock, a knee high and scissors. When choosing a knee high I say go with one closest to your hair color is you can.  Since my hair stays some variation of black I went with the black knee high that way if I miss a gap you can't tell since the donut blends in with my hair.

I was trying to figure out which sock I was going to use. I ended up using the one on the left.

Step 2:  Cut the ends of the sock, and knee high

Step 3:  Start rolling the sock into a donut shape

 

 

You should end up with this:

 

Step  4:  Put the donut into the knee high

Step 5:  Pull the knee high through the donut center

 

 

Fold the knee high over the donut and continue pulling through the donut hole. Continue until your donut is completely covered

You should end up with:

 

This works great for relaxed and natural hair.  If I wash my hair on a weekday I wear a bun the next day so my hair can finish drying.  You can make your donut as large or as small as you like depending on the size of the sock you use, just make sure that your hair is long enough to wrap around the donut in order to cover any gaps.

I hope this was clear if not email me and I'll  be happy to clarify anything!

pony tail holder pic courtesy of scunci

A Natural Updo

I have a love hate relationship with twists. I love the fact that they're a great protective style and they're a really easy go to style but after 3 days I get bored and I really don't like how the front looks. So I decided to do something different after watching MsButterfli's loc updo video. I originally tried it her way and I didn't like how it looked so I tweaked it in a way that worked for me.

Step 1 - Start with a twisted head

Step 2- Take one section and cross it over. It doesn't matter which side you start with.

Step 3 - Repeat Step 2 on the opposite side.

Step 4 - Repeat Step 2 and 3 and continue as far as you want to go.

The results -
For the front I did my staple 2 strand flat twist style. I'm trying to learn how to do different things with the front but I always end up with this.

Sides -

Top -
It's a really cute style that got a lot of compliments. If you don't feel like redoing the front when it gets old just add a scarf and you're good to go for as long as you want.

One thing - when pinning your sections try not to do it too tight. The first day I wore it it wasn't tight when I left for work but as the day went on I had to get Jesus on the main line and ended up pulling some pins out.