I took to you tube this week to find a video to help me get started.  I put “How to dutch braid for beginners” and I picked this video first.  This video is really awesome! The guy that is speaking/teaching talks slow and ensures that he explains the exact steps.  I decided to concentrate on the first part of the video before moving on too far.  The beginning is learning to do underhand braiding-this was tricky for me.  As a only one type of braiding girl, trying to train myself to do it backwards was hard.  I decided that I would stick with this step and perfect before moving on.  I did it multiple times, some turned out really good and some were a hot mess.  This week I am learning to have patience and perseverance, if things to don’t come to me easily I’m quick to bail usually.  But I kept going and I am hoping that when I move on to the next step this week I will be prepared to move on because I stuck it out.

My biggest struggle still is to get a tight ponytail to stay in so the front doesn’t look so lumpy and like its falling out, I may have to find different hair elastics.  This mannequin has super thick hair, which I wasn’t expecting, but it is also helpful as my daughter has thick, natural curly/wavy hair-so it is similar.  Now I’m gearing up for the next step on this journey.

This first week of my learning project has been tricky for me about knowing where to start so I admit, I have procrastinated it until I find myself under pressure.  I sometimes find it hard to carve out time to do tasks like these in my busy work, school, mom life, I will do better this week!

I decided the best place to start was to practice my skills where they are now and see how it goes.  My husband put my mannequin head together this week and mounted it for me at my height so that I could get started.  I did my classic single braid with a little bit of hair, the one I would give my girls when they were little and I felt bad I couldn’t do beautiful braids for them, I would do this single braid and then pull it back into a ponytail or a top knot/bun for them.  As my girls are now teenagers it is rare that I get the chance to braid their hair so this is how I did.

Next I decided to see if I could do one big braid as a whole ponytail.  I cannot do it from the top of the head and moving my way down because I struggle with gathering and adding more hair as I go.  I could not pull this type of braid off often as my girls hair is thick and I found that I often lost humph somewhere, and it all came back to me quickly as this braid was automatically loose, which would probably fall out on a normal moving persons head.  I also never know how to finish the end off when there is more hair on one strand then the next so I usually just scoop it into another loop.

I am gonna head and find some helpful videos for this week, hopefully.  Watch for what kind of braid I do next.

For my learning project I have decided to learn how to braid. My hair skills are lacking immensely and I have always imagined my girls having the cutest braids in their hair, so I learned how to do a pretty single basic braid, usually one that I could pull back and add it to a pony tail so that they had a fancy addition to their regular top knot or pony that I could pull off.

For this project I am going to start out with the basics and get into a more trickier style-double dutch braid.  My daughter dances competitively and the hair style that is required is a double dutch braid with a fancy crossover bottom, like pictured here:

My biggest fear of my daughter changing dance studios, was this braiding business.  For the last couple years I have been paying people through cash and gift cards to braid her hair for all the important events, recently a friend has joined us at the same studio and she is a braiding goddess and she has been pulling me through.  This is the last year my daughter is dancing as she graduates this year so I thought it would be fun to be challenged to see if I can pull it off.

I have purchased a long hair mannequin head to use so that I am not having to use her for every practice time, lol.  I am going to watch some online tutorials to help me, the dance studio has sent us one to use as parents, but I have never actually opened it and watched it because the thought of it overwhelms me.  But I got this and I am up for the challenge!

Follow along and maybe you too will learn some braiding tips! I am sure there will be some super frustrating moments through this journey, but I am also hoping to have a really awesome outcome!  My mannequin has arrived and I am hoping to get started this week. Stay tuned….