Now that my hair is long enough to pull back most of the time, I find that I am bored with the usual ponytail, and I’d love to learn to braid my hair decently - so that I could actually go out in public with it braided instead of just doing the Laura Ingalls Wilder braid before I go to sleep at night (ok, not every night, but it’s easier to sleep now if I pull it back - that way it doesn’t get everywhere while I sleep).
What’s the best way to learn to do this? Do items like the braidini work? Any other suggestions for learning?
My advice: Practice on other people until you get good, then practice on yourself. I’ve never tried aids, as I have been able to braid my own and other people’s hair for as long as I can remember. Your arms will get really tired the first few time you do it. If you don’t have other people around to practice on, maybe you have dolls from childhood that you could practice on? Good luck!
When I had long hair, I got a book called Beautiful Braids, you can probably find it at the library. Grettle is right – your arms will get tired at first. I got so good at it I could read while I french-braided my hair. Oh, excuse me, I mean freedom-braided.
Yeah, I’ve known how to braid my own hair since I was really young, so I found that when I tried those helper-things, they were making the process more difficult!
My first suggestion: don’t try to get a perfect braid right away. I assume you want to do the 3-strand braid? An example is http://home.columbus.rr.com/dreamweavers/braids/basic3.htm
I say don’t worry about getting the 3 sections perfectly even right away. Just get used to the hand movements and weaving you need to learn.
I personally think that the hardest thing to master is keeping the sections of hair held at all times, and not letting them get blended together when you’re holding them. Eventually, when you have a braid that has 1 section smaller than the other two (often happens, trust me), you’ll be able to take little chunks from the other sections and blend them into the small one, evening out the sections.
I don’t remember learning how to braid, but I do remember learning how to french braid my hair, and that was just a matter of braiding it, undoing it, braiding it, undoing it, braiding it again, undoing it - until it looked right…
And starting over the next time I needed to braid my hair.
(Do you already know how to braid in general? If someone handed you three ropes, could you braid them?)
Also for me, braiding my hair, and braiding someone else’s hair are two entirely separate (though losely related) skills. So practicing on someone else’s head may or may not help you.
Yes, amarinth, I know how to braid in general, and there are days that I can swing my hair up into a french braid with no problem - but I was hoping there was an easier way to get it right (yep, looking for the easy way out, that’s me).
There’s no one I know that I could practice on, and I have no dolls from when I was a kid - I didn’t have many even then, and I tended to always give them mohawks because their hair would get tangled anyway.
When I was first learning how to french braid my hair, I found it was easier to practice while the hair was wet (it stayed together better). It’s also good to practice to the point where you can get all the hair in one hand and rest one arm, and then switch to the other hand and rest the other arm.
I likely didn’t say it - I’m bad about leaving out things like that (and reading my second post up there, it could be read in a sort of snide manner…I hope I didn’t come across that way - if so, it wasn’t intentional).
See, you did say you knew how to braid.
It popped out at me the second time I read the OP. I really did miss that the first time I read the OP - and my reply to your reply was supposed to be an apology for not reading carefully (and now looking at it, it might have sounded snide)
I also meant well with “good luck” not the sarcastic way, but the encouraging way.