Diy Ombre Knotless Braids: Knee Length, Blonde + Beginner Friendly!

I know you guys see these braids. I know you see these braids now. You guys already know that. I love me some braids shoe. I love me some very, very long braids and if you've seen the video where i lay out my entire hair care, regimen you'll already know that i try and do braids once or twice every single year now. This typically coincides with when i'm in lagos, but due to reasons we're all pretty tired of talking about at this point, that's not happening. You know what else isn't happening me. Looking for a good braider who has patience for 15 plus hour, ombre knotless box braids and then having to sit there for 15 plus hours with a mask on my face? No dear! In a nutshell, i don't know what came over me, but i decided i was going to do my own knee-length knotless box braids. So here we are now. I will know that this is my first time ever doing. Knotless box braids. I have never done braids on myself before talkless of not list box braids, so this video is essentially going to be me showing and talking you guys through my process, i mean my literal step-by-step process on how i achieved these braids from start to finish now, when I say these are diy box braids, i mean diy in the sense that there was literally nobody in this house to help me. So i'm talking everything from parting own hair by yourself, picking and mixing the hair laying the hair out as well as my feeding technique. So, basically, everything you need to know to recreate this exact look, but that's enough preamble, let's get into this video. The items you will need to achieve this look is, of course, your rat tail comb and or a plastic toothpick, which we will be using later when we get towards the front of the hair, some hair gel. So i'm going to be using the shine and jam conditioning gel. You already know some clips to help me secure and separate the hair, as i part it as well as some thread racks, so either a 30 thread rack or a 60 thread rack. So we're going to be using these thread racks to lay out the hair to make it much more of a seamless process once we start braiding now. As for the hair that i'm going to be using, this is the spectra stretch braid in tp27, 1b and, as you can see, this is already pre-stretched hair. Now i got this super pack from my beauty supply store, but i then also realized that it wasn't actually as long as i wanted once i got home and took it out of the pack, so i ended up blending this with a longer blend of blonde hair. That i had left over from a previous set of braids now the colors in this blonde mix is from the darling, braiding hair collection in here we've got the 30 rustic copper. We'Ve got the 20 super golden blonde, as well as the 16 platinum blonde. Now, i'm not sure if you can only get the darling hair in nigeria, but if you can't get it here, you can always just make some expressions 27 and awesome 24.. As you can see, the blonde mace is considerably longer than the spectra hair. So this will help to elongate the blonde at the ends of the braids. I'M now going to mix these two hair colors together into three gradient mixes. The first mix will be a two to one ratio with double the amount of spectra, ombre hair to the straight blonde. The second will be a one to one ratio with equal amounts of both, and the third will be the straight blonde. Now, starting with the blonde hair. First, i'm going to separate three tiny pieces of hair and lay them out on the thread rack like so then i'll do the same with three pieces for the half and half mix and three for the darkest mix. So all together there will be nine pieces, and this is what the gradient is looking like before we start, so i'm working with clean blown out freshly, trimmed hair and i'm just going to start by making a rough part with my fingers first to make it easier For me to go in with the rat tail comb thereafter now to part the back section, i'm going to go straight across from the top of one ear to the top of the other, trying to create, as straight of a line as possible, using two mirrors facing Each other at an angle so that i can see what i'm doing at the back of my head now. I know my part is not perfectly straight, but guess what everybody will be. Okay, because i can't tell you guys how much of an optical illusion it was trying to figure out how to parts with these mirrors. Next, i'm going to section off the top section by doing a middle part, first, going as far back as the crown of my head, so that the braids are laying super flat. When i put them in, i'm, then going to do a curved side, part on either side of my head to make a horseshoe shape. This is just so that i have the option of wearing my hair in either a center or a side parting. When i'm finished and then i'm just going to twist that up and put it out of the way till further notice now, this middle section is whatever is left over after sectioning the back and the top sections, and these are the three main sections that we will Be working with so i went ahead and did the back section off-camera, and i split that into a total of three rows and eighteen braids with five on the first row. Six on the second and seven on the third, and now i'm going to get started on the middle section, but because it's quite a large section, i'm going to make it easier for myself to work with by splitting it into three further sections, one on either side Of my head and one section left in the middle, as you can see me doing here, i'm going to split the side, sections into three equal rows and put away the top two rows, so they don't get in the way. Then i'm just going to split each row into three to four equal boxes using my nails or you can choose to use the toothpick here. If you want super clean parts and then i'm going to section off alternate boxes so that i don't pull hair from neighboring boxes, whilst i'm braiding i'm now going to go in with a bit of shine and jam on my roots to help clean up the part And give me better grip and then i'm going to split that one piece into three equal pieces and begin to do a plait. I will cross over about three times before i add in my first piece of hair and then cross over another two to three times before i add in the second piece of hair and then the same for the third piece of hair. Now that all three pieces of the darkest mix have been added in, i will continue to braid without adding any more hair in, as this is the thickness of braid that i want to maintain once i start to get toward the bottom of my own hair and The braid begins to thin out ever so slightly. I will add in the first piece of the half and half mix, to the thinner of the three strands and braid until it begins to thin out slightly and then i'll add in the second and braid a bit again and then add in the third. When i get to about bra strap length, i will then begin to add in the final three blonde pieces in the same manner, i did for the half and half mix making sure that i'm not adding in the hair too early or too late, so that i Can maintain the size of the braid till i get to the end, and this is a close-up of what it's looking like from the dark roots. All the way down to the blonde ends. Okay, so now that you guys have an overview, i'm going to break down the technique in real time, so it's easier to follow. I'M going to apply the shine and jam to the roots and keep my edges out of the way by using any excess, shine and jam to make sure i'm not braiding them. Then i'm going to split the section into three equal parts and begin to plat. I will cross over one two three times ensuring it is my less dominant hand holding onto the braid, as i will need my right hand to feed in the braiding hair. So i'm going to take my first piece of braiding, hair and tuck that, in between my thumb and index, finger of my left hand, so half of the added hair is in the middle braid strand and the other half is part of the adjacent strand. Now, before i cross over, i am going to be pulling these three strands of my own hair to make sure that it is as firm as possible, so the braid is not too loose and then i'm just going to continue braiding as usual after four crosses. I will do the same thing and after another four stitches, i will do the same thing, making sure i'm adding the hair to the strands equally, so any one strand isn't considerably bigger than the others, and then i will braid until it starts to thin out slightly Before starting to add the hairs from the half and half mix now, this is just a close-up of how i'm holding the hair to feed it in you want to balance the hair over your thumb and index fingers like so then, with your three remaining fingers. You want to grab onto both strands and pull, and then you want to hold the hair taut by pulling your index finger and thumb apart from each other. Now it's this stretched portion of the hair that you will be pushing into the index finger and thumb of the hand holding the braid again, placing the hair in between the index finger and thumb of my less dominant hand and continuing to braid as usual. The one tip i do have for you guys here is when adding in the hair. You want to be soft-handed and fight the urge to pull on the braid tightly, as this will cause the braid to bunch up, and the addition of hair will be obvious as opposed to seamless what you'll see me doing here is placing the hair and braiding behind My ears, this is mainly to relieve the pulling tension on my scalp and also to pull the hair back a bit in order to help me reach the ends. So this is the next morning and after 12 hours of braiding, i managed to finish both the back and the middle sections, but i was way too tired and so i went to bed. But before i went to bed i did pre-part and twist up the top section so that i would just be able to get up and go in the morning. The last thing you'll see me doing here is shifting the extension hair so that it is lopsided and one leg is longer than the other as opposed to adding it in in the middle. I did this to elongate the braids at the top, so they would be as long as the ones at the back and at the middle. Of course, this meant that i also had to add in one to two extra pieces along the braid to stop it from thinning out too early. I also want to note that when i got to the top section, instead of adding in the darkest mix and then the half and half mix and then the blonde, i replaced the initial three pieces of the darkest mix with the 50 50 mix to introduce the Blonde a little bit earlier now, all together. This took me just under 16 hours from start to finish. Now i didn't do this in one sitting like i said i did this over two days and i was actually quite impressed with the results when i was planning. I plan to do no more than 100 braids and i think in total i had about 80 something braids. So this is a win. I love how flat it is. This is exactly what i was going for and yeah. So this is the finished look. This is what it looks like at the back and then this is how long it is so yeah guys, that's literally it for me today. I hope you guys found this relatively easy to follow. Also guys, let me know if you've actually tried doing your own braids by yourself before and if you have any tips for me, because this might actually be a thing i mean i'm not gon na lie. It did feel good to not have to wait on someone to get my braids done. Also, if you guys decide that you're going to try this look, then please go ahead and tag me in your attempts on instagram so that we can see how it turned out. Alright guys, thank you so much for watching and i'll see you in my next video bye,