Protective Hair Styles For Long Hair Growth

Are you ready to learn some special hairstyles that can actually help you to grow long, thick and Luscious Hair? This video is for you protective hairstyles when done properly are the most underrated, hair growth and hair Health secret. A good protective style helps you prevent frizz and Tangles, as well as protecting the hair from mechanical damage, moisture loss and hair breakage that can make your hair just stay stuck at the same length all the time. Women have been using protective styles for hundreds, if not thousands of years, in order to first of all, keep their hair up and out of the way, but also to just help them grow long and thick and healthy hair by keeping the hair protected on a regular Basis, keeping their hair in protective styles was also an invaluable tool for helping them to draw out the amount of time between hair washes, which in their case was essential, since they didn't have access to indoor plumbing and indoor showers like we do today. So over the past few weeks I have been working steadily to record all of my own favorite protective hairstyles that I use in my own hair care routine. That have been very helpful in growing my own hair out from chin length to now hip length, because it has helped me to protect my hair and preserve, moisture and protect it from Tangles and all of the other benefits that I've already mentioned. This really has been one of my most asked for videos, so I'm really excited to be bringing it to all of you. I will also be sharing several tips along the way for how you can alter these Styles and these practices. If you have very straight or fine or thinner hair than I do, I will even be sharing with you, the protective style that I used when my own hair was at chin length. As you can see, I myself have very curly hair, so I will also be sharing loads of tips for all of you. Curly haired people out there on how you can use these protective styles in your curly hair and what that looks like throughout my own hair care cycle. I'M referring to my hair care cycle as the time that I go between between washes so you'll get to see the different ways that I care for my hair throughout this hair cycle. As my hair texture and needs sort of changed throughout that time and I'll be showing you the simple natural and historical methods that I use to keep my ends nourished and moisturized, and to keep my hair as a whole. Looking nice and healthy, despite being able to go a long time between actual washes, so before we go any further into talking about Styles, we need to talk about what condition your hair should be in before using these hairstyles, and the answer to that is that your Hair should, in almost all cases, be completely bone dry before putting it up into a protective style. I will explain more about why this is important in a moment, but this actually leads perfectly into thanking the sponsor of this video, which is taimo and their brand new air hype. Hair dryer. So tymo is a company that specializes in creating Innovative hair styling tools. Their newest creation is an amazing, state-of-the-art hair, dryer known as the tymo air hype, hair dryer. What makes this hair dryer so great for me and for any of you who are interested in using a hair, styling tool like a hair dryer that helps preserve the health of your hair. So the tymo air hype combines power performance and high quality results while being a much more affordable price than comparable competitor Brands such as Dyson having a good hair dryer, has actually been a game changer for me, especially as my as my hair has gotten so long. It produces highly focused air velocity, which basically means that it can get your hair dry in 10 minutes or less, while using a much lower temperatures than most hair dryers have to use in order to get your hair dry even being able to dry hair quickly with Room temperature air, which is actually the way that I like to use it because I don't use any heat on my hair, so the timer Airhead is unique because it produces a uniquely calibrated blend of negative ions that helps to combat frizz and seal off the hair. Cuticle, which increases shine. My hair is so long that when I let it air dry, it tends to be very flat at my roots, because it's just so weighed down 12 hours plus to get fully dry, and this actually isn't the best for hair Health. Wet hair is weak hair, and so we really want to limit the amount of time that our hair is very wet when your scalp is remaining wet for a very long time, it can increase the growth of bacteria that inhibit hair growth. What I love about this hair dryer is that I can easily and conveniently set it to use only room temperature air and it's able to effectively dry my hair at least get it dry to the touch in about 10 minutes, and it's also a very, very quiet. Hair dryer, so after selecting that I only want room temperature air, I can then control the air velocity that is coming out of the hair dryer, which is very helpful. If you want to use some heat, there are four different, precise heat settings that you can select. Now again, these temperatures don't go as high as your standard. Hair dryers does because they don't need to, but it can get hair dry in 10 minutes or less while using much lower temperatures. That is what sets apart this hair dryer in my mind when it comes to those of us who actually care about the health of our hair and care about growing long hair. So it's really a win-win. We get to dry our hair more quickly and we get to decrease the amount of time that our hair and scalp are sitting in this wet state. But we also don't have to have negative effects on our hair whatsoever as a result, and it can help us achieve beautiful, styled results in our hair as well. So the diffuser really helps me and my curly hair, to give me more volume at my roots, which would otherwise be kind of flat and weighed down. If I just let my hair air dry. Besides, all of these benefits that I've already talked about the taimo hair dryer is just a very sleek and beautiful hair dryer with a very minimalist design, which I absolutely love both for its functionality. It'S a gentleness for my hair and it's a beautiful appearance. Okay, everyone. After hearing me, rave about this tymo hair dryer and how great it is to dry your hair with only room temperature air and be sure to check out their product, tymo is offering you my audience a very generous discount. So I would encourage you to check that out. The link will be in the description as well as the code that you can use to get your discount. So before we jump into the actual demonstration of how I do my favorite protective styles, let's talk about what condition your hair should be in before trying to do one of these Styles and I'm going to give tips for those of you with straight fine or thin Hair as well as for those of you with more curly hair like mine, then we're also going to talk about what tools and supplies you might want to have on hand, actually we're going to talk about tools and supplies. First, let's talk about that. So, in terms of hair care supplies, you don't technically really need anything but you're going to want to have some things on hand. That will make it a lot easier if you are using protective styles like I am to draw out the amount of time between hair washes. This likely means that you're dealing with some amount of oiliness at your scalp okay, so I'm putting a towel around my shoulders because I'm going to do a little demo for you of how to deal with your hair. If it's just looking a little bit too greasy for your likings and maybe you're going to be doing a protective style, where it's a little more visible, that your hair is oily certain Styles, it doesn't show as much and then other styles. It does. So that's what I'm going to show to you right now! So the first line of defense against greasy hair and it's a really quick fix. But you do need at least five to ten minutes before starting your protective style, because you're going to need time for your hair to dry is using some kind of natural degreasing spray. So I have two options here: excuse the fact that one of my spray bottles is broken, but it helps me to differentiate between the two. So your first option is this: this is the simplest option. You just mix some water with some apple cider, vinegar and I don't have an exact recipe off the top of my head. But I will do my best to write that down for you either on the screen or in the description. So you mix filtered water. So drinking quality water with some apple cider, vinegar - and this is a great Degreaser, so just as a demo I'll just spray a little bit in my hair. But I'm not going to go overboard because I don't want my hair to be wet for this style. But basically, if you have a greasy area like I do right here, you spray it right there, massage it in like this and don't worry about the vinegar smell. In my experience, the smell, typically dissipates very quickly. I use vinegar to clean my house and, although it does smell initially the smell, always dissipates very quickly after so that's your first option. Your second option is to use an ayurvedic herbal hairspray, and I have a YouTube short about that that you can watch here and the recipe for this will also be written in the description or in the blog post. I haven't yet decided, so this is great, because not only is it a Degreaser, but it also helps strengthen the hair. It also typically helps add a little volume as well, so you just apply in the exact same way that I just showed, with the vinegar just spray a little at your roots. Okay, so if you were one using one of these Wet Spray methods, you would want to give your hair five to ten minutes to dry before proceeding to the next natural degreasing step that I'm going to show you now. So just pretend that my hair is perfectly dry at the moment, so in this bowl is some dry shampoo that I literally just quickly mixed up in my kitchen. Historically, this would have typically just been referred to as hair powder. It was used a lot in the 18th century, but really throughout lots of periods of History. Some form of hair powder was used, so this is just comprised of cornstarch and cocoa powder. I mostly add the cocoa powder just to darken up the color a little bit to match my hair a little better, and then I have this brush. So normally, when you make this, you can keep it in a container with a lid, but just for the purposes of demonstration. It'S in a bowl - and I just got this Barber brush because I decided it was time for me to get an actual brush to apply. This to my hair just lightly tap it in the powder like this and then I'm going to lightly start dabbing it at my roots, like this, it's going to be a little messy. This is why I have my towel here now. The good thing about adding hair powder, which is something they were pros at in the 18th century, is that when there's oil in your scalp and then you mix that oil - that's in your scalp inadvertently with the hair powder that you're applying the two kind of combine To form a really good hold in your hair and to help add volume to your hair, so obviously you don't want to go around with powder on your head, like they did in the 18th century. So that's where your boar bristle brush comes in and you just gently use it. You just use the bore bristle brush to brush that into your hair. Also, whenever you're using a boar, bristle brush to attempt to alleviate greasiness, you want to make sure it's a clean bore, bristle brush and I have another video that's coming out on my channel soon. That will be all about bore, whistle, brushes and we'll explain how I easily clean my boar bristle brush okay. So it's looking a little bit better, but I'm going to go ahead and add a little bit more go in with my boar bristle brush again and there we go. There might still be a little bit of visible powder in there that I'm missing, but I think that's pretty good. Okay, so in terms of Hair Care tools to achieve these Styles, the main thing you're going to want - you can probably guess, is a boar bristle brush. If you know me, I love boar bristle brushes for pretty much every hair type. You will possibly also want a comb to do various types of parts in your hair, or at least just to smooth out any bumpy areas of your hair. Finally, you'll want some hair fastening tools. My favorite ones are wooden: hair sticks, a wooden hair Fork, silk, scrunchies, high quality bobby pins and also a whole Deluxe bun maker and Barrette kit. I'D like to quickly mention a small, inexpensive hair tool that I recently became aware of, and I've been absolutely loving it. It'S called hold the locks and it's actually invented by a lovely woman named Hillary, who herself has a very long and beautiful, but fine hair, and she works as a machinist and for many years she struggled to find a way to put her hair up reliably without It getting caught in things or needing to be redone several times throughout the day, and so she actually invented this small device and it's basically a very effective tool for being very gentle with the hair and allowing you to put your hair up in several different styles. Without creating the typical type of damage that can be caused by things like elastics and bobby pins, and it's also great for keeping the hair tangle free and it's just very easy to get in and out of the hair as opposed to something like hair elastics, you Can create really beautiful, looking hair buns with this? That is what I've been mostly using mine for that stay all day, but they just make really pretty looking buns compared to the typical bun that I've been used to doing in the past with bobby pins. If you're interested in trying it out, I would definitely recommend it and I have a link for you in the description where you can get 10 off of your own Holby locks kit. If you choose to try it later in this video, I'm going to be showing you how I create a few of my favorite hairstyle by using holy locks. Okay, let's talk about what state your hair should be in before attempting to do any kind of protective style. First of all, for all hair types, you're going to want to make sure that your hair and scalp especially, are bone dry first. So, in other words, you don't want to be hopping out of the shower with wet hair and then putting your hair up in a bun. That is a big No-No, because it keeps your hair and your scalp sitting in wetness and moisture for much longer than they would be otherwise, because the air isn't able to circulate - and this is especially important when it comes to scalp health, because having a wet scalp Is it can breed the growth of bacteria that inhibit hair growth and it can also increase the amount of hair fall. You experience. So when you have wet hair coming out of the shower, you really want to allow your scalp to dry as quickly as possible, whether that is just letting it air dry as quickly as possible or using a high quality hair dryer like the taimo one to get It dry quicker, so don't put it up in a style at this point. Likewise for the length of your hair, if it's soaking wet, when you put it up in a bun, it's not good for the length of your hair to stay wet. For that amount of time, because it can create sort of a it, can make your hair feel more limp and lifeless if it has too much moisture, because hair is only healthy when it has a balance of moisture and protein. And so, if you put in too much moisture, your hair becomes like overcooked spaghetti and we don't want that. So the only possible exception to this bone dry, hair rule is, if you have very straight or very fine hair and you struggle with the ends of your hair kind of poking out awkwardly of any Styles. You do you could have a spray bottle that you fill with filtered water and just lightly Spritz your hair just get it a little bit damp, especially at the ends, and this will help you hold your hair in that style for longer and now we're going to Talk about a few more tips for straight and fine hair that will help you to keep your hair in these Styles. So another option would be to mix a little jojoba oil with a little little bit of shea butter. Again, don't overdo it because you don't want to weigh down your hair. You can literally just mix these in your hand and apply it to your hair, especially the ends before you're going to style it, and this can create sort of a hair, Pomade effect, especially the shea butter that will help your hair hold its shape. Once it's put into that style, if you're feeling adventurous, you could check out Abby Cox's video on 18th century hair care and how she uses 18th century hair, Pomade and hair powder to achieve strong, holding results in hairstyles. Finally, another trick for straight or fine hair types is to actually add some texture into it. The night before an easy way to do. This is again have a spray bottle filled with filtered water and lightly dampen your hair with the spray bottle. You don't want to go overboard and the night before you get your hair damp and then you can sleep with it in at least two braids and a great option, if you can, is to actually sleep with two French or Dutch braids, because this creates really really Beautiful heatless curls in your hair, and that can be a great starting point for a protective style, but it's not necessary. If you don't have time to do this, but anyways, I do kind of recommend sleeping with your hair in braids anyways. So this could easily be something that you work into your routine, so if you have straight fine or more oily hair, another issue you might deal with, especially if you're trying to draw out the amount of time between washes, is that as this time progresses, your hair May feel a little more limp and oily. So another solution to this is to use the homemade DIY dry, shampoo that I mentioned already, which is a mixture of cornstarch and cocoa powder and apply it to your roots or really any area. That'S feeling greasy and then go in with your boar, bristle brush and brush it through your hair, something that you could actually do even before applying this homemade dry shampoo is to use those hair sprays that I mentioned already like the apple cider, vinegar and epsom salt Spray or the ayurvedic herbal spray, because both of these are very cleansing kind of degreasing sprays that you can apply to your scalp area. First, let it dry and then you can also go in for direct with the dry shampoo and the boar bristle brush, and I think these two things combined will work really well for getting rid of any excess oiliness. Okay, so for curly, hair types like mine or even curlier, I'm going to give a few sort of different tips on what condition your hair should be in before using these Styles. So the main thing that kind of sets apart curly, hair from straight hair, is that let's say we go for one week between hair washes during that one week. The texture and conditioner of our hair is really going to change a lot. It'S going to evolve over that time, so, on the first couple days our curls are going to look more defined and on those days you might not even want to put your hair in to a tight protective style. I will be including the styles that I do use to put up my hair on these days, when I really just want to preserve the curl pattern and protect frizz, and so these Styles Keep My Curls piled up on top of my head now after these first Few days have passed and your curls are starting to look a bit less defined a bit more frizzy a bit more Tangled. That'S when you want to start going in with your fingers or whatever detangling method that you prefer and slowly beginning to work out those tangles. So for me this looks like using my fingers, I like to finger detangle, my hair in the evenings before braiding it and I'll, usually kind of work out the tangles for two to three consecutive evenings before I even attempt to go in with a boar, bristle brush And once I can go in with the bore, bristle brush and begin bore, bristle brushing my hair because it's pretty detangled and the curls are more stretched out by that point. That'S when I can start to do the little more elaborate protective styles like the milk made. Braids also another concern for curlies like me, is that later in the week or in your hair cycle of the time between washes, your hair will start to feel a little more dried out at the ends, especially if it's longer and the curls will just look more Kind of stretched out, and they might look a bit draggled and just a little bit unhealthy and a great way to deal with this is again with a bore bristle brush, as well as with using some oils that you apply to your ends like jojoba oil. The boar bristle brush really helps to smooth and soften the hair and to condition it all the way down to the ends by bringing any oils from your scalp all the way down to your ends, and it really gets my hair. Looking nice and smooth and shiny and healthy again, especially when I'm just putting it up into a style, it's not too hard to get it looking nice just for an updo like that. Finally, if my ends are feeling very dry, I like to Spritz them with my ayurvedic herbal hairspray and again you can go to the blog for the recipe for that. By the way, this hairspray is also a hair strengthener, which is partly why I like to use it on my ends, because it really helps prevent breakage. So after I've done that, then I go in with an oil like jojoba oil or coconut oil or shea butter or a mixture, and I lightly apply that to my ends to seal in the moisture and this acts sort of as a leave-in conditioner hi everyone. So before we jump into the Hair Care demos, I'd like to give a quick note, because my hair in many of the clips you're about to see, looks quite oily. And I just wanted to give a little bit of explanation as to why it's, because I literally use oil in my hair as a leave-in, and also my hair, was feeling particularly unmanageable and prone to Tangles. This week, when I was going to be filming this video and in order to be able to get my hair in as soft and manageable State as it needed to be in order to film several consecutive hairstyles, all at once, I did need to get a good Amount of coconut oil in my hair as a leave-in just to get it softened up and to be able to be manipulated without causing Tangles or breakage. So that's why my hair looks pretty oily just wanted to give that word of explanation before we jump in okay. So now I'm going to be showing you guys, one of my all-time favorite protective styles, there's many different names for this I'm going to go with the name of milk made braids. The good thing about this style is that as long as you have hair, that's maybe like this long, maybe just past shoulder length. I believe most people with that length of hair can do this style with just a slight modification. But then, after that, I'm going to show you how I do this style with longer hair, because having longer hair means that you're able to do it in a way where you don't have a center part going all the way down. The back of your head, which I personally prefer the look of for my own head. But if you have shorter hair, it's totally okay, you will have a center part showing at the back of your head unless you're willing to add in hair extension or something just to do this style. But you don't need to do that. I'M going to show you a way to make it work with shorter hair and that's what we're going to do now. This is going to require a little bit of suspension of disbelief on your part, because my own hair is longer than that. So I'm just going to do my best to show you on my own hair. So let's begin if your hair is short, the main way that you're going to change the style is where you begin your braids you're going to want to begin your braid about here. Like just behind your ear and I'll show you what to do after we've done that braid. So of course you will have separated your hair into two sections, probably with a part with a comb, because you want a nice neat part to be showing at the back. It'S not one of my own forties, but if you have straighter hair, getting a clean part should be no issue. You want the braid to start fairly firmly to your head, not ridiculously tight, but just fairly firmly and for my own hair, I like to pull the braid a little more tight as I'm doing it simply because it helps my hair type, which is Curly and prone Detangles to stay day in a stretched out sort of flattened state, so it helps to discourage any tangling. But if you have straighter or thinner, hair and you're wanting to create like big braids, go ahead and do more of a looser braid. So I'm just going to braid right to the end of my hair. Of course, if your hair is shorter, your braid is probably going to be ending like here. I imagine the way to tell if you have enough hair length, for this style to work is simply by measuring the length of braid that you're able to get the length of braid you need is basically for the braid to be able to go from here. To just past your center part, so that's an easy way to tell if you have enough length for this style. Okay, so I finished both of my braids and I'd like to give a quick note that if you try this out and you're still having trouble getting your braid to be long enough, you can experiment with starting your braid up even higher like more like up here. Whereas mine was sort of right behind my ear, so that's always a thought. So once your braids are done, you do want to fasten the ends with some kind of soft gentle hair elastic. I will have the kind that I personally use Linked In the description option. These are just the elastics that I like to use for fastening the ends of braids. If you have thinner, hair and you're looking to create more big braids, even if you don't have thin hair, I mean who doesn't want really thick luscious. Looking braids um, you can just kind of gently pull out on the braid like this, even more than what I'm doing. I'M not doing it very much right now, because I want more tighter braids for my hair. So once that's done, all you're going to do is bring your braid like this over and if your hair is shorter, it's probably going to end about right here. Just pretend my hair is ending there and you're going to take bobby pins. You do need several bobby pins for this style to work, and you can see. The problem is now that I have this tail of hair to hide. If your hair is shorter, the tail of hair is going to be more up here, but I'm just going to show you how I deal with it. So what I would do is, I would just kind of tuck it under this hair. As best as I can, and then I like to put a bobby pin into the body of the braid, just above the elastic and I open up the bobby pin so that it's catching some of the braid and some of the hair on my head and I'll. Also, just put a couple more like here: okay, that's good for now, then I take the other braid and I do the same thing so once you're bringing up the second braid, you want to do it in a way where you're, using this braid to cover up The tail end of the first braid, wherever that happens, to be if your hair is shorter. That tail is going to be about here. So you just want to bring the braid over the tail, and you have two options. You can either have the braids lying like side by side like this or you can cross the braid over. If your hair is shorter, it's not going to really be as relevant to you what you do with the braids at this point, because your main goal is just going to be to get it just over the center part and clip it down. I guess I'll. Do it like this today, so with this braid, I'm going to actually start off with a bobby pin right in the middle of the braid, because that's where the most weight is and it's trying to fall off my head at the moment and then I just clip This tail end in and I'm going to tuck it under this hair here and clip it, and at this point you can just use some more bobby pins along the length of your braids to make sure they're being held securely. Do a little head shake test just to make sure and there is the style. So if you have shorter hair, it will probably look a bit better on you than on me because with my hair it looks a bit funny, I think, with the length of braid. That'S coming down, and then it just ends right here, but anyways. This is a great style for you, if you have just past shoulder length, hair and you're, looking for an attractive way to put your hair up in a protective style. This is really a great one. The ends are all tucked away, it's very pretty and the weight of your hair is evenly distributed around your head. There are other ways to do this style that are even more gentle for your hair and it's called hair taping, and it's where you use ribbon. That is either wrapped around the braids or braided right into them, and then the ribbons are used to fasten the hair around your head. Sometimes you can even use a thick blunt sewing needle and actually sew the braids onto your head hair with the ribbon. There'S different ways to do it and I will link a really helpful video below from Morgan Donner About Hair taping. Okay. So now I'm going to be showing you how I do milk made braids on my length of hair and it's my favorite way to do. Milkmaid braids, now that my hair is long enough and what I like about this way of doing it is that it's a way of doing this style that doesn't involve having a center part going all the way down. The back of my head, which I personally prefer a quick word about what condition I like my hair to be in when I'm doing this style, you can tell my hair is several days away from its wash day. Now it's looking more greasy, both through my natural oils, as well as through the oils that I literally apply to my hair as a leave-in and, most importantly, my curl pattern is very stretched out at this point and it's as detangled as it ever will be. That'S very important to get this style looking good and just to be able to get nice crisp. Looking braids over your head, so the key to not having a center part down the back of your head is the direction that you pull your hair before you start the braid. So for me I actually start the braid down at the base of my head. So it's going to be starting way back here and then the braid is going to be pulled in this direction, something that I like to add to this. To spice it up. A little is just adding a little bit of a French twist before I begin the braid just like this. Actually, I should probably section out my hair into threes before I do that: okay, okay, so I've gotten my hair sectioned now and I'm just beginning the braid. So you can see that I did my best to sort of pull the hair going straight down, so it's going to Dr not really create much of a center part once I do both braids in this way. So, as I'm braiding, I'm actually pulling my hair in this direction, because that's the way that the braid is going to be going, I'm also starting the braid, not quite at the base of my hairline here, but an inch or an inch and a half up from That, because that's where I want the braided headband to be sitting so at this point, I'm literally just pulling the braid out from this side of my head, even though it's this half of hair, because I want to be encouraging it to go in the direction that It'S going to be sitting in the style and again I'm choosing to do more of a tighter braid just to encourage my hair to sit more smoothly and to prevent tangling. My hair is a little more Tangled today than it would normally be so I'm using this style in a way to help manage that. Okay. So once I get to the tail end of my braid for most people, with straight hair, you're going to want to use an elastic I've actually gotten to the point where my hair is long enough. Where I don't need an elastic because it just kind of holds itself, but I will put an elastic on it just for now. Okay, so I finished both braids, I'm going to show you the back right now, because this braid is actually coming from this side, and this braid is coming from this side. So this is what it should look like in the back. There shouldn't be too much of a center part. I do feel like going down to about here. At this point, I'm going to use my comb and just very, very gently comb here, just to encourage the hairs to kind of come together and cover up that little bit of center part. I only do that very gently because I don't want to create any Tangles or matting. I can also use my board bristle brush. Okay, so you can see I'm not going to use any elastics, but if you have straighter hair, you're, probably going to want to use an elastic or something, and I'm also going to mention again, there is a way to do this using hair ribbons to fasten your Braids up and that's called hair taping, but I'm not yet proficient enough at that to show it on video, but once I've gotten it figured out, I'm will definitely do a video on that at some point in the future. For now I'll link a great one by Morgan, Donner in the description I'm just going to work with one braid at a time. But if you happen to have a claw clip on hand, you could get both braids up and just claw clip them in place temporarily. I don't have any claw Clips, so I'm just going to do one at a time, so I'm going to start with this braid and bring it up over my head, where I want the braided headband to be sitting and I'm pulling it fairly firmly, but not overly. So and then I'm going to take this tail end of the braid and tuck it under this hair of this side here and by the way that braided twist that I did at the beginning or sorry that French twist that I did at the beginning. I'M just going to make sure the braid's sitting behind that this just adds a little more volume and interest, and then I'm just going to clip about an inch above the end of the braid and then I'm going to take another bobby pin and just sit it In about here, so the bobby pin, the top of it, is catching the braid and the bottom of it is catching the hair on my head and next it's time for this braid, so I'll just remove that hair elastic because I don't need it okay. So now it's time to do the second braid. So the way I like to do it is to bring it up in front of this braid until I get to the center part, and then I cross it over and behind the first braid, and then I can just tuck this tail end of the braid. Underneath that braid and I like to take a bobby pin and go in from the back here from behind the first braid and catch that end of the braid, as well as this braid, as well as some hair for my head in the same bobby, pin. And then I just go in with a couple more just to get it more secure. Okay - and here is my my style of doing milk made braids - it's not as nice as it could be, simply because my hair is feeling a little more tangly today and it's kind of in a state where I don't even want to use the bore bristle brush Too much because it's just feeling a little more delicate and a little more prone to breakage, so I'm being gentle with it, that's just the way. Curly hair is you kind of have to gauge how it's feeling on a certain day to know how to deal with it? If my hair was feeling more apt to being brushed with my War bristle brush, then I could get the braids looking nice and smooth and shiny, but this was just a demo for you to show how I do it. So here's the side view the back view at this point. You might just want to fiddle a bit with how the hair in the back is sitting manipulate it a little bit and there we go. This is the way I do my milkmaid braids hairstyle. So I'm actually going to show you the hairstyle that I used when my own hair was about chin length. So I'm going to be showing it to you a little bit differently than I actually did it at the time. And the reason for that is that this style involves putting my hair into two french braids or two dutch braids, and I don't do French braids in my hair anymore, because as it's gotten longer, it just makes it much more difficult to get my hair sectioned out Into all of these little sections to do the French braid, because my curls like to Clump together - and it's just not worth it to me - to have to like run a brush through my hair, to get all those curls brushed out before doing a French braid. So I'm going to be showing it to you with a French with two French twists rather than two french braids, but just pretend it's two french braids. So obviously this isn't going to be a how to french braid tutorial. There are plenty of great tutorials on that on YouTube. So if you don't know how to French braid go and check that out or you could try the French twist and I'm going to show you, I will say that if you have short slash straight hair, a French braid would have more holding power than a French Twist - and this is also another style where, if you have very straight hair, that tends to kind of poke out you're going to want to possibly lightly spray it with some water first to get it a little damp before doing this style and or apply some kind Of natural hair Pomade, first, to give your hair a little more holding power. Of course, when my hair was chin length, I had no problem with doing french braids because it was so short, there was less chance for Tangles and everything this style also won't. Look exactly the way it looked back then, because my hair is so much longer and this style depends on having pretty short hair. So you just section your hair into two. You might want to run a comb down the back to get your part. Looking nice and neat because it is going to be visible in this style and just pretend I'm doing a French braid if you want to try this style just like this, then just follow what I'm doing so for a French twist of this kind, I'm going to Start with a little section of hair at the front add some more hair from my hairline going over the Twist and then add some hair from back here coming from under the Twist and just keep repeating that. So you can see it forms this nice twist. Okay, so you just keep taking this French twist or french braid all the way down until all of the hair has been incorporated into it. So if this were a French braid, I would then just as I come to the end of my hair. That'S left! I just do a regular braid until I get to the end of my hair. So if your hair is like chin length like mine, was that braid is going to end like right here and you're going to want to use a nice soft gentle hair elastic to fasten the end at this point. So at this point, you're just going to have to forgive me because my hair is much longer than is going to work in this style that basically, what you do so at this point, you're just going to fasten the end of your braid or twist with a Soft hair elastic - I'm just going to put mine up here, just because I'm pretending that my hair is this short in all reality. Um. If your hair is chin length, it's the elastic is probably going to be like all the way up here, because your braid is going to be even shorter than this okay, so I've gotten both of my French twists done. This is the point where it would be a little easier if these were actually french braids, but my hair just does not cooperate with French braids anymore, so just pretend that these are French braids, so they're fastened with elastic and at this point you're going to take Your little tiny braid just pretend it's a little tiny and you're going to basically be tucking it under the French twist or the French braid just like this, and because your hair is so short, there's not much hair to tuck up in there. I have this big long tail hanging down. I just pretend that's not there and then at this point you just take a bobby, pin and stick it up in there to catch the elastic of the end of the French Braid and hold it in place. You might need a couple bobby pins on both sides, so this is how it would look from the side if I don't have this long tail of hair hanging down okay. So this is a rough simulation of what the finished product would look like. I tried my best to get my long hair into this style, so if your hair is very short, you're not going to have all of this bulk underneath, but what I really love about this style, what I loved about it when my hair was chin length, was That it was a way to kind of hide how short my hair was because for me personally, when I had chin length hair, I didn't like having chin length hair. I didn't want people to see how how short my hair was. I was embarrassed about it, so this was just a way of me being able to put up my hair and still feel like my normal self, and not be attracting like. Oh, my goodness, your hair is so short now so I'll just show you the side and the back. It looks kind of funny because I just took my bunch of long hair that was left and I twisted it up into this little bun with a hair stick. If you want to find other tutorials of how to do this style in more detail, it's called a French braid tuck. Usually that's the name. I'Ve heard referred to it, so you can do french, braid tucks, with only one French Braid and then tuck the tail of that braid up and underneath. But when you have short chin length hair, you really need two french braids to be able to get your hair into the style, because that way, there's less length. That'S needed to reach your hair into that French braid. If your hair is very straight and silky and fine you'll likely need a little bit more length, like maybe collar bone length, at least to get into this style and get it to hold either that or you might need to do it on damper, hair or use. Some kind of natural hair Pomade to get it to hold, but I hope this style gave you an idea of where you can begin when you have chin length, hair and I'm sorry, it wasn't as in depth as I would have liked it to be in the Future, maybe if I can convince one of my friends who has shorter hair to be on camera, then maybe I will show you this style on some of with shorter hair, where it's easier to get it into this style properly. Okay, everyone! So today, we're going to start off by talking all about the various type of hair buns hair buns, in my opinion, are one of the most versatile protective styles. They can be done all manner of different ways and they can be very comfortable and a really great protective style. So right off the bat I'm going to show you my hairstyle, that I have in right now. This is actually I slept with my hair last night in two braids and I woke up this morning and it's now midday and I haven't felt like doing my hair yet actually I'll. Just briefly show you guys how I did this braided hair bun in case you guys want to do it so again, I'm starting off with my hair in two braids I coiled up my braids. You can see that I'm kind of working on them separately, so I crossed them and then I'm coiling this one over here and this one over here and this just helps - distribute the weight of the bun more over my head tuck those ends in and then I Take my hair stick and I'm going to stick it going kind of in towards my head like this at the one side of the bun, and now it's going in and it's picking up some of the scalp hair. And then it's going to angle back up and out of the bun on the other side, and that is very secure. Sometimes it slips out a little bit. So if I wanted, I could even add in another hair, stick like this, and you can see a very secure, protective style, it's very attractive, even though on my informational video, All About protective styles, I did emphasize the importance of of typically separating out the front section Of your head of your hair, I should say, and twisting it in when you're doing any kind of low, bun or low style like a French twist or a low bun. You don't need to worry as much about pulling at your hairline, because it's not pulling on my hairline at all, it's just kind of going down, so this is another great option. Okay, so now that I've shown you my nice braided bun, let's just talk about more basic buns, especially for those of you who don't yet have the length of hair that you need to do. A proper braided bun with hair sticks, because, obviously you need more length to do a braided bun and when it comes to hair sticks, you do need a certain amount of length to get the tension necessary for the hair stick to hold the bun in place. This is the hair that I slept in if my hair felt dry at this point or if I was having trouble manipulating it gently, I would add some jojoba oil, especially to my ends, but I did just put some oils in it last night before braiding it. Okay, so now I'll just demonstrate to you a basic low bun and again when it comes to low buns, you don't need to worry so much about separating out the front section of your hair from the style because, as opposed to a high bun like this, if I just pull all my hair up like this. It would obviously be creating tension on my hairline, but when my hair is in a low bun like this, it's not really pulling at all on my hairline. So this is a great basic option for, if you're, in a hurry, when it comes to fastening tools for creating a basic hair bun, especially if your hair is shorter, my two main recommendations are either basic bobby pins. You'Ll need several of them to begin or my new favorite hair tool, Holby locks and I'm going to show you how to make a hair bun with one of these in a moment, first I'll tackle the bobby pins. So when it comes to making a hair bun, you can choose to either just twist it right up into the bun, which is what I purse personally choose to do, or you could first fasten it with an elastic. This is a nice soft, elastic and I'll put the link for where I bought these on Amazon or a scrunchie. I typically only use scrunchies in my hair, but right now, I'm just going to demonstrate to you the way I like to do it, which is just where I go in like this, and I just twist it up. So I twist it up and as I'm twisting, I begin coiling The Twist around itself on my head and because my hair is pretty long, I like to be able to distribute The Twist over a wider surface area of my head. So, in other words, I don't twist it up into a tight bun. I do more of a loose flat. Bun, that's spread out over my head when I get to the end. My hair is now long enough where I can take the ends of the twist and tuck it under the body of the bun like this, so you can see it literally forms this knot that stays actually pretty well on its own. I was not able to achieve that until my hair was longer, though so, don't worry. If you can't, then I go with my bobby pins and I'm going to go ahead and open it up with my thumb like this, and then I'm going to stick it in at the edge of the bun, so that the bottom part of the bobby pin is Catching the hair on my head and the top part of the bobby pin is catching the hair of the bun like this, and I just push it in. So it's holding it in that spot and I'm just going to repeat with at least three more bobby pins around various areas of the bun and there we go so there's the finished basic bun with bobby pins and it's a low bun. So it's not putting too much tension on my hairline. If you wanted to, you could always do a little French twist of your front edges into the bun for more interest, but this is just as basic as it gets for a protective style and it's great for, if you're, in a hurry. Okay. So now I'd like to demonstrate to you how a hold the locks bun works, so this is Holy locks. It'S one of my new favorite tools and it is great for making beautiful hair buns whether your hair is long or short, thin or thick. Whole Deluxe comes in two sizes, there are large holy locks and then there are smaller holding locks, but in this case I'm working with two small holy locks that have been joined together with a hair elastic. This is the size I need to use for my amount of hair, but if you have shorter hair, you can just use a large holy locks to makeup on or even a small whole Delux. Now this particular holy locks there's different ways of joining them up together. Basically, what this is is a tool to wrap your hair around in the case of making a bun at least, and then we're going to join these two ends together, and so with the case of this holy locks. There'S this little ring here that I open up and then it Clips together and my hair will be all wrapped around this and will form a really pretty donut shaped hair bun. The reason I love these is because, if you've been around for any amount of time in the Hair World, you'll know about those donut shaped bun makers and don't get me wrong. Those can actually be a great tool for getting a nice big, pretty looking bun, even when your hair is shorter, and I used to use one of those myself. But now I think this is actually a far better option than those donut bun makers, because the donut bun makers aren't the greatest for your hair, because usually your hair ends kind of end up, like splayed out around the base of the bun, and you have to Like tuck them in awkwardly, it can create just excess damage and manipulation of your ends that way, whereas this you're actually wrapping your hair around and around and around it, so it prevents Tangles. It can also create really pretty waves in your hair. If you have straighter hair, it's just a really secure way to hold a hair bun, okay, so for the purpose of just showing you how to make a whole Deluxe hair bun, I'm just going to do a basic straight pull back bun. I don't normally recommend doing a straight pullback bun, although I do do it on occasion. If I'm in a rush and I'll show you one way that I like to dress it up. If I do occasionally do a straight, pullback bun like this, if you haven't yet seen my other informational video on protective styles, please watch that, because I go into a lot more detail about why you do generally want to avoid pulling your hair straight back into ponytails And buns, but again for the purposes of demonstration. That'S what we're going to do so when you're, making a whole Deluxe hair bun, you need to start by having your hair in a ponytail as you'll probably know by now, I'm not a fan of using elastics to put my hair in a ponytail. This is partly because elastics are thinner and they are more likely to cause damage and friction on your hair, but also just because my amount of hair is held up better by something like a scrunchie. So I do generally recommend using a silk or satin scrunchie like this. So here we go okay, so I got my hair into a ponytail on the crown of my head. I just brushed it a little at the back and now I'm going to do just a couple wraps of this satin scrunchie. So here's my ponytail so now, in my case again, I'm using the two small hold the locks that are joined up together. If you're using just one holy locks, the instructions will be the exact same. So I'm going to take the holy locks.