Compare this (pic. above) with what I got from the professional stylist below. I bought 2 packs of Noble Gold Natural Braid Extension (Color 1). I love the texture of this brand and the curl pattern is just as tight as my type 4b.
The problem I had with it was finishing the twists. This is because of the way the extensions end. To solve this problem I had to do what is called "picking" by Nigerian hair braiders. The technique is to hold on to the ends of the extensions and pull out some individual strands to create an uneven finish at the ends. This would help keep the twists from unraveling after you are done.Unfortunately, I learnt this after I had done almost half of the left side of my head. So most of the ones I had already done were unraveling. Read on to see how I stumbled on the solution.
The beautiful thing about doing your own hair is that you work really carefully with the sensitive spots and you can control how tight or loose you want the twists to be. I wanted to do havanna twists but I was too impatient to start learning something new today. So I worked with the old technique I knew really well; attach the extensions by braiding the roots and after some inches you twist all the way down.
TECHNIQUES:
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| Styles at the back of the pack |
-Cut out a section of my hair
-Attached the extensions by braiding the roots and then twisting tightly until after my hair was completely twisted with the extensions.
-Then I loosely twisted the rest of the hair using Ms. Alicia's loose twists technique.
To Protect my hair strands I...
-Sectioned my hair using my fingers first and then a sectioning comb to create straight fine lines
-Applied Shea butter to my hair strands (from root to end) and
-Applied some Shea butter to the Noble Extensions. Why? Kinky extensions dry out my hair. Even daily water spritzing isn't much help. But once I began applying Shea butter to the extensions, twisting with the coarse texture wasn't much of a problem; take down was much easier and my hair faired better after weeks/a month of been rolled in kinky extensions.
Like I said, some of the twists were unraveling because I didn't start begin by 'picking' the ends of the extensions. And because I was too tired to loosen, pick and retwist, I decided to deep the ends in hot water to see if what worked for Expression extensions would work for Noble Natural Braid extensions.
So I boiled water, poured some in a bowl and dipped the ends into the hot water. I left it in for some seconds and when I took it out the ends had shrunk tight and felt hard to touch. By the time I did the other half of my head, the water was not hot enough to seal the ends tight so I boiled the water again and repeated the process. That Simple!
So what styles are you wearing for the HOT dry season? I hear it is raining in some of the western states of Nigeria but as far as we Abuja people are concerned, the Sun won't gree us rest. Lord give us strength.
