Advanced Plaiting and Braiding

This post will cover the Dutch Braid, Waterfall and Ladder Braid and the 5-8-11 Strand Braid.

Things you need:

• paddle brush
• pin tail comb
• hair gribs
• hair elastics

The Dutch Braid

The dutch braid is basically just the opposite to the the french braid. Instead of taking the hair over your take the hair underneath so that in the end the braid will stand out.

But as I am not good at explaining I will add a step by step image.

source

The Waterfall and Ladder Braid

I will try my best to explain how to do it but I will,again, add a tutorial for better understanding. Personally I need to see how things are done instead of just reading how something is done.

For the Waterfall braid you start ideally at the front and make 3 same sized sections. You start of plaiting like you would do normally but then you leave the right strand out and take it down to the front. At this point if would be good to have someone who can help you and hold the strands that are going out like the one just one. Then you take a new section and add it into your plaiting and redo everything all over again. You could then end the braid at the back of the head or wherever you want it to end. 

 In the image below you can see how to do the Waterfall braid using different kinds of braiding techniques like Dutch braid, 2-5 strands braid, etc

If you then want to turn it into a Ladder braid you just need to add  some more rows of waterfall braiding like you can see in those images. Also you can start off with doing a normal braid  and plait it down for a couples of centimeters like in the the image above or you do it like in the image below where you start straight from the hairline again.

5-8-11 Strand Braids

For the 5 strand braid you start off with making 5 same sized sections. Then starting from the right you take the outer strand(5) over the 4th strand and under the 3rd. Then you go to the left side and take the 1st strand over the 2nd and take it under the 3rd.  Keep redoing those steps until you run out of hair. Tie the hair with an elastic.

In the last image I pulled the hair apart so it will be easier to add the new strands for the 8 and 11 strand part.

After finishing the 5 strand bit you go over to the 8 strand part. For this you can either start with the left or right side. I started with the right side and sectioned off 3 more strands and first was plaiting normally and then add the left strand into the outer strand of the 5 strand braid. As said you take the left strand and pull it through/ in down and out again/ the loop of the outer 5 strand side.

For the 11 strand bit you just do the same as now but just on the other side.

-> the only new thing for me during this lesson was how to do the 5-8-11 strand braid as I did the other in a workshop before.

-> when doing the 5 strand I was first a bit confused with what strand goes over and which goes under-> this was very frustrating as I kept doing it wrong and the braid looked funny and I just couldn't figure out what was wrong until I realized that I was taking the one of the strands over instead of under but after figuring out the right way the 5 strand braid is quite easy. 

-> the 8-11 bit is also not too complicated but I will still need to practice those more as they still look very unclean