My hair was a work in progress.
I originally purchased 4 packs of hair, which is my norm for crochet braids. I always make it a point to cut my hair in half and pull the hair apart to create more hair for myself. This hair separated very nicely for me. Typically, when I use “Marley” hair and I want to separate the hair, I would have to comb the hair out to separate it. I appreciated this hair because I didn’t have to do all of that. I got a little tangling when separating, but it wasn’t a big deal. With the flash photo, I was very skeptical about the color. Even though I had a 1b/350, more of the 350 showed on top. I was nervous, but I continued installing the hair.
“Would you believe me if I said I still wasn’t done?”
At this point, I ran out of hair. Can you believe that?! That was one thing I did not like about this hair. The amount of hair in the package was lackluster, for lack of a better word. Even with cutting the hair in half, I didn’t have enough to fill in parts of the back of my head, as well as the front. So, the next day, I went out and purchased four more packs of hair; two packages of 1b, and two packages 1b/350. My journey to big hair continued. I was able to finish my hair with about 6 packages of hair, with the hair cut in half. I realized that I had too much of the reddish color in the front and at the time, I didn’t think I could find a product that I could use in my eyebrows to match my new hair color. To remedy this, I added more of the 1b in the front to frame the face and match my eyebrows.
Finally, I was done with installing my hair. I still had to cut the hair to shape it to the way I liked. I thought about rodding the hair and having my Mama help me dip it, but I decided against it; big Afro hair is life, so I decided to keep it in its Afro state. My main goal in cutting the hair was cutting the stray hairs in a diagonal fashion, so that I got a rounded shape with my hair. I did as much cutting as to my liking before calling it a night. This style took a day and a half to do (mainly due to running out of hair and laziness).
As you can see in this photo, I cut and styled the hair to my liking. In order to sleep on this hair, I twisted it up and wore my satin bonnet. In the sunlight, this hair really blended better than I thought it would. The hair was perfectly big and bold, but still tame enough to where it looked natural. The colors were amazing together. The texture of this hair was also great. It looked as though it was combed out, but it wasn’t. Now, under this style, I needed to take care of my hair, of course. To moisturize my hair underneath, I used S-Curl No Drip Activator and my oil mix to moisturize and seal. This helped keep my hair soft underneath my crochet braids, and my scalp from hurting from the added hair.
You could not tell me anything while I rocked this hairstyle. “Shuna Rae, your edges aren’t slicked down!” “But this hair though.” I felt like Diana Ross’s long lost daughter, and I just needed to find a microphone and bless the world with these vocals (spoiler alert: I can’t sing lol). I was all, “yassss honey yassss!” There is something about big hair and a new color that just makes my spirit happy and my days brighter. Mission “get cho life” hair was complete.
I kept this hairstyle in for about two weeks before taking it out to relax my hair. I am considering going back to this style for the holidays if I do not wear my own hair. Only problem is figuring out how to put a Santa hat on top of this hair. Oh well. Please enjoy some of my favorite photos of me rocking this style:
Filtered to show the contrast in the colors. Clearly, I’m trying to slay the game.
No filter; just natural light. The flash fooled me. These colors looked beautiful together; bold, but not too much.
Excuse me…but have you gotten your life yet?
I thank you for reading and I hope you found this post helpful in some way. Do you have any photos of you slaying the game with a crochet braid install? Do you have a favorite brand of “Marley” hair you like to use for your installs? Please share them with me! Until next time, have a wonderful and blessed day!
