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Synthetic Dreads
So you don’t want to spend months growing natural dreads, or you want several funky colours for your style, then synthetic dreads are your quick fix. They are available both commercially and custom made and in a variety of different materials, although the most popular ones are made from Kanekalon Jumbo Hair.
Trouble is which type do you go for?
Broadly speaking there are two main types of synthetic dreads:
Long skinny dreads/braids
Long skinny silky dreads/braids are usually commercially made, although you can buy custom made ones in your own choice of colours. This type are not back combed but are twisted and heat sealed. They are really easy to braid into your own hair and create striking hair do’s fast. They can come in single or doubled ended dreads. The downside is that they don’t tend to last as long as the shorter fatter type as their length means that they tend to get more wear. You can buy this type of dreads/braids from some hair shops and on-line sellers and they are usually quite reasonably priced.
Short Fat Dreads
Shorter fat more natural looking dreads tend to be custom made so their method of creation and quality can vary quite a bit, but you should be able to get them in any colour you want. These also come in single or double ended types. You can buy these from some hair shops and from on-line sellers, and again the price should be reasonable as the materials are fairly cheap, although they do take a bit of time to make.
Making your own dreads
Making your own dreads is really not difficult, just a bit time consuming but you can get some really good results if you don’t mind spending a bit of time on them. There is a number of ways to make dreads, the chat rooms and web sites are full of different methods. To be honest there is no right or wrong way to make them so you should try a few different methods until you find the right one for you.
Starting Off Making Dreads
To get you started I’ve included here a quick start method for you to give a try, but I don’t claim that it’s the best so by all means adapt it to make it your own.
Materials
You will need a few packs of synthetic Kanekalon Jumbo Hair. It must be Kanekalon and not the cheaper Super Silky Jumbo as the cheaper one is great for braiding but doesn’t react to heat the same way as kanekalon, making it difficult to seal your finished dreads.
You will also need either an old metal coat hanger. A door handle or a chair. This is to anchor your dread whilst you are making it.
A metal comb or brush ( pet brushes/combs are great).
A heat source i.e. kettle, hairdryer, saucepan of boiling water, steam iron or clothes steamer.
Method
When you take the hair out of the pack you will notice that it is looped at the top. Depending on the finished length that you want to achieve you can either use it as it is in one length, or cut it in two in the middle. Either way fold your length of hair in two and loop around either the hook of a coat hanger, door handle or on a bit of cloth strung between two legs of a chair.
Start to back comb the hair up towards the loop. When its nice and fuzzy and fat pull it apart again and back comb some more. Do this several times until the dread is nice and fat and fuzzy, aim to get it about 3 inches wide.
You can then twist the dread from the bottom round and round until it resembles a nice fat dread. Twist it quite tightly because it will unravel a bit whilst you are sealing it.
Now for the tricky bit, basically you need to apply heat to your dread to stop it unravelling but you need to be really careful not to burn yourself. You can either dip it in boiling water for a few minutes, blast it with a hair dryer, steam iron or clothes steamer or wrap it in a damp cloth and apply some heat from an iron (a steam iron is best).
You then just need to leave your dread to dry before attaching it to your own hair.
Mixed Colours and Candy Canes.
To get a mixed colour dread simply mix together two or more colour hair before you start to back comb. If you want candy cane dreads then you need to add an alternative colour to your dread hair before you loop it onto your coat hanger but leave it out when you are backcombing. Then when you have finished backcombing and twisting wrap the other colour hair around your dread in a spiral fashin before sealing.
Care
You can wash your synthetic braids on a low temperature in teh washing machine is you oput them in a laundry wash bag (or old pillow case first). Leave them on a towel to dyr naturally.
If they start to unravel with wear, you can just back comb them a bit me more and re seal them as above.
To keep them looking neat you can use a little braid/dread wax.
How to Apply Dreads
There are lots of ways that you can apply your dreads and you should experiement wth a number of different methods to find the right one for you but here is a couple of methods to start you off.
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You should first neatly section your hair. Pinning or clipping hair up out of the way of your first dread. Then split yourfirst section into two. |
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| Whilst holding your two pieces of hair apart, get a friend to hold a braid across the centre of the parted hair. |
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| Cross your hair own over over the braid |
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Then cross the braid over your own hair
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| Cross your own hair over the braid again |
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| ... and the braid over your own hair. Continue with this until you reach the end of your own hair if it is quite short, or for about 2 inches |
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Secure the end of the braided dread with a small rubber band.
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| You have one complete dreadlock. To finish the style simply repeat the method over the entire head maybe leaving your fringe if you have one free. |
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