My niece will be spending the rest of her summer with her father who is stationed a few states away. I thought it was time for a fresh new hairstyle for her airplane ride and her time with daddy. Her last set of braids are shown here.

It took a long time to take her previous braids out. It was about 4 hours- well, I measure in movies, we watched Gnomeo and Juliet and a German cartoon movie called Princess Lillifee. I have to be extra gentle with her hair because she loves any excuse to scream, smh…lol. But this hair session was mostly peaceful. She only cried once and that was mostly because I turned off the TV (she’s a bit spoiled).

Anyway, on to the hair. Here’s what it looked like after taking out the braids… There were virtually no tangles, no matting, and no product build-up. I had to spray the roots of maybe 2 braids to help with undoing them. The rest I unbraided while dry, with no problems. 

ready for a new ‘do

Braids easily came undone after 3+ weeks

Detangled each piece at a time

For the first time ever, I used a blow dryer on her hair. I washed with kids shampoo, conditioned with Aussie Moist, rinsed then detangled (using a Denman brush) with Shea Moisture Milk as the leave in and sealed with a shea butter mix that belonged to my sis (not sure what’s in it). I blow dried using tension on low to warm heat, until her hair was about 95% dry.

While braiding, I didn’t use a brush at all, just a comb to make the parts. She had a lot of stretch in her hair because it was braided dry. I set the braids on perm rods and took them out when I was done with all the braids. She was all ready for her trip to see her daddy. The next day, however, it rained so her hair shrunk up, and the curls fell anyway…but braiding on dry, stretched hair was worth it anyway. She doesn’t have the patience for a 2 day hair session so I never get to braid her hair while it’s dry.

All done- curled up

braiding dry gave her more stretch than usual