Crochet Braids with 100% Kanekalon Hair

It's been over a month since I debuted my newest hairstyle on the blog. This has been a protective style I have been wanting to try since Chinelo opened my eyes to it: Crochet Braids!

at the Panamanian Day Parade in Brooklyn

Once I read that the style she had wasn't her hair, I immediately ran over to Mother Google to find out more about this witchcraftery lol. I went down a black YouTube hole which ultimately led me to discover the 100% Kanekalon Hair version of crochet braids. I rarely use heat and I don't straighten my hair so I though this would be a great alternative. Plus I was getting super frustrated dealing with my hair and I knew I had to put it away for a while.


So I asked my friend Dallas to hook me up. I came with my hair washed so she blowdried it out. I parted around the entire perimeter of my head how much hair I wanted to leave out of the braids. I decided to do this to protect the frailty of my edges. After a couple bouts of Senegalese twists, they aren't what they used to be. I decided I didn't want them braided up.

My hair half blowdried. the other half braided. Perimeter leave-out is twisted

Unfortunately I had to give and take. Since I was braiding up my edges, I was going to have to straighten them. I decided that it would be less damaging for MY hair because it's very rare that I use heat and I was only going to straighten them once or twice while I had the style in.

here you can see my hair in front of my shoulder, straigtened.

So she braided my hair using a braid pattern she felt would work best for what I was going for. Then came the installation of the Kanekalon hair. We ended up using 5 packs (maybe 5-1/2) of hair. She didn't cut it in half to install it. If she did, we would have used less packs, obviously lol. This was my hair when she was done lol

looking CUH-RAY-ZEE lol

At this point I know some of you are feeling really deceived lol  If it makes you feel any better, I asked her to cut it to the actual length of my hair. So in reality, my hair really is this long.... It's just nowhere near this thick. Now that I have it, I don't think I would be able to handle my hair if it was this thick. This is how it looked when I left :-).

notice very blunt ends

Once I got home, I got my cousin, LaToya a.k.a. the self-proclaimed "Weave Tamer", to take some scissors and a razor comb to it just to reduce some bulk and add some layers to make it look more natural. Once we did that, we probably removed a whole pack of hair from my head lol But I was very pleased and was even convinced myself that it looked pretty real.

After a few weeks, I decided that I wanted to curl it up. Straight hair get boring to me fast lol and the kanekalon was starting to tangle; Plus I didn't have a blowdryer in my house to smooth it back out. There's only so many "flat twist in the front" styles you can do lol

My friend Vashion helped me install my generic Curlformers. I did orange on one side of my head and pink on the other so that the curls on each side would fall in the same direction.  For my leave-out, I added water and Oyin Handmade's Hair Dew and for the Kanekalon, we just combed the hair out and put it in the curlformer, no products. Vashion dipped all of the kanekalon curlformers in really hot water. I left all of the curlformers in overnight. Even though I could have taken the kanekalon ones once they cooled. I didn't want to sleep with them soaking wet and loose so I just left them in until the morning.
This was the result :-)

The curls have lasted a week so far and they're still kicking. MY hair around the perimeter has started reverting (which I attribute to all of the rain and humidity) but it's okay.

I don't have any specific links I would recommend for the install of the crochet braids. You can just type it in youtube and you won't have any trouble finding inspiration!

Shoutout to you if you made it to the end! I should be switching styles in the next week or so. I'm thinking about doing mini twists next but we'll see where my patience is when the time comes lol

xoxo,
Tasha