Hair Tutorial: The Braided Crown

This is the hair tutorial I had to do before I cut my hair off. I remember the first time I saw the tutorial, I thought it was an impossibly magical hair tutorial, so I had to try it and see if it was possible.

You can find the original tutorial for the high braided crown here. That blog, Hair Romance has a ton of hair tutorials in case you aren't loving this one.

First of all, let me say, this turned out waaaaay better than I thought it would, and looking back at the pictures I'm kind of impressed with it all over again.

This hairstyle may look super complicated, and honestly it intimidated me before I tried it out. One night when I was just sitting on the couch, I decided to give it a try and see if I could wrap my head around how to do this. Starting it seemed a little confusing to me, and I wasn't sure if I would be able to round the corners to make a crown out of it, but once I got going, it was pretty easy, so here goes.

1. I started with wet hair. I cannot braid my hair on dry hair, it just falls out, and all of the layers poke out. I always braid on damp hair.
2. I started on my left side because that's what made sense to me, and because my hair is thicker on my right side due to my part, so my left side was easier. Start behind your ear, and do a Dutch Braid. A dutch braid is the same thing as a french braid, but instead of braiding the strands on top of one another, you pull the strands under one another. So you braid under instead of over...if that makes sense.
3. Start curving the hair around the top of your head. Pay attention to how high up on the crown of your head you come. I didn't do this, so my braid sat rather low, and far from my face.

4. Keep going around your head, making a crown. Your arms will ache a lot doing this braid, as it's a little more time intensive.
5. Make sure you curve the braid once you come around at the bottom. I had to stop, and undo the braid a little bit, because it was too loose as I came around he corner on the right bottom. Keep it curved and tight.

6. Curve it up all the way until you meet with the start of the hair, and then just braid the left over hair like normal.
7. Pull on the braid to loosen it and give it more volume. Just a little all over, you don't want to pull it out.
8. Wind the left over braid inside of the larger braid. I have much longer hair than the girl in the tutorial so mine wound a lot on the inside. This is where bobby pins are necessary. Just tuck the ends inside the larger braid and pin them there.

AND WALLAH

And it lasted all day, even including a little nap. Here's what it looked like at the end of the day.