#hairoftheweek: Waterfall Feather Braid

It's been quite an eventful week, especially since on top of everything that's just happened, I have to gear up for an even busier and more stressful week coming up. College doesn't stop for anything. Thankfully I had selected a surprisingly easy hairstyle for this week. This hairstyle may have opened a lot of doors for me.

The Process:

When I first started getting into doing my hair, a lot of skills came naturally to me and other things I had to work on. Other things, I've been working on for years and still have yet to accomplish, let alone master. One skill in particular is the waterfall effect. No matter how many tutorials I watched and how many different ways I tried it, it would always fall apart by the time I dropped my first strand. When I watched this tutorial, it was explained in such a clear, concise manner that I immediately understood what I had to do without even having to practice. It was like a light shined down on me as I had a revelation. I didn't practice this until the day of so I'd say it's an easy one as long as you can get the hang of waterfalling.

The Tutorial:

Since I followed a tutorial, you can watch the TwistMePretty video I learned it from (skip to 1:20 for the tutorial) but I'll put it in my own words here. (1) Part your hair to the side. Pick up a medium sized chunk of hair and split it into three. (2) Make one stitch going over (like you're French braiding). (3) On the next stitch, bring the strand on the top over the middle strand and drop it. Tuck that behind your opposite ear. (4) Now pick up a new strand hair from the bottom (close to your face) and add hair to the top strand. (5) Repeat Steps 3 and 4 until you have four strands waterfalled. If you didn't really get that, it's probably because I didn't explain it well. The video can definitely help with that. (6) Continue adding hair in from the back but now add the waterfalled strands back in to make the feathered effect. The first strand dropped is the first strand back in. Take it over all the other dropped strands and braid it in with the bottom strand. (7) Repeat Step 6 until all the dropped strands have been feathered. I made sure to angle my braid down so it would have weird lumps or lay funny. I also stopped adding hair to the top strands when I thought they didn't seem necessary anymore. (8) Braid a few more stitches and go back to loosen up those feathers. Get them to swoop how you like them and finish the braid, tweaking your feathers as needed. You can have them as swoopy (or as not-swoopy) as you like. (9) I tied it off and gently pancaked the rest of the braid, nothing to dramatic, and the hairstyle is complete!

The Result: 

1.21.16 waterfall feather braid (x)

A nice, swoopy accent braid. Don't forget to give it a like on Instagram if you haven't already!

The Verdict:

This hairstyle was a little bit problematic (so thank goodness I decided to do it on Thursday when I had plenty of time) but it was all due to personal problems. My hair is very stiff and it likes to stay as straight as possible so any type of feathering effect doesn't work very well. Well, that's subjective but it just felt like no matter how far I pulled out the feathers to swoop, they would retract back into the braid. It just never seemed to be enough. And since I was tugging at them so much, the little flyaways were making their appearance so it didn't look very put together. In hindsight, it probably looked fine, it was just that my perception of it didn't match what I envisioned. Nevertheless, I was very happy with the way it looked. It was touching my face, which isn't my favorite thing, but it was so worth it. It was how I imagine having (hassle-free) bangs is like.


What'd you think of this hairstyle? Let me know in the comments below! If you missed last week's #hairoftheweek, check it out here! Be sure to keep up on all the upcoming #hairoftheweek posts and turn on my notifications on Instagram so that you can maximize your chances to win that extra vote for fan favorite!


Talk to you soon!

xo, Yvette