Can I braid extensions into my own hair? Let's find out!

As a toddler I had strawberry blonde hair that quickly became very light blonde hair before I hit school age.

All through school I grew it long probably because that's what "good little girls" were (and probably still are) taught to do. I loved my hair. I loved plaiting it and loved having it in braids. One day, age 11, after mum braided my hair enough times that I knew what it felt like and after seeing what the result looked like in other people's hair I taught myself to braid my own hair.

From that point on I braided it a lot.

As I stepped into adulthood I slowly played with cutting my hair shorter an shorter. Or, to be clear, I let other people cut my hair shorter.

I realised it suited my face better; my long straight hair had made my narrow face look long and it really didn't suit me. No wonder I felt like an ugly duckling.

Then one day something magical happened. I had moved to Hamilton Island as a 24 year old. My hair was shoulder length at this point and one day I got out of the shower and realised my hair was curly.

It looked amazing!!

And then I realised something that had been in front of me the whole time: my Mum has short, curly hair. And I am, genetically, a lot like her. I hadn't even considered that I could have gorgeous curly hair because I'd always seen it long and straight. But the shorter length plus the humidity of Northern Queensland meant - ta da! - curly haired Caroline.

Now, I suppose, would be a good time to insert a photo of my awesome curls but you can look at my profile pic while I see if I can wrangle this post back to the story I had intended to tell, which is about these long braids (which we call plaits in Australia but I think much of the rest of the English speaking world calls braids) that you see in the photo at the top of this post.

Over the last 20 years or so my hair has rarely made it longer than 'short ponytail length' before I've had it chopped short again. (And actually, while I'm in tangentville, I actually got my head shaved when I was 29... But that's probably another story for another day!!)

So I love how I look when my hair is short but I miss playing with long hair and being able to do all sorts of weird and wonderful things with it. But I also miss how blonde it used to be!

My hair has got so dark as I've aged!!

So a couple of weeks ago I came up with a plan (probably subconsciously when I saw a woman with long red braids/plaits in Melbourne CBD) that I would solve both problems (missing my light blonde hair and not having enough hair to play with) by buying some hair extensions.

So this was my first ever attempt to put (plastic) hair extensions into my own hair.

Firs, I combed my hair as straight as I could, following the directions I'd found in a YouTube video.

I bought three packs like this off eBay.

I quickly discovered that plastic strands of hair are messy!!

The first one was always going to be the worst, right?

I had forgotten that I would need lots of tiny hair elastics so I just tied a knot in the end of each one. Two done, they look okay!

I think this was my seventh one. It's probably the neatest of the lot. I've realised that the plaits/braids I do just behind my left ear are always going to be the neatest because they're the easiest for my dominant hand to control and I can also see some of what I'm doing in the mirror instead of having to do the whole lot by feel.

After about an hour I'd done two rows along the bottom of my skull and produced seven plaits/braids.

I had imagined I would try to do my whole head on one go but it looked cool and I had something to play with, and... I was bored of doing these same actions!

So for now, that's enough. I'm going to call my little experiment a success and pat myself on the back for being willing to try something new. It took a bit of courage because I wasn't sure I could do it. And I have a part of me that still wants everything perfect. So I'm happy that I challenged myself to take a well deserved afternoon off work and play dress ups, with my hair 😉