InStyle Your Way- The Braided Up Do

It's not a very frequent occurrence for me to wear an "updo", even more so a braided one unless I'm at work or having a seriously bad hair day, but in the name of fashion, with braided hair do's being spotted all over the runway for SS13, I have put together this style for InStyles "InStyle Your Way Challenge".

InStyle recently approached me and asked if I wanted to join them with a few other bloggers for their new line up of challenges, which will take place on Twitter and gives you the opportunity to win a goodie bag made up of some of their personal beauty favourites which includes products from Dermalogica, L'Oreal and Morrocan Oil. To enter, simply tweet a picture before the 25th February, of your twist of The Braided Updo to @instyle_uk with the hashtag #instyleyourway.
 Excitingly for me, I get to help pick a winner and I'm so excited to see what everyone comes up with.

I'm no expert when it comes to hair but have so much fun playing around and seeing what styles I can come up with. I have quite fly-away hair and I often find delicate hair styles quite difficult, so to achieve this look I made sure that I had a small amount of product blow dried into my hair to give it a little bit of hold. I used the V05 Plumping Mousse*, but I think a styling spray would have worked well too. 

I combed my hair from the ends up to ensure it was completely tangle free, and starting on the opposite side to the side I want the most part of the style to feature, I separated my hair into three sections (roughly about 1.5inches each), working from front to back. 

Once I had my three sections, I began to braid towards the opposite side. On every sequence, similar to a french plait, I added a little more hair into the plait and continued to do so until I got to where I wanted to the braid to finish, making sure I didn't pull it too tight as I personally like a much looser look.

Like I said, I'm certainly no expert when it comes to hair and wasn't too sure how I wanted the overall look to play out but after playing with it a little, I decided to continue the braid all the way around until I had very minimal hair left to work with. I secured it with a few Brown kirby grips and a little bit of L'Oreal Elnett Hairspray to finish, but if you wanted to do a similar style with more of a ponytail, a snag free elastic would work beautifully.

I'm really excited to see what styles you come up with. What's your favourite braided up-do look?


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