Crimped Braids & Messy Bun

A friend of mine from church gave me the idea to wipe the dust off my old crimper that had been hiding in the back corner of my bathroom cabinets and try something with it.  She’d added a cute braid in her hair one Sunday and had run her crimper down it for added texture.  We thought we’d experiment and see what fun we could have.  After all, all the neon colors from the 80’s are coming back — why not crimped hair! 🙂 Goose really loved this and she got lots of compliments on it.  This was a really fun way to change up a “normal” style.

For starters, you’re obviously going to need one of these:

I have no idea how long I’ve had that thing, but the plates come off & can be switched out with a waver, or a couple other flat iron type plates.  Never thought it’d come in handy 20+ years later! 🙂  But don’t worry …. If you don’t have a crimper, it would be a little more work, but you can make a few small braids and run your flat iron down them to get really small waves using the technique I did in THIS old post.  Anyway, on with the tutorial.  This is nothing hard – just adding fun texture from the crimper!

Step 1 – Part hair and braid

Part from ear to ear and braid the hair in front of the ear.  Temporarily secure both braids with a clip on the end.

 Step 2 – Crimp your braid

I started at the bottom and worked my way up with my crimper.  Crimp the braid as much or as little as you want to add texture to the plates of your braid.  Do it on each braid.

This is what it’ll look like once you’re done:

 Step 3 – Make a low side ponytail

 Step 4 – Add braids to ponytail

 Step 5 – Make a messy bun

Since her hair is so long, we did our Messy Bun for Long Hair.  If your hair is shorter, you can use our other messy bun tutorial.

Step 6 – Crimp the messy bun

This step is technically optional, but I wanted more texture and so I took random pieces from the messy bun & crimped them.  Again, if you don’t have a crimper you could braid a few small braids into your ponytail, run your flat iron down them and then make your messy bun.  You’d have even more texture in your bun than I got from just doing random sections on her bun.

 Finished!

Please tell me I’m not the only out there that still has a crimper!  If you try this we’d love to see pictures!  Feel free to share them on our Facebook page.   We joined in SNAP’s Show & Tell Party today!  Have a great day!