How to Cornrow Hair Extensions

Video transcription

Hi, my name is Shann Christen, with Salon Republic, and we're going to do a cornrow braid extension. We're going to start by making a parting through the hair, and we're going to follow along the occipital bone. Remember to stay at least two fingers above the ear when doing an extension and you want to stay away from the top crown of the head. I do like the occipital bone. The hair tends to be strong, it's a great place, it always gets hidden and we're going to make a slight, we're going to make a nice clean parting that has a slight angle upward, up over the ear, just like this. I always go ahead and continue my parting all the way to the front that way you get a very good clear idea of where that extension is going to lie. With the slight angle in the front, it does give the extension an opportunity that as it grows out that it grows out and slides this way as opposed to opening up this way as that hair grows. So, now that we have our parting, we're going to fit the extension. You do not want to encroach too far to the front and you want to stay above the ears, so we're going to make sure that we have a nice route to go. You want to make sure that both sides are even by holding and putting your fingers forward you can look above and see that that's pretty even. That looks good and I'm going to put a little mark right in front of the extension. That way I know where I'm going to start my braid. Make sure it doesn't slip and wala. You will find that by adding a little synthetic hair in the braid it will make it stronger and less likely to slip out. So, we're just going to take a little bit of synthetic hair. I like to just cross it and we're going to prepare for our braid. We're going to go to our mark here and I'm going to grab a small pinch of hair right at our mark and I'm going to do a pinch braid to attach the synthetic hair and that's just simply by crossing and starting your braid. Using the thumb and the nail to hold it tight to the head. I like to do a couple knots prior to beginning to do the cornrow. Now, a cornrow braid for extensions is just like doing a French Braid. Each knot, each leg, you're going to add a little bit more hair as you go through and we start our braid. As you are working the braid you continuously add hair all the way through. The braid has a tendency to get a little thick. So you can, each opportunity that you have to drop out a little bit of the extra hair you may do so as you go through. This leg here has got a lot of hair. I'm going to actually always choose the synthetic part and I can drop out a little bit of the hair I've been adding thus keeping my braid from getting too thick. Take that hair out and then just continue on as you go and I'm going to finish up, I'm only going to go half way and I'm going to finish it off by doing a slightly braid, finishing off with just a few knots of a braid like that and then I'm going to take my needle, designed just for hair extensions. It's a round needle and it's got a blunt end on it and I'm just going to stick it through and I'm going to go through the two sides and I'm going to pull that needle through, holding on and essentially I'm going to tie it off by just wrapping it once and then wrapping through itself and through the two chords and that will make a lock just like that and go ahead and cut, and just cut the chord. Okay, so now I've gotten one side done and I'm going to go and do the other side. It's important that when you start your cornrow braid that you start in the front of both. You don't want to do a braid all the way to one side and end in the front because you'll always have this little thing that sticks out which would be the end of the braid. Two ends together, I'm going to ask for my client's participation on that. I'm going to move them just to the side and ask her to hold those. Would you please hold those? Be sure not to pull them too tight. Check and make sure that there's not a lot of pull going on and then with your proper tool, your extension needle, we're going to go in and we're just going to seal those off together. Okay, and we're just going to continue that stitch passing the needle through itself, through the thread so that it makes a locking stitch. Alright, so after you've sewn off the two ends of your braid, you want to make sure that you go in and cut all your cords and cut off the synthetic hair that you've blended in. You don't want to leave the synthetic end blended in with their own hair. It will only cause knotting. So, I'm going to measure one more time to make sure that my extension matches my braid. Checking both sides and they look good, okay. So, now we're ready to attach the extension. Okay, so I am going to ask my client to hold the two ends of the extension, thank you, okay and I'm going to pin up one side. We don't want the extension to do too much slipping while we're sewing, okay? Okay, now with our needle we're going to go in and do the same stitch that we did to connect our two ends at the center. We're going to start at the beginning, coming through the two chords and we're going to continue to stitch from one side all the way around to the other side. I'm continuing with my locking stitch and I'm going to make sure that I tie down the very end of the extension and then pull it through is an excellent way to knot that off, not too tight, and we'll finish off. That's it. There we have it and then the hair will just go right on top of it. That hair comes right down on top. I'm Shann Christen, and that's how you do a cornrow braid extension.