What You'll Need | Washing & Sectioning | Backcombing | Waxing

Backcombing, let the fun begin...

Now for the actual dreading. Can you believe it? It's finally time!

First off remove the rubberbands and put them aside for later. Now you want to start backcombing, starting at the back of your head and working your way to the front.

Backcombing is kind of like teasing the hair and kind of not. If you took the comb and stuck it in the strands you're holding and slid it up towards your scalp, not letting any hairs slip loose and get pushed forward, not much would happen. I suppose if you did it real fast your hair would get warm but that's about it. The trick is to very slowly let a hair or two slip on each stroke forward. These loose hairs will get pushed toward your scalp and start to form a dread.

Pack the hairs in tight by pressing the comb firmly against the newly forming dread on each stroke. You can turn and roll the dread as you go to make sure it comes out round. Make sure the knots closest to the scalp are as tight as you can get them. This does involve some pain, so if you don't have a beverage this is a good time to crack one open.

When the hair grows you want it to get tangled into the dread. Keeping the knots that are closest to the scalp tight will help new hair to dread as it grows. Continue to back comb the hair slowly (yes it does take a while) working your way to the end. Keep dreading until you get to the end and have nothing to hold onto.

OK , now a rubber band to finish it off. Tighten the tip up as much as you can with the comb. You'll notice it's kinda hard to get a good grip on the little guy cause you have only a small bit of hair to grab and pull against. Grab the very end in your fingers, fold the undreaded hair you have left back on itself, and fire an elastic on to hold it. Make sure the elastic is really tight. If you want to, instead of folding it over, you can just put the elastic on and clip the very end of the tip off where it sticks out after the elastic. If you do, cut it on a bit of an angle, otherwise the hair will have a tendency to flair out instead of forming a little point. When you feel loose hairs on the ends, get in the habit of rolling them in your fingers to tangle them up...in time this will give you nice smooth rounded tips.