I haven’t been blogging much lately, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been braiding… Quite the opposite. I’ve been practising braids that I thought were impossible.

First one: fishtail braids. If you asked me a month ago to do a fishtail braid, I would have said it takes too long and will become loose too easily, and looks messy in any case. But now I quite like them.

There were couple of contests on Instagram, where you had to do either a normal fishtail braid or a french or dutch fishtail, so I thought that was a perfect excuse to practise.

This is an updo that I created from two french fishtails.

It took quite a long time, maybe 20 minutes. The fishtails lasted a day, but the bobby pins that I used to pin the two braids up with, came off quite easily, and the braids just hung down the back… but that also looked alright.

A dutch fishtail / inverse fishtail is a bit more difficult, and I never used to like the way it looked. When I practised them a bit, I came up with hairdos where it actually looked quite nice. This one is probably the best:

This is a starburst bun, but instead of french braiding it, I’ve used a dutch fishtail braid, and instead of tugging the end of the braid inside the bun, I wrapped it around and only tugged the very end inside.

This one was a bit too fancy for a 5-year old, and lots of babyhair started sticking out quite soon, but I think it would be great on an adult or a teenager.