 Today I'm going to attempt the longest braid I've ever done in my life and I did a really long jumbo braid for my trip to LA that I thought was going to be a really good tutorial but I accidentally deleted the footage so instead of redoing it I'm just gonna do a longer one and see how long we can go so this is what I'm starting with and I have a bunch of synthetic hair that I got from a photo shoot you can check it out on my Instagram but I just kept the hair so I could repurpose it for something fun like this so the first step is going to be combing my hair out and you can blow dry it straight if you want to but I'm gonna avoid doing that because I don't want to put any heat on my hair so I'm just going to detangle it and then pull it top when I'm braiding and next I'm gonna prep the braiding hair and I'm just gonna put them into little sections so they're easier to work with so this is what my hair looks like combed out Harrison what do you think it looks fantastic thank you I kind of want to wear it like this sometime thank you I think this would be cute for a shoot someday but we are here to braid so let's detangle these for these I'm just using scissors to cut out these little rubber bands nail shot I did these yesterday last night this is synthetic hair so it's like kind of tangled I feel like it tangles more easily but is way cheaper and here's a low quality picture of the packaging I took at the photo shoot when I was like I should probably try to remember what hair this is so I'm holding this in the middle and then I'm using my little loopy detangling brush that's for synthetic hair and I'm just going to brush this out so that it'll be easier to braid with so once it slides through very easily you know you're detangled and then the last part of prep is to take this and put it into smaller sections so you can braid different pieces in and feed it into the braid so I'm just taking some skinny sections like this and this is going to be for the small part of the braid I'm going to show you guys that really soon and for the main braid I'm taking sections this wide so these are the size differences now that my hair is brushed out and the braiding hair is detangled I'm going to start putting my hair up into the ponytail shape that I want and last time I did this I had a hard time making it exactly straight and this is why you're lucky my last video got deleted because this one's better so I'm gonna really focus on that and I decided that I'm going to just take the hair right around it and figure out exactly where I want that ponytail to be placed and then slowly add more hair to it to make sure that everything is exactly even and also very flat because my hair isn't blow dried or straightened I want to make sure that it lays as flat as possible and I think that is going to be the easiest way to do it to make sure the braid is perfectly centered I did a middle part just so I can find the center and then I'm going to have the braid starting from my ariana which is the spot the ariana has all of her ponytails just like high pony centered and like kind of at the top of your head so you want to put your fingers where you think that would be and then look up and see like will that be visible if you're looking straight if you're looking sideways like where is that one point that you really want it to start so I'm gonna get the circle of hair around that so I'm really happy with this being the area that the ponytail is coming from so I'm going to make sure that I really smooth that section down comb it out then I'm using a clear elastic to secure it exactly in place where I want it to stay I'm gonna tighten it just make sure this feels really good on your hair and it's not pulling because the whole braid's weight will be on this section so now I'm gonna add some leaving conditioner and this is the african pride olive miracle leaving conditioner then I'm going in with some gel this is the madame by madame cj walker humidity styling gel for the leaving conditioner I'm just gonna scoop this much and I'm just gonna kind of put it everywhere grabbing more for my ends and with the gel I'm gonna do the same thing I'm kind of focusing the gel on the outer sections where it will be slipped down on top but I am putting it through everywhere and definitely getting the ends now that the product is in I'm gonna comb my hair to make sure it stays detangled and is also going in the direction that the braid is going so I want to get rid of this center part and make sure everything goes directly back and lays flat a good way to get the back flat is to just go upside down and comb it like that that way your hands hurt less than just going straight up like that so once everything is combed you want to pull it together with that center section in the center and just do one last comb through to make sure that all of the hair is sitting flat and this is because I have texture in my hair so I'm trying to make sure there aren't like curly lumps or anything but if you have straighter or wave your hair it's probably not that serious I'm gonna temporarily hold this in place now I can put in the strong stuff anyone with edges anyone who wear wigs you guys know this stuff got to be glued super strong gel and this is what's really going to keep my hair in place so I'm just going to spread that liberally almost as liberal as I am all over top bottom sides everywhere and I'm taking my bore bristle brush to smooth that down and this is what makes it actually lay like flat flat better than the comb this is like really smoothing it down I have the scrunchie to hold it in place so I don't have to juggle holding both at the same time while I'm smoothing also makes it easier to do the back once you're really satisfied with how smooth it is you can take out the scrunchie and then you pull your hair taut put in that scrunchie one thing I always do when I do a really tight ponytail is I make sure I tilt my head down a little bit because if you don't do that the hairs at the back of your neck will be so tight that you won't be able to tilt your head down while you have the ponytail in and it will like tug on your hair and be so painful so just make sure that you at least tilt your head down a little bit if you're putting in a really tight pony double check if you like the placement because from here on out there is no going back so now is the fun part and we're going to get braiding if you want to get really fancy with it you can take a fourth piece just a small section and put that aside so we have three main pieces and then one little section I'm just going to set aside these three big sections for now I'm going to comb out this little section and I'm going to turn this into a skinny braid and I'm going to use the same method I'm showing you for the big one so with the smaller section I've divided it into three pieces and I'm going to braid it like a regular braid and just get that started a little bit and now that I have a good grip I'm going to in between these two sections I'm going to add some braiding here so I'm holding it from the middle and I'm just going to place it in between those and then keep braiding so once you braid that a couple times it's time to add another section same way but make sure that when you add it you're alternating which piece is going to be crossed on top of it so that you can spread out the thickness of your braid at this point I feel like it's starting to taper so I'm going to add in another section right here and then just keep braiding it in another section at this point I'm going to add one more section I'm going to guess the point where your arms are stretched out and you're having a hard time braiding you can just shorten the braid and keep going just be careful one more section okay one more section braiding is getting long again the end of the braid you want to put an elastic to hold it in place and this is how long it is so it's time to move on to the big braid I'm just going to quickly detangle these sections again just to make sure that the top of the braid comes out smoothly I'm being really careful on this next part and it's just starting the braid and you want to make sure that when you're doing it you're looking forwards you're pulling your hair directly backwards and you're not pulling it sideways because then your braid will be lopsided and like kind of go to the side instead of like center and straight back and I kind of did that last time so I learned from that mistake it's the same method is when I did the little braid I just take the hair and I put it in this v and then I keep braiding I'm going to add another section going to add a little to even it out right now and a little more this part is hard because I'm getting to where the end of my natural hair is so it's going to get puffy so you got to make sure you add the right density so it doesn't look like too puffy at that point I'm going to try and pull as tightly as possible to just lock in that natural hair adding another section I'm going to detangle what I have in right now because it does get tangled during the process add in some more hair obviously this isn't the best braid ever I definitely should not have done my nails so long with all these charms yesterday and this is also the second time I've ever done this but I think I'm getting better at it each time and I'm perfecting my method so this is just how it looks right now and it's good enough for me as it gets short again I'm adding in more hair it's getting too long to reach again so I'm going to wrap if I can keep braiding more hair some more double wrap and one last section of hair now the end I'm going to use a clear elastic and tie it off this is what the two braids look like they're pretty much full body and the last thing I'm going to do is take the little braid and wrap it around the big one like a spiral so it can be braid-ception and I think it just looks cooler and also like my braid isn't perfect so we'll distract from that so this is what the braid-ception looks like I'm making a knot at the end where this little braid ends I'm just going to loop it through itself pull that tight and then I'm cutting off the excess I'm also going to cut off just this much on the end of the braid last thing to do here is edges so I'm using the softy edge control and my little pink brush and the first thing I'm going to do is just use this edge control to smooth down the entire top section because it just gives like the smoothest hold and it holds it really well and since it's edge control and not gel it stays in place even more and it's thicker so this gives you like a really smooth top so you can leave your hair fully smoothed back or you can add edges and I'm just going to do a little something something a couple swoops up in there maybe it's because the time period I grew up in on YouTube but you have to add the swoops I feel like it's mandatory for me not for you but for me okay so here's the finished look it's a jumbo braid with a little braid around it kind of like a double helix and it's floor length so I can wear it all the way on the floor I can have my hands walk behind me to hold it so it doesn't get dirty or you could wrap it around your neck you could have a scarf you know it's kind of cold out there um you could do whatever you want with it so I'm really happy with how it turned out but if you have any tips on how to do jumbo braids or braids in general drop those tips in the comments down below and thank you so much for watching