Starting dreads on straight hair… Prep to Dread #1

I decided in March 2013 to take the leap and dread my hair…
I love the look, feel and message dreads evoke.  Don't be afraid and just go for it!  You will have ups and downs throughout the process, but don't give up.  You will get to a place where you love your dreads.

Here is my hair before starting.

Prior to this picture I stopped conditioning my hair for about 1 week.  Once you have dreads you don't want to use any type of products that have conditioners.

Do your research!  I spent hours and hours reading all about dreads, the process, best techniques etc.  Probably watched just about every you tube video out there on dreads.  This really gave me an idea of how I wanted to create them.  The downside is that there is a lot of conflicting information out there.  Do this, don't do this about the same thing.  I did come to the conclusion that I did NOT want to use wax to create my dreads.

I went ahead and ordered a dread kit off of dreadheadhq.com It was $37 and looks like this:

Next we (actually my husband) sectioned out my hair and braided it into small braids.
We knew we wouldn't be able to finish all of my hair in one day so having braids would be a way to keep the hair sectioned until ready to make another dread.

It is important to section your hair first so that you know how the dreads will lay and how it will end up once you get to the front sections.

I'm very glad I did this, since I was unhappy with a few in the front and had to resection.

Here is a shot of the first few braided sections.

Note the brick layer type pattern.  You don't want giant sectioned stripes down your head so it is important to alternate the hair lines. 

You will see in the picture below that we choose to do some "unsquared" type patterns on some of the sections.  After viewing other before and after pics online I was worried about having tons of white lines that looked like checkers on my head and this helped with it. 

One tip I will say is that a few of my sections were done with a longer, rectangle type section and those didn't work out as well months into my dreads.  The hair naturally wants to split in the middle, so if I had a redo I would stick with these uneven star shaped sections.

I was getting pretty anxious to try a dread so we undid one braid and dreaded it.  (Prior we found a mannequin head at Goodwill and practiced)