Kanekalon Dread Making (picture heavy)

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When you have as many dreads as you want or as many as can fit on the string cut the string on one side.

This leaves you with dreads on a piece of string, like a necklace.

For this tutorial I only needed one dread but you can fit loads on a length of string at a time.

Next, take an old tee shirt, similar in colour to the dread, the tutorial I saw used towels but I found the fluff got stuck in the dreads so I used tee shirts.

Make your tee shirt wet, totally soak it then wring out the excess water but make sure it's still soaked but not dripping. If you have a steam iron get it warmed up and ready to steam, if not the heat from the iron will still work but the more steam you have the better.

Slide a dread off the string and place it on the wet shirt, make sure the shirt is wet both sides of the dread.

Hold the dread down at the end where the string was and use the other hand to twist the dread in the same direction as you twisted it when back combing. Try to tuck in all the stray hairs as you twist.

Then flop a piece of wet shirt over the dread and very lightly apply the iron on top of the wet shirt. Hold it there for a few seconds (about 5 seconds is plenty).

Work your way down the dread, twisting and holding and steaming as you go:

(Look at the difference between the dread sticking out of the shirt at the top and the fluffy worm at the bottom, huge difference!)

As you get further down the dread to the thinner section the iron may flat it out a bit, no matter how gentle you are. While it's still warm roll it between your fingers it should round up again, if not give it and extra twist and steam it again. The very last piece will just be a wispy piece of fluff that you can't steam.

Now you need to cut off the wispy bit but there's a knack to it!

Don't cut it horizontally! You'll get a nasty flat blunt end.

Do cut it vertically, along the twist. As I twist mine clockwise I cut from the right hand side, if you twist anti-clockwise then you need to cut from the left in order to follow the twist.

You now have a neat dread!

Do this as many times as you need.

As a rough guide, my real dreads are approximately half a centimetre across and I have 90 of them on my head so maybe that will tell you how many you need to make for your fake ones.

I make tiny ones out of kanekalon for my dolls, here's "Juno" to show you how they look:

I hope this has been helpful! Thanks for reading. ;D

Those look great!  Thanks for the tutorial.  I've been thinking of trying out making synth dreads for myself but I've never worn them before.  I don't know if I could rock them or they would rock me.

Wow! This is such a cool tutorial! Great job!

loving the yellow nail varnish! is it rimmel? wicked tutorial & im loving juno!

Fantastic - thanks Mathurine, very helpful indeed.

Thanks guys.

The nice thing about kanekalon is that it's very lightweight so the dreads aren't heavy. I know the ones I make are tiny but even with a hand full of them, when I made them all for Juno they didn't weigh anything at all!

If you shop on ebay you'll see that kanekalon comes in loads of different colours, both natural and neon so there's really nothing stopping you from trying it, especially at £4 a pack + postage.

I just got the ok to dread my hair from the OH so im going to try some fake ones like this first 🙂 If your after thin ones how thin would you reccommend?

My real dreads are considered "skinny" and they're around half a centimetre across. Synths can be thinner because they hold their shape but real hair probably won't get too much thinner than that.

I've been looking at tutorials online for this, wanna make dread falls as a summer project- The one i saw said dip them in boiling water but your iron method seems much better, thanks!

awesome tutorial!

piestar, I saw loads of tutorials that said about dipping them in boiling water and if you fancy it then good luck. Personally I didn't relish the idea of sticking my hands in a pot! Not that ironing my fingers is much better but at least you have more control over where the iron goes and you don't have bubbling water and hot steam coming up your arm.

Thanks Gothicle!

I've just been making some today, and I used your ironing method- which was great, a few steam burns but you could see the results straight away! Made some dark brown ones, just gotta go pick the pink hair up from the post office and hopefully by the end of the day I should have a dread fall to match my hair 😀

EDIT- all done, my first ever dread falls- not perfect but I'm happy 😀 thanks for the help!

Good job! By back combing first they get to stay pretty tight after you iron them.

Yeah I've had a few steam burns but it's not as bad as burns from the iron straight on your skin, they heal pretty quick.

Well done though.