Hi everybody! Today I’m showing you an easy updo you can do when you’re having a bad hair day, or if you have hard-to-manage hair. This is of course perfect for any hair type, but it’s just an especially great one for those bad hair days when your hair is an absolute mess and you have no idea what to do with it.

One of my younger sister’s is modelling this hairstyle for me today, and as you can see she has curly hair, though it’s been a couple of days since she washed it, so it’s getting a bit flat and messy. And I know there have been quite a few requests for hairstyles with curly/hard to manage hair, so I thought I would take the opportunity to show you how to do this easy hairstyle in her hair. 😉

Items needed: comb, 1-2 small rubber elastics, a normal hair tie, and a handful of bobby pins. (dry shampoo if needed)

Time: 5-7 minutes

Difficulty: Easy

Step-by-step instructions:

1.) Start with your hair down and parted in the middle. You can do a side part too, it’s just not as even. (If you need to add some dry shampoo because your hair is a bit dirty at the roots you can do that now.)

2.) Now pick up a small section of hair near the part and divide into two sections to begin a lace-rope braid. See this post for a quick tutorial on it. These are generally slightly easier to do in curlier hair then french or dutch braids, because you don’t have to comb through the hair so much to braid the hair. 😉

3.) When you reach a few sections behind your ear, stop adding in hair, and continue doing a normal rope braid at least a few stitches down, and secure with an elastic.4.) Repeat steps 2-3 on the other side of your head.

5.) Now gather all you hair into a ponytail, making sure you take the elastics out of your braids. But on the last pass through the hair tie, don’t pull your hair all the way through. See picture:

With the remaining hair left out gather up and tuck into the hair tie just under the first bump. See this tutorial for more detail (go to 1:00 in the video for the messy bun bit.)

6.) Your hair should look something like this now:

7.) All you need to do now is bobby pin the bun to your liking. Quick Tip: To pin the bun more securely and use less bobby pins make sure you’re only pinning small sections at a time, the pins will hold the hair better and keep the hair in place for much longer. You can also gently tug on the top bumps of the braid to create a fuller look.

And you’re done!

Let me know if this is something you’d try out, and also you can leave any hairstyle requests you have down in the comments. 😉

We also have a hairstyle poll running at the moment which you can vote for right here. Enjoy the rest of your week!