Wow, Thaks to all of you ladies my installation was such a breeze. I used Amm's black shrinkies and they shrunk hard and fast!!!

I used GE Silicone II 100% siclicone Sealant clear.  It is low oder (so it's not real stinky when applying) withsdands temps up to 400F, I think because it says "NOT for surfaces that will exceed 400F. Gets tacky in 30 min, so it's really easy to work with and It fully cures in 24 hours. I bought it at Target.

It was so easy, I couldn't believe it!!  

Here are the photos. This is before:

This is after:

I used hair from his and hers.  The kinky straight cuticle and French refined #3 and #4 brown.  Cuz I wanted two different types of textures in my hair.  Their cuticle hair is soo nice.  No tangles AT ALL, so far.  And it washes and dries beautifuly, with no tangles!!. 

So, far... also, I haven't had to brush it every couple of hours to keep it tangle free.  I went all day yesterday without brushing it untill the next day, I even slept on it, and it was virtually tangle free the next morning.  We'll see if it stays like that in the long haul.

This was my process with silicone.  I made this contraption below it’s a piece of wood with two nails in it.  I think that next time I might buy bulk so that I don’t have to deal with cutting the hair off the weft.

I tied the wefts onto it so that I could cut the hair straight across in a straight line as close to the weft as possible so that I wouldn’t waste any by leaving it on the weft.

In the photo below I’m actually blending two different color browns #3 and #4 (note that I am not blending different textures only different colors, that will be another experiment).  I was able to blend the colors so that I could have blended colored pre tipped hair along with single colored pre tips.

In this photo I am combing the two colors together so that they blend really well. Also, after cutting it off the weft I combed out the top 2 inches to get rid of the unwanted short hairs left, from when they sewed it to the weft, there is a lot of this extra short hair which just bulks up the tip,

Next I spread the cut hair onto the paper and layered the top ½” with silicone then I pushed the silicone through the hair with a Popsicle stick, I didn’t take a photo but after the first coat of silicone I actually grabbed the hair in the middle and flipped it over then coated the other top ½” with silicone.  It actually stayed in tact when I peeled it off the paper from the first layer of silicone.

Then I took the back of my comb and separated each pre tip, so that I could peel each pre tip off one at a time.

Here’s a photo of me peeling off one pre tip which I then shape into the shape I want, in this case flat. I even cut some of the pre tips at this point so that they would be nice and square at the tip when dry so that I wouldn’t have to trim them when finished.  Cutting the tip square worked wet or dry.

Here are my pre tips drying!!!

Wow, you did a great job blending the extensions into your hair...it looks natural.  Very flattering!

Jenny, wow, definately!! Feel free to use this thread in the demos archive.

Syren, It took me about 5 hours to make 200 pre tips.  Now that I have the hang of it I'm pretty sure it should only take me a couple hours to make the same amount of tips, but I won't need that many....

Amazingly, I only used around 55 for a full head.  I was a little slow so it took me about 7 1/2 hours to install it all.  The hair loc salon had almost 200 pre tipped hairs in my head, which I took out last week.  Hair locs caused a lot of hair breakage and I lost a lot of hair.

I always felt like they had too much hair installed and now I know I was right.  I will never go to a salon again to do hair extensions.  I paid around $3500 total over several appointments to finally get the look I desired with hair locs. 

Now, I can do it all myself  for $300.00 or less and by installing only 55 pre tips instead of 200. I am so thrilled with the results.

Thank you all for your compliments. I learned everything I needed to know off this board.  When it came time for me to do mine, I was freaking out that somehow I would screw it all up, but I had to make the best of it since I took out my hair locs and wanted long hair.

Anyways, I was more than prepared thanks to all your demos, tutorials, mistakes and successes.  You all ROCK!!

Luz:

THANK YOU For posting this, and WOW, what an amazing job. Your process and your results are so impressive!!

I of course always have a "burning question" so here it is. I've had absolutely *TERRIBLE* luck with shrinkies that don't have a glue that will stick to my hair. In other words, the shrinkie glue isn't enough to hold the hair. I am really hoping that AMM's shrinkies (which you are apparently using) DO THE JOB and have enough glue in them to hold the hair in place.

Please keep us informed!!  And thanks again for your ingeniousness!

Fina