I made these dreads using about 4 packets of silky straight hair - 3 bright red and one fluorescent pink (mixed in with the red). The hair was just backcombed, twisted and zapped with a hairdryer, and it took me about 5 hours to make 50 pairs of what I can best describe as double-ended dreads. Instead of looping the hair round something and dreading it to create one dread with a top loop, I took one long section of hair and dreaded each end of it, leaving a 3-4" section in the centre of each piece which was undreaded, like this.

I didn't want the dreads to be the same length all over, so I cut each pack of silky hair in half where it folds over, and made most of the dreads with that half-length hair.
I then made a few more (about 12) that were a bit longer by cutting about 6" off the end of a full pack of silky hair and using what was left.

I finished off the end of each dread with my heat clamp which made them look quite neat and not quite as 'chopped off' as they can look if you trim off the loose ends with scissors. I imagine a lighter or braid sealer would do the job just as well.

Next, I got a friend to braid them into my hair for me, which took about 3 hours. My own hair is about collarbone-length and dyed red, so it doesn't clash too badly with the dreads.
She started at the back of my head and sectioned off my hair in horizontal rows, and put about 4-6 pairs of dreads in each row, so the sections of hair are quite large and therefore don't get too stressed by the dreads hanging from them.

She braided just one side of each dread pair into my own hair, using two pieces of real hair and one side of dread as the three stalks of each braid. The un-dreaded bit of hair in the middle of each dread pair went into the braid at the top, and she just kept braiding until she ran out of real hair, and fixed with a clear elastic band.
I took a picture of the back of my head, so you can see the first row, and how each attached pair has a braid at the top and a dread hanging loose next to it.

She put the longer dreads that I had made in at the back of my head, and used the shorter dreads towards the top, so the whole thing is quite graduated and has quite a lot of volume.

I'm a big fan of this. It's huge, it's lightweight, it was quick and easy to do and very cheap. I'm writing this a week later just after washing them for the first time, and they're still poofy, holding up well and very comfortable. Best of all, my own hair hardly shows because the dreads that aren't part of a braid hide the ones that are part of a braid.

The biggest drawback I can see with these type of dreads is that if your own hair colour is very different to the colour of the dreads you're putting in, then the braided parts will show up. Black hair and black dreads hide the braids very well, but bright and light colours don't. Consider using a 'base colour' for your dreads which matches your own hair to minimise this. Longer hair also tends to show up the braided bits more than shorter hair does.

In my spare time I've done these dreads for other people - Some of my 'victims' so far (well, a few of those whose photos a) I remembered to take and b) which came out OK!) include Jo, Jamie and Sarah, Joey, Lex, Erynn-Elisabeth, Nat, Shelly and Tash, Gema, Nickiey (1) Naomi (1, 2), Laura (1), Emily (1, UV.), Charlotte (1), Katy (1), Sarah B (1), Tash again (1), Jorden, Chris, Vicky (1), Cara, Teayam (1, 2), Naomi (1) and Han.