Kategoria: Lace braids

11 joulukuun, 2013

Skiing

Started our skiing season on Sunday. Hair under the skiing helmet and balaclava is always a bit tricky: there can’t be any hair escaping from under the balaclava around the face, and the braid can’t be too thick around the head or the helmet won’t fit.

For my youngest daughter, I did just two very tight french braids as her hair is so thin that braids won’t prevent putting on the helmet. (I didn’t take a picture of this one)

For my oldest daughter it’s a different story! I did a mermaid braid for her, which is like a french braid, but you only add hair from the very edge of the head leaving loose hair underneath the braid. This way, the braid doesn’t get too thick. When I got to the nape of her neck, I finished with a loose simple three strand braid.

For my middle daughter, I did two very fine lace braids around the face and then finished with a loose 3-strand braid.

Here is a tutorial I did for this hairdo:

All three hairdos worked really well. The helmets fit over the braids, and there was no hair on the face. The braids didn’t get messed up when the girls took their hats off, put them back on and off again…
We came home quite late and didn’t have time to wash the hair and do new braids before bedtime, but these ones lasted well for the next school day.

1 joulukuun, 2013

Braiding at the Christmas market

Today I was doing braids at the Finnish Christmas market. I only had 1 and a half hours to do as many as I could… I managed 10 heads!

I very rarely get to do braids on anyone else than my daughters, so it was quite an experience to do so many so different types of hair: thick, thin, curly, straight, layered, fringe etc… I really enjoyed it! And it was for a good cause: fund raising for the Finnish school.

I was a bit worried before hand, how to get the little ones to sit still without a TV or computer. I had brought a small sticker book, and I asked the girls to stick some stickers in it while I was braiding. It worked really well.

These all took about 5-10 minutes. The trickiest one was the little double lace braid headband on very fine and thin hair, and the one I enjoyed the most doing was the thick long Rapunzel braid.

26 marraskuun, 2013

Ballet hair

My oldest girl started ballet few months ago. We were a bit disappointed, when we got the welcoming letter in the summer, and there were instructions for hair… The older girls have to have a bun, but for the younger ones, just a simple ponytail! I know it is a relief to most of the mums that they don’t need to do buns on their little girls, and of course the ballet teacher wants the whole group looking the same, but I had been hoping I could do something more than just a ponytail.

So we started in September with just a ponytail, but soon sneaked in a little variation (which the ballet teacher loved):

One day, my daughter came home from ballet and said she is allowed to have a bun for ballet. At this point, I remembered I’m not very good at doing buns, it always ends up a mess with bobby pins sticking out everywhere. So I started practising and did this version of a lace braid bun:

Here is a CuteGirlsHairstyles tutorial for a lace braid bun. In my version, instead of using a bun-maker, I wrapped some of my daughter’s hair around the ponytail, but this trick only works if you’ve got super thick hair.

Today, I came up with a french braided bun:

This was fairly easy, held really well, and only required 3 bobby pins. I will do a picture tutorial for this one soon… My daughter absolutely loves having her hair up in a ballet hairdo, always puts a big smile on her face!

14 marraskuun, 2013

5-minute braids

I have promised to be braiding at the Christmas market in a couple of week’s time to raise some money for the Finnish school. There will be limited time and loads of people, so I need to be able to do quick braids that are pretty enough for everyone to want! So that’s the reason I haven’t posted anything for almost a week: I’ve been practising quick braids. I’ve braided with a stop watch and here are a few that I am now able to do in 5 minutes:

If you want to be quick, you choose a hairstyle that doesn’t require parting the hair in any way. The first one is a dutch lace braid going around the head, so almost like a normal lace braid, but doing it inside out.

So I decided that dutch lace braids were quick and pretty, and did another one with three little braids on the side. The third is a dutch lace braid headband. Just like a lace braid headband, but inverted.

Two braids down the sides is also quite a quick hairdo, especially if you do the parting slightly to the side, so you don’t spend any time trying to get it perfectly in the middle. Two normal french braids are a bit too ordinary for me, so I made two lace braids down the sides.

My daughter loved this hairstyle and called it indian hair.

The last one is my first ever attempt at these little flowers. They are quick to make, but impossible to undo without pulling loads of hair out! Also, I didn’t quite like how they turned out, so I think I’ll need some more practice on this one.

If anyone can think of any quick but impressive hairdos, please let me know, I think I need some more ideas!

4 marraskuun, 2013

Five beautiful hairdos

Couple of weeks ago I was staying at my sister’s and had the opportunity to try some of my favorite braids on her.

Adult hair can be challenging as well, my sister’s is quite slippery, and she is growing out her fringe, but at least she sits still when I do her hair.

The first one is a lace braid going around the head, and catching all the short hair at the front. After going around the whole head, I turned and french braided the rest of the hair from left to right.

The double starburst bun is probably my favorite braid at the moment. My sister and mum were taking my bigger girls to see the National Ballet, so she needed a beautiful hairstyle, and this seemed perfect:

Most of these (apart from the ballet hair) I made the night before, so that we didn’t need to get up too early in the morning to do hair. The braids lasted really well on her, much better than on a child!

Below left, is a kind of a ladder braid, which I’ve tried on my daughters before. I still think that it is very difficult on anyone else except my oldest daughter with super thick hair, but it worked out OK on my sister.

Below right is two spiral braids, which you can do on any hair (I have done this one successfully on thin and short hair). You start from the middle and lace braid around and around. On my sister’s hair do, I did two spirals and tied them back, so from the top it was a heart-shape.

By the time my sister had walked around with nice hairdos for a week, people started suggesting hairdos for us to try… This was supposed to be two french braids from the top down and from the bottom up, tied together into a (non-braided) bow. Her hair was not long enough to make a simple non-braided bow, so I did two bow-shaped lace braids and twisted the ends of the braids around. It ended up looking quite a lot like a butterfly:

27 lokakuun, 2013

Winter braids to fit under a hat

We just returned from a holiday in Finland. It was good practice for the winter, as I had to think of hairdos that stay nice under a hat. Here are a few that I came up with:

The one on the left I started from the middle of the swirl and lace braided around a few times, then did a little french braid into normal braid with the hair on the right, and combined at the back. The braid on the right is a 5-strand lace braid adding hair from the left.

The last one is a combination of waterfall and french braids. It caught my eye once on Pinterest, and I’ve done it a few times, always gets many comments, as it is a bit different. I can only get this braid to work on my oldest daughter, as she is old enough to help a bit by holding the strands from the waterfall braid until I braid them into the two french braids. Without her help, the strands from the waterfall become loose, and the whole thing falls apart.

All three hairstyles lasted couple of days and didn’t get messed up under a hat, so perfect for winter.

10 lokakuun, 2013

Birthday butterfly

I was flicking through braids on Instagram to find something quick and pretty for my daughter’s birthday party, and she spotted the butterfly braid on @abellasbraids. I realized that’s not quick, and on the first attempt, probably not pretty either, but she asked nicely, and it was her birthday… So I decided to try it, and thought, if it takes the whole morning and I don’t have time to clean the house before the party, at least the butterfly on her head will divert the attention.

It took me about 15-20 minutes and I was going back and forth a bit to get the wings to look right… but it turned out alright.

Here is a link to Abellas Braids tutorial. On the first attempt, it’s not as easy as it seems on the video!!

My daughter loved it! After I finished, my youngest daughter sat on the chair in front of me and said she also wanted a butterfly! I put her hair on a ponytail and put a butterfly hairclip on it, took me 1 minute!

10 lokakuun, 2013

The secret is in the planning

When braiding hair, thin hair isn’t necessarily a problem…

A while ago I did this amazing double starburst bun on my 7-year-old daughter, and thought it would only work on her as she has thick hair and can sit still for ages.

But one morning I decided I’d try it on my 2-year-old, who has thin, uneven baby hair, and it turned out alright:

The secret to success is in the planning. I put the telly on and did the brushing and parting and made two little ponytails at the back to braid around (here is a link to the tutorial I found on youtube), then came the serious part where I really needed her to sit still. For this part, I put her favorite TV program (Littlest Petshop) on, the episode lasts 20 minutes, so I knew I had plenty of time to finnish the hairdo. Sometimes I accidentally pull the hair too hard and she screams and decides she doesn’t want me to do the braid after all, but if I have Littlest Petshop on, I can easily divert her attention from the hair back to the TV by asking questions about the program (”where did that blue dog go?” etc), and carry on braiding.

Here the trickiest part was to know how much hair to add at a time, so I did need to undo the braid a bit at times and redo to get it even. But even with all the braiding, undoing it and redoing it, I managed to finish before the TV program.

29 syyskuun, 2013

New inspiration

I’ve found a great new inspiration: I follow her on Instagram @abellasbraids. She does amazing hairdos, most of them just my style. I’ve been trying them out with varying success. This one I tried a couple of times on my 4-year-old, but her hair just isn’t thick enough to split the hair strands from a waterfall braid into 3. So finally I succeeded when I did the braid on my eldest daughter:

This one is quite tricky to make: you first need to do a waterfall braid, but only drop a strand to the left at every other stitch.

Next, go onto do a ladder braid, but instead of adding a whole strand from the waterfall braid, add a third of a strand at a time to the lower braid.

(I think I really need to do some tutorials instead of adding links, but I can’t braid and film at the same time…)

Anyway, I thought this was beautiful. And it lasted well. And if you have practiced braiding a bit, and have some patience, it’s really not that difficult to make.

I have tried a lot of other braids from @abellasbraids. Here is one that went quite wrong. It looks nice enough here, but nothing like what I was trying to do. I challenge you to go on Instagram, and find the hairdo I was trying to copy:

Katie @abellasbraids also has a blog on blogspot and you can find her on youtube, go and check it out. I thought I had tried every braid there is, but she has definitely proved me wrong.

11 syyskuun, 2013

Starburst with less hair

After I posted the step-by-step pictures on how to make the starburst braid, I’ve had a few people asking how to do it for kids with less hair. My oldest daughter has thicker hair than any child I know, so the same hairdo looked quite different on my 2.5 year old:

I modified the hairstyle slightly, because stretching all the thin hair from the back up to the braid looked funny and came loose very easily. So I started with a lace braid headband (as I so often do, to catch all the baby hair from around the face), then chose the thickest part of the hair for the middle ponytail, and then french braided around it, leaving the hair at the back loose. See my post from last week for details:

The trick with thin and short hair is to keep the circle small: don’t stretch the strands that come out of the ponytail, try to keep the braid near the ponytail by stretching the outer hair strands instead. (This will make sense to anyone who has tried the starburst braid).

The braid lasted for a day and a half, but then we went swimming again, and it turned quite artistic: