Kategoria: Ponytails

21 elokuun, 2014

Jenni’s daughters have always got a good hairday (even on school days)

I used to do school hair on the night before, and will probably get back to that when the mornings get darker and getting up gets harder, but at the moment I’m trying to send the girls to school with good looking braids. There was an article about me and my braiding in Nyt.fi (national news paper’s web site), which said ”Jenni’s daughters have always got a good hairday”, so I’m trying to live up to my reputation now 🙂

We’ve been trying to get into the rhythm of school mornings for nearly two weeks now. Last week, we did 5-minute braids in the morning, but had no time for photos. This week we’ve done a bit better, and managed to squeeze in extra 2 minutes for braid photos! So, now I can share some of my quick school morning braids:

First, the arrowhead braid by Hair 4 My Princess. Such an easy and quick style, but looks a bit different. Find a video tutorial here. This one stayed quite well, but I think it’s only because her hair is so long!

Another quick, but impressive braid is the carousel braid. Find a tutorial by Cute Girls Hairstyles for this one here.

This was perfect for my 5-year-old, as she’s been asking to have ”normal braids” for school… so a ponytail is fairly normal…

The next one looks more complicated than it is. The hairstyles, where you don’t need to make partings or have it symmetrical, are generally quicker. This honestly took me 5 minutes. It is just a combination of lace braids and french braids, which I made up as I went.

And finally, this morning I did another complicated looking braid, which is fairly OK to make, as it doesn’t require partings or symmetry. This one is a combination of feather braid and french braid, and took me just over 5 minutes, but I have to admit, you need some practice for this one!

23 heinäkuun, 2014

Hair for weddings

Those of you who follow my Instagram or Facebook page know, that I was doing a lot of hairdos for a wedding last Saturday. Today, I was planning hairstyles for next Saturday’s wedding. Such an honour to be asked to do some wedding styles, so I thought I’d share last weekend’s styles with you.

First of all, I had the honour of styling the two little flower girls’ hair for my cousin’s wedding. They have very thin and curly hair, but the older girl’s hair is quite long. I did two dutch braids with a ribbon for her, and let the end of the braid just curl nicely. This lasted really well and still looked good after running in some fields, dancing and playing. For the younger flower girl, I made a hair clip bow with the same green ribbon. It looked cute until she pulled it out, but it lasted fairly long!

Other than the flower girls, I did three adult’s hair: two lace braid hairdos, one of which I finished with a ponytail and a bow, and the other one as a rolled bun and a flower. The third adult hairdo was a starburst bun on some lovely pink hair:

With adult hairdos, it’s important to do something that the model is comfortable with. All these three were very happy with their braids, so I thought they were a success.

And finally, of course, I did my own three daughters. The older two told me exactly what they wanted, and my youngest one hates her hair on her face, so I chose a style that would keep her hair out of the way for the whole party:

So last weekend was kind of a practise run: next saturday I’m doing three bridesmaids hair! We did some trial hair today, so it should be fairly easy, but as it is the bridesmaids, I think there will be more pressure!

And just to add some extra pressure: I will be doing the bridesmaids in the morning before working at a kids’ festival, doing braids… that will be about 6 hours of braiding all together! I think my fingers will be hurting 🙂

12 heinäkuun, 2014

Easy DIY styles

Braiding your own hair requires a bit of arm strength, and longer hair than mine is at the moment. But with some practise, you can do quite a lot more than just a ponytail in your own hair.

I know there are lots of braiders who can do absolutely anything in their own hair. But I’ll try to share some styles that I think are doable for the average braider…

So to start with, you can just spice up a normal ponytail. For example, you can hide the elastic by wrapping strand of hair around it, and pulling the end of the strand through the ponytail with a tool called ’topsy tail’. You can get topsy tails from hair accessory stores, but before I found one, I made one out of knitting needles!

Once you’ve mastered this style, you can try a bubble ponytail, either like the one here, which I’ve done on my youngest daughter, or you can just do a simple ponytail with bubbles. Each bubble is first secured with an elastic, and then the elastic is covered with a strand of hair. Perfect as a do-it-yourself hairstyle, as every time you attach an elastic, you can rest your arms a bit before the next step! See also my infinity braid into bubble ponytail here .

Another easy way to make your hairstyle more interesting is rosettes. You make them by taking a strand of hair, doing a normal 3 strand braid, rolling it up and attaching with a bobby pin or two.

And if you are a bit more experienced braider, you can ’pancake’ (i.e. pull each stitch a bit loose) one side of the 3-strand braid to make the rosette look more like a flower. Here are couple of examples:

All of these are nice summer styles and stay quite well, so now just get practising everyone!

19 kesäkuun, 2014

Memories of the Carribbean

We are finally settling in our new home in Finland. I didn’t have a chance to blog while we were travelling, as I only had my mobile… My Instagram followers have seen more than enough of my ”travel braids” as I posted at least one braid from each country we went to. So now for those, who are not on Instagram: I’ll show you a few favourites from our Carribean trip.

First, we went to Jamaica. It was amazing. We all agree that out of all the countries we went to, Jamaica was our favourite. The people we super nice, food was good, atmosphere, music, weather, the sea… everything.

There were braiders everywhere! And so many amazing braids! When we first got out the plane, my 5-year old said ”mummy, everyone here has much nicer braids than what you make!”… So, I took it as a challenge, and this was the first morning in Jamaica:

I got so many compliments for this and other braids throughout the 2 weeks in Jamaica, I even got job offers from the local braid-salons! Really felt that my work was appreciated in Jamaica 🙂

Next, we went on a Caribbean cruise visiting six of the Eastern Caribbean Islands. On each island we did a little trip to a beach, did some snorkeling or just relaxed and went swimming. The braids were always destroyed in the end of the day from all the seawater, so perfect excuse to do new braids every day. Here are some of my favourites (snake braid in St. Kitts, rope braid in Antigua and fishtail-french braid in St. Lucia):

After the cruise we went to Mexico, where I’ve always wanted to visit. It was really interesting with all the history, Mayan ruins etc. and of course Mexican food, one of my favourite cuisines!

Again, we swam a lot, so needed to re-do the braids all the time. I was trying to decide which photo to put here, and then found this:

This braid was done by my husband. He was complaining he never gets any braiding practice anymore, as I always do the hair! So he came up with this braid, which I thought was beautiful!!

But that’s enough from our holiday (I might do another post with a bit more, but if I add it here it will be too long!)… I hope I’m better at blogging regularly now that we finally have a home again!

12 huhtikuun, 2014

Braids in France

Sorry, I haven’t been posting for ages! We are in the middle of moving from one country to another, and travelling for two months in between. Even though there is always time for braiding, there is not that much time for taking pictures and writing about it… I’ve been doing quick posts on Instagram, so if you’re on Instagram, go and check out @jennishairdays (link on the right)

We are in France at the moment, staying here for a while, and we’ve had internet access most of the days here, so there are some lovely pictures on my Instagram. I made these ’sister braids’ the other day. They were super easy and all the girls loved them, and as a bonus, they lasted well!

Today, we even managed to do a tutorial for this hairdo:

First, make a normal ponytail with all of the hair. Then, start making a 3-strand braid with a small piece of hair on the top part of the ponytail. (pictures 1 and 2)

Next, take a thin strand of hair from behind/bottom part of the ponytail, and add it to the right-most strand of the braid. (pictures 3 and 4)

Move the right strand (with the added piece) over to the middle. Then take a thin strand of hair from behind the ponytail, and add it to the left-most strand. (pictures 5 and 6)

Move the left strand (with the added piece) to the middle. And again, take a thin strand from behind/ bottom of the ponytail and add it to the right strand. (pictures 7 and 8)

Move the right piece to the middle. Carry on adding pieces from behind the ponytail until you start running out of hair. (pictures 9 and 10)

Finally, tie the rest of the hair in the ponytail together with the mermaid braid. And you are done!

23 maaliskuun, 2014

Something different

Normally I can look at a braid and figure out how it’s been done. But sometimes I have no clue.

A few months ago I saw this braid, which looked different from the normal french and dutch braids, but no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t see how it had been done. Luckily HairAndNailsInspiration had done a YouTube tutorial (link here), so I could try it.

This was my first attempt, and it was quite difficult. I thought you definitely need more than two hands, so I did it on my oldest daughter, who was holding strands of hair when needed.

A few days ago I decided to try it on my middle daughter, who wouldn’t help by holding strands of hair for me… Surprisingly, it still worked out fine:

PS. Sorry for not posting for a while. We are in the middle of organising our house move. Will be moving out of our apartment next week, then traveling for two months and finally relocating to Finland in the summer. So please bear with me for the next few months, I will try to do some posts while we are travelling, but not sure about the wifi connections in all the places we are going.

I’ll try to do quick Instagram posts when I can. You can get to my Instagram by clicking on the pictures on the right panel.

13 helmikuun, 2014

Valentine’s day braids

I thought I’d show you some of my heart braids for Valentine’s day. These are impressive to the normal people, we always get lots of comments when we do something like this… but in the braiding world they are just average!

First, a couple that I did a year and a half ago, when I was first starting to get into creative braiding – a dutch lace braid heart, and some Cutegirlshairstyles heart-pigtails.

In the last couple of weeks I have made some new heart designs: a french braid with 3 hearts on it on my oldest daughter, a double heart braid on my 5-year-old, and a ribbon heart braid on my smallest one.

The girls absolutely love these heart braids. My favorite is probably the double heart, as it stayed in shape, and held all the hair in place the longest.

I need to come up with one more tomorrow, as my middle daughter has a Valentine’s day party to go to!

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!

13 elokuun, 2013

For a good day

I made this twisted ponytail on my youngest daughter today. It looks lovely and is fairly easy to make. However, today was the wrong day for this hairstyle.

Last night we arrived home from a camping trip at 3 in the morning after driving 9 hours. My daughter woke up when we carried her to her bed, and didn’t properly fall asleep for the rest of the night. So today she was on the worst mood ever, too tired for anything. So by the third temper tantrum this hairdo was completely gone: it was not meant for rolling on the floor screaming!

If you would like to try this on a better day, here is how to do it:

First, make a twist in the middle of the head by twisting two strands of hair around each other and adding a bit of hair into each twist. Once you’ve picked up hair all the way to the neck, tie with an elastic band or hair clip.

Next, do another twist on the right by twisting two strands of hair around each other, adding hair at each twist until you’ve added all the hair on the right side. Tie with a clip or hair band.

Finally twist the hair on the left side and tie all three twists together into a ponytail (and remove other hair clips and elastics).

Hope you have better luck with it than me!

17 heinäkuun, 2013

Combination of pretty hairdos

I keep on finding pictures of lovely hairdos, that I know are not going to be any good on children. And I love coming up with my own child-friendly versions…

A while ago I saw a picture of two beautiful lace braids around the face, which ended up in a bun. But my girls don’t like buns, as often they sleep with their hairdos, and buns are not very comfortable for sleeping. And I don’t like buns, as I’m not very good at making them, and they always require bobby pins, which are not very practical on kids. So I started using similar lace braids as a start for lots of different hairdos.

Then I found another picture of a hairdo I liked. It was a ”chinese ladder braid”, which would work well on kids apart from the loose top part of the hairdo. So I combined the two hairdos and came up with this:

For this one, instead of making a lace braid headband that adds hair form the side of the face, I made the lace braids by adding hair from the side of the top of the head (here left). After making two lace braid headbands or crowns, I tied them together with the rest of the hair and made a chinese ladder braid, which is much easier to make than it looks. Here is a link to a tutorial on the last part of the hairdo: Chinese staircase braid tutorial.

This one lasted quite well. The after-photo is taken after one night’s sleep and a day at the swimming pool: