Avainsana: Braid

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!

8 marraskuun, 2013

Dutch braid tutorial for beginners

Here is a video tutorial for a basic dutch braid, or an inverted/ inside out french braid.

BASIC DUTCH BRAID VIDEO TUTORIAL

And after you practise a bit, here are some ideas of what you can do:

Two dutch braids joined at the back

2 dutch braids crossed over and tied to each other

A dutch braid headband and a sideways french braid joined together

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:

7 lokakuun, 2013

Can you see the difference?

Can you guess which one of these braids was done by mum and which one by dad? If not, I think this is a perfect ”daddy-do”.

Me and my husband did the same braid on two of our daughters… Apart from one having thicker hair than the other, I don’t think there is much difference between them.

To make this, you just take three strands of hair from the front, do a normal braid with those strands (right to middle, left to middle and so on). When you have braided the hair till the end, get a good hold of one of the strands and pull the rest of the braid upwards, adjust a bit to make it even, and finally secure with an elastic.

I love this braid as it is simple, but always gets compliments for being a bit different.

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.

24 syyskuun, 2013

Another quick one

Continuing from last week’s quick and easy hairdos… Here’s one that you will need to practise a little bit, but once you’ve got it, it’s fast, easy and impressive.

Cute Girls Hairstyles did a one-sided version of this, and I think Mindy explains it so well, that there is no point of me trying to do instructions, click here for a link to CuteGirlsHairstyles video tutorial on the 4-strand slide-up braid. When you do this 4 strand braid, there is one strand that will never get to the outer side, in the end you hold onto that strand and slide the rest of the braid up (this will all make sense if you watch Mindy’s video tutorial)

So, for my version, I just did the 4-strand slide-up braid on both sides, and tied it back. I love this one because it looks a bit unusual and makes people look twice.

You will need reasonably long hair for this one, a bit below shoulders, to be ably to have long enough braids to ”slide up”. Also, the problem with smaller kids is, that the hair easily sticks out from the middle, but to prevent that, you could tie all the hair and the little braid into a low ponytail at the back.

19 syyskuun, 2013

Quick and easy

I haven’t posted anything this week, as I have been busy with taking the kids to school and all the after-school activities… If anyone else has been as busy, here are some quick fixes for the school mornings:

This one is super easy: just do two basic braids, then tie them together at the back. I used a very small hairband and then took a strand of hair from the ponytail, wrapped it around the hairband and attached with a see-through elastic.

This hairdo took me about two minutes to do. It looked nice for the whole day. The next day I tied all the loose hair and the little braid into a ponytail, which was also a nice hairdo, and a bit different from the day before.

A variation of the above hairstyle: do the same, but instead of basic 3-strand braids, do two little fishtail braids. This one takes slightly longer, as fishtail braids always do, but I was still able to make this in under 5 minutes.

7 syyskuun, 2013

Playing with the lace braids

Once you’ve learned the basic lace braid, you can start to be creative.

This one is a nice variation, almost like a normal french braid, but makes people look twice.

I started by lace braiding from above her left eye, going slightly to the right and picking up hair from the right. When I had caught all the difficult fine baby hair from the front, I started heading left, and picking up hair strands from the left only. Then changed direction again to the right and picked up hair from the right into the lace braid, then left and finally right again to finish.

This was very quick as it didn’t require parting the hair in any way. Took me about 3 minutes. And it lasted really well, somehow lace braids always do.

And you can zigzag the other way as well. Start from behind the ear, lace braid heading towards the middle of her forehead, picking up hair from the left, after 4 or 5 stitches , turn slightly to the right and start picking up hair from the right, then turn towards the fore head again, and pick up hair from the left again…

Zig zag until the left ear, turn and finish by lace braiding the rest of the hair by picking up hair from the right.

This one was slightly trickier, took me just over 5 minutes, but was really worth the effort. It lasted a couple of days, and survived our ultimate test: the swimming pool 🙂

And even if these don’t turn out quite right, they are a good way of practising lace braiding.

3 syyskuun, 2013

How to make a starburst braid

Every time I make a ”starburst” braid, I get so many people asking how to do it. Even strangers on the street stop to ask whether the hair goes to the middle or comes from there… So I finally decided to do some step-by-step pictures.

I started with a lace braid headband to keep hair out of the face.

After I braided from left ear to the right (adding hair from the right only), I put a clip on the braid and made a little ponytail in the middle of the rest of the hair, leaving some loose hair all around.

You don’t have to do the first part of the braid (the lace braid headband), you could just start by making a ponytail in the middle of the head and leaving some loose hair all around the ponytail.

Next, unclip the braid and start french braiding it. Every time you add hair strands to the braid from the left, add it from the ponytail. And when you add hair from the right, add it from the loose hair around the ponytail.

Carry on french braiding around the ponytail, picking up loose hair to add to the right side of the braid and hair from the ponytail to add to the left.

Once you’ve braided all around, finish with a normal 3 strand braid. Then tuck the braid inside the french braid, and secure with couple of bobby pins.

So, it’s not as complicated as it looks. It’s a bit tricky to make the ponytail in the beginning, and you might need some practice to find out how thick the strands of hair should be, when you add hair from the ponytail. The model here is my eldest daughter with incredibly thick hair, but I need to do quite a lot thinner strands on the other two girls. And the outcome looks quite different, but still nice.

When you master this, you can do the beautiful starburst double bun: