Avainsana: French braid

7 syyskuun, 2014

More back-to-school hair

Now that our Swiss and UK friends (and pretty much everyone else) have also started school, I’ll share some more of my school hair ideas.

First, a 5-strand braid with micro braids. Warning: five strand braids always require some finger flexibility. This is nice and fairly quick if you’ve practiced it a few times, but don’t attempt it for the first time when you’re in a rush in the morning.

This is also easy to do in your own hair. Here’s a link to a tutorial by Bebexo: 5-strand with micro braids . And once you’ve practised it a bit, you can try a french version (on the right), but that’s a bit advanced.

If that’s all too much for you, here is one that is much easier: criss-cross pigtails.

The hardest part about this is making the partings: you need to divide the hair into six sections. Then make two pigtails at the top, cross them over, make two pigtails in the middle and include the crossed over pigtails as well, cross them over, and make two pigtails with the rest of the hair. I’ve twisted the hair a bit, to hide fly-aways.

Finally, a quick and pretty hairstyle: milkmaid braids.

The model here is my youngest daughter, who is not in school yet, but so often we have no time to photograph the older ones!

Here is a link to a tutorial by Cute Girls Hairstyles: Milkmaid braids.

This is also perfect for thinner hair. I tried it on my oldest, and it looked awful as her hair is so thick that the sides were very bulky, and it was too heavy to pin up securely enough to last a whole school day. But on the two younger sisters this style stays in quite well.

These hairstyles and a couple of ponytail days should take you through another school week!

1 elokuun, 2014

Braiding marathon – part 2: festival stall

So last Saturday’s story continues at Skidit Festival. After doing all the wedding hairstyles, I rushed to Kallio in Helsinki. Skidit Festarit is a really nice children’ festival with lots of kids’ activities, music, food etc.

I got the idea for a festival braiding stall last summer when I went to some music festivals and noticed all the boring ponytails… But as I am only a self-taught braider, whose main experience is doing kids’ hair, the kids’ festival was the perfect place to try out how it would work.

It was a hot day (+30 degrees), but luckily I had a tent, so I was in the shade. It took about 15 minutes for the first person to stop for a braid, but after that, it was a constant queue for 5 hours!

At first, I had a few little girls, with very thin hair, but I managed at least to do a little lace braid with a ribbon or a quick heart, which looks good on everyone, and is easy to make even when the model is moving a lot.

When the queue started to be quite long, only girls with a lot of hair thought it was worth waiting, so my job got a little bit easier 😉

Some little girls were very specific on what they wanted, many parents wanted something to keep the hair out of the face, some girls chose their favourite colour ribbon, and some gave me free hands… So it didn’t get boring!

A national news paper’s website had published an interview of me the day before, so some girls had already been on my Instagram or Facebook for ideas.

The most popular style, which I did 6 times, was the corset braid, followed closely by the star braid:

In the end, I did 31 braids in 5 hours. I didn’t even take a break! I remember queueing for face painting with my girls once, and when we got to the face painter, she said she’s going for a break… I couldn’t do that to the little girls (and parents) who had been waiting for their turn! So I just had some quick snacks and water between braids, and carried on!

I was exhausted in the end: my back was aching and I was hot and hungry, but I had really enjoyed it. I didn’t notice the time at all while I was braiding!

I thought it was such a fun experience, that I have already agreed for another event in a week’s time! So everyone, who is near Porvoo, Finland next Saturday, come to Bubbles-event at Taidetehdas! I will be braiding kids as well as adults this time!

PS. as you can see, I used stickers, stamps, crayons etc to keep the little ones occupied while I was braiding.

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 maaliskuun, 2014

Challenge 2: multiple strands

I always thought you’d need more than 2 hands for more than 4-strand braiding. But I’ve seen so many pictures of 5, 6, 7 and more strands in a that I started to think it must be possible.

So I started to practise. Now I can do up to 6 strands french braid, dutch braid and lace braid.

Here are some examples:

These are two 4-strand braids finishing in a ”cheat’s 9-strand braid”. That means I left a thin strand of hair out in the nape of her neck, then looped that through the two 4 strand braids, combining them into a 4+1+4= 9-strand braid.

(By the way, this is my youngest daughter, who just turned 3, and who’s hair is getting very long and increasingly braidable)

The next one is a 5-strand ”mermaid” braid.

I’ve promised to make a tutorial for this one, but at the moment we are so busy with an upcoming house move, that I barely have time for photos, never mind videos (but I’ll always have time for braiding).

Finally, my first (and so far only) attempt at a 7-strand french braid. Very messy and uneven, and still my fingers were nearly on a knot after this, so I just have to carry on practising!

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!

19 tammikuun, 2014

Ribbons, ribbons, ribbons

We had a birthday party for my youngest girl today. All the girls were up early, had chosen their dresses and were waking me up to do fancy hairstyles for the party! (Girls!!!)

They wanted something fancy, with shiny new ribbons that we bought last week. So it was a great excuse to go over the top a bit:

The first one is my favorite of the three, probably because I got to choose the ribbon color! And it’s very easy. It’s a 4-strand french braid, but one strand is ribbon instead of hair.

The second one is a bit Christmasy, but my daughter has worn this dress pretty much all the time since Christmas (apart from school), so we did the same color ribbon… For this hairdo, I did two dutch braids and then threaded the ribbon through with a help of a bobby pin.

The last one is definitely over the top, but she absolutely loved this style, so what can I say! It was quite difficult to do the two up-side-down dutch braids and the bun, but the ribbon was quite easy to thread through the stitches of the braids.

These styles lasted well through the day, and the girls went to bed with them. We’ll have to wait and see how much fixing I need to do in the morning, but they want to have the ribbons for school and kindergarten tomorrow!

4 tammikuun, 2014

Frozen

Went to see the Disney film, Frozen, today. The girls loved it. I did as well, especially the hairstyles in the film. So, when we got home we tried to recreate some of the hairstyles.

My oldest daughter’s hair is just like Elsa’s in the film, so we tried the two Elsa-styles. I was going to do the Anna-styles on my 5-year old, but she was not in the mood for braiding… maybe another day.

First, we did the coronation hairdo on the right. I made it by twisting the hair at the front and twisting all the hair into a bun, and attaching with bobby pins. I thought it turned out quite well, but I don’t think it would last very long at all on a child.

Luckily my daughter wanted to try the other braid straight away, so we didn’t have to wait and see how durable the bun was. The second hairdo (on the left) involved a lot of back-combing for volume, and a loose french braid. She really loved the hairdo and wants to wear it for skiing tomorrow, I don’t think I need to post a picture of it after a day of wearing a ski-helmet, you can probably all imagine it!

And for those of you who are not up to scratch with your Disney films, here’s a picture of the two hairdos in the film:

30 joulukuun, 2013

French braid bun

I finally got around doing a step-by-step picture tutorial on the french braid bun, which I promised about a month ago. I’ve been so busy with all the Christmas stuff and skiing, that I haven’t done much blogging lately!

Anyway, here it is.

First, make a ponytail in the middle of the head using a thick hairband.

Next, make another ponytail with all the rest of the hair around the original ponytail.

Then start french braiding taking hair from the little ponytail and from the outer ponytail.

Make a loose french braid all the way around, using all the hair, and finish with a normal three strand braid.

Finally, tug the braid inside the loose french braid, wrap the rest of it around and use bobby pins to make the bun tighter and tidier.

I did this pictorial on my 5-year-old. She has quite thin hair, so using a bun-maker instead of a thick hairband would have been a good idea.

I’ve done the same hairdo on my older daughter quite few times, and it looks quite different because of her thick hair.

She has had her hair on a french braid bun for ballet quite a few times, and it really holds well, and looks pretty:

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.