Avainsana: French braid

Five beautiful hairdos

Lace braid around the head into a french braidCouple 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:

double french french braid bun

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.

ladder braid     spiral braids tied together at the back

french braids into lace braid bowBy 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:

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:

flower braid spiral half up hairdo5-strand lace-braid half-up do

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.

waterfall braid french braid comboThe 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.

The secret is in the planning

french braid into two french braid bunsWhen 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:

french braid starburst double bun

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.

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:

Waterfall braid into a different kind of ladder braid 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.

french braid feather braid swirl 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.

How to make a starburst braid

lacebraid headband into starburst bun lacebraid headband into starburst bun

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.

how to do a starburst braid

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: french braid into two french braid buns

At least the hair looked nice

A few minor back-to-school disasters yesterday: had one girl there at the wrong time (luckily too early), forgot their snack boxes (saved by husband who ran back home for them), forgot quite a few items from the list to bring to school, and in the evening, tried to cover the notebooks with plastic, and got it all wrinkled. And after all that, I had another accident with not reading the label on my hair wax and makeup remover containers, this time with waxy eyes! Clearly too tired after the first day!

But the main thing was: they both enjoyed school very much AND their hair looked nice 🙂 :

two dutch lace braids back to school hairfrench braids made with five strands, back-to-school-hair

The first one of these is very easy, and could even do it in the morning (but we did all the hair the night before). It’s two little dutch lace braids. That’s a lace braid, but  instead of moving hair strands form the side over to the middle, you move from the side UNDER to the middle. So like an inverted braid.

The second one is more tricky, and requires some practice. I’ve made two french braids, but with 5 strands instead of 3. I did this first time about a week ago and ended up with loose braids that fell apart, but after trying a few times, I’ve mastered the 5-strand french braiding. You might want to start with making simple braids with 5 strands first (here is a link to a tutorial on a simple 5 strand braid, which I found on YouTube).

Amazing french braid double bun

The other day, someone asked us if we were Russian. ”I thought because of the braids”, she said. And she had a point: the Russians do make the best braids! So I spent a lot of time last week on YouTube, going through Russian hairstyle videos. Here is a french braid double bun, that I learned:

french braid into two french braid buns french braid head band into two buns

I really love this hairdo, looks even better in real life, and what’s best, you only need some french braiding experience and a bit of patience (for both braider and braidee) to do this.

Often the tutorials on YouTube make any hairstyle look easy, but when you try it, the braid turns out loose, it’s impossible to hold together, or you get the hair or your fingers tangled… This one, however, is as easy as it looks on the video (which is not to say that it is very easy, but you get what you see on the video). So, if you want to try it, here is a link to the video: french braid double bun

I did this on my oldest daughter, who has very thick hair, but I don’t think thick hair is the key to success with this hairdo. Normal hair, 5-10 cm down from the shoulders should be fine.

The braid lasted well for the day, even though she was running and climbing at the playground. It fell apart  bit over night, but still looked ok after I added a few bobby pins. Got destroyed at the swimming pool though.

Second day hairdos

When you’ve made some lovely braids, it’s nice to keep them for a couple of days to make it worth the effort. You can often get a whole new hairdo in minutes (in case you think, having the same braid for many days is boring), by changing the hairstyle a little bit or by adding to it.

Here is what we did with yesterday’s half-up-hairdos. Two lace braids into a french braid (on the left), and lots of mini lace braids into a french braid (on the right):

two lace braids into a french braid second day hairdo: mini lace braids into a french braid

See yesterday’s braids here.

All I’ve done, is to french braid the hair hanging at the back of yesterday’s half-up-dos, also adding the little lace braids into the french braid. This gave a whole new look with two minutes of braiding, and makes the hairdo last longer, as the hair at the back doesn’t tangle. It’s also an excellent trick to make any half-up hairdo into a sports-hairdo.

Back to school hairdos

Ten days to go till the start of school, so we are trying some back to school hairstyles.

With a first-grader and a fourth-grader, I have two criteria for a good school hairdo:

. You need to be able to do it the night before. At least until we get used to getting up early again, there is no way I’ll have time to do hair in the morning!

2. The hair needs to keep out of the face, and out of paint, glue, food etc.

So, what always works well, is two basic french braids. They will keep over night, the hair is completely out of the way, and normally the braids don’t get undone in play or sports. 

To make it pretty, I like to do the two french braids a bit asymmetrical, following the girls’ natural parting instead of parting the hair down the middle:

two french braids two french braids, asymmetrical parting

When my oldest girl started school, she always lost the elastic bands in the end of the braids. The solution is to make the two french braids very near the parting, and tying them up high (below, left). That’s also nice just for a change.

Another variation is to braid the two french braids far from each other, near the face (below, right).

 two french braids near the middle parting two french braids near the face

So, if you just learn to do the simple french braid, you already have quite a few different hairdos to play with!

French braid bun

Something a bit easier for a change… A while ago I did a post on french braid ponytails, this is a nice variation of it:

Two french braids into a buntwo french braids into a bun

First, I did a french braid from the neck up to the middle of her head.

Next, I did a curving french braid with the front part of her hair. This looks equally nice with a plain straight french braid from the front to the middle of the head (see picture below).

Finally, I twisted the two french braids into a bun, and secured with an elastic plus bobby pins.

She loved it, and called it ballet-hair!

This hairdo looks really nice on adults as well. My sister has much thinner and shorter hair than my daughter, but the hairdo looked really lovely on her as well:

French braid bun

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