Avainsana: Lace braid

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.

27 elokuun, 2013

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 🙂 :

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).

19 elokuun, 2013

Back to school hairdos – one easy, another more difficult

Less than one week now till the start of school, so here is another set of back to school hairstyles.

All ”half-up-dos” are good for school, as they keep hair out of the face. They also last for a couple of days easily. If you use them for very long hair, and want the hairdo to last over night, it’s best to make a loose braid with the rest of the hair for sleeping, to prevent it from tangling. That also gives nice waves when you open the braid in the morning.

Today, I did two lace braids in the front for my first-grader-to-be. This is an easy to make half-up-do, and OK for shorter or thinner hair as well. Took me about 5 minutes to make:

I made a ponytail at the back to hold a bit over half of her hair out of the way. Next, I used her natural parting and started with the right (longer) side braid. I lace braided by adding hair from the left side only, making a braid very near her face. Then I lace braided the shorter left side braid by adding hair from the right side only. Finally, I undid the ponytail, which was holding back the rest of the hair.

For my older daughter, I made a bit more complicated variation, with little lace braids :

The hardest part here is to divide the hair before braiding, but after that, it isn’t too difficult to make 4 little lace braids on the right and 3 on the left.

This one is great for thick hair. I haven’t made this before, but from similar hairdos, I predict it will last really well for several days, as long as we keep brushing the hair at the back, and tying it back for sleeping.

14 heinäkuun, 2013

Thin hair and little of it

The pictures are of my daughter, who has a lot of hair for an average 2-year-old, but this hairdo is perfect for everyone with a lot less hair than her.

Last week, I was trying on some french braids and lace braids on my cousin’s daughter, who has very fine hair and little of it. I always ran out of hair before the braid got anywhere, so I invented a little trick to make a braided headband (or other braids) work:

I started braiding with three strands of hair. Then, instead of adding hair at every ”stitch” of the braid, I added a bit of hair to one stitch, then did three stitches without adding any, then added a bit of hair, followed by three normal stitches again, then added some hair to the next stitch and so on. This made the braid long enough to stretch across the head, but I managed to keep it tight and didn’t run out of hair.

Here are some step-by-step pictures of how I did it on my daughter (I’m half way through the braid, but you can see the trick):

She has a lot of hair, but also funny bits of very thin and short baby hair at the sides of her forehead, so this trick worked well on her as well.

27 kesäkuun, 2013

Beach hair -1

My criteria for a good beach hairstyle:

– there are no partings, so the scalp doesn’t burn (the girls are not very good at keeping sun hats on)

– the hairdo keeps most hair out of the face (and out of the ice cream)

– it is easy to tie back for diving, jumping and water slides

– it looks pretty

So, I’ve come up with a lot of different hairdos. This one is a lace braid made from one side to another and back. I’ve lace braided the hair from left ear towards the right, picking up thin strands of hair only from the right/top side. When I got as far as picking up hair from near her right ear, I turned and lace braided back towards the left ear, trying to keep as near to the first part of the braid as possible, and only picking up hair from the left/top side (from underneath the first part of the braid).

I made a slightly different version for her little sister:

Here I left a little gap between the first and second part of the braid, simply by not pulling the second part so tightly next to the first part. The picture on the right shows how it looked after a lot of swimming and playing at the beach.

23 kesäkuun, 2013

Flower buns without bobby pins

I was playing with the girls’ hair the other day, and came up with this side flower bun. Normally flower buns require bobby bins, which come off easily if swimming, running or playing… and we were going to the pool! So I thought of a way of avoiding bobby bins and still making the hairdo last:

To start with, I did a little side ponytail on the right side of my daughter’s head, leaving some hair loose on all sides of the ponytail. Next, I lace braided (french braid, but only picking up hair from the right side) the hair form left to right and under and around the little ponytail.

Then I opened the ponytail and lace braided around until I had picked up all the hair in the middle (about two circles)

I finished the braid by doing a normal braid.

Next, I tugged the braid through the middle of the ”flower”, and re-did the pink hairband as high as possible, so that it hides under the flower braid.

This hairdo lasted through swimming and she slept with it, and it still looked nice the next day. So I tried a variation with two flowers, or more like spirals, on the little sisters:

The younger girls have much thinner hair, so the braids didn’t look that much like flowers, so I added some spiral flower hairpins on the little one’s braids.

Even though they didn’t look like flowers, they still looked pretty, lasted long, and got lots of compliments from complete strangers

4 kesäkuun, 2013

More braided headbands

Couple of weeks ago I showed you how to do a french braid headband. This lace braid headband is a bit more original, but in my opinion, easier to make and nicer looking. If you want to try it, there are just two easy steps:

First, put most of the hair onto a normal ponytail, but leave loose a few cm wide strip of hair in the front from ear to ear.

Then, make a lace braid from one ear to another: as a french braid, but only pick up hair from the side of the face. Open the pony tail, and that’s it.

I think this looks nicer than the french braid headband as you can’t see a parting at the back of the headband. Also, this is excellent in the summer, as she won’t get a line of sunburn at the back of the headband. And for some reason, this holds better and longer than the french braid headband.

Next, you can try a double lace braid headband, which is the same as above, but just do it twice. And if you want another variation, you can simply add a pretty headband between the two braided headbands.

I love all of these, as they last long, and if you want to keep it for a few days, you can change it slightly by tying the rest of the hair on a ponytail or braiding it.

28 toukokuun, 2013

Nicole’s Cannes festival hair

My friend sent me some pictures of Nicole Kidman’s hair at Cannes Festival. I had to try it straight away. So, Nicole on the left, and my 4-year-old on the right:

I know it’s not the same, but my daughter thought the hairdo looked too messy, and I couldn’t get her to sit down for braiding before I promised not to do such a messy braid! So my version is more kid-friendly… I would love to try this on an adult!

If you want to try this, start by making a little ponytail in the middle of the head, then lace braiding across the head and around the ponytail. Next, undo the ponytail and keep lace braiding around until you run out of hair to pick up. Then finish with a normal braid and bobby pin it in a spiral.

26 toukokuun, 2013

Rapunzel ponytail

My way to relax on a sunday morning is to make a nice cup of coffee, turn on the kids’ favorite cartoons, and try some new hairdos on the girls. I saw a picture of a pretty lace braid ponytail on Pinterest the other day, and here is my version of it:

I did a lace braid headband to start, but you could leave it out and just do a normal ponytail. Then I lace braided around and around until I ran out of hair. This part requires some practice on basic lace braids (i.e. a french braid, but just picking up hair from one side), and some finger flexibility.

The girls loved it and said it looks like Rapunzel-hair!