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!