Trying out something new

Sorry for not posting for ages and ages! I’ve been busy with lots of things, but above all I’ve been busy setting up Jenni’s Hairdays as a business. I’m so excited about this, and so happy about all the people who believe in this!

I’m planning to do braids and hairdos in events, parties and happenings, as well as organise braiding courses, and of course do individual braids for all kinds of occasions. I’ve been busy planning and starting up things, so my girls have had quite a lot of quick and simple hairdos, or braids that I’ve done a million times before…

Today I decided to try something new, and did this honeycomb headband. I’ve seen a tutorial for this a long time ago, and always though it must be a waste of effort and fall apart in no time. I tried to make it stronger by using thicker strand of hair than in the tutorial and I was quite surprised that it stayed the whole day! So I can tell you it is worth the effort: go and check out the tutorial by Princess Hairstyles.

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.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Something different

Normally I can look at a braid and figure out how it’s been done. But sometimes I have no clue.

A few months ago I saw this braid, which looked different from the normal french and dutch braids, but no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t see how it had been done. Luckily HairAndNailsInspiration had done a YouTube tutorial (link here), so I could try it.

This was my first attempt, and it was quite difficult. I thought you definitely need more than two hands, so I did it on my oldest daughter, who was holding strands of hair when needed.

A few days ago I decided to try it on my middle daughter, who wouldn’t help by holding strands of hair for me… Surprisingly, it still worked out fine:

PS. Sorry for not posting for a while. We are in the middle of organising our house move. Will be moving out of our apartment next week, then traveling for two months and finally relocating to Finland in the summer. So please bear with me for the next few months, I will try to do some posts while we are travelling, but not sure about the wifi connections in all the places we are going.

I’ll try to do quick Instagram posts when I can. You can get to my Instagram by clicking on the pictures on the right panel.

Two hairdos from one

Haven’t posted for a while. We’ve had a lot of visitors and been away skiing…

My sister has been here, so I’ve had a chance to try out braids on her. Her hair is very different texture from my girls’, so it’s good practice for me.

Today I did a waterfall braid on her. Normally I hate waterfalls as I usually only have child models, and waterfalls just fall apart in minutes, so it was good to try it on an adult and see that it actually works.

The braid turned out quite OK, but then we thought it would be nice to make it into an updo, and that turned out even nicer. I just love her hair colour, and this braid really shows it off.

More frozen hairstyles

A few days after the Elsa hairdos on my oldest daughter, the little sisters wanted braids from Disney’s Frozen as well. So here are the two hairstyles of Anna and also a young Elsa:

 The Anna hairdos were difficult as my middle daughter has very thin, fine and slippery hair, lots of baby hair, and the colour is completely different from Anna’s hair. But she was very happy with the hairdos herself, which is the main thing.

I found quite a few tutorials on You Tube for the one on the right, but did it a little bit differently myself. I thought the braided headband needed to be as thick as possible, so I did partly a 3-strand braid, but on the top of her forehead I did some stitches of dutch lace braid to add hair to the braid and make it long enough.

Here is a link to a tutorial done by Hair 4 My Princess: Anna’s Coronation bun

 My youngest daughter got a braid inspired by the young Elsa in the film.

For this one, I put a sparkly elastic headband on her, leaving some hair in front, then made a loose french braid partly over the headband.

After we took the picture, she wanted to take the headband off, so we had to undo the braid to get it out!

And for those, who aren’t familiar with these Disney Princesses, here are pictures of Anna and young Elsa:

 

 

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:

 

Christmas parties

Been busy with all the December happenings… Here are a few hairstyles we’ve done for various Christmas parties.

First, there was a party where we were going to by car, and it was indoors, so we could do almost anything with the hair.

When I said I’d do any hairstyle they wanted, my middle daughter instantly requested the butterfly braid. For my oldest girl, I did a ladder braid, and my smallest had a braided headband with some curls from the previous braid.

 

The next party was a bit trickier. The girls were going to do a little song and dance performance with santa hats on. So the hairdo had to look nice even with a hat on… So these chinese ladder braids were quite good for that: they looked nice even when most of the head was under the hat, and were a bit more interesting than normal braids:

This morning was the last of the Christmas events: the Christmas Carols at the school. It was outside, and the girls were going to school first, so potential for messing up any hairdo before the event. It was also cold and wet, so hats on, and no curls… And an early morning, so no time for hair in the morning!

For my 1st grader, I just did some tight french braids last night. For the 4th grader, I found a nice hairdo from @abellasbraids on Instagram: two dutch braid headbands into pigtails and then making mini twists with the hair in the pigtails. This was easy, but a bit time consuming to make, and lasted really well.

The first picture below was taken last night, and the second one this morning after she slept with the braids.

 

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.

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.

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: