Can you see the difference?

Can you guess which one of these braids was done by mum and which one by dad? If not, I think this is a perfect “daddy-do”.

 

Me and my husband did the same braid on two of our daughters… Apart from one having thicker hair than the other, I don’t think there is much difference between them.

To make this, you just take three strands of hair from the front, do a normal braid with those strands (right to middle, left to middle and so on). When you have braided the hair till the end, get a good hold of one of the strands and pull the rest of the braid upwards, adjust a bit to make it even, and finally secure with an elastic.

I love this braid as it is simple, but always gets compliments for being a bit different.

 

Another quick one

Continuing from last week’s quick and easy hairdos… Here’s one that you will need to practise a little bit, but once you’ve got it, it’s fast, easy and impressive.

Cute Girls Hairstyles did a one-sided version of this, and I think Mindy explains it so well, that there is no point of me trying to do instructions, click here for a link to CuteGirlsHairstyles video tutorial on the 4-strand slide-up braid. When you do this 4 strand braid, there is one strand that will never get to the outer side, in the end you hold onto that strand and slide the rest of the braid up (this will all make sense if you watch Mindy’s video tutorial)

So, for my version, I just did the 4-strand slide-up braid on both sides, and tied it back. I love this one because it looks a bit unusual and makes people look twice.

You will need reasonably long hair for this one, a bit below shoulders, to be ably to have long enough braids to “slide up”. Also, the problem with smaller kids is, that the hair easily sticks out from the middle, but to prevent that, you could tie all the hair and the little braid into a low ponytail at the back.

Quick and easy

I haven’t posted anything this week, as I have been busy with taking the kids to school and all the after-school activities… If anyone else has been as busy, here are some quick fixes for the school mornings:

 This one is super easy: just do two basic braids, then tie them together at the back. I used a very small hairband and then took a strand of hair from the ponytail, wrapped it around the hairband and attached with a see-through elastic.

This hairdo took me about two minutes to do. It looked nice for the whole day. The next day I tied all the loose hair and the little braid into a ponytail, which was also a nice hairdo, and a bit different from the day before.

A variation of the above hairstyle: do the same, but instead of basic 3-strand braids, do two little fishtail braids. This one takes slightly longer, as fishtail braids always do, but I was still able to make this in under 5 minutes.

 

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.

How to make a starburst braid

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.

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: 

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).

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:

 

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.

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.

 

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:

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:

Related articles

• French braid tutorial for beginners (jennishairdays.wordpress.com)
• French braid ponytails (jennishairdays.wordpress.com)

Another try

I was supposed to be doing the laundry and cleaning the house this morning, but couldn’t resist trying again to do the “waterfall into little braids” (if someone can think of a catchier name for it, let me know).

The lessons learned from my earlier attempt and the fact that this time I did it on my older (more patient) daughter, meant that it turned out really well:

When we went swimming later, I tied the whole hairdo into a simple braid at the back. The final shot is after swimming, which shows it lasted pretty well.