Halloween Hair...The base for MANY styles

Many of the characters that I see out there have a basic hairstyle. It starts with ringlets.



Start out with dirty hair. Dirty hair holds curl better. At least in my house it does. So when your darling daughter gets her bath the night before, lay off the hair washing. I used a bunch of curl cream and ran it through her hair.







Then I curled ringlets with my flat-iron. You could use a curling iron, but I am more proficent with my flat iron. I curled her entire head of hair in less than five minutes. You can't do that with a curling iron, especially on thicker hair.



To curl her hair with the flat iron, I start at the base of the hair and wrap the hair around the flat iron and slowly pull it down. While I am pulling down, I keep the iron turned.



Less than five minutes later...

Excuse her tired eyes. She had some tummy troubles last night and she parked her pillow and blankets in the bathroom and slept on the bathroom floor. I don't think you sleep very well on the bathroom floor.

Also, this is where you stop if you are Goldilocks, Little Bo-Peep, Little Miss Muffet, Nellie Olsen (giggle), etc. Just spray and add your hat or your oversized bow that is almost as big as your head.

However, today we are not any of those characters. So I grab a section of hair at the crown of her head and back comb.

A lot. The poofier you want her hair, the more you back comb.

Now, let the hair fall and smooth over the top of where you just back combed. You may think you have lost some of the curl, but let me assure you, you have not. Those ends look a little wonky.

Simply take your fingers and smooth them back into curls.

Like so.

This wasn't my last step. I also sprayed her hair with hairspray and scrunched the ends up.

Look at those ends, and that poof. I will have you know, this is how my hair looked my entire junior year, only I used hot rollers. Then I cut my hair and my boyfriend hated me. So I dumped his sorry behind. I had cool hair in highschool. People even wrote that in my yearbook. True story.

Here is your base. Now you can take and do what you want with it. For school we put a snap barrette in it and then a flower over that.

For a fairy, I would twist it up into a claw and then let it fly all over the place or pull it into two loose ponytails at the crown and then back comb it some more or even re-curl pieces to give it more definition, like below.



However, what we were going for as far as princesses and characters was Ariel and Sleeping Beauty. I will show you THAT tomorrow. I am cranking these out as fast as I can before Halloween and I will be taking a four-day blogging break starting Friday. I really hope these little tutorials are helping so that moms don't have to go out and buy a bunch of nasty wigs that will never EVER be as cute as their daughters real hair!

Read More

Halloween Hair...Cinderella

My rendition of Cinderella.

Okay, after studying all of the princess hair, I have come to the conclusion that Tinkerbell and Cinderella are the most similar of any of the princesses. Although, technically Tinkerbell isn't a princess. But you get what I am saying. Tinkerbell's hair is a little more skewompus. Don't you love that I make up my own words on this blog?

For the slicker Cinderella do, first I start with a very high ponytail. I started with sopping wet hair (just out of the tub) and then I coated it with pomade on the bottom and sides. I was doing this one higher and I did NOT want pieces falling like they usually do on her hair. I used an elastic very similar to her hair color because you will see the elastic on this one.



Then I took and divided her ponytail into three sections. I took the first one and coated it with pomade and looped it over and secured it with two bobby pins criss-crossed. Just push the ends out of the way...we will deal with those later.



Then I did it again on the other side.

Then I took the third piece and did it one more time.

Now the ends. I continued the loop with them by taking my flat iron and curling them in the same direction as the loops. Think one big curly q. Then I tucked the ends into the bobby pins already in place. She had enough in there to set off the metal detectors at the airport, I didn't want to use anymore.

I sprayed the entire contraption with massive amounts of hairspray and then I set it with my blow dryer. Like I said, I didn't want to take the chance that this one would fall out.

Ta-da!

Now, for Cinderella, here is where I would add the black headband. However, we were just heading to a fire station field trip and I just don't love black and brown together, and since she was wearing brown, we stuck a bow on the side of the bun.

There you have it. How I see Cinderella in my head. Also, this makes a pretty fabulous Geisha do as well.

Read More

Halloween Hair...Tinkerbell

Start with the hair in a high ponytail on the crown. This was actually too low for my liking, but her hair is short and I didn't want all of the pieces on the bottom to fall out.

Put the comb between the elastic and the scalp and pull out.

Then flip the ponytail up through the part you made...see the post below.

I didn't take a picture of this step, but I ran my flat iron over her ponytail and curled it under so I could have a bit more control.

Then I backcombed her hair. Some call it ratting, That word makes me think of rats. For some reason I don't like associtating rats and my kids. Funny the things that you associate. My girls actually call this "fluffing". Spray the hair after you backcomb, fluff, rat, whatever.


Then smooth the top over the ponytail. Spray it again.

Now I take the ends and I tuck them up and secure them with two bobby pins that are crossed. Tess has fairly thin hair so I only needed two bobby pins. Depending on how thick your daughters hair is, you may need more, and you may need to tuck more than once.





Now, spray it all over you could be done, but for this day at our house, we wanted a headband.

Tinkerbell doesn't use a headband...but some glitter would add just the right touch.

Read More

Halloween Hair...Belle

For those of you who are dressing up as your favorite princess, these hairstyles are for you. Today we are channeling Belle.

Start with the hair in a ponytail high on the crown. I curled the ends because this was for school and I didn't have the full time to do what I would have done had she been getting ready for a night of Trick-or-Treating.

Take your rat-tailed comb and slide it between the elastic and the scalp. Using the comb, pull the ponytail out slightly.

Here we are doing and upside down knot. Push the ponytail up through the part you just made with your comb...


...but only partway through.

Now take and pull the elastic tight. This is where I started tugging pieces of her ponytail out to make it poofier (I don't think that is a word). See those ends? If it had been Halloween, I would have curled sections into ringlets to make it a bit more fancy.



Then I tied a ribbon around the elastic. Had she really been Belle, I would have taken a yellow ribbon and wrapped it around the elastic and tucked the ends.

There you go. My human rendition of Belle's ball hairdo.

Read More

Star part puffy braids

You will notice that there is a lack of pictures leading up to this first picture. Sometimes I will get going on their hair and then "DOH!" I remember I have a hair blog and I make a mad dash for the camera. If I am planning on a new style, I clean off my bathroom counter. HA! Now you can see what my bathroom counter REALLY looks like in the morning.

So, basically, you part the hair down the middle and then you form your triangles from a center point on the crown of her head. When I do a normal puffy braid, I like all of my sections to end at the same point right above her ear. I like the uniformity. With this one, you make the ponytail sections look like above.

Then I pulled the two ponytails into one big one...and I got her dress sopping wet. You could do this with two ponytails, however, my ponytails were too close together and I wanted to keep the star part consistent. So I pulled them into one. I only pulled the ponytail half way through.

Then I broke out the curling iron that I have been favoring latey and curled those ends.

See that darling little butterfly, you will have a chance to win one for yourself VERY soon. SO cute!

Top view

Back view

Read More