Upside-down Braids to Bun

I wanted to do something elegant, but not with tons of elastic showing. So we did these upside down french braids all around her head that came to a central spot at the top of her head. It's a simple concept, actually. Here's one way to do it:

First, wet, wet, wet hair and make sure it's free of tangles. Next, divide the hair into 6 even sections. I did two in front, two in the middle, and two in the back.
Next, she laid down on the couch and I braided her hair starting in the back. I french braided from her neck up to the center of her head and then regular braided all the way to the ends of her hair. Just continue to move around the head until you've finished all 6 section.
As you can see, they all end at one central location.
At this point you can do just about anything with the remaining hair. You can ponytail it and undo the remaining braids, out of the pony you can do double twists or other tiny braids, you can just messy bun it, you can combine the braids all into one big braid or weave the braids all the way around in a cool pattern, etc. The sky's the limit. I just ponied all the braids and turned it into one big bun using bobby pins to hide the ends of hair. And since I don't have one of those cool fancy pony-o's (or "thingies" as Jamie calls them), I used a boring adult scrunchie.



One thing I WISH I had tried was knotting each braid and undoing a couple inches of free hair at the ends and curling it. I may re-try this one in a couple weeks and do just that so that we can all see how it turns out.

And here's a fun collage for all of our family (great grandparents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and extended cousins) who are ALL long, long distance. (you can click the collage to see it bigger)