Under Construction

Just in the process of fixing my blog and trying to find some missing elements. I'm also currently finishing up three graduate projects, so this may take me a couple days to get back to. See you soon...

Be sure to go enter Jenn's "Flip Flop Fridays" Giveaway HERE.

Christmas Girl Hair Giveaways

Okay, there's another Karmin Titamium Hair Iron being given away at Beautyholics Anonymous. Just visit the following website and leave your name and email address. This one ends November 28th. http://www.beautyholicsanonymous.com/2008/11/karmin-titanium-hair-straightener-giveaway/

Ginny at Mom of 2 Dancers is having a hair clip giveaway. These non-slip clips are made by Maiden America. Be sure to visit Ginny's blog to see how to enter. You can get up to 10 entries. http://scrappyd.blogspot.com/2008/11/giveaway-maiden-america-hair-clips.html

Found another one--you can win a Karmin Titanium Hair Iron with a retail value of $99.99!!! There are also two great coupon codes you can get there, as well. Please tell her that Miller Manes sent you: http://www.diva4less.net/2008/11/my-first-giveaway.html

Thanks to "The Mom" at Babes in Hairland, I just learned of another holiday giveaway. Be sure to head on over to Cutie Pie Hair Creations and enter her latest giveaway. There are three adorable sets you can win (but only if you don't roll your eyes at her lights and music comment). I'm not sure when this one ends. Please leave me a comment below if you find out. Thanks y'all!

http://cutiepiehaircreations.blogspot.com/2008/11/ive-got-problem.html

I'll start gathering Christmas giveaways in this post and just keep updating when we find something new just like I did for Halloween/Fall.

Layered Corkscrew Net

Good Monday afternoon! I hope you all had a fun or restful weekend. I've been playing around with the layered corkscrew from our Halloween hair and thought I'd share something that worked. This is sorta a cross between the layered corkscrew and the traditional net. The main difference is that there is no elastic in this hair except for in the back pony. Each corkscrew gets divided up when it nets and then a new corkscrew begins. You could do this all around the head if you have time (or if you don't happen to have two other very young siblings needing mommy).

Start off with the same parts from the layered corkscrew--4 in front and 5 just behind those. The rest of the hair behind those sections will be pulled back into a pony for now.
Then start your corkscrew at the far right or left (up front). Twist until you can see that the corkscrew can be divided and pinned down to start with a new corkscrew with a new set of hair (new part of the "net").

As you see, since I'm not using elastics like you would with a traditional net, I have bobby pins all over holding hair down in preparation for the next grouping.
Then as you finish two sections that are ready to start the next corkscrew, just undo the bobby pins, add the hair and start a new corkscrew. This could be far more elaborate than I did here.
Then as I finished the longer corkscrews I just pinned them to the back so that I could pony them when they were all finished. Keeping the corkscrews tight is important, so if you notice one unraveling when you are about to start a new section, just spruce it up a bit before beginning each time.
M'k. Now that the 5 finishing corkscrews are finished, pony it using an elastic on top of the other pony elastic.
Really, you're on your own from here. You can messy bun it, or braid it or do a large corkscrew or snakes/worms, etc. I went on to do a bunch of twists.

And then I bobby pinned them all up into a twisty bun in the back.

THE END.

P.S. WHY is this dumb photobucket message following me around. I don't think I even use photobucket. Do I? I'm wondering if it has anything to do with the cutestblogontheblock background because it only shows up when my background doesn't work. Grrrr! Email me at teachertools at gmail dot com if you know how to fix it! Thanks in advance!

Layered Corkscrew Princess Hair

About a week after our new digital camera came in, my brand new laptop died. We couldn't even get it to start up at all. OY! I had some pictures and video on there that I still hope to recover, but I'm not holding my breath. There are seriously days when I wonder if I should be blogging at all (and believe it or not, I currently own 8 blogs). Anyway, I hope to have my laptop (or a new one) back in a week. But in the meantime, I came across these photos that I happened to have saved in an email from two weeks ago. Maybe someone else will get some use out of this style. I'm sure we'll do it again (we've already done it twice this month).

In the top picture you get the basic idea. It's pretty simply and I wasn't taking photos to show how I did this one really. We were just doing a quicky style for her Halloween costume. The front section is divided into 4 squares and the second row is divided into 5 squares so that the twist braids (or corkscrews) will fall in between the front twist braids. IOW, when you pull them back, you can clearly see all 9 of them.


From here I just tied the pony off and made a messy bun out of it. Here's a shot from the side while she was getting her face painted downtown. Her little crown kinda pushed the twist braids around, but they were still cute enough.


And here are a few more shots for all of our long distance friends and family who didn't get to see the kiddos for Halloween. We miss y'all!!!

Wandering Braids

:tap, tap: Is this thing on? Well HELLOOOO there fellow hair fanatics. I'm BAAA-AACK! Seriously, my new (used) camera is here. I have loaded new batteries, picked up a 2GB memory card, done a little experimenting, and I now have more shooting options than I've had to choose from before. I'm stoked!

So...to make my re-entrance to the hair blogging world, I figured what better to start off with than one of my obvious favorites--french braids. I love how french braids look in long, thick hair. The big bonus is that it keeps my daughter's head tangle-free all day which means less detangling before hair washing. :) So today we're demonstrating what I call wandering (or traveling) braids. You really can do whatever you want with braids--draw pictures with them, criss-cross them, write letters of the alphabet, you name it and it's likely possible.

These really aren't very difficult to do if you have a patient daughter. It probably took me longer to part off the sections of hair than it did to actually braid it. Here's what I did:

Section off your rows and clip or band them up. I was doing zig-zags so I basically did horizontal rows on back. These will all be connected by braids, but for now they'll be separate sections.

You'll start all the way at the far left, front side of the head (or whichever side you prefer) and french braid all the way to the other side from one ear to the other.
When I got to this point, I let down the second section of hair. My daughter laid her head down on the floor so that I could more easily turn the corner and begin french braiding in the other direction (again, from ear to ear).
You'll just keep going back and forth this way until all of our section have been let down and braided back and forth.
Once I hit this point I regular braided all the way to the end of the hair and rubber-banded off the braid.

I had just a little bit of hair left in the very back so I grabbed the part on the right and upside-down braided like you've seen HERE, and then let down the far left section, and then curved the braid around and came back down the other side.
Here's what the second braid looked like up close.

Ta-da! Now just add your ribbons, bows, or other fun assessories and you're done. Looks kinda funky, but it was fun and stayed up very well through the day. Again, I'm usually looking for something fairly quick that will keep the hair untangled all day. Wandering braids does that very well.

I have to say that this Kindergarten-teacher-turned stay-at-home-mom is really enjoying doing her daughter's hair the way she used to do her students' hair. :GRIN: I'm glad to be back!

Be looking for my entire alphabet soon.