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.