Let me start this one off with a big I KNOW – that I am not the first to ever do this – nor do I claim to be. So please, don’t e-mail me accusing me of saying this is “my” idea. Clear back at Halloween time, I’d had someone e-mail me saying their child was going to be pirate for Halloween and wanted to know how to get some beads onto their hair for their costume. I poked around a little and found some video online somewhere to which I referred her. I’d give credit if I could remember where it was – but it’s been months so I’m sorry. After doing my Valentine Heart bead project, I remembered the whole beading stuff and thought it’d be fun to put on my blog to add to the bead section of things. Either way – this is something that I know is common in the African American world of hair (which I think btw they can do some completely amazing things with their kids hair that I never could do in my girls hair!) They have many more wonderful tricks and tools for this, but this is the cheater way I found, and it worked for me, so here it is.
I’d wanted to post this back closer to the V-day post when I’d mentioned more fun with beads, but Goose wanted me to wait & post it the week of her birthday (wahoo – she’s going to be 7) since this was one of her favorites. So here it finally is!
I made a side ponytail & then did a tiny rope/twist braid. You can watch our video HERE if you need help w/that! You can do braids or whatever floats your boat. Do as many as you like. We did 3 this day.
Then you’ll need little squares of tin foil. Only a couple inches big is all you need – if that.
Just depends on how long the tail of your twist is.
Take the tin foil & wrap it around the area of hair under the rubberband.
If it helps, get the little end wet to get all the little loose hairs neatly enclosed in the tinfoil wrap.
Fold it around onto itself so it’s wrapped up around the end of the twist.
Then carefully twist it up tightly so it’s pointy on the end like a pin so that it will go through the holes of the beads easier.
We just used regular craft beads, like the ones from my V-day project. I think it’d be harder to use a bead with a smaller opening than these, but if you’re extra talented you probably can make it work! I’m just not – so I stuck w/this size of beads.
** Sorry for all the blurry pictures – my camera had a mind of its own when I took these apparently! **
Once you’ve twisted the tinfoil, start threading your beads up the shaft of hair. Fit on as many as you can or wish to.
Once you’ve covered the tin foil with beads, take be sure that you leave enough room at the end …
…because you will need to curve the end of the tinfoil up and stick it back up into hole of the bottom bead.
Sorry these are all a bit blurry. But it’s kind of like you need to make a little “ball” with the tinfoil so that the beads stay on the end of the hair. The beads just kind of float on top of the bump of tinfoil at the base of it all. Does that make sense?
By doing that with the foil, it kinda makes it look like there is a silver little bead at the base of each of them I think. And yes, the white-ish beads are different colors than the center ones. We thought she had more of the pearly looking beads than she did, so it wasn’t perfectly matchy matchy but oh well! We also mixed it up a bit & put less beads on the 2 outside twists & I put the beads in a different order to make it kind of fun.
This was the look in the end. She really liked it.
And then hours later it kept bugging me that we didn’t do anything around the base of the ponytail so we hurried and strung some more beads on some pipe cleaner and wrapped them around the base of the ponytail. It didn’t quite cover her elastic, but it added a bit more color & I thought it looked kind of fun.
Anyway, that’s the cheater way that I used to get the beads on. I know there are special little clips or snaps that can be used to hang at the bottom of the hair, as well as threading tools to get the hair onto the beads (similar to a very small topsy tail) but for my purposes the tin foil worked great & it was fairly quick & painless! I think this will be something fun to do in the summer with a whole headful of braids & beads. Hope you’re able to try this one.
Oh, and I almost forgot. I’ve got word of a few more fun sites out there for all your DD’s hair cutsie needs!
2 Lady Bugs Boutique -She’s having a giveaway too, so go on over & see all the darling stuff she’s got.
Lemon Drop Boutique –She’s got some very nicely priced items. I saw some headbands w/flowers the other day at a local store and they were twice as much as what she’s selling them for, so you must check her out too.
And last but not least – one of my dear readers Micki has a fun Etsy store with all sorts of baby slings and cloth diapering accessories … so if you are in the market for those she’s the one to visit! Like many, her honey was recently laid off, so I’m sure any help would be greatly appreciated! Go HERE for her fun site.
Ok, that’s it for now. And don’t forget my CONTEST either!
