Curlformer "How-To" Videos

It's no secret how much we love Curlformers around here and I know we've been posting styles using them forever.  I've had so many requests for how we put them in and any tips or tricks we might have when we use them so I finally was able to finish putting together videos to show you what we do.  Sorry they are a bit long, but hopefully they'll help you a bit.  It usually takes me about 10-15 minutes to put these in my girlies hair but since I was talking and explaining stuff I spliced things together a bit so you didn't have to see all of that. 

The 1st video showing us putting them in after her bath and the 2nd one is the results when we pull them out along with pics of several of our favorite Curlformer styles! Let me know if you have any more questions!   And for all our posts on Curlformers -- Q&A, styles, etc., go HERE!  Enjoy!

Our Segment on The Daily Dish

We hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday and enjoyed great time with family and friends - and of course had plenty of yummy food!  Our holiday was so great and I have so much to be thankful for.  

As I mentioned in our last post, we were asked to appear on a local TV show called "The Daily Dish."  If you missed it or aren't local and couldn't tune in they posted our segment so we thought we'd share it with you guys.

We had such a fun time.  They'd wanted us to come show some "holiday hairstyles" and so we showed them a few techniques for quick styles and then had a few styles already done to just show and explain a little about.  One of them was the style we posted last time.

Anyway, here are a few pictures from while we were there as well as our segment and a few pictures from while we were there.  Thanks to the lady in the studio audience for taking some pics, and to my BFF Jenn for taking some as well!

Here the girls are in the "green room" where we waited before all the fun started.  Can you tell Goose is just a "might bit" excited?!  They kept asking why it was called the green room, when in fact, it really isn't green!

 Here's Nicea & Brianne talking about their major high heels before our segment!  They were so funny together!

Again - more talk of those high heels!  I seriously could never wear those!

And here we were as the segment got going ... I showed rubber band wraps and our uneven rope braids on Bug quickly...

 

 

 

 We had a blast & the girls haven't stopped talking about it!  So here it is: 

If you can't view it here on our site, try watching it on their site HERE. Thanks to Nicea & Brianne for being so cute w/the girls & also to everyone who tuned in and for all your kind words.  It was a fabulous experience and a fun way to start the Thanksgiving holiday 

Also, just wanted to let you know, our Facebook Hair Gallery is totally updated now through last week - so if you can't find the style you are looking for you can look for it in our albums over HERE.

Cascading Messy Bun

If you were able to watch us on CW30's "The Daily Dish" this morning, this is the hairstyle that Goose was wearing.  It is perfect for any age, but looks great on her as she is in that "tween" stage of life.  If you are visiting us because you saw us on The Daily Dish -- Welcome!  We're so glad you're here!  We hope you'll stay a while & take a look around!  We've got hundreds of different styles for every age & every occasion so you're bound to find a thing or two to try on a cute little head of hair!

This first step is optional - Begin by parting out a section of hair on the crown to make a slight "bump" up front.  Secure it with a few bobby pins.  Our "bump" this day ended out not being much of a bump however!

 Next, part the hair from ear to ear like you're making a half pony.  Be careful not too pull too hard on those hairs you've bobby pinned when doing this.  Make a half pony & on the last wrap of the rubber band, don't pull the hair through all the way so you end out with a loop that looks like this:

 Now grab a small piece of hair that is from your half pony hanging below the loop-

 With another finger, poke through the loop (there is no exactness to this btw).  This part is hard to explain, so hopefully it makes sense!

 Take the small piece of hair you'd pulled up from below & pass it through the loop where your finger was.  If you have a topsy tail, this might be helpful at this part of the hairstyle.  I just use my fingers to sort of weave the hair & pull it through.

 A view from the side after you've pulled 1 piece up and woven it through a part of the looped hair.

Continue taking small pieces of hair from below & passing them randomly through sections of the loop above.  They will cascade back down once you've pulled them through. 

 You can do as many of these as you want and it is all just randomly placed.  If it looks random & maybe a bit messy that is fine.

 You can leave all those cascading pieces of hair straight, or to make it a bit fancier of a style, I curl them.  I use my small little iron for that.

Curl as few or as many of those pieces as you like.

 Now here's another step you can choose to do.  To hide the rubber band on top of the loop, I pull a few pieces from the top of the loop up and secure them with bobby pins just like I do in my messy bun.  You can see a video of that HERE.  By doing this to the top, the loop won't look saggy from the side as it's pulled down by the cascading hair.

 

I've done this style several times, so in these next pictures I pulled more hair up from below & pulled it through the loop of hair on top.

 And to add some color, we added this darling headband from All Things Ribbon.  Jen shows how to make this exact headband HERE on her blog.  And when we were up visiting months back she gave us THE actual headband she shows on her blog!  Thanks Jen, we love it!  We couldn't decide which side of her head we liked it on the best though!

 

 

*** Also - a slight variation of this style you could do is pull all the hair up in back into a high pony tail and then make the loop.  Then pull hair through the loop as shown above.  We put Goose's hair over her shoulders in front to get it out of the way for a minute, and all that hair cascaded down so nicely.  So you've got a couple options with this style ***

 Let us know if you have any questions on this one.  Trying to describe things sometimes gets tricky!

 Be sure to check out all our styles on our Facebook page HERE in our photo galleries.  They are current through last weeks hairstyles!  We're also on Pinterest too if you find us "pinteresting!"

To see more styles using some of the techniques we used on The Daily Dish - you can see them HERE, HERE, HERE, or HERE!

Letter L Hairstyle

"L" is for Love

Speaking of Love -- I just thought I'd tell you some great news about 2 things I happen to love as well as tell you some exciting news ...

First off, our fabulous bow making friend over at All Things Ribbon is having her annual holiday dress giveaway.  The dress & headband she is giving away is so beautiful.  So go check out all the ways you can enter to win on her blog over HERE.  Be sure to tell her I sent you on her FB page -- it gets me bonus friend points I think! lol  Also, if you aren't wanting to try for the dress but are in need of her fabulous accessories, she's also got a code for 25% off your entire purchase for the duration of the giveaway.  Just enter "Winter" at checkout.

And speaking of discounts -- if you don't follow us on Facebook or missed our post yesterday -- I got word from my friend at Curlformers that they are having a sale on Black Friday.  Can I just say "hooray?!"  I've been using these long enough to know it is rare for them to go on sale or be discounted -- so if you've got these on your Christmas list, now is the time to buy them!  This Friday - 11/25/11 you can get 15% off any purchase on their site Curlformers.com.  No code needed - it'll automatically be deducted at checkout.  So be sure in all your black Friday shopping you take time to head to their site & buy the greatest curlers in the world!  If you aren't familiar with them, check out our posts on them HERE.

Also - I just wanted to let you guys know that we're going to be on a local TV show tomorrow.  It's called "The Daily Dish" on CW30.    It airs from 9-10 a.m.  I'm not sure when I'm slotted to appear, but the plan is to have all 3 of the girls with so if you are a local and can tune in - we'd love if you watched us!  If you're unable to view it hopefully there will be a link I can share later.  We're so excited!

Anyway - on with the hair tutorial!  This probably has been the quickest letter of our whole series so far.  Not hard to figure out. We just did regular braids for this one, but as always, you can do twists, or whatever your preference is for this.

Part the hair from ear to ear & make a ponytail off to the left side.  Secure it with a rubber band & then braid it.

 With the remaining hair on the bottom comb it all to the right side of the head & make a side pony as far to the right as you can.  Make it nice and low too.  Braid it & secure it temporarily with a clip.

 Then bring that low side braid over to the left and combine it with the other braid.  Tie them together with a rubber band.

 To keep the L from pulling away from her head when she played I strategically put in a few bobby pins under the braid and by the pony at the neck and it worked just great.  That's not necessary, but that's what I did!  That's it -- you're done.  It was funny to me to see how doing her hair this way made her pony tail so much shorter than it normally is!  Strange to have such a short pony for a change!

And as easy as making the letter in her hair was - it was just as easy for her to do the letter L in sign language.  Some of the other letters so far have been a bit tricky for her little hands so she was happy for this one being so easy!

Letter K Hairstyle

K is for Karlee

(Bee's BFF!)

We're slowly but surely making our way through the alphabet!  On today's agenda - the letter K!  This one is pretty easy & quick too.

Start by parting the hair straight back down the middle of the head.  Then part to the ears so you have 2 sections of hair.  Make a pony tail with each & then make a rope/twist braid.  If I do this again, I'll probably just do regular braids because they tend to be a bit stiffer in the whole "molding" process!

 Secure those rope braids temporarily and then part the rest of the hair straight down the back to the nape of the neck.

Next take a rubber band and pull the right twist over to the left one & secure them together.

On the left side comb the hair underneath the twists down into a ponytail at the nape of the neck & add the twist on the left into it.

Repeat on the right side - comb the rest of the hair into a low ponytail and pull the twist on the right over into it as well.

 That's all this one requires.  Be sure to get the pony tails at the bottom even though!  Like I mentioned before, I probably would use braids next time on this in the hopes the line on the left side would sit straighter and not pull in as much.  ** Also another thing you can do is start the top right ponytail a bit further down/back on the head.  It'll make the right side of the K look a little more like a K instead of an X perhaps.**

 

 And a silly grin with her sign language letter K!

Happy Hair Doing & be sure to share your alphabet letter hair with us on our Facebook Page!  "K?!!"

A Bun for Shorter Hair

Ever since we cut Bug's hair off for Locks of Love it's been fun to watch it start growing back -- but the one thing that I haven't been able to do is a regular ol' bun.  She has enough hair for a pony tail, but if I try braid or twist it and wrap it around for a regular bun it is too stubby!  It won't even wrap 1 full time around.  She likes buns, and as the weather gets colder and hats are worn more buns are nice because everything stays in place and her still looks nice and go all crazy with static.

So this was my cheating solution!  Obviously, if your hair is majorly short even this won't work - and for that I suggest our messy bun, because even with my short hair I can manage one.  But if you've got at least shoulder length hair, give this a try!

Make a ponytail.  I suggest using a rubber band that is close to their hair color or clear since you might be able to see it later.

Split the pony in half and braid each section & secure the braids with rubber bands.  I've also done this with rope/twist braids and it works well too.  Braid further down if you don't want ends sticking out for the finished product at the end!

 Now cross the right braid over the left one...

Pull both ends up around to the top of the ponytail -- so the right braid is going around the left side & the right braid is going around the left side. (Sorry it's hard to show that in a picture - but the braids are crossed over each other now.)

 Pull the 2 ends up as far as you can and tie them together with another rubber band.  I like the ends spraying out all playful like, but if you don't, then you could braid further down so your don't have as long of ends sticking out & you can secure them down with bobby pins.

Add a few bobby pins to the bun to make sure it won't fall out.

 I curled the ends down just a little bit so they weren't sticking up all willy nilly!  And because I used a brown rubber band, you can't see it very much through the bun.

I realize this is very similar to a post we did a long time ago around Thanksgiving - "A basic bun with a little bit of turkey tail" but her hair just won't wrap like that anymore at this length.  So I'm glad I finally figured out a way to get a bun in her shorter hair!

 In the end I added a cute flower from Gimme Clips to add some color and the bun stayed in place all day.

 That's it.  Quick & easy and yeah- we finally have a fun!