Tidbit Tuesday

Did You Know???????

What position we sit in to braid cornrows up the back of V's head?  Well, I am sure many of you have figured out good ways to do this, maybe you even have a better technique than I do!  But I have been asked this question many times, so I finally made a video to demonstrate!



V actually HATES it when I braid up the back.  Mostly because she doesn't want to peel her eyes away from the TV but also because it can be slightly uncomfortable.  Even so, she is used to it and with a slight grumble here and there she puts up with it pretty well.  This is probably because I generally don't put up with much complaining when it comes to hair time.  (here comes some un-asked-for parenting advice - oooOOOooo, it's like a double tidbit!)

Whenever my girls get whiny about hair time my standard response is.  "I am sorry that you are getting bored (uncomfortable, whatever the complaint may be) but please don't whine about it.  I am also ready to be done with hair time, but we still have a ways to go and I really don't want to listen to complaining the whole rest of the time.  My arms and back are starting to hurt too, but we just have to remember that you are going to look SO GREAT when this is done!  So just hang in there, we can do it!"

That might sound a little harsh, but it's honest.  I try to keep hair time as positive as possible so that they don't have negative feelings toward their hair, but I am not going to sugar coat the truth.  Yes, every few weeks we have to put some long hard hours into hair time.  No, that is not always fun.  But you are always super happy with the results, so the hard work is worth it.  And after we are done you will get to go at least 3 weeks without having to worry about it!  And they get enough positive reinforcement about how amazing their hair is that I think they can handle being honest about the sort of negative parts as well.

Well, that is your double tidbit for today!  Thanks for stopping by!

Katie

SECOND UPDATE! Painted Beads

Ok, I had two pink beads and one orange bead in her hair yesterday. The pink beads were painted with Folkart Outdoor Metallics Rose Shimmer

This paint is holding up very well. It's acrylic paint designed for metal, wood, terracotta, stone...like for painting flowerpots. However the orange bead is not doing so nicely...it's just Apple Barrel Acrylic Craft Paint. Here is how it looks at the end of the day, next to the two pink beads.

I like the look of the shimmery paint anyway, so I would definitely recommend the paints designed for outdoors.

The bits of orange that came off were nothing to just brush out of her hair.

Looking forward to your experiments!

UPDATE! Painted Beads

Hi everyone, I thought I'd update you on the status of our beads from Tidbit Tuesday that I painted on the inside. I braided three of her locs in front and added the beads and a snap (I'm a big fan of pink with orange!) and off she went to school. I asked her if she minded the big beads swinging around her face all day, and she shook her head and said "nope!! I like it!" (music to my ears).

So the outcome was, no paint on her locs! I checked later, and the paint was still on the beads. No pink locs. The next trial was last night. I oiled the braid with jojoba and coconut oil and even rubbed the beads back and forth. I checked if any paint had scraped off, and it hadn't! This is the acrylic craft paint I used, by the way. I haven't tried the stain yet.  With the acrylic paint, you need a couple coats.

I can't speak to ALL hair products, but these did fine with the coconut and jojoba oil...so far. If anything changes, I'll let you know. If you try it and have anything to add, please tell us!!!

(the incoming teeth crack me up!)

Slather it on!

Just the words sound fabulous..."body butter." Butter for your body. Something that is as delicious on your skin as melted butter is on corn. Mmmmm!

When I see G's bare legs after a warm day of play and scooting around on the floor of the multipurpose room at school, rolling on the grass, and digging in the sand, her dry ashy skin just screams out to be buttered! Well, it does to me anyway. :)

Just plain old lotion has never seemed to do it for me. It's too wet and runny. Not fun, not earthy, not nearly as natural and pure as what I put on her hair. Usually one of the first ingredients in lotion is mineral oil. No thanks. Why have all those ingredients that you cannot pronounce when there exist such decadent things as "kokum butter, aloe vera butter, jojoba butter, tucuma butter, mango butter, macadamia nut butter, avocado butter..." and on and on! Jeez I am suddenly craving a fresh loaf of french bread!

I decided to use coconut oil as a base and just try to make my own body butter. I had tried pure shea, the unrefined one from West Africa, but it was a bit too hard to scrape out of the jar when you're in a hurry...you really have to melt it well in your hands. Whereas coconut oil melts almost instantly. Us being a "hurry hurry get out the door Mommy's gonna miss the bus!" kind of family, we needed something faster. So I tried combining coconut oil and shea butter. It worked great because the coconut oil softened up the shea. All I did was melt both of them in a double boiler. But I was dying to give other butters a try. There are fabulous websites such as Mountain Rose Herbs and Essential Wholesale where you can buy these in small or quite large sizes. You can try it yourself at home. Try putting in a couple drops of essential oil! (Make sure it's not a skin irritant first, and that its scent will mesh well with the natural scent of the butters. Refined butters tend to be deodorized, whereas unrefined, or raw, butters retain their original scent, which can sometimes be strong). Mountain Rose Herbs is nice because there is background information on the source and use of all the butters. They have a ton of other cool stuff there, too, like teas and bulk organic herbs and spices.

The perfect blend of body butter scoops up easily in your fingers, yet isn't too wet. And it doesn't sit on the skin too long, it rubs in well. Some people whip their body butter, but I don't. My jar is heavy and a little goes a long way. There is no air blended into it. Some people swear by mine, but I only have it at certain times after I have gathered the ingredients at special prices, and then I usually sell out. I call mine "Mama Snap's Body Buttah" and it contains Kokum (although I may start attempting substitutes for this one), Shea, Coconut, Mango, and a few others. When I do have it, it along with pure 100% Virgin Coconut Oil is available at Snapaholics.com

With so much great, wholesome stuff available for the body, I figure why not stay all-natural, like we do with our kids' hair? Does the body deserve any less? I mean, c'mon....Cyclopentasiloxane or Shea Butter? Propylene Glycol or Jojoba Oil? DMDM hydantoin or Macadamia Nut Butter? Is it any contest?

 Get some small sizes and try melting some of your own! Take a look at natural body butter ingredients and see what some of the popular ones are. Then get your double boiler out and have fun! It also makes a great gift and will keep a long time.

How to Easily Restring an Old Hair Ballie!

Ok this is super easy. Crazy easy. But perhaps some of us hadn't thought of it! 

In addition to using old ballie fobs as beads (because the hole is usually off center they would be great to end braids/twists with!) you can also easily restring your ballie fobs onto new elastic.

Here's a quick vid to show you how simple it is.

One thing I forgot to mention in the video is that of course this trick will work with ANYTHING that you want to make into a ballie. Anything with a hole in it! This includes BUTTONS! Buttons with a shank or the ones with 2 holes. There are so many cute buttons for every holiday, event, season, animal, etc. All it takes is a button for each end and some elastic! Here is a photo of some Fall/Halloween ballies I made for G last year. I put the big jack o lantern at one end, a shank pumpkin button at the other end, then cut some smaller pieces of elastic and tied on smaller shank buttons in the shapes of corn, small pumpkins, acorns etc. She got LOTS of compliments on them!

If you have made your own ballies out of something, show us! We love to see creativity.

Tidbit Tuesday

Put An End To Bed Head!!!
So I am not sure if this is going to be a really helpful tidbit or not! But I had noticed at some point that I have a very specific way of putting B's sleep cap on at bedtime. I also noticed that when I put her cap on she has little to no bed head in the morning, but if B or Dad put her cap on we can have some CRAZY bed head!

So I made a quick little video demo of how I put B's sleep cap on. This may mostly be helpful for those with locs, but, come to think of it, I put V's cap on the same way. It probably is good for any hairstyle! It's just that with cornrows, V doesn't often have bed head! Although, V's current style of box twists operate pretty much the same way locs do - so this sleep cap technique comes in handy.

As a side note: I have no idea why B looks like her eyes are going to pop out of her head in this video! We were giggling about something right before we started taping and Camera Guy and I always say, "Ok, be serious now. Well, it's ok to smile!" If we don't tell the girls they can smile they look SO serious and then I get youtube comments about how miserable my girls look! But they are just trying to sit nice and quiet which takes a lot of concentration for them! lol! Anyway, so I guess, on this day, reminding B to smile gave us this very fake, plastered on expression! Kids!




Do you put your kids sleep caps on for them or do they do it themselves?

Katie

How To do a Fish Tail Braid

After I posted the Loc Style video I had a few inquires on how to do the Fish Tail Braid.

Isn't that pretty?  Well guess what, it's also EASY!  Maybe the easiest braid you will ever try!  Here are a few more pics of B and little E sporting the Fish Tail:

You will have to be patient with me and Camera Guy as we try to find the best place in the house to film videos.  Wouldn't it be nice if we had a studio with perfect lighting!  But we don't, and unfortunately we don't get a lot of great natural light in our house either.  And with 4 kids and 3 animals in our house, we have a hard time keeping everyone quiet when we are filming!  But we are doing our best, so hopefully you can see and hear everything in this video.  (well some things we wish you couldn't hear!)

Katie 

Easy Big Bead "Jazzy" Ponytails

Even though G has locs, I couldn't help myself when I came home from one of my bead suppliers with brand new Big Giant Ponies (BGP as I like to call them) in the shape of butterflies. I haven't done many beads on her lately, but I just HAD to put in some butterflies. BGPs have a larger hole so it's easier to get them on several locs together.

I am a big fan of ponytails. Guess I can't call them Puffs anymore, since they are locs! I will do high ponytails as long as humanly possible until G says she's too old for them. This style is very fast and a great way to add some zing to ponytails, for ANY kind of hair.

First, cornrow or flat twist some bangs to one side. For unlocked hair, you could actually just do bangs hanging down the front of the forehead. But remember, these are larger-holed beads. If you don't have enough hair to mostly fill the bead, it looks a bit odd. Believe it or not, this is the first time I have ever cornrowed bangs to the side! 

Because they are locs they were too thick to get through the bead nicely, when I was finished. I did get them on, but it hung funny. Kind of stiff. So I took that out, and where the braid left the scalp, I split it into two and two-strand twisted it. These were perfect for the beads and I adore the way it looks. To hold the beads on, I used a plain black flower snap, Snapaholics Style #3 (this is a very underrated snap. Plain black snaps are great when you don't want the snap to be the focus. They just kind of blend in.) I just let the twirly ends of her locs hang down below the snap. I initially tried rubber bands but I would have had to put two on all bunched up in order to fill up the large hole in the butterfly bead. Rubber bands and the wispy ends of locs don't go well together!

Next, I parted the hair down the center as you can see. I did six box braids, three to the right and three to the left of the center part, from ear to ear. I included about 6 locs or a couple more in each box. I didn't want them to be too thick for the beads. Then I just added the beads to the 6 braids. Finally, I put the hair in ponytails, including the box braids. There you have it! The braids fell toward the front of the ponytail and you could see all the pretty beads. For unlocked hair, if it's long enough you can just box braid ALL the hair and then gather it into the ponytails.  Or fit what you can into the ponytails and leave the rest hanging down box braids. 

Best of all, her hair made the tick, tack, clicky, clacky sound that I know and love....and miss, since we haven't done beaded styles so often anymore. We were both happy!

Enjoy! And find LOTS of BGPs at Snapaholics! Stars, hearts, butterflies, barrels. We got 'em! 

Stay tuned for our next post early in the week, which will be a review of a VERY all-natural haircare line. We will follow that immediately with a giveaway!

V's Criss-Cross Cornrows with a twist!

Today I am going to introduce you to a new way of showing off my latest hair creations!  I will still be making "how-to" videos from time to time, but some styles are just a variation of an old style and I believe that pictures and a few directions will do the trick!

This style is a variation on our Criss-Cross Cornrows.  Just click on that if you would like to watch my video tutorials on how to do Criss-Cross Cornrows.  They are the second and third videos on the page.

Since V's hair had been in the "pizza" pattern for the weekend, it was really easy to get started on this style.  Anytime I am cornrowing into a ponytail I start by parting her head into four quarters and then breaking each quarter down into smaller "pie pieces."  In this case, I left the ear to ear part constant, but I got rid of the forehead to neck part, and turned what had been 8 triangles into 6 triangles.  Like this:

Hopefully you followed me on that first part!  Now, each of these 6 triangles are going to contain 3 cornrows.  One fat one and two skinny ones!  The fat one will go down the middle and the two skinny ones are going to Criss-Cross over top of it.  So, working with one section at a time, divide into 3 parts:

Hopefully you can see from that pic that the middle section is very wide and the two on the sides are not.  Next you will do that big, fat, center cornrow:

Now, with the two side sections you need to divide them in half and pin the front half of one side and the back half of the other side out of your way.  If you don't know what I am talking about, now is the time go watch that Criss-Cross Cornrow video!

After you pin the two parts out of your way you will start to cornrow the section nearest the hairline until you get to where you parted it in half.  Now you need to just do a regular braid (quite a long section of regular braid in order to cross it all the way over that big fat cornrow!) until you reach the other side and continue your cornrow with the back half of that section.  Then take out the pins and repeat with the leftover hair!

 Now all you need to do is continue making these three cornrows in each of the other 5 triangle sections. I say "all you have to do," but don't be fooled, this took me 3.5 hours to finish!  I never claimed to be fast!  Here are the pictures of the finished style:

When I was spraying V's hair this morning she said "I love it when my hair is all curly!"  I believe she was referring to the twists in the back that end in curls.  I asked her what her favorite part of this style was and she said "All of it!"  What a cutie pie!  I think on Saturday we might take out the twists and do a twist out OR a big puff!  I can't wait!

Katie