Fun idea - Headbands from Hair Things!!!

Hello friends!

I was sitting on the couch the other night, not even playing with hair things, and suddenly this image popped into my head!  What if I looped hair elastics together to form a headband?  So I went and tried it...and it worked!

I went to bed that night, and my mind started turning and I started thinking of other hair accessories I could use to decorate my little headbands.

Then when I pulled out all of our extensive collection of hair dodads (wow there is a lot of it!) I got this idea to use barrettes to secure the two ends of the headband and avoid the little "tail" I was getting.

Which then led me to this whole new idea for how to make a headband with hair elastics AND barrettes without needing to loop them together!

If you aren't quite sure how I did this by looking at the pics - have no fear!  I filmed a ridiculously long video to explain a very simple concept!  Check it out.  At least little E is in it, and she is fun to look at.

What do you think?  Fun?  Are you going to try it?  Can you add to my ideas?  Please post pics on our facebook page of what you come up with!

Katie

Shades of Us WINNERS!!!!!!

Thank you to everyone who participated in this giveaway!  We hope you have enjoyed seeing all of the many different styles of accessories at Shades of Us.  Keep checking back at their site because she is adding new things all of the time!  In fact, she just added 50 new items yesterday!!!

The THREE lucky winners of this weeks giveaway chosen by Random.org are:

Comment #48

Michelle G said... [Reply to comment]

As I have been entering all my entries I was trying to decide which thing was my favorite. I couldn't so I had to do "innie, minnie, miney, mo" to come up with 091. But I also really like 073, 087, 070 and 088, LOL.

September 30, 2011 12:30 PM 

Comment #36

Precious @ Precious-Curls.com said... [Reply to comment]

I'm a new follower!

September 30, 2011 11:10 AM 

Comment #13

Dalene said... [Reply to comment]

I love the black & white circle flower, #87. It would be so versatile!

September 30, 2011 4:27 AM 

Congratulations!  Please contact Laura at laurapk21@gmail.com and let her know your accessory choice as well as your mailing address.  Laura is going out of town in a few days, so email her ASAP if you want her to mail them out before she leaves!

For all of you who entered the giveaway and did not win - don't despair!  Laura would like to offer you a coupon for FREE shipping on your next order!  All you need to do is head over to her facebook page ("like" it if you haven't already done so!) and leave a comment saying you are a KMC reader and you are dropping in to get your coupon code!  Cool huh?

Shades of Us - GIVEAWAY!!!

Giveaway time!  Three lucky winners will win ANY hair accessory of their choosing from Shades of Us!

Have you gone over to the Shades of Us website to check out the cute and creative stuff she's got?  I think the really cool thing about this company is that you never know what you are going to get.  I was looking through the site last night and it had a ton of different stuff from the last time I was there!  I am sure it depends on what fabrics, flowers, jewels she happens to pick up at the time!  So if you buy something from Shades of Us, you can be pretty sure you won't see the same accessory on anyone else - they are so UNIQUE! Here are the pics of the cool stuff that Laura sent to Miss G!

 One thing I love about these clips is the very well-attached plastic faceted "crystal" button in the center. It really adds a fine finishing touch to these and makes them look very refined!

This unique hair clip was G's favorite. She loved that it was unusual and the black button off-center! (PS we have 4 floss hair wraps going on right now, with no end in sight! I did insist that we take out the first two which have been in for a couple of months! I've gotta tighten locs!)

PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE remember to write a SEPARATE comment for EACH thing you do on the list.  If you put all of your entries in ONE comment you are selling yourself short!  Each comment gets a number for our random generator, so you want to get as many comments as possible.  

You have until NOON EST on Sunday, October 2nd to enter the drawing.  We will be choosing the winners from the comments left on THIS post!

To enter this giveaway please leave a comment on THIS blog and answer THIS question:

After visiting the Shades of Us website, which was your favorite hair accessory?  

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If you would like to earn EXTRA entries do one or all of these things:

1)  Go to the Shades of Us facebook page and become a fan! Leave a comment stating you are a fan.

2) Head on over to our Keep Me Curly! Facebook fan page and become a fan. Leave a comment stating that you are a fan. (or that you already were a fan)

3) "Share" our Keep Me Curly! Facebook page with your friends and come back and leave a comment letting us know what day you "shared" us THIS week.

4) Follow @keepmecurly on twitter Come back and post a comment that you are a follower and leave your Twitter ID. (or that you were already following)

5) Tweet any unique tweet announcing our blog or the giveaway with @keepmecurly in it! Cut and paste your tweet (not tweet id status) and post as a comment. You can get 1 entry for EVERY new and unique tweet!

6) Become a follower of our blog or subscribe to our blog through an RSS feed. Simply post a comment saying that you are a follower. (or that you were already following)

7) Subscribe to Katie's youtube channel and come back and leave a comment stating that you are a subscriber. (or that you were already a subscriber)

8) Leave a comment on one of Katie's youtube videos. Leave a comment HERE letting us know the title of the video you commented on.

9) Place an order at Snapaholics between 9/27 and 10/1 Noon EST. Leave a comment including your order number and order date.

10) Grab our badge! If you add our badge to your blog leave us a comment saying that you are using it with a link to your blog.

11) Advertise our site or this giveaway in a forum or other blog! We would really love it if you wrote about our site or this giveaway on your blog. If you are passionate about natural hair care, or Katie's youtube videos have been really helpful to you, or if you love cute hair things, talk it up on your blog! Earn TWO entries for doing this one! Simply post a comment saying that you are talking about us with a link to the forum or blog, then put (first entry) then comment again and write (second entry).

12) Get a friend to talk about us or our giveaway on THEIR blog, earn two MORE entries! Just leave us a comment with a link to THEIR blog and tell us that you encouraged them to participate. Then make sure they enter the giveaway for themselves too!

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The winners will be announced on Monday, October 3rd. It is the responsibility of the winners to contact us at keepmecurly@gmail.com to let us know their mailing address and the hair accessory that they would like. IF the winners do not contact us by Friday, October 7th, we will choose a new winner.

Who can participate? US only please.  Shades of Us is a new business and is not yet set up for international customers.

*** If you have any questions or if you have comments that are not related to the giveaway please feel free to email us at keepmecurly@gmail.com or leave your comment on a different post. In order for this giveaway to work we have to ask that you do not leave any other comments on this post if they do not follow the guidelines of the contest.***

Shades of Us Hair Accessories - Review

It's been a long time coming, but I told you all we had another giveaway in the making.  Here it comes!  These adorable hair accessories come from Shades of Us.  Laura makes them all by hand and she has quite a variety of styles.  She sent all 4 of our girls 2 hair things each.  Katie's girls were SO THRILLED to get this package of beautiful hair stuff that they immediately put them in their hair!

They have continued to enjoy adding them to different styles to spice things up.  Here are a few pics:

Little E's favorite color is yellow and we have used these hair things A LOT!  I like that they are a solid color because they are a bit more versatile, I can pair them with so many outfits!

Miss V is ALL about the pink, so this pink and red fabric flower is perfect for her!  I love how unique this one is!

I know the pic of B is a bit overexposed, so I included a pic of this one in E's hair too.  B loves orange and turquoise, so this is the perfect choice for her! Aren't the different fabrics cool?

 These flowers are great for older girls.  I think the colors are bold and gorgeous!  I am a bit afraid to send my girls to school in these though because they can be so rough on their stuff!  I am sure they or their classmates will destroy them.  So I am reserving these ones for special occasions.

Here is another precious flower that I think is well suited for younger girls.  I love how it is made of soft, touchable fabric.  

You can check out Shades of Us on Facebook or at their website.  They have many many more styles than what we have shown you here!  There is something to suit every little girls fancy!  And priced from $3.00 to $12.00 (for headbands) these handmade and unique creations are a great buy!

Please come back tomorrow for your chance to win one of these fabulous hair accessories!

The Fabulous Flexi-Clip!

This is exciting everyone!

Remember a few months ago when I posted about these awesome hair things I would LOVE to get my hands on - if only we had the spare cash for a frivolous purchase?

Well, I had written to one of the Lilla Rose distributors, the lovely Paula Ramm, to get permission to use their pictures on our blog.  Not only did she gladly grant that permission, but she asked if we could work together on a review and giveaway!  EEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!  That is my happy squeal!

It was a REALLY hard decision to pick out which Flexi-clip to get first, because they have a huge selection in each size.  I decided to go with an all silver one because even though the colorful ones are cute, I thought silver would be more versatile.  Than I watched the sizing video and I had a tough decision to make on size.  I was hoping to get one that Miss B and I could share.  So I chose a MEDIUM clip.

When our clip came in the mail I was SO excited!  I put it in B's hair right away!  A Medium is a great size for doing half up type of styles on her.  Her locs have gotten so beautifully thick that I can't quite get a whole half of them into the clip, but we can still do some really pretty, simple styles like this:

Oh my gosh!  Don't her locs just look gorgeous!  This would probably look a bit more elegant without the floss hair wraps, but it still looks very pretty.

I am very pleased with the quality of the clip.  It is super sturdy, easy to use, and fun!  

For my hair the medium is a bit too big.  Next time I might have to get myself a small.  The only way I can make it work in my hair is to pile all of my hair into a bun - as condensed as possible - and fix the clip over top.  Anything else I have tried to do, my hair is just not thick enough to hold the clip in.  But, when I do it this one way, the clip holds all day long, really well!

Hi, Steph here!! We also decided get a medium, but we went with the multi-colored one

(same as I used to do beaded styles on G...usually very colorful. G picks her own clothes and I gave up matching clothes to beads years ago LOL. I would be happy to see shirt match to pants most of the time!). G's locs are not as dense as B's, so we were able to get all her locs in a medium clip. It is super secure and SOOO pretty. I wore the same clip to work and got lots of compliments. On me, the medium fit all my hair but seemed a tiny bit loose. I think the small holds all my hair much tighter.

Paula recently had a free shipping sale so I ordered a small

and an extra small

after I had tried the medium. The extra small was great for a partial ponytail on G, and it stayed tight and secure over a few days without removing it....she even swam in it and it didn't budge an inch.

Here are all three in her hair so you can see the sizes. I think it's a bit of an optical illusion that the gold one (the small) looks the same as the multicolored one (the medium). I think it's due to my tall camera angle:

Notice in the second photo, the top clip - look how flexible it is! G was already wearing a partial ponytail in an elastic, and I put the extra small clip right over the elastic, so it had to really bend into a semicircle. It did this perfectly!

I have to mention one of the best features about these clips is that, unlike its predecessor, you remember, the leather patch with the holes in it and the stick that poked through (remember the 60's and 70's?), with the flexi-clip, the stick is ATTACHED to the clip. It CANNOT get lost. I didn't realize this until I got mine in the mail and I thought it was ingenious.

You will notice that Paula has also chosen to advertise on our blog!

If you love these clips as much as we do, we would love for you to show some love to Paula, click on her ad and order through her.  She has been great to work with, and in a few days we will be posting a giveaway that she has offered to sponsor. Hooray!

To check out Paula's Lilla Rose Website click here, or find her on facebook, or twitter.

I can't wait to get some more Flexi Clips!  I am going to get a small for me and someday a mini to do half up stuff on my hair.  I also want to get a large or extra large for B to try and hold up all of her locs!  I will post links to the sizing info with the giveaway so that you can get an idea on what you and your daughters might need!  They also have other really beautiful hair accessories that I would love to try out.  Check out the rest of the Lilla Rose products here.

A G Style Worth Posting About :)

SHE LIVES! Hi everyone. Yes it has been awhile. It's just been so crazy and I have been doing not much with G's hair other than some kind of 'tails or just leaving it down (ahhhhh the ease of locs!). She was also was way overdue for tightening and it just seemed to take me forever to get them all done this time.

All the second grade classes at G's school had a little performance last week, the theme was "It's a Bug's Life," and all the songs were, you guessed it, bug or garden related. So, how could I pass up that opportunity to use the Snapaholics butterfly beads with flower snaps on the ends?! I couldn't! I didn't!

It's always a dilemma for me to hang especially large hole beads on her locs, because I feel like I should twist or braid the locs in order to make them thicker to fit into the large hole. I wasn't sure what I was gong to do until I started cornrowing the locs at the front....the thing now is that the locs are fairly thick once you cornrow a bunch of them, and though I could cram the beads on there, they won't "hang" well, they would be too stiff. So once I cornrowed all the front, I just started fooling around with what I was going to do with the resulting braids, and I really liked the result, especially how long it makes her locs look....stretched out! Here it is:

So all I did, since I had six cornrows, with a part in the middle, is to braid the braids together that I got from doing the six cornrows. There was just enough to do one or two stitches of braid, then I gathered it together, barely, and I put four butterfly beads on a plain elastic (check back here for how to do this). Then I just randomly installed beads and snaps on some of her locs, tried to spread them out evenly. The beads are SO bright, which went along with her crazy green shirt, and she was all ready to perform at school!

I've done lots of beaded styles over the years but honestly against the black hair I still ADORE the bright rainbow look :)

 

Hair Accessories I would LOVE to buy!

I have been drooling over these awesome hair accessories for a few weeks now and I thought I would share them with you.  It isn't exactly in our budget at the moment to spend money on frivolities such as these, but if it were, you can believe I would be getting quite a few!  So maybe if you like them as much as I do, you can buy them and let us know what you think!

 Flexi Clips by Lilla Rose also on Facebook

I think these would be PERFECT for B's locs!  They look so easy to use but cute and elegant and awesome!  I love that they would also work great for my hair so we could share them!  With the variety of sizes they sell I might even be able to use them in Little E's very thin hair!

 Lilla Rose also sells these cute Head Bands and O-Rings.  Aren't they pretty?  And if you are a jewelry person they nave necklaces and bracelets and things of that nature too!

Now check out these AWESOME pics of Flexi Clips with locs!

GORGEOUS!

I think this is the BIGGEST size - can you believe it holds all that hair!

This would HAVE to work on little E!

Do you have any great new accessory finds to share with us???

Katie