Hair How To: The Braid Bun

The girls had ballet the day Emily came home from school last week with a bloody lip.  In an attempt to cheer her up and distract her from her injury (sustained during gym class) I offered to make her hair look special for ballet.  Braid buns are easy, just like the simple ballerina bun tutorial I posted a few weeks ago.



Step 1 - Secure hair in a ponytail.

Step 2 - Braid the ponytail all the way to the very bottom.  I still have a supply of those little tiny hair elastics typically used on baby fine hair.  I've also been using Rainbow Loom (yeah, remember those things?) elastics as hair elastics.  Let's call it recycling.  I normally braid with a medium tightness.  So the braid isn't super tight but it's not super loose either.

Step 3 - Wrap the braid around the base of the ponytail.  I didn't take any photos of this but it's almost the same concept as my simple ballerina bun tutorial except I don't twist the braid.  Also, as I start to wrap the braid around the base, I immediately bobby pin it down.  This keeps the braid in place and prevents the bun from becoming a huge cone.





And then to make it extra special, I wrapped a ribbon around it.



(I'm obsessing over the fact that the left side of the ribbon was sitting behind the bun so in this photo, it looks like the ribbon tails are too different lengths.)