If you have a toddler, you may have an aspiring princess on your hands. My little monkin brought me a shoelace and a hair barrette one day and asked me to make her "Rapunzel hair." So I dutifully clipped the shoelace to her short, sparse hair and sent her on her merry way. I did that same thing approximately 2,487 times that day because, let's be honest, it wasn't a very good plan. So that evening, I combed through Pinterest looking for tutorials on how to make "Rapunzel hair." Turns out, it's super easy, which is good because there were later requests for Elsa, Anna, Belle, and Ariel hair. Here is the long and the short of it (see what I did there?)...
WHAT YOU'LL NEED:
1 skein of yarn (will make 2+ wigs)
Scissors
Dining chairs or other "edge" that you can wrap yarn around
Almost no crafting skill whatsoever
1. Figure out how long your hair will need to be. For Rapunzel hair, you'll want strands that will be 9 or 10 feet long. For Elsa hair, you'll want strands that will be 7-ish feet long. For Anna hair, 6-ish feet; and for Belle and Ariel, 4 or 5 feet. Then set a couple of dining chairs far enough apart so that you can wrap your yarn around the ends of the chair backs to produce the appropriate length of strands. Here, I'm making Elsa hair, so from one end of the chair backs to the other is approximately 3.5 feet (but just eyeball it). You want to wrap the yarn around 60 times, producing 60 strands in the end. (I only had enough yarn on hand to produce 42 strands, so your braids will end up being fuller than the braids in this tutorial.)
If you're making Anna hair, you'll want to make 50 loops with the orange yarn and 10 loops with the platinum yarn.
2. Once you have your 60 strands, cut a small piece of yarn and tie it around one end of your loops. This will be the center of your strands. (I used purple yarn here just so you can see what I've done, but you will want to use matching yarn.)
3. On the opposite end of your loops, cut down the center. You now have 60 strands of "hair" ready to braid!
4. Measure 15" from the center of your strands and tie off your strands, again using matching yarn. (So, in this photo, the center is marked by that top bow. The bottom bow is where I have tied it off at 15".)
5. Untie that original center bow and begin braiding your strands from the 15" mark toward the original center. For a toddler/preschooler, you'll want this braid to be 19" or 20", or you could just measure your child's head circumference and make this braid whatever size you need it to be. Once you have your 20" (or whatever measurement) braided, temporarily tie it off and join the 2 ends of your braided section to see whether the unbraided tails are even. If one tail is longer than the other, you can easily adjust it by unbraiding the shorter end a little and braiding the longer end a little. So say one tail is 2" longer than the other. You would want to unbraid an inch on the shorter end and braid an inch more on the longer end (or just play around with it until it's right). Once you have your tails evened out, tie off the 2 ends of the braided section with matching yarn.
6. Now tie the braided ends together to form a loop. This will become the halo of your princess hair. I prefer to do this with a bow instead of a knot so that you can adjust the size of the halo later if necessary.
7. If you're creating Elsa or Rapunzel hair, you can just braid the tails into one long braid. Tie it off, and trim the ends of the tail to make it even. For Elsa, I then sew little snowflakes onto the braid every so many inches. For Rapunzel, I tuck little flowers into the braid every so many inches (and then my child pulls them out, but whatever).
If you're creating Anna hair, you just separate the tails into 2 sections and braid each section. Tie the braids off and the trim the tails.
If you're creating Belle hair, you tie the tails into a loose knot at the base of the halo loop. Trim the ends to make it look nice.
8. If you're creating Ariel hair, you can either just trim the tail up to make it even, or your can take little sections of the tail and feed it back through sections of the braided halo to sort of spread the hair out across the back of your child's head. To do that, take 8 or 10 strands from the outer edge of the tail on either side and feed them back through the third braid from the bow of the halo. Then take 8 or 10 strands from the remaining tail and feed them back through the second braid from the bow. Then take 8 or 10 strands from the remaining tail and feed them back through the first braid from the bow. Repeat on the other side of the bow.
