Sweet Pea and I took a leap of faith in our hair braiding adventure and tried cornrows with beads in Dimples’ hair. As you can see from the picture above (and the last one in this post), our efforts produced a frenzy of braiding on dolls and ponies and beads scattered all over my house.

We began by watching two short video clips about cornrows on the Shuruba website and then sat Dimples down in front of a movie and started in. We loved the look of one braid in front, so we did that one first.

This was taken the following morning and you can see the five wide cornrows that are already getting a little fuzzy.

Then we braided the back into box braids and put beads on each braid as we went. We didn’t have a nifty beading tool, so we used a flexible hair pin and adapted it to work. It works like a device for threading a needle. Having used this technique, I have since ordered four braiding tools from Snapaholics and I look forward to being able to load it up with beads for several braids at once.

It was dark by the time we finished the back of her head and we still had cornrows to begin. Despite moving a floor lamp right next to us and removing its shade, it was still very difficult to see the braids as we worked. For my “over-forty” eyes, braiding needs to be done during daylight hours whenever possible.

We decided to see how it would look with only five cornrows and when we were done we concluded that it would have been much better with smaller braids, but we could not take it out and start in again – it was past Dimples’ bedtime and nearing mine!

Dimples came downstairs the following morning swinging her head and smiling in delight over the clicky-clacky sound her beads produced. She was beaming, and while I was pleased, the cornrows were already looking fuzzy and I knew I was not going to be satisfied until I turned those five into ten smaller braids. So, that night we turned on the same movie and I braided them again with a little help from Sweet Pea. This was the final result which, although not fantastic, looks pretty good to me:

Ladybug has been doing her share of braiding and beading, which has produced many requests from Dimples and Boo for dolls with “real hair”. I’m hoping to find some that I can tuck away for a gift while we are in Ethiopia. A new doll, along with some pretty beads, might be just the thing for easing a sad day of missing Mamma and Daddy.

I can’t end this post without adding another plug for our AHOPE t-shirts. Due to the generosity of the company producing and shipping our shirts, we receive a significant donation for each shirt you purchase. Not only that, when you wear an AHOPE t-shirt you promote our work of caring for HIV+ orphans in Ethiopia and looking great at the same time.

We have already added a women’s style shirt and more colors, so please take a look and buy a shirt or two (or ten) to support the children of AHOPE.

Thank you for stopping by!

~Lisa